A Dominant Force

My entry to the Dominance War IV art contest. I had fun thumbnailing the idea, the subject matter was a bit tricky at first because it was easy to go crazy and make a messy design. But I tried to play with thesilhouette to come up with some strong shapes. It is also pretty fun to take part of a competition representing a team. I am helping to fly the flag for the CGHub crew. Hope we do well :D
In other news... We are nearing the end of the grad film. Still a lot of work to do which means working from 9am-9pm most weekdays from the third years on the team. I am quite lucky to have such dedicated team members working alongside me. I am also proud of the first years we took on too! They are under no obligation to work for us but they stuck with the team and kept asking for more work no matter how tedious it may be. I cant wait to see the finished film myself. It is looking exciting. Sometimes you may feel a bit of pressure but then there is a lot of reward that comes out of it. There has been hardship the team had to endure but I think we are doing well under such pressure and continuing to work together with enthusiasm and determination. I am very proud of the team!

Layout Keys

Here are all the layouts put together.

Enter Kung Fu Romance

I have finished the layouts for my grad film... well sort of... I am in the middle of fine-tuning them actually but they are all more or less completed. I now help out in the tracing stage of the animation. The project is coming together and the end is nearing ever closer. The second years of my course has just finished pitching their ideas for next year's films and we will find out tomorrow who goes through. There has been some great ideas that I myself would be quite excited to work on. I enjoyed watching the pitches and I think I know where my votes will be heading ;)
Good luck to the next generation :D

Drawing Showcase

Something I put together for my portfolio. None of these were done deliberately for the portfolio though :P

Here Be Dragons

Layout Countdown...

OK, this is it. We now enter the last 20 backgrounds to be painted. Once thats done I may have to go into clean-up animation, I have already animated one short scene so maybe its not completely out of the question :P

Edit > Undo

Some retouching of the older layouts. Based on feedback from my tutors, I made some adjustments and hopefully they're better now :D
I still have around 20 layouts left to paint! And need to direct the film as well... blahblahblah...

What a Way to Make a Living!

More layouts... More more more... Theres still loads of it to do. And I'll need to start looking for jobs too. Busy busy busy.

C'est Ouf!!!

My latest CHOW piece for CA.org. The topic was the Cheshire Cat. I wanted to depict a sinister cat that retained the quirkiness and somewhat twisted nature of Wonderland. Initially my thumbnails looked to much confined to a standard cat design. So I came to a decision that it was pointless for me to design a character this way and tried to lower the boundaries a bit. Because the world of Wonderland is a bit weird and nonsensical I thought this allowed me the license to add random elements to it that might make it more unique.
Some people also thought this cat looks like me! I guess Im a bit of a weirdo too, so its nice to have a part of my personality expressed in this painting. We have some new French exchange students over at the AIB animation course, and it didnt take them long before they realized Im crazy :P That is why they keep saying I am 'ouf!'

Oh, and someone thought the over the top rim-light is erm.... a bit over the top! I had a feeling it was too, but couldnt help throw it on. I think I'll need to work on this area more in future. Lifes a bit boring if you got nothing to improve huh? :P

And..... Get Well Soon 'Cat of Sound' Chadeisson!

Portrait Practice

Heres a portrait study. My classmate/ housemate decided one night he needed more practice painting portraits and I thought I'd join him to push both of us. This was fairly fun, I think Im learning more and more about rendering flesh which is something I thought was always tricky business.
My grad film is going well at the moment. Listening to rough pieces of the music is exciting for all the team, we are getting some animation done, and the layouts look on target. Everyone looks happy and we're not too stressed out yet :P
Have a Merry Christmas everyone!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Way of the Intercepting Lines

The Christmas break is near!!! I almost finished drawing all the line drawings for the film. Just 5 more to go. Progress on these has slowed a bit as I started to put more of a focus on finishing the dissertation which is due in first thing when we return from the holidays. Here are a few samples of the line drawings.
Next year, there will be what ever remaining from the line drawings to finish off as well as the 30 paintings left too. Hopefully with those kept at a manageable rate, I can start working on some side projects. I'll speak about those once something is done about it :D

Production Still

Getting into the exciting stage of the production. We are now out of the pre-production stage and into the main production, animating! The trip so far was filled with ups and downs, highs and lows. But overall, the project is looking good and I remembering to how exciting this is! Sometimes you can get too caught up in the work you have to do that you forget to have fun and enjoy this experience.
Well, heres the production still for the film. TJ drew the characters, special thanks to him for his great efforts. The background was fun and took some time actually. One night I stayed up till 5am painting it, dunno why, just felt like it:P
Enjoy!:)

Studying the Master

I recently befriended an artist (Pao) who is soon to be on my course as a foreign exchange student from Esag, Paris. When we have time, we try to do some artist studies together. This time looked at Craig Mullins. This one took me 1 hour 20 minutes. Recently Ive been very busy with school work so its been hard to try fit these studies in, but I hope to get more time in to these since I really enjoyed this one and probably gained some new ideas from it:P
The grad film is going well. Soon we can begin animating. The animatic/ storyboard has changed slightly. Mainly the ending. It got some issues according to the tutors and so we came up with another solution which apparently works better.
Collaborating with people of other areas like musicians, editors, sound designer and model makers has been interesting so far. Our little team seems to be growing all the time!

In Secrecy

Sorry guys, the grad film blog is now private and restricted to only a few people for now. My tutors wanted me to keep the big stuff secret so no more animatics and animation for you to see for a while! Film is going well and kind of on track. A few unexpected bumps here and there but overall going well. We have responded to the feedback we recieved from the tutors and soon we can begin animating. The project is looking exciting, Im enjoying collaborating with people from different departments. Looking forward to seeing how the finished film turns out :D

Working in Progress

Moar layouts! Film is going well with a few bumps. One of my tutors suggested should make the layouts lighter and to fit in with the mood of the animation. The animatic is timed out and the storyboard doesnt need to be changed. However we need to get the timing for the animatic spot on to avoid over-animating which I will work on with our editor. Character designs are completed by my teammates and we can begin animating in 2.5 weeks time.