Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Three's Still A Crowd

Here's my animatic so far. The sound effects and things are just placeholders for now, and I haven’t decided on a soundtrack yet, so it’s still pretty incomplete. It’s only about 2 minutes too, so chances are I’ll be adding more to it/tweaking some things eventually, since the maximum length it can be is about 3-4 minutes. For now, I want to get some feedback from my tutors before I do anything else with it. I had a bit of trouble finding good quality dog barking/growling sounds, but otherwise, I'm happy with how this is turning out so far.

Also, here's a little group picture for general size comparisons.

That Team Spirit

I've gotten pretty into a game called Team Fortress 2 in recent months, and I did a few little doodles of my classes. One of the things I love about this game is the fact you can customize your characters with various hats and things, so naturally, I made mine look as stupid as possible.

This is my Mariachi Pyro. I hadn't used my tablet in a while when I drew it, and it was initially intended as just a silly warm-up doodle, but I ended up giving it proper lineart and colouring it. Sombreros are tricky to draw.

These are some doodles of my zombie hobo Soldier (who's usually just a regular hobo Soldier, since the Halloween items are only useable during either Halloween or a full moon). His arm falls off a lot.

Three's A Crowd

For my final animation for my course, I've decided to focus on some older characters of mine - Tlun, a large yeti-like creature who popped up briefly in my Tiny Planet animation; Zombie, a seemingly undead lizard/puppy of sorts who's one of my oldest characters (he's about 7-8 years old); and Biscuit, a strange dog/beaver/reptile monster thing who acts as Zombie’s mother and who also starred in my onomatopoeia animation. Zombie seems to have become a mascot of sorts for me, so it's about time I included him in an animation. :P

The basic premise is that Tlun usually spends his days looking after an abandoned village deep in the mountains. Aside from the occasional lost traveler, it’s generally pretty quiet work… until Zombie finds his way in and Tlun has to try to get the pup out. Biscuit… doesn’t quite approve of his methods.

Here are some really quick little background ideas (not terribly great considering backgrounds aren't really my forte). I tried to make it look like there was a tiny village in the first picture, but… it kind of just looks like Tlun’s toilet. Hm.

I used a ref for the second picture, which is why it looks more three dimensional and not as flat. I got Tlun’s old rig and shrunk it down to see how it’d stand out against a background like that, and he seems to stand out against it okay.

This was one I did for my storyboard/animatic, and I'm happier with it than I am with my previous two backgrounds.

These are mostly just tests for now - I’m still not entirely sure how the background is going to look, or how the village will look. Hopefully I’ll be able to get a 2nd/1st year to help me who’s better with backgrounds than I am.

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Back In Action

Been a while since my last update, and that's partly because I've been back at home, and partly down to holiday laziness. But with classes and things starting up again this week, now's a good a time as any to get back into the habit of updating.

I do have a bunch of drawings I have yet to post, so I'll fit them all into this entry first, and then get onto the details of my final year project in a separate post.

First up, we have a particularly odd looking, apparently berry themed warm-up doodle. I'm... honestly not sure what to say about it.

For something only slightly less odd looking, here we have the still unnamed dragon/mermaid thing who began life as a warm-up doodle. I was mostly experimenting with markings and things here, but I think I like him better without them. I think I also like his wings better when they're a little smaller and don't have that extra third membrane attaching to his back.

Next up we have what is essentially me as a Robot Master from the Megaman series. There was a little challenge of sorts going on that prompted this, and I decided to base my robot on an aspect of me that most people who know me are familiar with - my rather large love of pizza. And thus, Pizzawoman was born. ...Er, built.

She was created to cook pizzas, and the large box on her back is a way of expelling large amounts of heat and preventing her from overheating, seeing as she's cooking almost constantly.

Moving onto something Pokemon related, Gen 6 was recently announced, and I loved the designs of the starters so much that I decided to have another go at a lineless piece. The lack of eyes was partly experimental and partly because I couldn't get the eyes they were supposed to have to cooperate, but it works with the style, I guess.

And last but not least, here's a drawing inspired by a picture I saw on Tumblr, which was basically two Pokemon sprites (Wailord and Whiscash) combined to create this jolly looking fellow.