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.

The Start of Something Big

Today is the first day of uni (officially)!!!!!!!!!!! Final year! Big excitement! Big questions, how will they be answered? Today, let me celebrate the beginning of this grand adventure of creating a short animated film with this painting of the opening shot of the film. I wonder how would look back at this in a year's time...

Backgrounds for My Grad Film

University hasnt started yet but Im trying to get ahead with the layouts since it looks like Im on my own on this task. This is going to be one big year! Lets hope Im still standing by the end of it...

Colourkeys For Grad Film

Monstrous year ahead of me. I may have shot myself in the foot with this ambitious grad film. Ive planned 41 backgrounds to be drawn and painted. And theres the dreaded dissertation on top of that! And theres plenty of other things for me to worry about... But Hey! Bring it on!!!!!!!!

Face Sketch

Heres a painting Ive done today. Got a bit bored of working on the layouts for my grad film so took a break painting something else. Photo referanced but I deliberately didnt allow it to dictate what the painting should be. Pretty fun stuff maybe there will be more of these stuff in future?
Oh, and uni is about to resume. Im quite excited!!!!!!!!!!
(Oh, and Liverpool beat Man United today... my throat's a lil soar still from my wild celebrations :))

Heres a sketch I did a while ago and forgot about.

He Who Follows the Wind

Something I did whilst being caught up in the olympics hype. The news that Liu Xiang was forced out of his competition by injury was pretty devastatng. But he is still a great hero of the games.
I tried a few different techniques on this piece, which was referanced. I think I learnt a thing or two more about lighting. Painting skintones is something I need to get to grips with better though I think I picked up bits about it in this study. Played around with some filters on this too :P

A Journey to the East

Inspired by a recent trip to Hong Kong and China. I tried out some new ideas here. I dont use adjustment layers much but thought it would help here and the experimentations helped me to discover some new things. Whoop Whoop!

ChoW #116 The Host

Here I again tried a different approach.

ChoW #107 Steampunk Penguin Professor

This one had been my biggest success in the ChoW competition so far. It came second which was a major suprise to me. Before this I was hardly ever in the races. So I hope this signals a turning point for myself. The technique I used was less 'tight' as I would normally do. This one was taken more as experimenting, but it really payed off. Someone got in contact about the availability of the image to use for his company but they never got back to me when I said that its not for free!