In recent years, CCS has been putting together extra promotional materials to get its students' work out into the field a bit more. Last year was a print book, this year, and more appropriately planned I think, is a digital collection of works they've donned the Flipbook. In addition to illustrations, I also submitted this quick reel of 2d hand-drawn and 3d computer animation. Thought I'd share. The music has been provided under Creative Commons licensing by the very talented and generous Kevin McLeod from http://incompetech.com - said music wasn't added to the submitted reel, but I thought it was rather fun to at least have some extra sound included on a net-posted reel.
I'm on the very cusp of having Caravan's final animation halfway complete. As a whole, I'd wager that the film's work is almost 3/4 of the way done, which in a good realization to have made, for sure. As per usual, here's a quick-link list to the latest progress on Caravan, via entries over at the Caravan Production blog, including the above reel of more completed shots from the film.
I once again reached a point where I needed to doodle something that wasn't a 10 year old girl (whoo, Caravan!) And settled with doodling Dominic Drowe and Cheyenne Valkyrie from my Nexus series (Dom being the black haired fellow, and Cheyenne the gal in this previously posted image) in their wolfen forms as a means of taking a wee bit of a break this weekend. I'll color this one soon as well.
Good news on the Caravan front: I now have a good two minutes 10 seconds of the film completed. That's over a quarter of what will be the final product, a quarter of the way into my semester. I'm right on schedule! It feels awesome.
A couple of recently composited shots for Caravan.
The usual drill: Here's a quick-link list to the latest progress on Caravan, via entries over at the Caravan Production blog, including the above completed shots 003, 019, 030, 031 and 040 the final in the film.
Sheol & Kali - Winter Walk.Sheol and Kali strollin' through the winter woods.
Since I was stuck in Photoshop coloring animation for Caravan all weekend anyways (We completed 6 new final shots - I'll update the Caravan Blog with them sometime tomorrow) I slipped in a little color job on the side.
The above line art is by my good buddy and talented artist Renee Atkinson - she was kind enough to draw my character Sheol and our friend Kat Bongard's character Kali from our Matihao Whenua concept. I could not resist coloring this - Ren's artwork is always a joy to render. So, voila! Thank you again, Renners! ♥
Caravan's entire collection of 64 backgrounds are now complete! I'm now in the mad dash to complete its animation, alongside my other half, Niles', diligent and entirely awesome work in compositing the whole shebang together - he's already completed two and is slated to compile more shots this weekend. Here goes nothing, as they say! That said, here's a quick-link list to the latest progress on Caravan, via entries over at the Caravan Production blog, including the above completed background from Shot 081 - the final in the film.
After a much needed break over Christmas, Caravan's production is back in full swing. Here's a quick-link list to the latest progress on Caravan, via entries over at the Caravan Production blog, including the above completed background from Shots 036 and 040:
I was dead determined to get at least ONE portfolio image done this break. Success. Between that this far, and a couple of images for a freelance commercial project - time well spent. I'm back on Caravan background this evening as well.
That said, here's "Polly Want a Soliloquy" completed (above) as well as a couple of steps in its color progression (Below.) The story behind the image, as posted previously:
I picked a bit of the characters' story that always gives me a bit of a giggle: Wherein Reagan realizes, after much prolonged skepticism, that Rook is telling every bit of the truth about the pesky, yellow-eyed Corvid that has been following him around for days... He talks. Vividly, no less. Reagan shrieks. The bird, Dymitri, looks incredibly smug at startling the inferior bipedal specimens. Poor Rook just continues to look wholly disturbed.
Color Progression:
Steps Shown:
Simple flat colors.
The addition of textures, including a couple of awesome Public Domain poster designs.
The completed render of the background, sans characters.
I was recently contacted by an awesome Prodigy fan site, The Prodigy Fanboy, with the request to create an illustration for a new site-layout banner, after the site's owner had caught wind of an old Prodigy bit of fanart of mine from 2004. A Prodigy fan for ages now, I couldn't help but agree.
The trick therein lie in the fact that, in the past 15 weeks, I haven't inked a single iota, as I've been in the middle of rough animation for Caravan throughout and the backgrounds, as well, have been in pencil. So, I decided to kill two birds with a single proverbial stone - teach myself to draw steadily on a Cyntiq, as well as re-sharpen my inking chops.
The guinea pigs for said practice project? A couple of main characters from a long-standing original concept of mine: Kamikaze's Rook, Reagan and Dymitri.
