Silly Soldiers

Something I drew for my brother, of our Soldiers being... well, themselves. :B

Basically, in-game, there are a bunch of voice commands you can use which make the class you're playing as say certain things. My brother uses the "jeers" one a lot, which means his Soldier is often either insulting everyone or just generally being angry, while I use the "positive" one a lot, which means mine is usually snickering a lot and saying "yeah" at nothing in particular like the crazy hobo he is. Fun times.

Also, here's a silly warm-up doodle I did of Snakeman, who I haven't drawn in quite some time.

He's A Large Ham

It's been a while since I last drew something non-work related for myself that wasn't just a silly doodle, so I drew the customisation I have on my Scout in TF2. A new melee weapon was released the other day that's basically a ham shank, and I've drawn my Scout wielding it so many times that he's come to be known as the Ham Scout.

Oh, and speaking of doodles, here are a few little warm-up ones from the past week or so that I haven't posted yet.

Ham Scout again, looking decidedly more noodly than in the picture above.

Some sort of lizard thing with another lizard thing sprouting out of its head. It looks quite perplexed.

Some sort of shark wearing a pair of silly dungarees, which it doesn't seem to be too happy about.

This one I did with my mouse out of boredom one day, using only circles of varying opacities. It turned out a little bit creepier than intended.

And last but not least, further proof that I draw some of the least threatening monsters ever.

What's That?

Got a few little scenes done today of Zombie's reactions to spotting the village off in the distance. Hopefully I'll have the village entrance drawn up soon so I can put them between these scenes.

Zombie's first reaction to spotting the village off in the distance. I'm probably going to tweak the facial expressions at some point, since at the moment he kind of looks more confused than curious.

Zombie looking back to make sure Biscuit isn't looking. His expression after looking back at the village a third time will be more mischievous and eager looking.

Also, some expressions in between keyframes that I found amusing enough to take screenshots of. :P

Some Minor Adjustments

I ended up doing a little test to see how it'd look with the background from the first scene, but I found that it made the snow look really flat in comparison to the other background.

So, I made a few little tweaks to the snow that comes up when he lands, and swapped the backgrounds round again. 

Even Monster Kids Love Snow

Scene 5 is pretty much done now. I’m not sure I’m happy with the background, though - the one I used in the test seemed to work better, but I’m not sure I can get away with reusing the background from the opening shot. I'll have to get some feedback from my tutors on that.

In any case, future tweaks aside, Zombie’s movements and things for this scene are complete. I added in some snow in Toon Boom for his impacts, although that might need tweaking a bit as well, since it blends in with the background a little too much.

This is the background I drew up for this scene. The backgrounds aren't really the main focus any more, so I didn't spend more than a few minutes on this. I'm thinking I might have to use it for something else instead (most likely during the opening when it's slowly zooming in on Biscuit carrying Zombie), since at the moment it doesn't really match the current scene, to me.

There's Snow Day Like A Snow Day

It was suggested that I add a snowy effect to the first scene to help set the mood a bit more. It's something I'd been thinking about, and my initial plan was to save it until I'd done the animation, but I figured there was no harm in doing a bit of experimentation in Adobe After Effects. Adding a snow effect was really simple, and I like how it looks. I'll probably be using it for most of the outside scenes, although it'll likely be thinner and a bit less noticeable in the village scenes.

Did the same with the scene in which Zombie plays in the snow, and worked on the animation a bit more, too. It’s still not complete yet (there are a lot more movements I have yet to do, as well as secondaries and follow throughs and whatnot), which is why his mouth vanishes partway through. The background’s also still a placeholder for now, but other than that, I like how this is shaping up so far.

I had a bit of a mishap with background placement at one point while working on the scene, which made Zombie go behind the mountains and made him look huge.

And then I sort of ran with it and made this very silly animation. Giant Zombie attack!

To finish things off, here's an amusing screenshot I took before I'd moved Zombie's eyes to the correct positions when he turns his head.

Going Ape

I took a bit of a break from working on TAC today to get a few drawings done for an animation I'm doing for Carse & Waterman. The client is National Geographic, and I've been asked to do a short animation involving an ape walking on-screen and gradually transforming into a human, before looking up and having the title of the show land on him.

I've never really drawn an ape before, so I found a reference picture of the classic "evolution of man" line-up and did a few quick sketches from that. 

I'd been given a particular style that I needed to work in, so these were a few quick doodles I did to sort of get the hang of it. 

And this was a little test to see how the different stages of the transformation might look. I'm not sure as of yet how I'll do the animation, but I'm thinking a mixture of cut-out for the walking and then drawn for the transformations. To save time, I'll likely do all the drawing straight into Toon Boom as opposed to doing them in Paint Tool SAI as I usually do.