THE MOANING LISA

Game On! - Beginning Ideas and Genre

2012-02-25T16:28:00.000Z

Over the past week I've been working in my sketchbook quite a lot, exploring new ideas for our Game On brief. I thought I would upload some of the pages from my early planning stages onto my blog.

To begin with I jotted down the first things that came to mind that I think would be an interesting subject. I believe that the ideas that strike us straight away usually end up being the strongest option to pick so I listed a few things that I find interesting.

This is my genre suggestion page, I used some of the most mainstream genres to choose from.

To get an idea of art styles I may want to work in I then took some clippings from some of my magazines to see what styles I thought were particularly interesting. I will need to decide on an art style to work in for my game so I think it's important to explore existing styles and see what influence they have on the game they are created for.

Darksiders art is very much like comic book art.

I am fond of the traditional watercolour/ink art style.

Some character design clippings, I like the idea of colossal sized creatures.

Some costumes.

Costume/weapon details for Halo and other games.

Some more character clippings.

Use of colour is something I'm very interested in, these scenes are all very colourful.

Now that I had done some exploration into base ideas, I then got to work on figuring out what direction to go in. This page begins to look at genres. I wanted to make sure I picked a genre I would really enjoy for this brief, it was difficult to choose but I think by listing them all and then crossing them out one by one with a reason why I didn't want to choose it helped a lot!

This is a follow on from the last page, I came to the conclusion of either wanting to work with an adventure or RPG game. To figure out which one I would choose I decided I would make a pros and cons list for each genre.

Adventure game pros / cons list.

RPG pros / cons list.

Conclusion.

I then looked at some RPG games that are interesting to me and then circled features I was particularly interested in.

I have a lot more exploration work in my sketchbook but I think that these images that I have uploaded sum up what I have been working on in the exploration stage. I have now began work on my story for my RPG which will be fully explained in my next post!

Creative Media Directions - Game On!

2012-02-12T21:17:00.000Z

On Tuesday we received one of our new university briefs for second semester. I'm quite excited to begin work on this as it's pretty open so I can make sure I pick an area I have a strong interest in so I will enjoy all of the work I create.

Our brief is to develop an overarching narrative theme and use this to create concepts or game assets. We can create any type of games art forming a body of work to show off our game idea, this can include any of the following;

2D Character sprites or 3D Character modelling and texturing
2D or 3D Character Animation
2D Vehicle Sprites or 3D Vehicle modelling and texturing
2D or 3D vehicle animation
2D Backgrounds or 3D Environment modelling and texturing
2D or 3D Environment animation
2D or 3D Character and Environment concept art

Although I enjoy making 3D models, my favourite part of game development has to be the concept stage and all of the digital painting for both character and environment design. I think this brief will be a great opportunity for me to develop a strong portfolio of concept art and play about with some unusual ideas.

Over half term I will be developing some ideas in my sketchbook and reading some of my games art books for help with the development process of creating my game idea and some inspiration.

Influence Boards

2012-02-04T16:44:00.000Z

Now that our three briefs from our first semester have been completed we have now been asked to make 6 influence boards in our spare time before we get back into second semester work. This is to explore subjects close to us and discuss our inspirations. Here are my six choices;

CONCEPT ARTISTS

As concept art is my main interest in games art I make sure I follow a lot of inspirational artists. I have been a member on DeviantArt for a few years so I watch a couple of artists on there and with games art slowly becoming more popular as the industry grows, I have been joining new websites such as CGHub and ConceptArt.org to seek some new inspiration. Some of my favourite 2D concept artists are those that specialize in character design such as Sang-Heun Nam, David Keg, Joe Madd, Bobby Chiu who runs the Schoolism website, Immar Palomera and Wee Yee Chong. Because I do a lot of fine art as personal work I think anatomy is one of my stronger points so I like the idea of creating an idea then being able to make it look believable with having knowledge of anatomy, weight and colour theory. I really enjoy creature design too as you can see by my choice of images for this collage,I have been inspired greatly by Studio Ghibli films and I love the idea of dreams coming true and distorted reality in film and games.

MEMORABLE GAMES

Games have always played a part in my childhood and I have never lost interest in experiencing new games. I have been inspired so much by many that I have played and I have been lost for hours in games that have a well crafted story line. This collage that I have created includes some of my most memorable games that have meant something to me in some way, looking at this collage now I can actually see things they all have in common. The two main similarities that I have noticed with this selection is that the majority of these games have a very strong story and the others are very innovative for their time and stand out as being unusual. As well as being interested in games with a strong story I really enjoy the "god game" genre, this is a relatively unexplored genre and I can see that there is much room for new games of this type. Black and White 2 was a fantastic game of this genre and last year From Dust was released which was also very innovative but they didn't have a big budget to work with so it felt a little rushed. My favourite game is Chrono Trigger for the SNES, this a time travelling epic that was completely mind blowing when it was released, everything about it makes it a perfect game from its flawless story to its memorable soundtrack. This clearly goes to show age really doesn't matter when it comes to a great game it is all about new ideas.

COSTUME DESIGN

Costume design in games and film have always been something I have taken notice of even from a young age, I love costumes as they can make your audience have varied opinions about your characters before they do anything! Clothes say a lot about a person, you can sometimes tell if a character has bad intentions by what they are wearing say for example if their costume is dark with sharp edges. I am a huge fan of the Steampunk movement and any sort of Victorian clothing mixed with technology. I also really admire quirky clothing such as mad hatter type clothing, carnival/ringleader style clothing etc. Costume design in games is something that is an exciting yet daunting task because you have to get the balance just right, you need the character to look practical for the job they will be doing but you also want them to look individual enough to stand out in the game.

INSPIRATIONAL FILM/TV

I have very varied tastes when it comes to films and TV shows, growing up my parents didn't expose me to much Disney at all, in fact the only Disney I watched was Snow White, Bambi and Dumbo all of which I thought were quite mediocre films. I'm happy that I didn't get completely absorbed into "Disneyism" like a lot of my friends were at the time because it made me wonder what other films were out there and it made me discover some completely unique films. I gained an interest in foreign cinema when I was around 12 years old. The majority of people don't realize that a lot of animated foreign films are the main inspiration for many blockbuster films over here. Paprika for example was the inspiration behind Christopher Nolan's Inception, The Matrix used many of the mind blowing scenes used in Ghost in the Shell and so on. I love films that completely absorb you into another world where things are completely different. Also I don't dislike Disney in any way but now that I have watched many of them, I really can't compare them to the uniqueness of Studio Ghibli.

ENVIRONMENTS

Another interest of mine is environment design as this one of the most important aspects when it comes to the concept stage of a film or game. I love the idea of themes and creating a certain emotion when it comes to displaying the scene on screen. One thing that I always take notice of is the usage of colour, I seem to admire a lot of places in games that look magical/otherworldly with a strong use of colour. There is a game for Wii released not so long ago named Xenoblade, although I have not played this yet I have been looking at the environment design used in gameplay trailers and artwork and it has been a strong inspiration to me. I have done quite a few environments in the past year, notably for the Rising Stars competition which really motivated me to do more concept work. I think environments will always be an area of games design I will have a strong liking for.

CHARACTER DESIGN

Last but not least is my favourite subject, character design! I am really hoping to specialize in creating characters in both traditional 2D and modelling them in 3D once I graduate. There is so much creative thought that goes into the process of character design but you must also have a good amount of skill when it comes to drawing otherwise your creation won't look believable! As I discussed in my costume design section, I have quite an interest for unusual characters wearing quirky clothing. My favourite part of character design is making a character look mysterious so that the viewer has a hard time deciding if they should trust them or not, this idea excites me as it's important to get the balance just right with their expression, choice of clothing and most importantly body language.

SUMMARY

Now that I have completed my 6 influence boards I feel like I have strengthened my interests in each field further. There is a definite style I look for and aim to work in when it comes to concept art, I really admire artists who are clearly skilled and have something different to offer to the world. It's very obvious to me when an artist isn't skilled or a character is anatomically incorrect which makes me dislike the whole drawing! Overall I think that it is very important to me to continue with my traditional art practice and technical skills with 3D programs and Photoshop so that I can create more professional games art each year. I suddenly feel very inspired to practice further in the areas I feel like I could improve on such as facial expressions to help with a character conveying a specific emotion. I actually didn't think I would get into this task but I think that it has helped a lot and while doing some research on some of my current favourite artists I also discovered some new ones to be inspired by too!

The Message and Design for Society - Summary

2012-01-27T08:07:00.000Z

The Message - Walk Cycles

For this brief we were asked to create three different walk cycles that displayed a character showing some sort of personality or emotion. After using my life drawing lessons as inspiration I looked into some walk cycles by various animators and I looked into some of the motion capture by Muybridge.

First cycle - panning background.

Second cycle - walking through scene.

Third cycle - perspective walk.

My character the Boogie Monster was a concept created by myself, I am very fond of monsters and circus style music so this environment came to mind straight away. I am very pleased with these walk cycles even though animation isn't my focus in university. I was pleased most with the character design and idea for the environment. If I could improve anything in this brief it would be the third cycle which was very rushed, I didn't have enough time to create an accurate cycle for this animation but I feel I have learned enough with the other two. Also I should have probably edited them together in Flash instead of traditionally drawing each frame in Photoshop and then editing them together in Sony Vegas but I am not too fluent with Flash as I do not class myself as an animator.

