Future Worlds Character Designs

Here are a couple iterations of character designs for a game we are making at Intellimedia.  The game will be delivered on a giant touch screen and can be played by several children at the same time.  These are possibilites for the avatars the children can choose from.

Originally I had designed these amorphic blobs and creatures based on themes from the game.  After getting feedback from the team it was decided to take the shapes of the blobs and make them into human superheroes.

Noir!

These are some concept pieces I did for a team project in my animation class. My partner and I will be creating a looping animation that pulls the viewer through a day in the life of a private investigator.

Winning the Oil Endgame: Style

Here's some parts and pieces I'm working on for my next animation project, called "Winning the Oil Endgame." It's based on a TED talk of the same name. I motif for the animation will be board games, hodge-podging elements from Risk, Monopoly, and the Game of Life.

Animation Color Keys

Making major headway on my autobiographical animation. Worked out some of the details in my storyboard and did color keys for the whole thing. I didn't actually HAVE to do this step, but I see professional animation studios doing it and it just looks fun! I feel like I could refine these little drawings and have a storybook. I also feel like this simple retro style would be perfect for the animation all by itself! But the assignment is to do a puppet-show-theater style thing with a shallow depth of field, and that's what I'm going to do!

Also, here's the first set (of the neighborhood from the childhood scene) rigged & lit in After Effects. I tried to make it look like the set it built out of different kinds of paper and painted finishes. The whole thing should end up looking somewhat handmade. If you look at this and the little boy puppet from my last post you can get a pretty good feeling for the look of the film.

80 Dlist Boys: Clavicle & Reed. THE END

Here's the last two. It feels great to be finished with this project, as it's been a year and a half in the works. Some times it was like a weight on my shoulder, calling me to finish it and others it was a great way to express some creativity on the fly... I started it for a couple reasons:

1. I wanted to practice mark making and become more confident in my marks.
2. An opportunity to play with portraiture and test the limits of distortion against recognition. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't but because this was a sketchbook project it was easy for me to not get hung up on the guffaws.
3. Playing with beauty... how is it that these 80 men can all be beautiful but all be so very different looking? As my friend Maggie said about the difference between faces, "it's all about the spacing."
4. A productive time waster: when I started this I had a hole in my schedule everyday that I needed to fill.

Fox Confessor - Half Drawn

Here's an in-progress on the drawing for my Fox Confessor Bring the Flood album art. It's done in the style of the DList boys project - which is a divergence from the inky free style way that I did the Tigers Have Spoken. I'm not sure if this was the right choice - kind of wishing I went looser, but I'll finish and see how I like it then.

80 Dlist Boys: Little Deer, Amourad, Stephenn

I did these a few weeks ago and never got around to scanning them in. I like how Littledeer & Amourad have the same head shape but evoke completely different character within their facial features. I was disappointed with Stephenn - his photo's were all very lovely and in my quest for exaggeration I drew him looking like ET's twin brother. Oh well! Anyway I'm actually drawn up through #22. (which means I'm more than 1/4 finished with the project). I'll post the rest in a couple days.

Limits

1-Hour painting of Tilda Swinton. This is a great way to get loose!

Neko Case Project II: Roughs

Here are the first three roughs for Tigers Have Spoken, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, and Middle Cyclone. I still have to research the other three albums but these roughs give me a better idea of where I'm headed. Each image will be done in black, gray, and one color. I'm so excited about how loose and energetic these sketches are. I definitely want to keep that energy in the final art. (I almost just want to keep tightening these sketches and call it a day!)

Neko Case Project

I assigned myself a fun little project: I'm going to illustrate 6 Neko Case album covers, weaving a narrative out of the wonderful imagery she creates in her songs. I also want to make this a bit about branding and package design. Here are my thoughts thus far. I think I want to render them much in the same style as the 80 Dlist Boys. Black and white penwork with a premium on hand-drawn texture and color accents.

80 Dlist Boys: dirrtydude, hurley616

These two feel like weak links. I'm perhaps starting to feel stifled by the format. I hope I get my groove back with no. 17! I think a lot of it is my vain attempt at trying to capture these portraits perfectly in a perfect little sketchbook, when my best work is invariably on napkins and notepads that will be thrown out. I need to loosen up and be okay with failure.

80 Dlist Boys: The ones I did when I was in New York

I completed these last four sketches during a short jaunt to New York. I was looking at graduate programs and had the privilege of meeting with Marshall Arisman who is the head of SVA's Illustration MFA program. He gave me some really insightful feedback and I think I'm done with all these long necks. Not to say I'll never draw a long neck again because I sure will. But "not everyone has a long neck."

80 Dlist Boys: jmichaelv, john_galt, christhefur

80 Dlist Boys: nofunatall, xblacknickx

80 Dlist Boys: helloadam, freestyle, redroccket

Yves St. Laurent - Fall 2008 Men

Here's a little sketch I did of a couple photos lying on my desk.

Tree Man

Here's something I did on my break at work today. One can only define corporate standards for so many hours in a day. The original sketch came from our weekly meeting where I try to practice my skills. I'd like to take this a little further...

More Sartorial Expressions

Here's a couple more sketches... Again I can't emphasize how indebted these drawings are to the photography of the Sartorialist, as his images are their source.

Fun fun fun

Here's two more Sartorialist drawings. I LOVE doing these! So much liveliness in the fashion... I love drawing the details. I'm also doing them with some limited supplies, and I like very much how I'm forced to use a limited palette and to think more graphically.

New things

I'm excited to say that I have a new job at Rockwell Automation in Milwaukee starting April. I'm going to be a graphic designer there and can't wait to learn 5,000 billion new things. Along with the new apartment I moved into at the beginning of the month, this will really help shake up my life, which had become rather droll. I'm hoping that all of the positive energy will feed my illustration and help bolster my slow freelance career. I'll keep you all posted. Cheers!

And because no post would be complete without an image, I've taken the liberty of sketching up a pretty little fashion illustration. This is from a photograph by the Sartorialist. I'm thinking about maybe sharpening my fashion illustration skills by copying more of his photos... they're so lovely, and it's really fun to just draw sometimes without thinking. Paying attention to lines and media and just completely ignoring subject matter.