Autumn's End

And so we come to the end of my favorite time of year, and sort of abruptly at that. We already have about eight inches of snow here. It's byoo-tee-ful.

AbeBoxx

I'm a huge fan of the Oddworld video game franchise, and it is easily one of my biggest influences as an artist. In particular, artists Farzad Varahramyan and Raymond Swanland inspired me in ways I could not put into words.

The original Oddworld team (Oddworld Inhabitants) is no more, but a UK-based indie developer known as Just Add Water has picked up where the original creators left off. J.A.W. is exactly what an indie company should be; games made by the fans for the fans.

One such fan, who I met in the early aughts through an Oddworld fan forum, now works as J.A.W.'s studio coordinator. He approached me with some graphic design work that their in-house artists couldn't complete because they were bogged down by other responsibilities. The opportunity was too good to pass up.

Dat sexy emboss.

I was almost certain J.A.W.'s ceo, Stewart Gilray, would have some revision notes for me, but he didn't! All the feels when someone tells you your work is perfect. I may or may not be working on a few more of these in the future. I'll be sure to post about them here if that ends up being the case.

Sid

I was totally unaware of Tank Girl when I first came up with this character. Honest!
A lot of problems with this drawing structurally, but I'm happy with the color.

Moleskin 2

Autumn Snooze

Autumn is easily my favorite time of year, and the pumpkin cache grows every day

O mah gourd! 

I'm picky when it comes to muh gherkins, especially this year. Some of these beauties will be starring in a short film I'm working on. More on that soon, assuming I dedicate what little free time I have to personal enterprises and not Dark Souls (or Dark Souls 2).

Still up to my hairy nipples in work, and there's really no end in sight. Oh well.

Gotta keep burning that midnight oil so that I don't wake up in a puddle of it the next morning.

Waking up next to your dog is okay though. 

Back in business (sort of)

So it's been over a month since I've had a working PC. It's been exhausting, but I finally figured out and rectified the problem... more or less. For a while I thought it was the power supply, then I did some troubleshooting and thought it was the motherboard, some more troubleshooting, and finally I reach the end of the shrubbery maze; my primary hard drive was toast. This sucks, as a lot of my important client work was on this drive. Normally I save back-ups of everything to an external drive, but I got a bit lazy in my hastiness to meet deadlines and made the mistake of saving some of my work to the desktop.

I replaced the hard drive with a fresh install of Windows, and I have been working off of it since. There's still a glimmer of hope for my old hard drive, but it's a matter of money, and I'm woefully short.

I'll be pulling a few all-nighters in the coming weeks to catch up on the work I've missed. More to come.

Courtesy of Garrett

Garrett's been a busy beaver trucking away, restoring and integrating newly discovered footage into the Recobbled Cut. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to continue working on the stuff Garrett entrusted to me due to my computer situation. He's well aware of my situation and has been happy to wait for me. It's nice to feel like your work is valued.

In the mean time, have some gifs Garrett built from some of the new footage.

Though Tack is the protagonist, original animation
of him under Dick's supervision is a rarity. 

Thankfully, first impressions are most important.
When we're first introduced to Tack, we're greeted to this
beautiful animation of him dreaming.

ZigZag leering at YumYum. Very clear pencil test
with (nearly) finished animation.

Finished pencil animation of YumYum confronting Phido.
This is one of Garrett's favorite scenes, so he was very excited to find this. 

More can be seen on Garrett's tumblr. Stay tuned!

                                

Tease

Blehurgh

So it's been a rough few months, and I'm finally settled into a new environment where I can focus on my work. I think. Maybe. More to come.

Ready for paintin'

fggt do u even lift?

Art & Dog

Catching up on some painting. Fwuh. Nice to have the time. The beast guy is getting a makeover and a paint job. Muscles are fun to draw, even if I feel a bit homosexual drawing them.

And some other paintings you haven't seen yet, and won't see again until they're finished. Sorry about the crappy quality. I took these on my phone.

    

Also dog.

