Goodeye Mate!

Hello again!

I'm gonna update the crap outta this blog right here. I've been working hard on some visual development work for my senior studio project. Because I don't want to make a gigantic post, I'm just gonna throw some different work in separate posts over the next few days.

So a bit of background on this project. I've been doing work focusing on development for an animated story and one geared towards a video game. This post is going to feature some stuff for the animated short that will later be made in 3D.



My story concept takes place in a fictional 1930's USA. The story revolves around Rufus, a traditional boxcar hobo, encountering and befriending a young adventurous girl named Piper. While Rufus is heading out of Big Windy City to catch his train, he helps save Piper from an oncoming car. Piper is at first scared of Rufus because of his height and mangy hair but she realizes that he reminds her of her favorite stuffed lion doll. Rufus helps Piper find her way home but she becomes quite in trouble with her parents when they find out Rufus is of a different class. Heartbroken, she must say goodbye to her new friend. Rufus makes his way back to the train yard and while he safely boards a boxcar, he notices he has a follower. Piper made her way onto the train with Rufus and is now joining him on his adventure. Rufus must abide by the Hobo Code and follow the tenant to entice all runaway children to return home or he may face trial at the Hobo Court.  Although he can't get her off the train in time, Rufus' spirit for adventure is rekindled after seeing Piper's joy for it and decides to go along for the ride...


These are some of the developmental sketches I did for Piper just trying to figure out the look for her and capture her character. She is young, imaginative, cute, naive, and adventurous in a small package.

 

Here I did some colored versions of some of the designs I got the most responses from and felt matched her personality the best.  Although the final film will be in 3D, I really wanted to take a more Mary Blair approach with some of this initial 2D work. She has been a big inspiration to me as an animation artist and you can definitely see her influence on these pieces. 

Early on I had a better picture of what Rufus would look like compared to Piper and already had some design goals for him (you can see this in the painting a few posts back). I knew I wanted him to be very shapely and his hair would be a prominent feature for his design. It wasn't until later that I decided to add the resemblance to Piper's lion doll so that she could have an instant connection with him.

Stay tuned for more updates!



                                                                              

Time for a break...

From school at least. The summer term is now over. This wasn't exactly the hardest term but I'm glad I've got 3 weeks until I start what will be one of the final terms of my college career. I'll be entering my final animation studio class and I'm very excited and also nervous. Soon I'll have to enter the "real world" and figure out how to accomplish everything I've ever wanted to after college.

I'll be making some big updates with my senior project so keep an eye out for those. In the meantime these are a couple of digital paintings I've done the last few weeks. I'm glad my friends have started this group to keep us practicing even when we're out of school.



This is a digital painting of Darth Nihulus from the expanded Star Wars universe. I really wanted to work on lighting so I decided to use both his lightsaber and the environment as compliments to each other with the light. I've also been trying to keep a looser style and focus more on strokes rather than smoothly rendering everything. Here's the result.

And here's the most recent. The theme for this challenge was mythology. I'm pretty interested in Japanese mythology so I decided to a Tengu demon since they are pretty iconic. I wanted to do this one in my animated style and try some different approaches to digital painting.

Figure Drawing

I keep saying I'm gonna post figure drawing stuff on here so I finally am now! These are studies for a new sculpture of a male figure. I figured this would be a good series to start these posts with since I just did them earlier tonight. Once I take photos of some drawings done in the last few months, I'll be posting those up shortly too which will feature a lot of my gesture drawings and some quick lighting studies as well.



                                                

                                 

Good Times

Last night we had the opening of our show "REDEFINITION" which was opening along side another amazing show titled "Loosely Arranged" (featuring artists Adam Rex, Max Canon, Michael Nolan, and Dave Christiana). This was my first time showing in a gallery and I am really grateful for the experience. It was nice to get some outside attention on our work and we had a hell of a time transforming the gallery space. Received quite a few compliments about my piece. One of the best moments was seeing someone I didn't even know take a picture of it. Really glad it appealed to a lot of those that saw it and the whole show in general. I love working with talented people and putting each of our own ingredients into the gumbo pot and ending up with something truly amazing. I hope to do this kind of thing again in the future. I'll post some pictures from the opening once I obtain them but here's what my contribution to the show was. This was still a work in progress when I took this picture, I'll update this post once I get the photos.

                                                                         

Also I got the show's poster signed by everyone, granted two of the artists are my instructors so it was easy to get them.  As well as a nice little doodle from Adam Rex in my copy of his book "Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich". 