Design for Society

Final version of my Design for Society cinematic

I really enjoyed this brief, we had to create an animatic/prototype that would be turned into an advert to highlight a social issue to the general public. I was truly absorbed into this brief because I decided on my topic quite early on and began to storyboard. Also I was happier doing this brief because it involved more drawing which is something we haven't had chance to do much of lately with the message brief. Once I had all of my images completed, I looked into finding a soundtrack and managed to find a really good royalty free composer who I will probably use for future productions. I enjoy working with Sony Vegas so editing was quite a lot of fun for me especially when it came to choosing what sound effects/sounds to use in specific areas and how long to keep certain scenes playing for.

Again the only things I think I could have improved with this brief would be just adding some more frames or more detail but as this was just a prototype I don't think it was that necessary.

Character Behaviour

I was very happy with what I managed to achieve with this brief as it is the first time I have ever worked with Maya so it was nice to see some immediate results. I do however think it was quite a lot to ask for a full animation for a first 3D task but I managed to get some good behavior screen captures of my character that I am very pleased with and I have learned a lot in both Maya and ZBrush that I will be able to carry forward into future 3D projects.

Unfortunately I couldn't get a polished animation ready in the time we had left, main reasons being the methods I used for the other two briefs were very time consuming and also my red panda mesh was very difficult to rig because I had created it using ZBrush. This is something I will have to read up on as I didn't expect to face so many problems with moving a model from Zbrush straight into Maya. This being said I am still very pleased with the outcome of this brief as I have now pretty much had a crash course in both Maya and Zbrush and know what to look out for next time I work on a 3D animation.

I think as my Maya knowledge expands I will come back to this animation to work on it further as I really like the story I have designed for this.

Over all I am happy I chose to stick to 3D rather than relying on 2D as I have learned a lot of new things which are definitely going to help me with my future 3D modeling. Now that I have dabbled in Maya I will definitely be studying it further in my own time as I would really like to bring my 2D character concepts into a full 3D model myself.

Unrendered playblasts of various behaviour tests;

Bamboozled & Walk Cycles Update

2012-01-09T22:45:00.000Z

Over the Christmas period I have been watching an insane amount of ZBrush and Maya video tutorials, I still haven't finished my playlist and have some animation/rendering videos to watch but I have learnt a lot from the ones I have already seen.

Here is a turntable of my Red Panda model straight from ZBrush. I have been learning how to use GoZ to switch between Maya and ZBrush instead of having to import it maunally and then load the textures each time. I am very happy with how this turned out with it being my first 3D venture! I decided to keep the eyes as part of the texture and not have them animated also I haven't decided how I will be animating the mouth as I don't want to waste the valuable time I have left trying this out when I could be working on the main animation and then learn these lip sync skills at a later date.

To create the model I created my images to use as image planes in Maya for my red panda model;

The following screen shots show how I modeled a basic cut out in maya to get the size and shape accurate, I then used GoZ to import this model into ZBrush to so I could model it.

Once I finished modeling it and saving my texture to the model I then imported it back to Maya and then built the skeleton. I am now using IK handles to rig this character and then I will be ready to put him into the set to animate.

Progress with my walk cycle is going nicely also, I have now finished the colouring and smoothed it out as much as possible. I have to work on the horns to stop them wobbling so much though!

Here he is in colour :D

The finished background which will be for the first walk cycle as a looping animation, I will be creating a very similar background to this for my second cycle, for this I will be reversing the Boogy Monster so he walks the other way through my scene.

My social campaign is at a halt at the moment while I watch more After Effects videos so I don't waste time on unnecessary mistakes. I don't want to "finish" any of these projects until the final date (26th Jan) as I want to always be able to improve them using the time I have left.

Red Panda Research

2012-01-02T19:33:00.003Z

Now that I have the story ready, I have been researching red pandas and what their behaviour is like so I can make some modifications. After an hour or two of browsing I made myself some notes;

Red pandas are arboreal animals which basically means they spend a lot of their times up in trees and often chose to sleep up there. Knowing this means that I can now modify my environment plans to include many more bamboo trees as this is what would be expected in a red panda's natural environment.
They are slightly larger than a domestic cat.
It has a waddling walk because its front legs are shorter than the back legs - I will have to make sure I can animate this accurately.
Eats mainly bamboo - which goes along with the story fine.
Mainly active from dusk till dawn - I will have to modify my storyboard so that the first RP1 wakes at sunset and the other remains asleep (same story just at a different time of day).
They use "whistling" sounds to communicate which will make use of with the voice acting!
They sleep with their tails curled over their faces when cold.
Clean themselves like a cat when they wake up - I could add this.

Appearance notes:

Some sketches - I will be going for a cartoon look similar to the image I done on the bottom right.

Red-Brown fur on top and dark/black fur lower down the body.
Each individual has different face marking - this will help with identifying both red pandas in the animation.
Medium sized upright ears.
Very dark eyes.
Tail is yellow/red with 6 rings.
Paws turn inwards and have long curved claws for gripping trees.
They have "thumbs" coming from their wrist bones for climbing.

Finally some reference videos for my walk cycles;

General movement.

Eating - I will need this actual for the bamoo scene.

At play!

Bamboozled!

2011-12-19T02:28:00.000Z

Today I had a eureka moment with the development of my character behaviour 3D brief. Although I have been working on this project for a few weeks gathering notes, researching and refining my story I haven't truly felt absorbed into it enough to enjoy working on it.

Well now that has ALL changed!

My message is aimed at children and it is about having to work to gain your rewards/paying your way. As this will be my first 3D animation I don't want to be ridiculously ambitious so I will be keeping my whole animation on the same set but concentrating on animating my characters in the best way I can with the time I have. I will be using ZBrush to model as I am very familiar with this program and I will be rigging and animating using Maya. I was just going to animate traditionally in 2D but I would like to push myself, even if the models don't turn out to be amazingly accurate!

Story - (RP1 + RP2 = Red Panda 1 and 2)

Two red pandas are sleeping in the forest during sunrise.
RP1 wakes up ready for a day of collecting bamboo for dinner, RP2 is irritated and does not want to help out.
RP1 sets off to collect bamboo anyway as he knows he won't have anything to eat later if he doesn't start collecting.
RP1 calls over to RP2 to help but all he does is open one eye then goes back to sleep.
RP1 is struggling to collect all of the bamboo by himself but still doesn't give up.
RP2 is fast asleep and dreams about the meal he will be having later on. (may do a separate animation sequence for this for added humour)
RP1 makes one last call to RP2 for help collecting the last of the bamboo but there is no reaction (sun is starting to set).
RP1 comes down from out of the trees and piles up all of the bamboo on his sledge to pull back to the den.
RP1 then begins to prepare all of the delicious bamboo ready for his dinner after a hard day of work.
RP2 is woken up by his stomach growling loudly with hunger. He then notices the meal that RP1 has made and skips over to help himself to it.
RP1 stops RP2 with his paw and briefs him that he doesn't deserve to eat the food that he hasn't helped collect.
RP1 then goes on to eat the entire stockpile of bamboo as a statement and in a comic style enlarges in size finishing with a large ground-shaking burp.
RP2 looks on in shock and the end shot will be the expression on RP2's face as he looks "BAMBOOzled" by the actions of RP1.

Here is my draft storyboard...

I have a rough colour pallete ready for concept sketches which I will start tomorrow.

Finally I have also started to work on the font for my title screen, I will be creating the lettering in bamboo shoots with some leaves.

Boogie Monster Update

2011-12-13T13:59:00.002Z

The Message - Walk Cycle Update

2011-11-28T00:49:00.001Z

This evening I have been cleaning up my walk cycle, I have a few frames that seem a little bit out of place so I will be finishing this clean up tomorrow and then will go onto colouring. My next step of this brief will be to create my background scene for animation two - where I will be reversing my character and using each individual frame to create a walk. Finally I will be using my background used in the second animation to make a start on the final animation in this brief where I will be animating the Boogie Monster in perspective. I think this final animation will be the most difficult because I will be creating an entirely new line art animation of this character.

Character Behaviour - Character sheet

2011-11-27T19:35:00.001Z

Today I done some more work on The Message - Character Behaviour brief, I have decided to go for a traditional style red panda after trying out various other styles. I may change his facial expression later on but I can at least make a start on modelling him in Maya now that I have the body anatomy sorted out.

Next I am going to create my final storyboard as I have just finished my draft sketches and then finally some concept pieces to get the colours and scenery how I want them to look.

Red panda character sheet ready for 3D modelling.

Some sketches of possible poses that could be difficult!

The Message - Character Behaviour Concept

2011-11-26T02:03:00.001Z

Quick concept sketch, I will be working on more reference tomorrow and will post more about this brief.

Maya Lessons

2011-11-21T02:48:00.001Z

Some screen caps of my Maya practice.

These two are from an interior design tutorial I am currently working on it covers, basic modeling, texturing and lighting.

These screen caps are from my character rigging lesson in Glyndwr with Sonia.

Walk cycle progress

2011-11-14T00:52:00.001Z

This evening I spent a few hours cleaning up my animation so far, I have made this harder for myself by using so many frames but I prefer the smooth action so hopefully the work will pay off! Still a work in progress but I am excited to see how this one turns out once I get the background in and add details.

Clean up.

I changed the arm action from a plain loop to being irregular, I have faults in some areas so I will iron those out when I come to tweak this cycle next time.

The Message - Walk cycle development

2011-11-13T00:06:00.001Z

Today I began development on my walk cycle for my character "the boogie monster". I haven't been spending as much time on this as I would like because I have been busy with the other two briefs but I pretty much dedicated this evening to tweaking!

I still have a quite a way to go with this but it is definitely making progress.

First off I took my motion caption animation and chopped it down into just one loop, I used a grid to line up the action to try to keep him walking on the spot instead of across the screen. This left me with a very rough foundation to work with.