"Arf" 

Sketchery

So I'll be moving out to the west coast come summer time. Between now and then, I hope to get some semblance of a portfolio together. A bit of padding is in order, and I've been doodling like a wild doodler intent on funneling this white water stream of consciousness into some kind of levy. Most of my sketches look like I was trying to draw with the pencil clenched between my butt cheeks, but for every twenty butt sketches, I produce a non-butt sketch.

Non-butt. 

This ugly sumbitch started out as a generic animal skull doodle. Then I added a body, and what a body. He's single ladies, and as you can see, he's very horny...

*snort*

I think I'll tighten this one up and transfer it to some proper drawing board for paintin'.

                                             

Phido's Eye

Here's a short video I put together highlighting the completion of the shot mentioned in this post. Hope you enjoy!

Spring (sorta) cleaning...

Been a while since I've posted. It's been a hectic month.
Decided to convert one of the spare rooms upstairs into a temporary art studio so I can crank out more work in a considerably less cramped environment. Expect some new art soon.

Moleskin

Breakin' in the new moleskin (I know it's 'moleskine', but I like 'moleskin' more). I did a quick and somewhat ghostly sketch of my girlfriend's profile while she was watching King Kong. No detail, just form. More to come, or should I say... mole to come. *snort* 

Building A Door

The Thief & The Cobbler workprint is full of unfinished shots, ranging from long and complex to short and simple. While we can improve the fidelity of the complex shots, we can't hope to actually finish them. The level of artistry that went into constructing those sequences far surpasses not only our own abilities, but perhaps even the abilities of many professional animators today:

Just perhaps... 

Some of the material is less daunting. Little tidbits here and there fall within our range of potential and can stand some spit n' polish. Things like sponging out film dirt or splice frames from the footage, re-drawing a piece of unfinished storyboard, or adding in some missing sound or music.

Then there are those shots that fall right inbetween. They're short, but might be missing a crucial element like a background or some minor animation that has to be done from scratch.

Making stuff from scratch is one thing, but making stuff from scratch that also has to be consistent with a visually sophisticated work that is not your own is a whole other bag o' kippers. Like life drawing, it's not enough to just recreate what you see. You have to interpret it from all angles.

This is one of those shots...

In a nutshell, the sequence is a quick zoom from a wide shot of a prison door to a tight shot of a barred window. ZigZag's hungry pet vulture, Phido, is peering in with one sinister yellow eye. No finished footage of this shot as intended exists. All we have to go on from the workprint is a pencil test of abysmal fidelity.

Phido peeping in. 

The shot is relatively simple. Garrett observed it would be easy enough to animate if only we had a nice clean shot of the cell door. The only glimpse we get of the door is during a tight POV shot in which Tack is making a cat's cradle visage of YumYum with some luminous thread.

Dem bedroom eyes. 

As you can see, the door is pretty obscured. While there is never a clear shot of just the background, Tack's hands move from side to side throughout the sequence, exposing it one chunk at a time. I screencapped nearly two dozen frames to capture all the pieces I needed to re-assemble the background like a jigsaw puzzle.

The colors of the pieces were often inconsistent, and some chunks were just unobtainable (I originally typed "ungettable", which I swear is a word, but Webster's says it isn't). A crapload of stamp-tooling and color correcting later, I manage to recreate the background plate and then some.

Click for high res.

While this is great for the wide shot, the resolution ain't gonna cut it for a close-up. A detailed close-up of the window had to be made too. So I made one.

Click for high res.

It's tricky business making an image with such a low pixel density look good enough for an HD remaster. Garrett was very pleased with the final results, and I can't wait to see the shot fully animated.

Hours of hard work for a shot that will ultimately be about three seconds long. Welcome to film, asshole.

X-mas Haul

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...

It's been an eventful holiday season. Almost too eventful. I am now more behind on my work than ever before, and I need to spend the rest of January playing catch-up. The good news? I got pretty much everything I wanted for Christmas this year, including a Canon t3i, the best DSLR you can buy without spending Hollywood money. Finally, I can start getting my demo reel together.

What did you mugs get this year?