Sketch Studies

I did a few studies in areas I felt weak in. I want to do more environment studies along with strengthen how I draw heads as I sometimes struggle with different angles of the head. I have George Bridgeman's "Drawing From Life" which is an enormously great reference on how to do this. He breaks down his anatomy in a way that is so easy to understand!

Warm ups

Some warm-ups I did to get into the drawing mood.

Drawings done over the break

Drawings I did over the break so far! I got a few great books for christmas and ordered two more with an Amazon gift card. I ordered "Andrew Loomis: Successful Drawing" and "The Techniques of Scott Robertson" as I have always wanted to design and draw spacecraft. The other books I got were "Inked", "Character Mentor" and "Blast."

3d Production

My primary focus in 3d character animation and for this piece I have two characters in a classroom with one attempting to cheat off the other in ridiculous ways, this  The animatic I did months prior to me actually starting on the work and had a lot of changes done to it. For the characters I used Josh Burton's Morpheus rig which are very easy to modify to look like my characters. The only issue I am currently stuck on is how I don't know how to add my own clothing to the mesh.

The set I did in 3ds max and Maya. It started as a free model but the model required heavy work, also, the set needed to match the style of the characters I originally drew. The set and textures will be imported into maya before animating and modified using the lattice modifier in Maya.

2d Production

In addition to the 3d animation piece I need for for my portfolio, I decided to take on the task of also doing a 2d piece. Thanks to my internship I have become very familiar with the program Toon Boom Harmony and I wanted to use that advantage to advance my portfolio.

The story for this piece is about a little girl who goes to the zoo to see a gorilla who is quite irritable, and in his failed attempts to scare the girl away he gets his head stuck in the bars of his cage, after which the girl cakes his face in makeup. The initial plan to to have a clean rough animation but I would also love to have a colored version in addition to the rough, but the performance is the main thing I want to nail.

Here I have the animatic, and below is the finished set. It took a few iterations to get the set working well, I tend to stylized my backgrounds and because of that I had a fish eye effect going on. I also had to keep the backgrounds simple so the characters had room to perform, I really look forward to animating this!

Internship Stuff

Some work I was given to do at the studio I intern at. I absolutely love doing these illustrations! Its great practice, I get so much input from the guys there and the director, it helps enormously when you are constantly getting notes and input and it helps with my personal art at home. It also inspires me to inject more story into my art!

Jackie

A character design I played with in my sketchbook recently. I typically draw female characters a certain way and wanted to go with a taller slimmer type of girl. I need to push more variety, along with more sequential sketches to hone my abilities as an animator. Another note about this picture, I am moving away from relying so heavily on layers, and loosening up with how I draw. My old methods were slow and ram-hogging.

Anyway, her name is Jackie, and she won't hesitate to point out your mistakes.