I then got my tablet out and drew a very rough shape to transform my skeleton into a shape more suited for the "boogie monster". Once I had done this I could see the action wasn't right, especially with the legs so I spent an hour working on this and bumped the frames up to 59 along with having much nicer action.

This is where my cycle is currently at, I have a lot of tweaking to do with the legs then once I am happy with this I will work on adding the moving arm action and then finally head movement.

Design for Society - Planning

2011-11-06T18:17:00.001Z

Our brief in this module is to design some form of animatic/prototype for a 15-60 second film or game that will raise awareness of a public issue. To begin with I can see that this brief is heavily idea based and the outcome doesn't have to be a polished product. With this in mind I immediately knew what style I would like to go for, there are a few games I have played lately that use animated concept art in their opening sequences or trailers, obviously this isn't what the actual game play is like but it is very effective for storytelling and I would like to go for this in my prototype.

Last week I tried out a demo for a game called Hard Reset and noticed that the opening sequence used some of the techniques I would like to use although personally I'm not sure the comic-book style character pop ups work so well! Here is the video;

I have decided to base my cinematic on gang culture, this is something that I am very interested in and I find myself being absorbed by films and games of this genre. First of all I checked out the DirectGov website to look into the issue and find out some of the most common issues surrounding this subject. These were some crimes that I thought would be good to look into;

Mugging
Knife crime
Firearms
Car crime
Graffiti
Theft
Drugs trafficking
Rape

I will be looking into these issues and what sort of effect they have on the public as a whole. I have also visited some gang related websites to see the reasons why people join gangs. Some of the more popular reasons are;

Recognition
A sense of belonging
Excitement
Power over other people
Friends
Money from crime
Territory
Acceptance
Respect

It's also a well known fact that young adults are very vulnerable to peer pressure and I think this can be a good starting point for my animatic. I have a vague idea for the type of main character I want to use, a teenage guy from a respectable family who is being influenced by others around him who are up to no good. This will eventually lead to him causing criminal offences himself that he would never have done without the group morale behind him.

My next steps for planning this animatic will be to look at some existing games that cover the issue of gangs, even if it is only a brief chapter in a game it will be good to see how it is conveyed in different ways. I have a couple to look at so far including; GTA, Crackdown, All points bulletin, LA Noire, Mafia series and Saints Row.

3D Lessons

2011-11-01T23:47:00.003Z

Here are a couple of screenshots of our 3D Maya lesson today, we were learning how to use the EP curve tool. Also we focused on very basic animation, texturing and hair effects. I will see if I can upload a video of the finished animation at the end of the week.

The Message - Motion Capture Animation

2011-10-28T20:01:00.002+01:00

Today I created a motion capture animation using a video I created. Now that I have the base skeleton I will do a lot of tweaking over the next few days so that I will be able to use this motion for my "Boogie Monster" character. It will probably take a lot of time to animate this character but I hope it will be worth it :)

Here is how I created my animation; I converted my video into individual frames on Photoshop.

Once I had all of my frames, I selected each frame and then created a new layer over it where I then sketched out a basic skeleton using my tablet, the whole process only took around 30 minutes which surprised me!

The Message - Walk Cycle Update

2011-10-26T13:57:00.003+01:00

Introducing the Boogie-Monster :D

He is my final character design after 2 hours of doodling and watching TV. I will update with a skeleton cycle soon that I have been working on to get the movement to work accurately.

The Message - Walk Cycle Progress

2011-10-23T20:03:00.001+01:00

I created a basic keyframe animation using 10 frames from a reference book with no fillers, I have used the same motion in the legs but made the character into a penguin instead. I found this was great practice and I have decided that I want to challenge myself further and create a very original looking creature to animate as my final character instead of this one which is quite basic.

My skipping cycle reference.

The Message - Walk cycles & walking with a meaning

2011-10-23T19:54:00.001+01:00

For our first brief we have to create a character and animate it in three different scenarios. I am currently working on the first scenario now which is to create a walking cycle with a panning background. It is important that the character shows some type of personality behind the walk he or she does so I have done as much testing as possible before I decide on the final character and their behaviour.

My first idea was to make a basic penguin where he would follow a skipping cycle which ended in him tossing his top hat into the air.

Some character ideas.

I created a 3D turnaround of the penguin and also listed the pros and cons of animating this character. I thought that his feet could prove tricky to animate because of their size in comparison to the body.

How the cycle would look.

Also our life drawing classes have mainly been focused on walk cycles so I have had a lot of opportunity to create varied animations out of these.

Life Drawing & Figure Studies

2011-10-22T14:36:00.003+01:00

On Thursday we had a much better life drawing class, we had a little bit longer on each drawing so we could focus more on the form and lighting, not just a series of 30 second sketches. I hope that we do more lessons like this as I feel I get more out of these as they are more suited into transforming them into concept art.

Also I now have these two bad boys to work with so hopefully my figure work will improve! The figure drawing version is 200 pages and the head and hands version is 150 so there are many tutorials and studies in there for me to look through.

Animated Cycles & Life Drawing

2011-10-15T00:53:00.004+01:00

More 30 second studies from our life model.

I started sketching this 16 frame running cycle in the car on the way back home and finished it off this evening, I am quite pleased with the leg movement.

Life Drawing/Walk Cycles

2011-10-09T00:09:00.001+01:00

For our first life drawing lesson in year 2 we focused on walk cycles as we are also doing this for a brief too so it's helpful to have as much reference as possible. I have put my sketches together into a rough animation, it isn't smooth but it is still nice to see the life drawing lesson as an animation.

The drawings in the cycle and the two large A2 drawings below where all done in 30 seconds each.

Summer Project

2011-10-08T20:29:00.003+01:00

Well I thought before I move onto year 2 work I will document a little bit of the summer brief we were given. We had to fill up a sketchbook full of reference images from drawings of people to architecture studies. Obviously I can't exactly scan each page of that so I will just post up the other work that I created after these studies.

The project was split into two sides; you had to create a character for each and a story for the game/cinematic they are starring in. As both were only small briefs I felt like I could experiment a little bit with the story behind them without having to do too much draft work.

Sci-Fi God Game

Over summer I played a new xbox arcade game called From Dust, this was the inspiration behind my game idea plus the God Game genre is one of my favourites.

Drafting character silhouettes.

More experimentation.

Face ideas.

Line art expressions.

Line art 3D sheet.

Idea Storyboard -

1. Aliens are invaded on their own planet.

2. Antagonist start to destroy all of the civilization

3. The last aliens make an escape on a spacecraft.

4. They find a planet to start life on.

5. God game starts - creating the elements.

6. Creating wildlife.

7. Civilization.

8. Challenges.

Panda Dance Game
My second idea came from my love of pandas, I decided to create a little panda character that uses a bamboo shoot to walk around with.

Character drafting.

Basic cinematic idea.

Character Studies and an update.

2011-09-11T23:10:00.001+01:00

Two character sketches I have recently created, both were made by making basic shapes and then seeing what I came up with and surprisingly they took under an hour each to complete. I am really happy with both of these, but I guess drawing characters like this doesn't say much for my sanity! My favourite has to be the alien, by the time I had finished drawing him I actually felt sorry for him having an expression like that.

Also I have almost finished with my summer work now, I probably should have finished it a while ago but I was really stuck for ideas and I've had a pretty busy summer while being back home with my parents. I did go out around a few local parks, shopping areas and also the village I live in for some on site drawing but I didn't feel I was getting much out of this as people were moving so fast, I did get some good architecture references but that was about it. Once I got home I had a bit of a eureka moment while I was catching up with some of my TV shows, I started pausing the show at various times when a person was on screen so I could make a very fast sketch of their facial expression. I actually found this to be a lot more useful than drawing on site and more comfortable ;) (god I'm lazy!)

So yeah I'll update again soon, shizang!

Snow Yeti

2011-08-31T22:12:00.000+01:00

Snow yeti, 30 mins photoshop speedsketch... had an idea and had to draw it!

Speedpainting 1

2011-08-14T00:16:00.001+01:00

I'm going to start doing speed painting as much as possible from now on, to kick start here are 2 I have recently done both took under 10 mins. I would like to start focusing on tone work so I might keep my future ones greyscale and then once I am confident enough to build up into colour.

Desert creature idea.

Quick paintbrush sketch while looking in a mirror.

Rising Stars Entries

2011-08-03T01:13:00.000+01:00

So then, here are my final images. I decided to work fully on 3 of my ideas and recycle 2 drawings from a previous university project.
*CLICK TO FULLVIEW*

My first is the mermaid's castle, I am very happy with this I had an idea for a diver to explore a giant shell castle unaware of what was lurking in the depths.

The second is the Meadow Tea Party, I am pleased with this one though it is also a mixture of styles. I had a dream a few months back that I was in a field with large blue sheep looking creatures so I used this Yak idea for this.

This one is the Horror Carnival, I love the concept of this one with so much going on however it was rushed and could have been done much better if I had managed my time better.

My fourth is an image I created during my first year at university, it was to illustrate a spaceship crash. I am very fond of this one!

Finally a character I created for a university project, I wanted her to have a clean look and not rendered too much so I touched this one up a little and improved the colour.

Competition Planning

2011-08-03T00:54:00.001+01:00

I decided to give this competition a try mainly because I wanted to push myself harder, some of the artwork I have seen in ImagineFX over the past year is really inspiring and there is clearly a great amount of skill involved.
Personally I feel like my skill with Photoshop has a lot of room for improvement and I definitely feel my traditional work is much more professional, taking part in this competition has definitely strengthened my work and I will continue to keep practicing with Photoshop.

