Another test

Here the latest test.  I am achieving the looped, painted texture effect, but I don't know how well it will jive with the angular design of the character - or how messy and noisy I want the texture to be.  I don't want this to be Dr Katz.  I keep going back to the character design and I like the angularity of it, perhaps the noise will be too distracting from the stillness of the piece?

The background is just a plate taken from Samurai Jack, which kind of what I want the background to look like, but there will be some secondary animation of the clouds and the grass blowing in the wind.

Motion test. This is only a test.

The puppet tool.  So obvious.  Now I just need to refine the texture and I should be able to manipulate the character models easily

Speaking of Flash...

...here's a quick test to see how it might look in Flash if I so choose.  Hopefully if I choose to illustrate it in Flash, I will put more care into the actually illustration.  This one is pretty chunky, I am not used to the brush in CS4.

More Concept Art for Thesis project

Here are 2 concept illustrations for my thesis project.  I haven't illustrated in photoshop in a long time, so it took me a while to get reacquainted with the brushes - these could be a lot better, but they are just sketches.

The plan at the moment is to create something kind of painterly, something with a little bit of noise to give it a hand-drawn touch, much like what is featured in these great The Giants animations.  But I also like the simplicity of solid shapes with painted backgrounds such as those in the highly underrated cartoon Samurai Jack (or this wonderful homage to it).  It would be nice to actually do some hand-drawn Flash animation for this project with gouache paintings, rather than all After Effects manipulations, I guess I will have to do some animation tests in the mean time to see how to marry the two styles.

Scarecrow concept art

I have a new project I am working on involving a scarecrow.  Here are some of the character concept art:

(some of) The Olympians

About 6 months ago I started a brief animation of the 12 Olympians.  I don't know if I will ever finish it, but here are some of the illustrated stills, to varying degree of polish:

 
Zeus with his lightning bolt.  I think this is the first one I did and this served as a style frame for the rest of the piece.

Hera was a tough one.  I didn't really know what to do with her: Aphrodite has her sexy body, Artemis can hunt, Athena has her owl, but Hera is just a stubborn, jealous queen.  She isn't that interesting.

 I don't think I did a very interesting take on Apollo.  I added sunspots and that was about it.

  Athena be all stoic and shit.

Ares looks a little more like he leaped off of a Greek amphora than any of the others.

Aphrodite has been illustrated more than any other greek god, so I didn't do anything revolutionary with her, but I am happy with how she turned out.  I wanted to make her sexy yet playful.

The Greek Gods are interesting because they are still archetypes that exist today, often petty and childish.  It was easier to give some of them a unique personality over others.

I have a print of Lou Romano's Poseidon hanging on my wall, which is what inspired this project in the first place.  I wanted to do something in the spirit of his work, but not necessarily in the style of it.

 Demeter is the most recent one I did, and her grains need some work, they are a little too clean.

I never really knew what to do with Hermes.  I wanted to animate him running, but to where? and why? and would his penis swing with each stride?

Actually, all of the characters were illustrated sans clothes (see examples below).  I wanted to emulate the epic, primitive innocence of the classic statues that they were cast in so long ago.  It was also a way to get the whole architecture of the character.  However, it just wasn't practical, especially when it came to their iconography, which got more detailed along the way.  Like the iconography, the clothes added personality and character to those I felt did not need clothes (Poseidon, Aphrodite) for practical purposes, thereby separating them from those who did (the virgin Artemis).  Plus, naked cartoons just looked kind of weird.  Originally the depictions were even more simple and flat, like the end credits to The Incredibles.  Maybe one day I will finish this, some of it is available in my demo reel.

Hera with some of the pointiest boobs.  I think I was going for a queen of diamonds look.

Um, Ares, that's a big shield, but you might need some more protection on the battlefield.

demo reel ii: the sequel

along with the website redesign is a revised demo reel.  check it out at porkchopbob.com or right here: