Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

From my thesis film characters! :)

Art was hand drawn and scanned in!

Super Science Friends!

Here's a trailer for upcoming Super Science Friends episodes! This was a fun project I had the pleasure of working on during the summer at Tinman! Really cool to see it all come together. A couple of scenes I worked on are featured in the trailer!

Hippie

Been super busy with my film as well as those damn electives lately. I haven't had the opportunity to work on my film as much these past few weeks due to the amount of work that piled up for them near the end. Bit of a bummer since all I want to do is work on my film. 

ANYWAY...less electives complaining since that happens too often at school, here's a doodle of a hippie I made today as a warm of that is sort of based on a life drawing to tide you over until I post thesis film stuff again. 

I'll post film stuff very soon such as my animation tests. I'll also probably post during my winter break of a description of my film! The break's in a few weeks and although I'm excited for it, I'll be spending those 3 weeks still at school in the studio working on my film. 

NO BREAKS UNTIL I'M DONE!

The Evolution of Art

Meet the main character of my thesis film Arthur, or Art for short!

This is a page of gestures I made of Art not too long ago and his design has changed a bit since then. He is based on a question mark due to the theme of my film as well as him being a curious character and the embodiment of intrigue. I'll reveal the story premise soon!

I've done some animation tests recently which resulted in me changing his design a bit mostly on the legs to be more tube/rubber hose rather than thin tapered legs, they still taper a bit. This change was recommended by one of my teachers pointing out that since in my story the character is seen in varying distances (close ups to extreme long shots), thin legs would be lost/hard to read at certain distances and actions. This is why animation tests are important! I'm glad I started them early.

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Below are, in order of my progression, of the character since last year when pitching the idea in 3rd year to more recently. Originally he was very nondescript character so that anyone can project themselves onto it, he still is but less so. Although I haven't revealed the story these drawings might actually give a hint to what I'm doing...

Originally I wasn't sure if I should give the character a mouth or not. I want him to be expressive but more through body language and pantomime. In the end I went with a mouth because I ended up making certain poses that looked weird when you couldn't see his eyes, such as looking up so a mouth was necessary. 

During a lecture in 3rd year a friend of mine was cutting some paper so I decided to glue it into my sketchbook and use it.

Here I was recommended I put pants on the character which I ended up liking a lot and went back to some old drawings and threw it on. Afterwards I felt like he looked bare chested now with just pants hence why I added suspenders and added the hat for secondary action later on.

Here was when I went more with a curvy approach to the design and started to implement the question mark as a gesture. I was really leaning towards the design on the top left but after some critiques from several people it seemed to be really 50/50 with people liking it and people thinking I could push it further. It looked too "basic", very standard. and in the end I agreed. 

I approached a former character design teacher of mine, and although he did like my original design  he agreed it could be pushed further. So to start from scratch he made me consider parts of the original design that were "Non-negotiable" or parts that I NEEDED to keep which ended up being:

-big eyes for clear expressions

-big nose because it looks funny and cute

-big hands for clear body gestures

-a bean structure or bean like body

       Art needed to move certain ways due to my boards, so a unibody couldn't work.

-question mark gesture

He also suggested I work graphically then complicate the character the moment he moves in dimension, such as opening its mouth and revealing complex shapes within a simple circle head. The above drawings were leading me really close to the final...

Then I made this drawing! THE drawing that led me to my current design. It had everything I wanted and more such as his design making him gesture in a certain way. His hips are wide so he can't really put his arms down so instead he puts his hands on his hips for resting, which gives it this bit of a judgmental feel from Art and fits his personality exactly. 

One of the advice I got from my previous character design teacher when I was redesigning Art was to, "Create a design that makes them immediately laugh. The moment he appears on screen and the audience laughs, they're on board with it." And ever since redesigning him I've gotten chuckles and laughs when I've shown him around!

Thesis Film Sneak Peek!

Here's another small slice of work from my thesis film. This was made sometime early September, lots of progress since then! Work on the film is going along extremely well! I'm about 2 weeks ahead of the school's deadlines and I'm trying really hard to keep it that way. I will reveal more about it really soon and I'll be posting some more artwork on it this week! Look forward to it!

Spooky Doodles

Just kidding, only one spooky doodle. Sorry to have scared you at first thinking there were more. The rest are just some silly doodles I did after getting tired of storyboarding for my film. Which is going pretty good so far! I'm on track and way ahead of schedule! Hopefully things remain this way for the rest of the year haha.

Busy, busy, busy! ALREADY!

End of week 2 and even though we have such few classes this year, I've been super busy on my thesis film! Constantly working on it since the first day and I already have a ton of pre-production work. I'll be posting those very soon. In the meantime enjoy a story sketch and a pose I really dig. Character designs aren't final of course! I'll divulge more info about my film the more concrete it is.

I have also added the tag "thesis" for anything pertaining to my fourth year film for quick searching. Look forward to my film! Fourth year is already one hell of a ride and I'm both excited and nervous. 

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3rd year film post-mortem will be delayed until I have time to do it. Compiling all those images and info is one hell of task. There's just so much to talk/post about. I WILL do one, it's just a matter of when I have time to do it.