First of all I set out a blank piece of paper and jotted down genres, dreams I have had, colours and themes that are of interest to me, also I raided my shelves for games that I really like because of their art style. Some of these things included the games "Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg", "Animal Crossing (Gamecube)" "Spore", "Eternal Sonata", "Grim Fandango" and more. I found some concept images of styles I like and started to brain storm.

After a few days of juggling with ideas I decided on an underwater castle, a tea party, a horror based carnival, a futuristic pet shop and a gothic girl in the snow. These are the first sketch ideas for each picture;

July Schedule

2011-07-03T23:33:00.000+01:00

Just a little update, I am currently hard at work in my free time on my entries for;

I will be very quiet this month but I will post up my work at the start of August once I am done and have them sent in to ImagineFX. I have all 5 images planned out now and I'm part way through the first, I am hoping to spend at least 20 hours on each painting so it is going to be a tough task getting all 5 finished to a top standard before the deadline.

This years panel judging the entries includes one of my favourite artists Sam Didier (head artist at Blizzard), Jon Schindehette (senior art director at Wizard of the Coast), Mark Chiarello (art director at DC comics) and a few god-like others! This is a very big step up for me being just a first year games art student but I am going to give it everything I've got!

Moobs

2011-06-26T19:53:00.000+01:00

For the past few months I've had great difficulty using brushes on Photoshop so my paintings were not turning out as I had it pictured in my head and I found most of my colours and brush stokes were too bold but I wasn't sure how to change this. So today I was reading an article on brushes, which is often overlooked by people new to Photoshop and I went ahead and cleared my library of brushes I never use and reset it to some very basic ones. After some tweaking and setting my opacity and stroke levels correctly I can now happily say I know how to create a "paintbrush" on photoshop which gives very similar results as I would get painting traditionally.

I have also been reading a book on colour theory too which has been very useful so I decided to put both of these new "skills" to the test and draw a male torso, this took me just under an hour and I feel like I can finally "paint" on Photoshop now and I look forward to creating more work now rather than battling with the technical problems!

This is quite a loose painting but I hope I can refine this style over summer.

Update, Sketchbook Pro and Chihuahuas everywhAr

2011-06-25T01:07:00.000+01:00

I used Sketchbook Pro properly for the first time before and I think as a drawing program, I am liking it much more than Photoshop even after a short time of using it. It feels very authentic to use and reminds me of a program called Dogwaffle I used to use that would mimic traditional tools such as paint sponges, heavy charcoal, graphite etc.

This evening I was just using the pencil tool but I feel like I am getting much nicer results out of using this than the custom brushes in Photoshop. I was always told in A level to draw hands and do self studies as much as possible to train your eye to pick up details so you could draw an image that looks 3D.

I warmed up by drawing some quick hand studies, wahay for my tiny hands :( haha

Then I started on a self portrait (these things always make me embarrassed haha) once I started working on the head I thought I might as well expand the canvas and try and make a full length portrait, I'll spice this up in the next few days and try and make myself look like some sort of concept character! I may even colour it on Photoshop if I'm happy with how this ends up looking...

.... and I've just opened commissions again to rake in some extra money as I am starting to feel the pinch after buying a 42" TV for my gaming/movie needs! I have been working quite hard on some dog portraits whenever I have had some free time, I'm finishing on this one over the next few days.

Next on the to do list will to be to get a website back online to take on more work, they seem so expensive now just to have one with a site builder for easy editing. I'm not a fan of HTML anymore and I think my basic knowledge isn't enough anymore to compete with the fancy looking sites out there boo hoo!

Cat To The Future Animation

2011-06-13T18:27:00.000+01:00

This is our finished group animation. Team; Lisa Hignett, George Roberts, Nate Jacquemain and Christina Chan.

ENJOY!

Pirate Panda - Complete

2011-06-12T16:52:00.001+01:00

Well this afternoon I finished up work on the pirate panda. I'm quite happy with this picture as it's one of the first digital paintings I've completed. I really doubt it will do that well in the competition but I am happy I've learnt a lot of new techniques while working on it.

For the clouds I found out how to use specifically made brushes to make them look as realistic as possible, the sea was just done using a technique I would use traditionally with paints. There are a few things in the painting I don't like but can't change as I'm not good enough on Photoshop yet, the scimitar for example ... is horrible but if I colour it with a brush it wasn't giving the right results. I will have to look into how people paint weapons on Photoshop as this was a nightmare, same goes with the hook, it's hard to create a metal effect.

Overall I really enjoyed this one, I must have spent about 6 hours on it in total over a couple of days, I will have to brush up on some techniques though before I can get the results I'm looking for using Photoshop.

Pirate panda & marine progress

2011-06-08T20:02:00.001+01:00

Over the past few days I have put a bit more work into my entry for the pirate animals competition, I have finished with the base colouring now so I can get some of the details done soon. Overall I am really enjoying this one, I think I will give him a more heroic expression though - he looks a bit funny at the moment!

Also some further work on my marine, he now has a gun as you can see as his other pose looked a bit empty. Will be rendering this one soon too.

1 hour session

2011-06-04T18:05:00.000+01:00

Over summer I am going to try and do at least 1 hour of concept work each day (unless it's impossible to do so) as I really want to start getting into the habit of practicing regularly. An hour isn't really a lot to ask I guess!
I have a few competitions coming up soon so I want to make sure I spread out the work load and enjoy them as much as possible.

This is my latest work, I am using a workshop in Issue Imagine FX to create a marine character, I am really enjoying this so far. I want to try and keep it quite sketchy/stylized rather than realistic like it is in the magazine. I will probably make more changes to armour as I work on this.

Base colour.

And of course I made a little more progress on my Pirate Panda!

competitions

Competition: Pirate Animals

2011-06-03T14:17:00.000+01:00

A competition being run on CG hub with a deadline of 13th June, I really like the sound of this one so I will work on this guy over the next few days. Introducing the start of PIRATE PANDA!

Competition: Fairytales Re-Imagined

2011-06-02T13:38:00.000+01:00

I saw this competition featured in ImagineFX, basically you have to pick one of your favourite fairy tales and illustrate it in a new way with a twist I am going to try and get some ideas for this over the next few days as it sounds like a lot of fun!

end of the dragon

2011-06-01T17:54:00.000+01:00

I spent 30 minutes this afternoon playing about with this old painting. I am quite happy to leave it like this now as I feel I have gained all I could out of the tutorial and as it's based off another artists work I don't feel like working at it until it looks "finished" as it won't be a portfolio piece of my own. I know in the next creature design I will spend a lot more time planning out the pose because I ended up moving the head, legs and wings around more times than I can remember because I wasn't happy with their locations.

Workshop - Colour Theory

2011-05-21T01:14:00.000+01:00

Today I started work on one of the workshops in ImagineFX, I've been meaning to give this one a go for a while as the colouring method looks really nice on it and I hope to be able to improve mine.

The workshop came with a non-photo blue pencil sketch so I used that as my template and set the transparency down on that layer so I could make my own line art over it. Line art was also supplied in the workshop but I decided not to use this as I prefer working from scratch myself.

Here is my first layer of line art complete, I tried to keep it as basic as possible so I can create finer detail on the lines later on once I've finished with the colouring.

I created a brown background and set a gradient layer over it, this will also be the base colour for the character.

Starting to work in the colours, I feel like I'm hitting a brick wall at the moment so I decided to leave it for now and will pick it up again soon as the colouring is a lot harder than I expected. I have to keep the saturation as low as possible for the character to fit into the correct colour scheme. I think I will have to brush up on colouring and watch some videos before returning to this one.

WARBOSSES - Box art, poster & evaluation.

2011-05-17T03:05:00.000+01:00

Warbosses Poster.

Warbosses box art.

Now that I have finished the Warbosses project I feel like I have gained a lot of experience both in skill and knowledge. I really enjoyed this brief as we were given quite a lot of free rein to be able to develop our own ideas and get into the routine of the game development process which will be very important as in year two we will be doing bigger briefs.

I think overall it was a successful project and I feel like I have stayed close to the brief but also used some of my own ideas too to make it more interesting to work on. I think the most important part of the project was the planning stage, it isn't something you can put off as you need to have your ideas set in stone before you can go working on your characters otherwise it will cause you a major setback. Overall I am happy with the story and character designs but I do feel like I could have been more consistent with the storyboard work, I really liked the story so I started out with high detail but as time went on I realized that it wouldn't be possible to render all of the images in such a way so I did have to cut back to some basic cell shading for the character portraits. Time was definitely the issue with this project but I still feel happy with the experience I have had and it's been a good introduction to games art.

WARBOSSES - Game Trailer

2011-05-16T13:28:00.000+01:00

Final pieces of my storyboard for my trailer.

WARBOSSES - Draft Cinematic

2011-05-16T13:25:00.000+01:00

WARBOSSES - Character Development

2011-05-16T13:19:00.000+01:00

Next was the long but fun process of making all of the characters;

First ideas, I decided to make four character that each have a different class.

First armour sketch up.

Wolfe, I wanted him to look tough with experience fighting so I think the scars are a good touch.

First sketch of Waldobert, not happy with this one.

Mustache looks terrible!

I finally settled with this design which suits his role as a medic/technician.

First sketch of Wanda.

Wade will be a butch guy who uses just his fists in combat.

Wade.

I created some silhouettes of each character to get a better idea of what their builds should be.

Armour lineart. I later decided Wade would be better with less armour as he is already built massively and I think it will make him look tougher to not need so much armour.

