Goats and Pigs

I spent the day scaning and cleaning up  character design sheets of my thesis characters Farro the Satyr and Nia the Pigtaur. I could use some feedback on their appearance.The Complete looking character sheets with the turn arounds  are actually the older designs. I'm going for the more streamline look as their official look (cuz its easier to animate). I'll be putting up storyboards soon. 

 :D and random doodle i do because i can. Excuse so many pictures. 

EDIT: This is the most retarded image uploader ever.

Rough start

Hm. Sorry for random post. but I thought maybe if i posted regularly it would motivate me to keep to my work schedule better. in 2 weeks from now I have a progress-report to present to the animation class on my thesis. I havent done any solid animation for it yet. so. Here is my test animation for my main character Farro crudely animated in Photoshop. and a little incomplete something i did on the side in my frustration with myself (inspired by my roommates new game). Hope the rest of you are not as blah as I am. ~CC

EDIT: okay so apparently animated GIFs are not working. anyone wanna tell me how to fix this? 

Status Report

So now there IS a spanking new private site where we can swish our work around in virtual "dailies" meetings. And as soon as I can figure out how to BREAK INTO MY OWN PRIVATE SITE, I'll be happy to upload the first story reel lol. Talk to Raf.

All current boards have been scanned in and sequence 1 is viewable as a story reel...MAN it's hard to put those things together...I fell asleep like seven times. As soon as Sequence 6 is made into a reel (or before), I'll hopefully start doing some REAL boarding. I gotta get myself into a 14-a-day workflow. Apparently, 26-30+ a day is the industry standard.

That's the way it be, right now. Anyone reading this?.......hello?......................*tears off pants and dances a jig to the Popeye theme*

The words of Ralph Bakshi

Ralph Bakshi was responsible for the animated/rotoscope Lord of the Rings movies. He also created the X-Rated Fritz the Cat movie. My current favorite of his is "Wizards", but I've yet to recieve "Fire and Ice" from my Netflix.

This was shot at his "Spotlight" panel at San Diego Comic Con 08'. Even if you love big studio animation, there's a lot to take from this speech. I found it on Lesean Thomas' blog. In all his notorious bluntness, Bakshi actually managed to be inspiring.

The next logical step...

I'd like to get some "tests" done before we all go back to school. I feel like if we all saw something move or took a real swipe at some BG's, it might boost the moral around here. Heck, it might even make it easier to believe this thing could actually get done!

At our next meeting (whenever the hell that'll be...) there should at least be a computer present with a digital art program running, and a capable user at the reins. Perhaps we can leave with an honest to goodness image of what the VG world will look like! Hmm?

On my end, the storyboarding process is...actually going pretty well! Besides the fact that 3 of my markers pooped out on me, I'm officially chuggin' along. I'd like to say I'll keep this party going during school, but I can't make any promises. By now I've kind of gotten the hang of it, so who knows...

Model Sheets: Altered, Rescanned and Resized

Brian, here! Today I finished RESCANNING the model sheets and resizing them to a manageable (hopefully E-mailable) zip-file. Of course doing so without adding a few subtle alterations would be a crime. I heeded as many critiques as I could remember and they helped.....A LOT. Sorry, but I was a much younger when I first tackled those drawings (according to AAU improvement time). We can only hope the designs (among other things) will evolve into something that truly reflects our skill levels.

Also, I recently gained access to a 20 film collection of Alfred Hitchcock movies. Raf and I saw "The Lady Vanishes" a few days ago, and it was awe-some! I propose that every meeting (where we have time) might end with a screening of one of these 1+/- hour films. I actually wanted to have a "story meeting" where we could brainstorm on the coolest things that can happen on each shot we're working on. It definitely would help me with the storyboards if I had a whole pile of ideas to choose from, in case my own ideas fail. I don't know if the Hitchcock movies will help, but no jury of Pixar employees would convict me for trying it lol. Furthermore it'll be reeeeally hard to storyboard accurately without some solid layout drawings. We'll work on those soon enough.

L8er!