Maude

Here's another character designed from a thumbnail! I said would post them after the first one, but crazy workload at school came out of nowhere. I won't make any promises on when I'll be posting the other ones as it's difficult to predict when I can get things done, but they will come in due time!

So check out Maude, inspired by Robert Valley's work:

Surprisingly this wasn't a thumbnail I wasn't really fond of, but I suddenly got an idea for the design of the head and then I just needed to do it.

Storyboard Beats

*Updated*

Our first assignment for storyboard was to create beat boards from 2 poems that were given to us. We were to interpret each poem however we wanted. 

I had another idea for the Mistake poem that my instructor liked except the ending, so I decided to change the entire first one's story to what it is now. I will update this post later if I manage to scan those, but my scanner at home currently isn't working properly.

After pitching these beat boards we are to expand and actually storyboard one of them. My instructor extremely liked my Good Little Girl idea but thought that the story had already resolved. So I am currently in the process of elaborating on my A Mistake idea.

I found the process of figuring out a story was extremely fun, I was able to flex my storytelling imagination. My whole process was thinking of the first idea I had and then completely scrap most of it if it wasn't at all interesting. Surprisingly my prediction that my first ideas would be filled with cliches was true as I saw many other stories with similar ideas I originally had. That's not to say that my stories are free from cliches, I just think that these are stronger than what I originally had. 

Rough Work

Character development of Isabelle, my favourite is the bottom left. 

Two other characters from my original interpretation of the Mistake poem, the couple Bruce and Holly. I did keep the name Bruce for the bear in my final idea.

The two pictures above are roughs of first idea I had. The top one of the first page and all three panels in the bottom page were used to pitch. It involved a couple snowed in their home, Holly giving Bruce a snowblower as a gift, Bruce riding and crashing the snowblower into their home, and finally them celebrating Christmas while using the crashed snowblower in their home as a Christmas tree/furniture. It was a decent idea with an okay ending, I decided to change it because I wasn't really satisfied with how the plot develops, it required decent perspective/layout which I'm not so good at, and the fact that it was too "realistic" and not really animated. 

Early Bruce and Bib designs, Bib remained pretty much the same.

My original idea had Bruce swinging at the hive only to have it get stuck at the end of the stick he used. The bees would then swarm and attack him. This idea didn't work since in the story the characters didn't accomplish much. Plus I had no clue how to conclude it in the final beat. 

The final roughs of Bib and Bruce's designs. Keeping these character very shapely (oval and circle) helps a ton when having to draw many storyboards with them, and makes them extremely easy to identify. 

How To Train Your Dragon Portrait

My year decided to make How To Train Your Dragon-themed portraits for a banner. I've never seen the film in its entirety, I know what a sin. But I have seen the beginning and the end on two separate occasions, I just need to see the meat of it all.

Apart from that, I do love the art from it and I absolutely love the dragon designs. For my portrait I attempted to mimic, Nico Marlet's style while maintaining a bit of my own. I like how it turned out a lot and I hope you do too!

Doodles From Week 3

Since this year has already been hectic and busy, this past week I've tried my best to take a bit of time every day to doodle and create something not school related. I started on thursday and I'm going to try my best to post frequently on my tumblr, instagram, and twitter. After the week is up I will round whatever I have drawn and post a total recap here. 

So here's what I have made so far these past few days:

Lady Astrid

The first thing that came to mind when I drew the thumbnail was some sort of drunk and/or insane queen telling guards to get rid of someone. I took some inspiration from The Earth Queen from The Legend of Korra but mostly from the costume designs from the film The Fall (specifically this) and it's beautiful colours and headdresses. As for the name? I just came across the name of the author of Pippi Longstocking close to when I was doing this project.

Sketch

Original thumbnail