WARBOSSES - The Story

2011-05-16T12:43:00.000+01:00

Now I had some rough ideas of what some characters could look like in my head I started work on the story. The brief mentions that it should be a "gravelly trailer to tease gamers" so I thought of what type of environments and action scenes would work best.

My first task was to think of what disaster could happen to create the story. I thought of a massive plague spreading and it would have to be cured while also taking care of mass culling of people effected (similar to a zombie outbreak). I thought this was quite overdone so then thought of "alien" enemies and settled on these notes for my cinematic trailer;

Young girl walking through woods.
Massive ship crashes down from the sky, girl looks worried.
Scene of the crash site, destruction.
Reptilian/Alien creatures escape, killing all in their path.
"Warbosses" an elite group of soldiers step up to the task of culling the monsters.
Various cut scenes of each character doing what is typical of their class.
Dramatic running shot of main character about to kill a monster.
Gorey, action packed scene.
Characters standing back to back while displaying game title.

WARBOSSES - Character Inspiration

2011-05-16T12:31:00.000+01:00

Now that I had my typography finished I got to work on some ideas for what my characters would look like. I thought it would be sensible to go and look at some existing war games and have a look at what sort of armour they were wearing and what type of colours are used.

I collected a few of my favourites but after speaking to my tutor about the character designs she said they don't have to be as heavily armoured as they are in the games I was looking at. I was happy about this as before I felt quite limited and all I could imagine were oversized men with massive armour. I toyed around with the idea of having different classes to play also.

WARBOSSES - Typography & Logo

2011-05-16T12:21:00.002+01:00

Typography is one of my least favourite subjects so I decided to get mine finished early on and I thought that maybe it would help me with the whole feel of the game by having lettering to refer to.

As it's a war game I tried many different styles of writing, all quite striking to look at as I wanted it to look bold and powerful ... how my characters will hopefully look!

My first ideas were quite bad I'll have to admit, I didn't really have a feel for the game yet so I tried to experiment with using sharp edges on the font. I do like the idea of this but in this case it just looks too feeble and boring. Gas mask man was scrapped too...

Later that night I sat down with my sketchbook and tried out a few different fonts that I thought may work, I thought they all looked quite controlled and predictable so for the fourth one I tried I decided to make it loose and bold at the same time and I ended up really liking it, it just needed some refining.

Some logo notes.

Final typography finished.

WARBOSSES - Trailers

2011-05-16T12:09:00.000+01:00

The next step was to review game trailers to gain knowledge of the fundamental approach to different marketing techniques and styles. I picked a few trailers to look at and spent a good day making notes of what works well in trailers and what type of typography is used for different game genres.

WARBOSSES - Planning

2011-05-16T12:02:00.000+01:00

The first step I took with the planning was to set a "mood" for the game. In the brief it says the developer will be Epic games which are well known for making "Gears of War" and "Unreal Tournament". They generally follow a grungey style, quite dark but also have a strong story with characters that you recognize right away because of their very distinct look..

First of all I looked through some of my various film/game magazines and took out some snips of colour schemes I thought worked well as well as taking note of the look of some of the environments.

I then made some notes on trailers to look at for some inspiration.

Game Trailer - Brief

2011-05-16T11:47:00.000+01:00

Our final brief this year is to make a fully rendered 12 panel client storyboard for a game trailer and a digital marketing poster to match the content of the game.

We were given a list of 8 different game proposals to chose from and develop with our own ideas they were "Trenchdog" a first person shooter game set during the first world war, "MARIO Spacehog" a retro Mario racing game for the Wii, "Freedom Force" an iPod touch game that focuses mainly on using touch technology to interact with objects in the game, "WARBOSSES" a new age war game with unique characters, "Penatly" a football game, "Ladykills" a murder mystery game with specific character descriptions, "LEGO LUNACY" a sandbox style game and "Eyepet Lizard" a cyberpet game for PS3.

After listing some basic ideas for each proposal I finally settled on Warbosses as I like the idea of creating a story involving a group of people taking on an evil force of some sort.

Stoke Your Fires

2011-05-16T11:16:00.000+01:00

On 2nd March we went to the Stoke Your Fires convention, this was mainly for animation students so I didn't enjoy it as much as BAF Game but there were definitely some animations and short films that were worth going for.

The show reel/talk by Double Negative was interesting, they have a large portfolio including special effects on Inception, Scott Pilgrim VS The World, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and more recently Paul.

I really enjoyed this talk because they explained how Paul went from a basic idea of an alien and the team slowly built him up to be believable to the audience. I found all of the special effects work to be fascinating, it is amazing how much detail can go into such basic scenes in a film. I think the part that surprised me most was when they were talking about the scene in Paul where they are driving down the long desert road, most of this is CGI and they gave a walk through of all of the special effects that were needed in just this one scene. Starting with the actual environment itself, then moving onto things such as reflections and then down to things that most people would overlook while watching the film such as the mirror effect of the enviroment displayed in the mirrors to make it look believable. Although I have only briefly used ZBrush and Maya it is great to be able to see how 3D work is made at an advanced level using high end programs.

Creative Futures week at Glyndwr

2011-05-16T11:06:00.000+01:00

The first talk that I chose to go to was by Harriet Buckley , she is an animator that has been working for various companies and for herself so it was nice to hear from somebody who has a lot of experience in the industry. Harriet’s style was very unique; she uses traditional frame by frame animation for most of her work whilst maintaining sleek, fluid movement for all of her characters. The part that interested me most was when she was showing her character designs that she used in her animations, it is very important to be able to draw out your character in all different positions as well using a variety of facial expressions.

The next talk I went to was by Paul Gravett, he is from the comic book industry and gave a good talk about how comic books are becoming quite popular over here. Japan has a lot of influence on the comic book/graphic novel world as many people read manga and large amounts of the audience are adults. I like how comic books can be illustrated in many different ways, some of them are quite basic in style but still get the story across the reader just as effectively. I am also happy that Paul gave a mention to Maus as this is one of my favourite graphic novels.

My favourite talk of the week was by the lead games concept artist Lee Carter from Bizarre Creations. First of all he talked about the closure of Bizarre Creations which was quite sad to hear and what it was like working for them before Activision took over. Next he went on to show us his show reel of concept art which included both environment and character design, I personally found his work incredible and I’ll definitely be following his work in the future now that he is going into the comic book industry. I learned from this talk that to be good at concept art you need to have an active imagination and to be able to draw straight out of your head without reference sometimes.

Finally the last talk I went to was by Terry Morris a photographer, although he is very talented with his photography work the thing I liked most about this talk was hearing his views on his own work and his general attitude to the industry. He emphasised the importance of putting hard work and effort into what you do and how buying all sorts of fancy tools doesn’t necessarily make you better at what you do. Terry talked about how he likes to go to his photo shoots with as little equipment as possible and he talks to the person he will be photographing so that they will be relaxed resulting in a much better shot.

Overall I did find the Creative Futures week useful, it has made me realise that I have to put a lot of effort into improving my work and keep passionate about it.

ZE DRAGON cont..

2011-04-24T20:30:00.000+01:00

Some adjustments, I can't decide what position he looks best in...

Anatomy: Andrew Loomis

2011-04-24T19:08:00.000+01:00

In university we are restricted to one life model at the moment which is a shame because I don't feel like my work is improving much, only in detail if we spend longer sessions on a drawing.

This said, I was recommended by a friend to look at Andrew Loomis and really study his techniques and I should see a huge improvement with my human anatomy. So whenever I get some free time I am going to try and work myself through his book and do as many study sketches as I can, hopefully this will pay off when it comes to designing characters from imagination.

This is my progress so far;

Getting used to drawing the basic mannequin figure in different poses.

A bit more expressive...

More studying to use a more detailed mannequin.

Putting that model to the test...

First attempts at putting on tone.

Using the box technique.

Sketchbook Work

2011-04-24T18:59:00.000+01:00

As it's the easter holidays I've been trying to fit in some sketch time as well as entertainment time!

Here are some speed sketches I've working on while baking my body in the sun;

ImagineFX Speed Painting: Dragon

2011-04-23T20:12:00.000+01:00

Well today I was planning on working on a speed painting from ImagineFX by Maciej Kuciara which looked quite awesome. Only I found I'm pretty bad at being happy with a "finished" picture when it's not detailed enough! So I am now going to continue with this into a full digital painting over the next few days.

Character: Combat Guy

2011-04-23T11:40:00.000+01:00

For the past 2 weeks I've been working on and off on a character design thanks to ImagineFX. I am quite happy with this guy and it has been good practice and motivated me into trying these things more often ;)
Here is the finished piece followed by development shots.

3D Stop Motion Project: Summary

2011-04-21T18:09:00.000+01:00

Production on our 3D stop motion project has come to an end I am glad to say, overall I did enjoy working on this brief even though it was yet another animation task! I felt like I have learned a lot while designing and working on the set and found out a lot of technical information about stop motion that I wouldn't have considered if it hadn't been for assistance from the technicians.

Our group consisted of myself, George, Christina and Nate with each of us having our own strengths so it was a great varied group to work in and our communication during the entire project was what made it a successful animation. This was the first time I have worked on a stop motion as a group so it was definitely a lot different from working by yourself as you have to take other peoples ideas into account as well as sacrificing some of your own to make it a group effort that everybody is happy with. Also we had to organize extra days to come into university as the planning stage took a lot of team effort.