I picked a bit of the characters' story that always gives me a bit of a giggle: Wherein Reagan realizes, after much prolonged skepticism, that Rook is telling every bit of the truth about the pesky, yellow-eyed Corvid that has been following him around for days... He talks. Vividly, no less. Reagan shrieks. The bird, Dymitri, looks incredibly smug at startling the inferior bipedal specimens. Poor Rook just continues to look wholly disturbed.
Here's the progression on the image so far:
Steps in detail:
The initial rough sketch. Each character, as well as the background are addressed on their own layers.
Fleshing out the sketch a bit more, particularly where Rook is concerned. The bird, Dymitri, is also resized a bit to make the composition hold a little more weight.
Opacity on each layer is brought down to about 40% to help separate them from the line work. Line work is, again, kept of its own character-by-character layer. Here, I've started final inks on Dymitri.
Dymitri's line work completed, I move onto Rook.
Rook is completed as well - Onto Reagan.
All three characters completed in their inks. I also began sketching the background a bit more, teasing the idea, in the bottom right corner, of having a bunsen burner cooking a pot full of some ominous concoction for food. This was considered primarily for the purpose of having a blue flame as a light source in addition to the window. And yes, for the record, my sketching is usually this haywire when I'm not drawing on a clientele basis. It all makes sense to me, at least ;)
Pushed down the characters' opacity tremendously to focus on the background. The backgrounds' lines are kept to a very minimum, as most of it will be built when I flat and color the thing. I also nixed the bunsen for what will be a rickety looking fire-hazard of a space heater, adding an orange light source to the space instead. It seemed more appropriately creepy, given the characters' expressions.
Initial color study/flat layers. This will be a night shot, mostly monochromatic blue, save for the addition of the space heater's fiery glow.
I needed something random and cute to draw - and something completely different than anything I've been doing in Caravan for the past few months - so, here's Moxie as a puppy in the snow. Hello, cute overload. ;) This silly quickie is all-digital from sketch to finish, created on Niles 's Cyntiq. It feels so wonderful to create art for FUN! It's been too long!
Also, I'm quite pleased to note that I've been granted some unexpected commercial freelance work over the break - looking forward to it!
News has reached my peers and I that this past Sunday, one of our most talented, dedicated life drawing models, Ron Hayward, passed away. Ron was an amazing person - soft spoken, intelligent, good humored, who took his craft seriously, and genuinely cared about the students who were learning from illustrating his thoughtful, dynamic poses. It was always a pleasure for me to speak with him, and I, as well as the CCS family as a whole, will genuinely miss his presence. RIP, Ron. You will be missed.
Source dialog clip is from Dexter, in a conversation between Vince Masuka (C.S. Lee) and Dexter himself (Michael C. Hall):
"Yo, what's up with you today? You're throwing off my Chi." "...You're not Chinese." "I'm not?"
So, it's official! Not only have I survived a full semester in a rather intense Maya animation course at CCS, I genuinely feel like I've thrived in it, despite my initial devout stubbornness when it came to the program itself
The last day of class, and indeed the last critique, was, to be perfectly blunt, awesome. We had the opportunity to have our work critiqued by a professional animator, a great fellow by the name of Glenn Parsons from Kinetic Post. Knowing how busy ANY animator is professionally and personally, it was wonderful for him to take the time to come out, view, and critique our work, as well as openly answer any questions we had about the industry in general. Thank you, Glenn!
He had some great suggestions on the clip I did for my final piece as well: I will be going in and working on them to help improve the animation, as soon as I've gotten a couple of day's rest (Today is the last day of a very long, very hectic semester) The critique:
Show more weight and purpose in the character's step. This could possibly be achieved by having him stepping into the scene from the very first frame.
Anticipate more into the "I'm not?" to further emphasize the character's emotions. This could be done with a clearer curve: more emphasis on a reversed curve in his spine.
Over all, I'm very pleased, I have to say. It feels fantastic to now have a base of knowledge in not one but two methods of animation - and knowing I'd love to do either professionally. -Mel
Hi all! Here's a quick-link list to the latest progress on Caravan, via entries over at the Caravan Production blog, including the above completed background from Shot 002:
Hi everyone! Here's a quick-link list to the latest progress on Caravan, via entries over at the Caravan Production blog, including the above completed background from Shot 027:
Hi everyone! Here's a quick-link list to the latest progress on Caravan, via entries over at the Caravan Production blog, including the above completed background from Shot 034:
Just in case I am unable to get to blog updating over the Thanksgiving holiday - Happy Thanksgiving, all! Be safe, have fun, and eat your weight in yams!
