Hi again everyone, I was hoping to catch you all before I went over to sunny Sheffield and checked out some details of another job. This week I had a play around with some marker pens and whilst on 12 cups of coffee, decided that I should draw this lot.
A simple animation from a commissioned job…thanks for watching:)
Sythopian Wars is the game that myself and Jason are putting together based on 10 years research by Jason into the making of an actual game. Through our added knowledge and my concept art we are developing a slow but sure interest in this amazing world.
My contribution is the following image based on the Guardian history when they returned to Sythopia and held back the swamp…
Time To Relax With A Good Book
The other week I got a reply to one of the many freelance websites I use to gain work. This particular one was simply a cartoon, caricature of a man on the toilet reading a book. The image itself I find funny but I thought, fair enough, put the sketch together and see how it comes out. You see this stuff doesn’t appear by magic, you do your preliminary sketches, rough drawings to get the layout and the character down. I know its tempting and to just go ahead an slap that marker on there and come up with something but this is a piece that needed setting up ready for printing at A1. That’s big!…so I needed to make sure the lines were of a good enough quality that they would reproduce at that size and you have already seen the process I go through to create a character, getting the muscles of your brain going to come up with something that looks good to you. This character was my version of a standard cliche…string vest, stubble etc. But done without the elements that could have easily made it x-rated.
This guy "motivates"
Today I though I would show you something that I rarely do…a super hero!!!…den, den, daaarrr!!!…I did loads of comedy stuff back in the late 80’s and early90’s for a few spoof magazines and at the time is was the lucrative thing to do. I think as long as you don’t take them too seriously they can be fun and entertaining. Sometimes even make a point in today’s society…way too serious for this post though and this one is a character I was commissioned to design. I get the pose right first and as you can see from the rough sketch it looked nothing like the final piece. This is due to the clients input and I changed and altered everything to be a little more of a cliche. Striking pose, in a rough stick man way and using that pose I built on it to come to the final piece. Sometimes just flicking through a book or day to day life can make things happen. I had actually had an email from a writer, not going to say who, and I remember them in the old days with the pony tail. They went to the gym too so it just made it a little more fun to do, even though they will probably never find out it was them. Try it, the first thing that pops into your head when you remember the people in your life.
Player X
This week I want to show you another example of how I would put together a character. There a re lots of ways and experimentation is good, I found that after a lot of trial and error that putting a rough and quick sketch together foor a client is a good start. You get their feedback and then refine the pencils to a more finished piece. After that moving onto the final inks and then the colours. Each stage giving the a chance to give feedback and alter your work. That way you don’t waste any of their time, which to be honest, they are paying you for and should get the feeling that they are in control of a final product. The creativity and the skill are all yours and you end finish with something you can both be proud of.
Hey there everyone, this week I am going to show of a few stages of some work I did for a client and through the rough sketches and feedback I received from them I was able to do them quickly, efficiently and get paid. Job done and on to the next. This is the way it should be, working through the process and getting the job out of the way by solving any issues in a productive manner. Even if its an uninteresting subject, you will find the process still has something for you to sink your teeth into. In this case the Cinemaniac was done as a rough and the final pencils printed in blue on to Bristol Board. I do this so that I can remove them easier in photoshop. In the past you would simply do a copy of it and the blue didn’t print, just the inks. But now scanners and photocopiers are a little more advanced and give us problems by showing all the imperfections in the inking that you probably never saw before. I then inked using a Rigor, a long thin tapered brush similar to a lining brush traditionally used by sign writers years ago.
Chester
Chester here is the image I was given to create a banner, the site is still in the process of being put together and sells many interesting comics and books. I loved putting this guy together.
Since the work on the Time Bomb Comics and Huddersfield University logo’s I went further and every month I try out something new to help improve on the skills I already have. I have worked in photoshop a lot when putting together concept art but discovered since that after effects is the video version of photoshop. I had to keep playing and so put this one together for part of my showreel in order to send to film companies.
Whilst at University I was in class when my tutor started scribbling an idea on the board. The rest of the group seemed to be more interested in Youtube and I saw straight away the way that his idea could be created. You know the feeling when you see an answer to a problem and get knots in your stomach? Well just like that. Over a period of a few weeks I was asked to put this together with colour changes, with triangles and without, with different slogans and blurbs. Finally we agreed on this and went with it. All done in 3Ds Max using a lighting system I had never tried and maps for the colours I never used.
A great example of the things that come up when working in the real world.
During my time at Life Class I put together an illustration that I later used to test some special effects ideas. I discovered you could use the layers in as a 3D space. With this and a recently purchased copy of some physical effects I tested the idea out on this image.
Another rough animation but it gets me closer to that extra special job role.