Each of us brought our own ideas into the story which was great, I really enjoyed the script writing and storyboarding process as it was interesting to see how other people could come up with a completely different outlook on a scene. When it came to the set design I think we were very organised and worked together to conjure up a theme idea that worked well for the atmosphere were were trying to create. I found I could be quite creative with some ideas for the set such as the spider web, making it out of fabric then dipping it in PVA glue to give it a realistic effect and painting on some 3D looking scenes for the props. Keeping the colour scheme the same throughout the set was also a challenge but I am very happy with how the end result looks and I think it fitted in with the characters and story very well.
As I didn't make my own character I only had a minor role in the actual animating such as the cats movement during the start. George, Nate and Christina done a great job in working on the movement of the characters and hopefully once the sound effects are put in it will have the feel of a professional stop motion animation.

Overall I am pretty happy with this project, I wouldn't have changed anything with the design. I will post up the finished animation once we have played it in university to our class. I think having a varied group is what made us a successful team for this project which was very hands on. I think our super animator in the group George Roberts deserves a big pat on the back for doing the majority of the work, including editing sound and even a teaser trailer. Be sure to check out his blog if you are into animation.

Well hopefully that is the last animation brief we will get, I am very excited for our next brief which is entirely games related so look out for a lot of posts coming soon!

3D Stop Motion Project: Building 5

2011-04-11T14:44:00.000+01:00

Ready for animation!

3D Stop Motion Project: Building 4

2011-04-11T14:30:00.001+01:00

For our last session of set building we worked on final details and the puppets.

I started out making the spiders web, this was quite fun to make but also a bit tricky. I created it from fabric, tied it in them middle and then knotted each joint together to form a web. Once I had finished the structure I coated it in a PVA mix to make it look real.

For the remainder of the day more work was done on the armatures which involved coating the exoskeletons in a foam body.

3D Stop Motion Project: Building 3

2011-04-11T14:10:00.001+01:00

Our next step was to create props and other various set decorations. We started off with posters of each of the three main characters, this is a nice addition to the set as it makes the characters feel more important.

We then created some mini posters for the back wall of the laboratory. Most of these are designed to be humorous.

Once we had the posters up we put some green paint effects around the wall and then created the generator which sits in the corner of the set.

3D Stop Motion Project: Building 2

2011-04-11T13:38:00.001+01:00

Set development.

3D Stop Motion Project: Building 1

2011-04-02T15:22:00.000+01:00

At the moment we are in our first stages of building both the characters and the set. There has been a lot of hard work and decision making during this process.

3D Stop Motion Project: Storyboarding

2011-04-02T15:15:00.000+01:00

The next step we took after confirming our storyline and deciding on our character and set appearances was to make a scene by scene storyboard, this took about 2 hours to create but has made our job much easier when it comes to creating the animation.
We haven't done camera shots yet as we still need to build the set design and need to work out what walls we will be removing for certain shots during the animation.

3D Stop Motion Project: Planning

2011-04-02T15:03:00.003+01:00

For the past two weeks we have been working on our current animation brief, to create a 3D stop motion animation based around one of the themes that were supplied to us at the start working in a group of 4 people. After some discussion our group decided we would use "time" as our theme to work with, we all put our ideas together of what we could possibly go with and then eventually settled with the idea of a mad scientist who is working on a time travelling experiment.

Our first job was to decide on a suitable storyline that would make up at least 1 minute of animation. This took up the first two days of our schedule and we managed to make up a pretty strong story line that works well to show the personalities of our characters while also maintaining good humour throughout.

Once we had our storyline confirmed we started to make some draft sketches of the characters and the set;

My early mock up designs of the scientist. We eventually decide to make him look more lanky and crazy looking.

Early story ideas (excuse the cat!)

Set design plans.

Set design plans, 3D mock version.

Ariel view of our set plan.

At this stage of development it was very important to all communicate with each other as much as possible and throw ideas out there so we could enjoy the project as much as possible.

BAF Game 2010: Day 2

2011-04-02T13:13:00.000+01:00

CREATIVE ASSEMBLY
We kick started this day with a talk from Creative Assembly with their Total War franchise. It was an interesting talk and it was great to hear how they have improved their games over the years to make them popular while keeping them historically accurate.
The guys speaking mainly covered their game that was in development at the time "Shogun 2". They covered environment design and how they had to go overseas and take a lot of reference photos to make their levels believable. Overall I really enjoyed this talk as the speakers were quite open about their own experiences while working on the game including the problems they en counted along the way.

"Shogun 2"

STARTING A COMPANY: ASSYRIA

Our next talk was with Assyria a small independent company who creates arcade style games for the iPhone and iPod touch. Although I didn't like many of the games on their show reel it was refreshing to hear how small companies have their own place in the industry and how they were quite happy to be working on games of a much smaller scale. They also covered the pros and cons of working with a small group of people which was also quite useful to know.

STEREOSCOPIC 3D: A NEW CREATIVE MEDIUM, SONY

Ian Bickerstaff from Sony's 3D team was present to do this talk. First of all he talked about how 3D film has opened the doors for games to be able to give a similar, immersive experience. 3D is something that is definitely going to be explored more in the future by the industry and as the PS3 and as Nintendo 3Ds are now supporting heavy 3D games we can expect to see this area to be exploited in many different creative ways. At the moment it is hard to tell what direction 3D is going in as it is still fairly new with games and not everybody enjoys the feel of it.

LIONHEAD STUDIOS: FABLE 3

This talk was by far my favourite of the whole 2 days and was the main reason I decided to go to BAF this year! Andy Brunton, head animator for the Fable series gave a fantastic talk covering all aspects of the design behind Fable and also some of Lionhead's past games which I have a great passion for including the Black & White series. We were shown some of the developer diaries of what happened behind the scenes at Lionhead while making some of the audio sound effects also he went through a reel of death animation outtakes that would have put the game's age rating up which was very amusing to see.

One part of the talk was about how the dog interacts differently as in Fable 2 the relationship between your character and the dog was often quite glitchy and the dog would not always do what you wanted as the large environments sometimes confused it. Brunton talked about how he had to study the movement of dogs for months before making sketches and deciding how the dog in game should behave to make him lovable yet loyal.

I really liked at the end of his presentation he put some good references up which I have found very useful for character design online, the whole talk was fantastic and I got to speak to him at the end of it and even managed to get my Fable 3 collector's edition signed by him, which left me grinning all day!

BAF Game 2010: Day 1

2011-03-12T15:56:00.001Z

Back in November I attended BAF with some of my classmates also doing games art, we went to the two game conference days on the 9th and 10th rather than the animation festival.

I did make a couple of notes while I was there so I thought that today I should really make a real write up for it so I can look back at this at a later date and jog my memory of the talks we had there.

BRINK

First off on day one we had a talk by Splash Damage who talked in depth about their upcoming title “Brink” which is due to be released May 20th 2011. As I am mostly interested in character design, this talk was pretty amazing for me as they covered all parts of their concept work including both character concepts and environment designs.

This character below was definitely my favourite, there's just something highly original about the design and it is very quirky.

A lot of thought had gone into the construction of the environment, which I think is what makes this game stand out from others currently in development. Brink is based on a futuristic floating city called "The Ark" which lurks over a now flooded earth, the storyline is based around the two factions which inhabit this city "resistance" and "security" as they fight in an over populated land.

The lead character artist Tim Appleby chose to use a very distinct style with all of the designs. These characters almost look like caricatures as their features are so exaggerated. Working in this way gives the game it's own unique feel so that it's not completely realistic but it is definitely believable so that players will be able to get immersed into "The Ark".

Overall I found this talk very helpful and I have been keeping a watch on the development of Brink to see how their unique art style is evolving as the game nears completion. I think the main thing I learnt from this talk was how important traditonal art skills such as lighting and colour theory can be in games, it plays such a big part to what emotions a player will feel while playing through an area.

DOCTOR WHO: THE ADVENTURE GAMES

After Brink there was a brief talk on the Doctor Who franchise and how the BBC has been releasing the games for free on their website. Although these games are only created for the fans that admire the series so much, it was still very interesting to hear how the development team had to work very closely with the cast and crew of the actual TV series to make sure what they were doing was accurate. This is the most important thing when films or TV shows end up having a game released for them, if it's not based around what viewers have already been watching then it wouldn't be a successful game.

INDIE GAMES IN FOCUS: DAVID HAYWARD

This talk was fantastic, I am very interested in independent developers that attempt to do something a little different from the money-fueled main games industry. If you grew up playing games then you will know yourself that amazing graphics are not needed to make a good game. In this talk, David told us about various success stories of small teams of people that have made successes out of their creations and distributing them using online methods such as XBox LIVE and Steam. Every now and then we see a some really popular indie games that also make a lot of money, two of my favourites have to be "Super Meat Boy" and "World of Goo".

EXPERIMENTAL MODS: DAN PINCHBECK

Dan Pinchbeck talked in depth about a game that he and his team had modded and successfully distributed for free around the internet. It was a horror game to do with madness and the world coming to an end, I can't say it looked like something I'd enjoy but it was still nice to hear how the modding community is still very much alive. I do like modding but I have only created basic meshes/skins in the past for games like The Sims 1 and 2 and I also created some of the characters from the Zelda series using the engine for "Mount and Blade" so it was nice to see how people mod game engines professionally!

NINJA THEORY: ENSLAVED

The talk on Enslaved was my favourite talk of the day by far as this was focused on character development. This talk was held by lead animator Guy Midgely and senior animator James Stevenson, both were very passionate about their work but they also had an incredible sense of humour!

Concept work for this game is absolutely beautiful and it focused around the relationship of the two main characters in the game.

The environment is futuristic but overgrown with natural elements too making it a very nice to explore as there is so much detail. I like how most of the concept art for this game is matt painted using a lot of textures, it gives the characters a very bold feel to them.

