Fox Run in Colour

I created this colour version of my Fox Run cycle in Adobe Photoshop by importing the original GIF animation and painting multiple layers using Photoshop's Timeline and Video Layers. While the final look is very like the original sketches seen in the previous post, the approach is incredibly time consuming taking roughly 4 hours to paint about 18 frames. It might be a unique look for a commercial or short film and I'm sure with some more experimentation with brushes I could achieve a more realistic water colour look.

I also ran into some trouble trying to make this a GIF as the frame rate came in as 30FPS to Photoshop but the original animation was created at 24FPS so things got super fast on the export. I managed to get it to export properly in Adobe Premiere.

Fox Run

I animated this run cycle based on a set of water colour sketches of a fox character I did a few years ago. I animated the cycle in Adobe Flash CC on my Wacom Companion which is a really great piece of tech. My plan for this cycle is to try and paint it up in Photoshop to see if I can achieve the same water colour style as the original sketches below.

Space Pirate

I've been brushing up on my Photoshop skills and in particular, colouring art work. This Space Pirate design (not sure its really a Space Pirate?) was created in Sketchbook Pro and then brought into Photoshop. I used a method found on Cubebrush.com as an approach for colouring which allows easy changes to be made to the colour design. I also completed some alternate colouring too (See Below). I'll post up a full workflow for this design asap.

TV Animation Development Work Part01

As I mentioned in a previous post, I occasionally get to do some development work for TV animation projects that are at the pitch stage. This tends to involve coming up with characters, locations and styles for a project that might be at the script phase or earlier. One of the first things that needs to be produced when pitching a show is the pitch bible. This consists of the synopsis and treatment of the show, outlines the info about target audience and format, contains production, direction and art direction notes and introduces the characters. Some bibles will also have story outlines and possibly some sample scripts. The visuals must then sell the project, showing the final look (or as near as possible) of the characters, some locations and overall art style. More often than not a finished still or series of stills must be comped together showing the final look of he show.

So, how do I begin this process? Well, the first thing I do is go through whatever materials are available. Sometimes this will be a rough version of the bible outlining what the series is about or if the TV project is based on an existing IP (intellectual property), I may have access to the original books etc. At this stage its good to have some discussions with the producer/creator and get a feel for what they are looking for. Once all this info has been digested and  i'm familiar with the project, I find its good to produce a list of deliverables for the project and clearly define with the producer what they need from me?

The sample project I'm going to show was based around fish, so my deliverables for this project were 2 coloured Fish characters, a visual design for an interstitial aspect of the show and 2 final production stills of the final look for the episodes.

Reference

Once all this work is out of the way, I can begin with the visuals. My first step is to source as much reference material as possible. Not only am I designing characters but I 'm responsible for defining the art direction for the entire project. I need to source reference that inspires my vision for the project and this process is just as important, if not more so, than sitting down and beginning to draw with no direction or clear intent.

The process of choosing reference materials and building mood boards immediately helps to define the project. These early decisions are narrowing my focus, giving me inspiration for design, colour and feel while allowing me to see the show as a collage of imagery without even putting a pen to paper or screen.

Sample Mood board for an the unnamed Fish show

Sometimes its necessary to show these mood boards to the producer for feedback but more often than not, these will only be seen by me and I will constantly reference them for the duration of the project. These days, I find applications like Evernote a great time saver and resource for accumulating image reference. You can easily source images online and its a simple drag and drop to collect your reference. Pinterest is also a great resource for collecting libraries of images to reference.

I would create a whole series of these mood boards on different aspects of the show such as mood boards just on particular fish consisting of live action photography or mood boards on film posters with aquatic themes to see what graphic design elements were used.

In the next post i'll talk about beginning the character design phase and the wonderful world of design approvals and fixes!

From The Archives: Gore Ball

Another blast from the past here with Gore Ball!!! I designed these Icons/Posters for an indy iPhone game called Gore Ball. It was one of my first freelance design jobs after leaving one the major animation studios in Ireland and I had just begun to study full time on Animation Mentor. I was chuffed to be doing some design work as I felt I didn't get to do enough when working in the industry. 

Anyway I think these are interesting little pieces to show. I have a bunch of other Gore Ball material like Logos and a proper poster design that I need to dig out from some old laptop or hard drive. Not sure what became of Gore Ball the game in the end but I like the style of these icons.

       

From The Archives: I'm A Creepy Crawly

I'm going to start posting some older character design work that I've completed over the last few years. A lot of the design work I do is tied up in development and NDA's and I don't have a huge amount of time to pursue personal projects with teaching and development work. Its a good complaint to have though as I've seen some of my work through to final animation for TV. 
Creepy Crawly is one such example, it's a series I designed and directed for Monster Entertainment based in Ireland and has been shown in a bunch of countries on Discovery Asia, ABC Australia, DR Denmark, TVO Canada, RTE Ireland, YLE Finland and the last I heard its on Tiny Pop in the UK. 
The following, in my opinion, are some of the stronger designs completed. I had about 52 insect characters to design for the series and insects are not exactly the cutest or easiest creatures to design but I tried my best to make them appealing and still a little bit creepy.

Lightning!!!

Here's a short FX Animation test of 'Lightning' completed in Toon Boom Animate Pro. For those interested in learning FX animation, check out Adam Phillips. Adam runs an online training school teaching 2D FX Animation on his website http://bitey.com/

Barbarian Kid

More pulpy nonsense with this Barbarian Kid character sketch. I'm trying to find a fast workflow for inking and colouring while maintaining the energy of a rough sketch. Sketchbook Pro is my software of choice at the moment, but will be trying some other approaches in the near future...

Dinosaurs and Lovecraft Monsters in Colour

So, I've completed the colour pass on this Dinosaur and Lovecraft Sea Monster scene. I've very much drawn from another heavily Lovecraftian influenced work in Mike Mignola's Hell Boy and the colour work of Dave Stewart. As simple as his colours are, they capture the tone of the strange, weird and pulp influences on that work. It's fairly simple (after trying about 10 different colour combinations) Pinks, Purles and Greens work well for Horror images!!!

Dinosaurs and Lovecraftian Monsters

Here is an inked drawing I did of some of my favourite 'pulp' iconography - Dinosaurs and ancient Lovecraftian Monsters. I was very much inspired by the illustration work of W. Francis Phillipps. These illustrations where far from anatomically accurate but had a great sense of drama, atmosphere and strangeness. Some of the images were terrifying to look at.

I was also looking the work of James Harren and Ryan Ottley, two excellent contemporary comic book artists. I love one of the images by Ottley from their blog 'The Bog', which depicts a cross section of a monster sea scene. I love cross section illustrations, were the viewer is shown more of the story than the victim!! I also love the sense of scale.

I plan on doing a colour pass on this image, exploring some lovecraftian colour palettes that will hopefully enhance the strangeness of the subject matter. 

Professor Abronsius

A concept sketch of the character Professor Abronsius played by Jack MacGowran in Roman Polanski's The Fearless Vampire Killers. Like all the best films I discovered in my teens, I first saw The Fearless Vampire Killers on late night TV, either on Channel 4 or BBC 2. It joins a list of secret gems found on late Friday or Saturday night viewing like Blue Velvet or even Akira back in the early 90's. Anyway, I was always taken by the rich set design, cinematography and cartoonish nature of Vampire Killers and have been meaning to do some character designs based on the film for a long time.