Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Flame on!

If you haven't been able to figure it out by now, our hero (Despite the title of this post) is based on Firefly from Batman. Our story filled with clichés and sort of typical hero stuff didn't really feel like it needed a special unique hero or villain.

Out of all our concepts though it was kind of funny how characters that were basically rip offs of other established characters were the ones our team gravitated towards. Goes to show that people like those things for a reason I suppose. I honestly had never heard of Firefly, when I saw the original sketch I was thinking about the Rocketeer. Which is also one of my favorite movies.

Anyways no real reason behind this piece either, just another thing to get people going in our group. I guess it was also a break from having to do proper character turnarounds. That stuff really wears you out. So much thinking about things you normally don't care about cause you're usually doing a one-off drawing. I suppose that's a good thing in the end though.

Fire & Ice

Here's a quick sketch I did, just to make something for fun and to 'hopefully' get the rest of my Production Studio class in the mood to work on this, since we begin animating next week.

You wouldn't think it but this is severely edited in photoshop haha, well unless your monitor's colors are different than mine, then you can probably tell. I reposed the characters forever trying to find the right angles and changed the colors to red and blue. Also it's so much cleaner than it actually is, Photoshop really is amazing isn't it?

The Mother & Daughter


Here is our unnamed mother and daughter for a story beat in the beginning of our project. Not much to say about 'em. Both designs were started by my friend Lee who you can check out at http://deadpoolrus.deviantart.com/. I ended up modifying the designs again, just because we wanted all designs to be similar. The little girl is barely changed and the mother's body shape was the only thing I kept from his. Originally the mother had a ponytail off to the side, like her daughter. However this made her look like an older sister or something. So I settled on a bobbed kind of hairstyle.

Also on a side note front views always make my characters look weird now that I'm looking at them again... not sure if that's normal or something I should be working on.

The Hero


Here's the Hero of my Production Studio project, the "T" stands for Trojan (As in Trojan Man, get it?) Anyways all immature silliness aside I think I like this the most out of all the characters. Knowing the plot also makes me feel kind of bad for our hero, but I won't give anything away till it's finished.

Again not all designs are mine here. The alter ego again is mine, but the hero costume design was originally done by my friend Lee, and then another guy in our group took it from there. I finalized and refined the design into what you see on the bottom image.

The Villainess


Well here's some turnarounds from my Production Studio class. Tis' the ice based villain of our story, complete with alter ego as well. The story has quite a twist, at least we think so and despite it being so dead serious I think it'll be fun.

Not all here is my work, the super villain costume was created by my friend Lee, who you can check out here http://deadpoolrus.deviantart.com/. I edited his turnarounds and I guess you can still see the eraser marks from his original line art. Her alter ego is all my idea, and I had originally drawn her head too big, thank god for photoshop haha.

Anyways hopefully the costume scan looks ok, I didn't scan it myself I don't have the original.

Monday, July 23, 2012

Superheroes!

Well once again I've somehow become art director on another Flash Animation based class. My story pitch sadly lost by one vote, and I wasn't able to do my sequel I've been itching to do for Desperado since I invented that character. Instead we're diving into some serious dramatic territory with a superhero story.

The story is fairly cliché and I couldn't really stray from conventional hero types. So I got down a quick and very sketchy generic hero body type, and tinkered with it. So here are the three I did, a sort of Commando Samurai Jack, Deadpool-ish masked hero, and finally a hero who's inspiration I can't even recall anymore. I want to say a hero or villain that had bird-like overtones in the costume.

Anyways the other guys in our group that actually were assigned to design the hero/villain came up with plenty of fun designs of which we more or less got our characters finalized. Hopefully our team which is much larger than it was for Deep Blue Sky, will really pull this off well. Guess I'll see what happens in about 9 weeks.

Also my heart goes out for the victims of the TDKR shooting in Aurora, Colorado. That kind of stuff just pisses me off, six and nine year olds there to enjoy a movie gunned down by a nut case. It's just not right.

Sunday, July 15, 2012

A Pretty Face



I've realized lately, I've been drawing nothing but some really generic faces. They literally feel all the same, and while every artist develops their own sort of default face for men and women I felt like I needed to draw more of them from reference. I kind of worked myself into this spot since most of my boredom sketches are all about glorified muscular definition and I've never really focused on the face. So yesterday afternoon I had some time to kill, and

Anyways I felt like I should focus on faces for awhile when I have the chance. So yesterday afternoon I had some time to kill, and sketched this up.The reference for this comes from http://characterdesigns.com/ which is a great reference resource, and while he doesn't update much anymore there are more than plenty of images to practice anatomy, some clothes, and props. Go to the left, and click on 'photosets' under 'Archives'. I forget which set this is from but you'll recognize it if you find it haha.

Anyways that's all I got for now. I just realized I haven't slept since 6am yesterday and it's 5:30am now. Time to get some sleep. Also wow I'm at 5.5k views already and I haven't even posted for awhile. I think this is probably the most popular web-thing I've ever made on the internet haha. Thanks again to all you anonymous visitors.


Anatomy Drawin'

Again here's some forgotten sketches I found from last quarter. Practicing my own little brand of anatomy I suppose. Been really messing up lately, I hadn't really watched Anime for like a year and I binged on it over my break. Consequently my sleep schedule is messed up and I'm drawing legs much longer than I usually do. The stuff you watch really influences you! Which is why it's important to always practice your basics, and do Life Drawing. 

Even a sharp blade dulls without sharping! Practice Practice Practice!

Mystic Girl

Here's a sketch from like 3 weeks ago, I completely forgot it was in my sketchbook. Anyways, I don't think I had any idea in mind when I drew this out. Just kind of attacked it from an artistic vacuum, which comprised of me going "Hmm...I think this looks neat" as I drew random shapes on top of the anatomy to form her armor. I think it fits together well considering I had no direction in mind.

It's really nice to draw like this once in awhile. Remembering all your techniques and design philosophies you learn in classes/books takes it's toll when you draw. I believe one of my professors explained to me roughly as your brain draws it pulls on all you've learned sub-consciously, and when you consciously think about those things, it hinders you.  When you draw without letting all your training take up your brain's RAM (Processing) I believe you create much easier.

Deep Blue Sky

Well I should of posted this like a month ago, but here's the end result of my friend and I's crazy shark idea. I designed most of the characters and converted them to flash, my friend handled the sharks and a fair bit of animation himself.  You can check out his dA page here: http://deadpoolrus.deviantart.com/ He's pretty good at makin' monsters and better at painting in Photoshop than me I think as well. Anyways, there were other group members naturally and there was probably as much pain as there was fun put in to making this.

Still at the end we wanted to fix more things, improve the look of backgrounds, shots, and different assets. Time was something we didn't have by then and only a few fixes made it in. All in all though our professor liked it and we passed. Hope you like it, more posts to come soon!