Animated Life Drawing

2011-02-25T01:26:00.001Z

Well I've been meaning to do this for a while now, get all of my sequence drawings together and make a quick animation out of them. I think it works especially as a looping animation with background music!

Posture

2011-02-25T00:23:00.000Z

Some various life drawings I have done at the start of Year 1. First 3 images are between 30/60 seconds each.

Sketchbook Doodles

2011-02-25T00:09:00.001Z

Some doodles from various sketchbooks I have taken photos of, maybe I will use these for digital work at some point...

Cut Out Animation Progress

2011-02-22T23:31:00.000Z

Well today I done some more work on our "cut out" assignment for uni. I'm finding it quite frustrating animating off a completely random audio track which is required for the assignment but hey we can't always get tasks we enjoy.

The brief states we needed to get recordings off random radio/drama shows and create our own audio track from these audio clips using Audacity to edit. We are working in a group of two for this task which is quite nice as we can bounce ideas off each other as well as creating an animation in two parts that we will need to merge. This was quite fun to work with, I got most of my audio clips from "The Apprentice" TV show and I made sure I picked up some completely obscene audio files so I could keep myself entertained while animating.

I have done my dope sheet for mouth movements now just need to complete the animation this week :)

Alien Character

2011-02-22T22:06:00.000Z

More practice with sculpting on Zbrush. I am quite happy with this bust.

Latest Inspirational Photographs

2011-02-22T21:57:00.000Z

A quick post with some very nice photos/manipulations that have caught my attention for various reasons.

Character Development: Rufina Valentine

2011-02-12T00:00:00.001Z

For this assignment we were asked to develop a character in period costume, create a written profile and make several concept sketches of the character in various poses with different expressions.

Here is my project.

Novice Zbrush

2011-02-11T22:41:00.000Z

Last week I started using Zbrush and going through a few tutorials to learn the basic commands and sculpting tools. These are the two sculpts I finished with, the first took about 20 minutes just for me to get used to the different strokes used and the second sculpt took slightly longer and I learned how to use different brushes with this one.

Animation: Overlapping action and follow-through

2011-01-21T17:35:00.000Z

<br><br><br>For

For this brief we had to do a short animation that lasted at least 5 seconds and had a character in it that used overlapping action. I decided to use an Old English Sheepdog as my character because it is a breed with very long hair and I liked the idea of his hair blowing out of his eyes to make him look more suprised. I first toyed with the idea of a fan being the main pointo of interest that the dog would play with. After considering different poses and interactions with the fan I decided that this idea was quite limited so then considered the idea of a more extreme idea of the dog going skydiving. I then created a plot for the animation and drew out my line art on photoshop using 118 different frames. Once I was happy with the motion of my characters I then went through each frame and coloured them all in sepearately.

Plans:

Character interacting with an object

2011-01-18T10:44:00.000Z

Research: Character interacting with an object

2011-01-04T19:56:00.000Z

For this assignment I chose the subject of a character interacting with custard in a 1970's school canteen.

I done some research on various school history websites of what type of food was available so I could draw them in the background.

My composition sketch for my final image.

Next I will research 1979's fashion and what type of furniture would have been around in school canteens then so I can give the image the right look for that era.

Octopus Girl WIP

2011-01-03T22:12:00.000Z

Work in progress. Seeing as I have far too many issues of ImagineFX and barely do any of the tutorials in them, I would give this months workshop a go!

Inspirations. 2

2011-01-02T15:47:00.000Z

Soul Reaper finished

2011-01-01T22:11:00.000Z

Soul Reaper finally finished after spending 2 hours on it tidying it up a little.

Square animation short

2010-12-30T22:16:00.000Z

A short assignment where we had to create a short that started and ended with a 6x6cm square.

inspirations. 1

2010-12-30T22:04:00.001Z

Some inspirational photos/photoshop work I have found in the past few days.

Gladiators Ahoy!

2010-12-19T15:32:00.000Z

Our last brief was "Characters showing anticipation" where we had to either create an animation or fully rendered image of a character performing some sort of action. We had a couple of choices to base our image around and after considering a few others I finally settled on working on the Gladiator.

Sketchbook:

My final image which was done in watercolour. I am not too happy with how this turned out with the hand, I'm sure given more time I could have done a better job with it.

Kadoosh!

2010-12-02T21:56:00.001Z

Well here is my first "real" update since I've been absorbed in my new life at uni. I don't have a good excuse for not updating it in so long apart from being "busy" so yeah.. I'll just poke myself into writing this entry.

First of all my games art course has been merged with two other courses; creative lens media and animation so it now has a new (not very good) title "Creative Media". At first I was a bit WHATDAFAWK about this but I guess it's growing on me as I love animation which slots perfectly into games and I guess various aspects of lens tech can be helpful like lighting, positioning and such. Anyway it's going super gravy so far and I have nothing to rage over... well apart from the fact I'm writing this in a minus 34589653 degree room (with heating on) but that's nothing to do with the course.

The projects in our first module we had were a bit broad, perspective drawings, continuity cutting , observational drawing... and a few others. the most exciting project in this module was a storyboard for a commercial we had to produce. I chose the Sony Games one which was making a female character for a new game that appealed to GIRLS. Well this was a bit difficult because all of the research I done resulted in me finding other women characters with giant bazoombaz all wearing bad excuses for clothes.

I remembered back to a tutorial I started to draw from ImagineFX magazine how to draw a "Soul Reaper" and immediately I was sold on the idea of having a soul reaper lady.

Storyboard images:

Young girl character finds the Book of Souls on the floor.

She then opens the book causing the shadow monsters to escape.

The dark mist covers the land wiping out everything in it's path.

Darkness spreads throughout the world.

Young girl backs up to a rock for cover while the ground shakes.

Shadow monster creeps up to girl.

Shadow monster reveals itself to girl and runs at her.

Close up shot of monster about to attack girl.

Soul Huntress kills the shadow monster with her crossbow.

Then absorbs its soul in a soul-vial.

End of commercial.

Now we're on the second module things are getting a bit tastier as it is just games/animation. First of all I created a very basic pose to pose animation which is just a pen line drawing of a panda. The legs definitely needed some extra work but as it was only a quick project it's acceptable!

Finally we are now working on a concept art piece based around a character showing some form of anticipation. My next post will be all about this. Au revoir!

Ink Blot Cinematic

2010-09-20T16:35:00.000+01:00

Cinematic finished :)

Ink Blot Planning

2010-09-20T16:12:00.000+01:00

The first assignment in our summer project was to create an inkblot then create a sequence of some sort related to our course from it.

I created 5 inkblots, but only two of them had imagery in them. One turned out to be a crab and the other was the one I have used shown below:

Immediately I could see two winged creatures, maybe angels coming together. So I decided to think of more ideas with what I could turn it into.

The first thing that came to mind was the Twin Valkyr bossfight on World of Warcraft, I have played this fight a couple of times so thought that the inkblot represented a similar sort of character. Especially as on this game they represent light and dark forces and you have to defeat them individually as combined they are deadly.

Some further notes I made to do with the Twin Valkyrs and also a similar boss I remembered from Zelda: Ocarina of Time called Twinrova where there are two witches one represents fire and the other ice. To defeat them the player must use their own offensive attacks on the opposite witch to kill them, eventually they form together to make a final even more difficult boss.

I sketched out the shape of the inkblot and tried to think of ways in which the boss would position itself.

I sketched out my main character who will be the protagonist in my cinematic.

I like the Drakonids in the Warcraft series and because they stand on two legs like humans, I could easily create something similar to fit in with my ink blot.

I then created my own monster by using the Drakonid as a starting point. I was looking for something with a lighter build and with just one wing, the idea is when two of these monsters merge together - they will create a larger boss to fight which will be in my cinematic. I will be making two of these creatures, one will be using the element fire as a weapon and the other one will be using ice so they will be coloured accordingly.

The final boss will look like this and able to fly (now it has 2 wings!). Its right arm will have wolverine-like claws as a weapon and it's left arm has now been replaced from small guns to a hand cannon. This boss has much slower movement than the unevolved version but causes a lot more damage.

Ink Blot Assignment

2010-09-17T01:43:00.000+01:00

The first part of the summer work I will be working on is the ink blot assignment. I have tried this in the past so it shouldn't be too hard to do providing they work out nicely. We have to create some ink blots, choose one you like and try and see something in it. Then, from that you create a game sequence.

I guess it will take a lot of imagination to do but I am looking forward to it, it kind of reminds me of an online project I tried a year ago where you had to try and see an image out of certain shapes. Everyone thought of something different for each shape which was create, it really gets you thinking.

We started off with a grey image full of random shapes, immediately you can see patterns in it and conjure up an image in your head, here you can see how mine worked out:

The blue line is where I have made my outline of what I could see - a Rhino!

I then created a more accurate outline off my draft.

I then removed my draft line and created the first layer of shadows.

Then I blended the shadows in to the Rhino.

I then started to colour.

Final image!

I would never have thought of drawing this little creature without using the "chaos method" of using random shapes to create form. I will be working on my ink blot tomorrow so I hope I have some luck with that :)

Hello Autumn

2010-09-17T01:17:00.000+01:00

Well summer is over already, it went so fast ;O

Although I didn't go abroad this year I had a lot of great days out with family and friends and even managed to bump into Collette my foundation tutor (hi Collette! :D) in Limestreet station on the way to Blackpool Pleasure Beach. I got a few videos while I was there and put two of my favourites together to make this:

Well apart from having a great summer I've also had to work ridiculously hard with commissions - and I wasn't always drawing fun subjects either, it ended up being quite a tedious task and in total I managed to do 19 commissions over 3 months and made just over £900. I have spent most of it on a lovely new graphics laptop which I am still drooling over so I should be able to do my 3D and high photoshop work without it setting on fire now! I hope my drawing "stamina" has improved after all that anyway, I'm very glad I can have a break now now and get working on my summer projects fully which I am very excited about.