                                                                                  

It's been a while..

But I haven't been lazy, I swear!

I'm just making a quick update to make sure I keep in the habit of this blogging thing. Not much animation stuff going on, but I've been working on figure sculpting stuff as well as making some concept sketches for a painting that I'll be doing for a gallery show with some friends. I'm pretty excited about that. Anyway here's the most recent progress of a bust we've been doing in class the last few weeks. This is the first sculpting I've done since my first maquette I made about 3 years ago. So far I'm really liking it and I hope I get to do more in the future.

 

OH. Hi.

This has been a long and busy week. Currently wrapping up production for the promotional piece and excited to attend the in house premiere for it on the 11th. Also got word that the commercial I worked on with the same group last year has been airing. I wish I had cable so I could see it but ah well.

Currently working on my digital environments piece. Here's a render I did detailing the harpoons and barrel.

Also starting this watercolor painting of the Pisa Cathedral. I found some beautiful references to use as my style and I like the way it's coming along. Just have to learn to not rush so fast with watercolor, I tend to keep treating it like oils and that causes bad results. But here's the start of it so far.

Anyway, just a quick update. The term is wrapping up next week so there will be some more updates on personal work during the break and I will be heavily working out my art muscles then!

Hard work..

Welp I have finished 99% of the short so far. Just need to make some small tweaks in a few areas and it'll be ready to be stitched together with the others in this vignette.

So here it is for your viewing pleasure!

Recently I've figured I need to get back into painting daily. My friend made a good suggestion of writing down a list of goals and that included drawing/painting for an hour or two a day outside of just class work. It's true. Lately it has been hard to make any time to just sit and paint or do something that isn't for one of the 100 assignments I have to work on at once. This goes true for just other parts of living. Eventually you gotta do some laundry. No amount of Febreeze will cover the funk of a month old pair of dirty underwear. My same friend started to do a livestream of him just drawing and whatnot and I found that it kinda helped to get me working on my own stuff again. I guess it has to do more with a buddy system thing. I always like have chats with friends while animating, drawing, painting, etc so even if we can't be in the same room, we can still be exercising our art muscles together which I think is cool. Once I get really into the groove I'll start to post some of that here. For now here's a warm up I did in about 20 minutes the other night just to get back into the swing of things. Been a few months since I have painted.

Update update update

 'Ello' ello. Just doing an update before I crash for the night. I've made some progress on this short and I'm happy where it's going. Not to mention that an extension was given on the project so it's just that much more to take it to the level I want it to be at. Don't have any pencil tests to upload at the moment but they may come soon. For now here's the finished background from the previous posts with a composite of how the character will look against it. The line style isn't final, I'm thinking of doing darker values of the colors for the line around the hair and skin because it's a little closer to the style I was going for. But, again, this was just to see how the characters looked in the world.

(Also to note: She is running her finger along the rim of a coffee cup in this scene but it did not make it into this test.)

Also just wanted to show some progress I've made on a portrait of Jeff Bridges I'm working on as an illustration assignment. This is done in Prismacolor pencil. First time I've used them in many years and in this kind of approach. I'm pretty happy with it. Really liking the fact that I'm getting exposed to some different medias lately and have the ability to quickly adapt to using them and executing some fun pieces with them. 

Keep on keepin' on

Was the only one working in the studio today. It felt kinda nice to be alone with my thoughts and I like to think it helped me to concentrate a little more but still would have rather had some animation buddies with me. Currently I feel like I am struggling to keep on schedule with this short due to the limited time I've had to work on it but I'm trying to remain optimistic that I'll get it done on top of my other projects (see my 3-Dimensional Worlds blog to see what I'm working on in that area). Got a few seconds cranked out today of pencil tests, only have about 5 more seconds to finish up which should be relatively easy from a motion standpoint. The hardest part is getting the acting right.

Also managed to do a little more to my background I posted last night and did a composite test to make sure it is working for my scene, which it does (good news!). It's nice how therapeutic it can be to just work on something that isn't animated sometimes even if it's apart of the same project. That's what I love about animation as there is ALWAYS something to do.  Not sure I mentioned in in the last post but I'm going for a UPA style look for these backgrounds as I like the simplicity and funkiness of the shapes and colors but also the detail lines that go into them.

Well this is awkward....

Finally getting around to posting to this thing. I've been severely lacking in that department but blogging is something I've never been too into. Anyway, currently working on a project promoting a film festival. We're going for a vignette of shorts about 10-15 seconds long each. Here's an example of a work in progress background for a French cafe...