Other than that I bought an Xbox 360 and have been attached to "Fable 2" I just love how it plays out like a storybook, all the choices you make throughout the game change your characters appearance and how the towns people react to you. Being nice to people improves your looks and makes people respect you and being evil makes you look terrible and causes townsfolk to flee! I am so excited to start university, I want to get making characters like that myself!

I'm hoping once I start transferring my traditional way of drawing to photoshop I will be able to get some freelance jobs this year, it will make a nice change from drawing dogs and horses constantly too. Maybe I could look out for some small games in development or trading card game companies.

Finally I am about to start my Vlog show which is a way of blogging but using video to talk, I really like the idea and it gives you a chance to record yourself drawing and talking about the work you are doing too so yeah.. I will see how that turns out. And last but not least I've started on a beginners Japanese course so I can go and visit and see their Studio Ghibli museum and "Ice Cream City"! (WAHOO ;D)
Well that's it, Sayonara :D

Photoshop Sketches: Soul Reaper

2010-06-27T00:15:00.000+01:00

I've been reading ImagineFX magazine lately and came across a really good article on character development for games and how you can create a person just from a storyline. I'm currently working through their tutorial and decided to do my sketch in pencil and scan it in just to try and wean myself slowly onto photoshop!

I will update this with progress as I work further on it!

Hand sketched and imported into Photoshop.

First stage of colouring.

Sketchbook: Studies 1

2010-06-08T00:37:00.001+01:00

Art college is now sadly over, it's been a fantastic year and I've met some talented people who I hope I will always keep in touch with, it's still not quite hit me that we won't EVER be going back for in for lessons but I can't wait to see everyone at the final show though, it will be great to see everyone for one last (probably!) time.

Well after a good week of boogying and snoozing I feel like I have finally recovered from my 6-hour-a-day diet of animating to finish the final major project! I'm so glad that project is over now and am very happy that I finished it in a viewable standard.

I have started off a sketchbook to practice basics which I hope will help me with future assignments, I will update this blog as often as possible with sketches. Also if I get any finished pieces done on photoshop then I will be sure to include them here also. Today I began to continue on my traditional commissioned work so it looks like I will be getting in a lot of practice over the summer!

Anyway here is my first entry for my new sketchbook this week I have been exploring some basics of human face structure through life drawing, science books and reference photos. I hope to gain more skills in this area and fluent enough to be able to draw straight from memory.

FMP: Sweet Taste of Horror

2010-05-27T16:21:00.000+01:00

Sweet Taste of Horror - Final Major Project from Lisa Hignett on Vimeo.

Finished animation!

FMP: Sweet Taste of Horror Progress

2010-05-20T23:17:00.002+01:00

Over the past few days I've been working continually on my animation which is now starting to take shape. Today some of my friends volunteered to do some voice acting for it so I will be inserting those clips at the weekend. I am about a third of the way through the animation but I am happy that the most difficult parts are done so the remaining scenes should be much easier to do.

I made quite a big error near the start where Jack the main character is sitting under the tree waiting for his friends to come and I forgot to animate him blinking while everyone was walking past! So I have now edited this and he's no longer having a staring contest with the grass :P
I also had to ask someone to film me walking towards the camera while wearing converse and also standing up from a sitting position so I could work off the film to animate Jack's scenes at the beginning accurately.

I've certainly set myself up for a hard time completing the project in the time we have had but overall it has been fun and has really tested my patience!

Some clips of the scenes so far..

FMP: Making a Monster

2010-05-16T19:55:00.000+01:00

As part of my installation to go along side the projected animation; I am making a real version of the antagonist candy monster as seen at the end of the animation. It has been a nightmare to make so far but I hope all of the hard work pays off for it (and my parents don't kick me out of the house because of the mess!)

I've been working on it for about half an hour most days for the past 2 weeks because it has been taking a long time for each layer of the paper mache to dry. I am now constructing the first layer of sweets on the monster, I first attached them using PVA only to find half of the sweets came off it the following day so have no resorted to using super glue which is working great so far!

Also I had some issues getting it to balance when standing up by itself so have converted a casey football into a giant gobstopper eyeball (as seen in the animation) to prop it up under it's foot.

Working closely with the design in my diary sketchbook to get the monster in the correct position!

The eyeball "gobstopper".

First layer of sweets and a lot of glue!

More work.. and mess!

and finally standing up! Hopefully will have it finished soon.

FMP: Gallery Visits

2010-05-16T19:34:00.000+01:00

On Wednesday me and a friend went to Bluecoat gallery in Liverpool. There was an exhibition full of international works, some were very unique but the most striking artist had to be Haruko Maeda.

Her work is beautiful and after reading more about her, I found that each piece reflects an event that has happened in her life so you can understand the work fully and why it exists.

(Haruko Maeda - Heartbeat of Death 2010)

The sculpture above was created using all sorts of kitsch materials and represents her cat that had died at her home in Tokyo just after it had given birth to a litter of kittens. The jewelery attached to the sculpture gives it a sense of feminism and life even though the cat looks like a spectral creature. Maeda was very sad about the cat dying so this looks like her attempt of making it still exist. I like this piece because it links into my sculpture I am currently creating to include in my installation, it is made out of scrap pieces and candy. Maeda's work seems to be based around giving a personality or a life to inanimate objects which is really intriguing but I suppose it could also be considered to be a form of dark art also.

We also went to the Walker Gallery where "The Rise of Women Artists" exhibition was currently being held there. I liked the "Viral Landscape No2" by Helen Chadwick. Ironically enough the artist herself died because of a viral infection she caught while working at a hospital. I think this image is dramatic and has a sense of destruction and mess. I picked this piece in the gallery as my favourite because it ties into my animation where the atmosphere suddenly goes sinister. Also the pink and red colours in the painting remind me of candy floss or strawberry syrup!

Finished Animatic

2010-05-08T16:06:00.002+01:00

Sweet Taste of Horror Animatic from Lisa Hignett on Vimeo.

FMP: 280 drawings later..

2010-05-08T00:30:00.002+01:00

... and my draft animatic is complete!

I've spent ridiculous amount of hours on it changing events around to give a more dramatic effect and the music has snapped into place much better than I imagined. I still need to get some voice actors and download sound effects for some of the actions but apart from that the animation is ready to be worked on.

I did find one mistake half way through which shows the flute man putting out a bowl of toffees and then in the next scene he enters the room from the opposite side, so I will have to change this in the main animation so that he comes from the area he was last in. Also I'm not entirely happy with the way the murder scenes are executed, I don't want it to be too scary so I think I will consider another option rather than blood to play with the innocence effect more, I do however like the way the deaths of the friends are caused by the candy they were eating. Also the end climax scene on the draft animatic is slightly rushed and you don't see much of the candy construct but in the real animation I will make sure that viewers get a good look at it and maybe it can stomp around on the floor. I'm really enjoying the development process of this animation but I think maybe next time I make one I won't make it quite so long!!

Also my papier mache version of the candy construct is almost ready to be coated white, I just have to make sure it's balanced enough to stand up by itself on display. I have about 12 bags of kiddies sweets to work on it with and 2 large swirl lolipops for the eyes!

I'll post the video of my draft animatic next once it's finished uploading!

FMP: Animatic Progress

2010-04-28T23:52:00.000+01:00

Today I started work on the animatic version of Sweet Taste of Horror. An animatic is similar to a storyboard and is basically a mock up version where you draw out draft versions of selected frames. When you play the animation you can see if each event is lasting the correct amount of time and if not you can easily edit it without worrying about spoiling hours of detailed work. I have my soundtrack completed now so I will be animating to the music gradually adding more detail to the animation over the next few weeks. I also downloaded some free sound effects which hopefully will come in useful somewhere!

I am using a traditional animation technique using full backgrounds I will draw on photoshop and then pan the camera around when needed. I will only be animating characters and objects in the foreground which will make the whole process a lot less time consuming. Here are some snaps of what I done today:

Editing the draft frames to fit in with the music on the timeline.

4 screenshots of draft versions of the opening scene.

FMP: Candy Construct

2010-04-28T23:30:00.000+01:00

The antagonist in my animation is a suspicious man who has the appearance of a circus ring leader. When he plays his flute, all candy that is nearby in the shop forms together to make "constructs" which attack the main characters. I think my main inspiration is from Charlie and the Chocolate factory where Willy Wonka plays the tin whistle to summon his Oompa Loompas, there was always something creepy about it! I also think the construct bares resemblance to the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland with the stripes, pink colours and massive grin.

Here are some snap shots on the progress of my "real" candy construct which will be a part of my exhibition so people can see the main construct in his full glory. At the moment it's in the papier mache/pulp stage and looks like primary school project - once it's dried out fully I can begin the real work on it and get glue gunning candy all over it.

FMP: Mark Ryden

2010-04-28T00:01:00.000+01:00

Today I found an art movement called Pop Surrealism which fits in perfectly with my animation as it is very surreal but has a certain sense of dark humour and suspense about it.
I found a couple of artists I'll be looking at this week but one that really stood out was Mark Ryden. He mainly uses pastel colours in his paintings and often paints young girls or subjects associated with youth or innocence, then adds a twist to it either with dark humor or macabre.

Because my animation is based around a candy shop, I think it's great to look at his work and see how he has used colour and most of all, changed his innocent subjects into haunting surreal paintings.