End of My Education

Alas, my final day in university has passed and I am now going to start my life as a freelancer. I plan to create my own website with all my work and start my own little business on that and take it from there. I also have my own web-comic in the works so look out for that soon. For now, here is my very first drawing outside education for the first time ever!

These two girls are from a game called 'The Last of us'. Smile girls.

Lost Time Concept Art

Here's some character design work I did for the little girl. Facial expressions and so on! Enjoy.

Lost Time Animation Preview

Here is the preview of my Lost time animation for my show reel. Hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed creating this.

Lost Time

Lost Time Animation WIP

I have decided to create a short 5 minute off animation based on an idea I had years ago. I wont spoil it but the story aims to be touching so I plan to put a lot of time and dedication into this animation.

It will consist of two characters. A young girl and a young boy.

These are the two characters that will be in my animation:

 I want to keep them both simple with bright innocent colours. the simpler they are, the cuter I feel they'd be.

Here is a small clip of what's to come with my animation:

Wild Grinders Are Those Even Wheels?

Another longer animation based on the show, 'Wild Grinders'. This is to help further show my ability to animate. It's also another way of showing I can change my styles too. I took another audio clip from an episode and animated the whole thing myself.

Wild Grinders 'How Dare You'

For one of my submissions for my final year of the course, I made a small animation clip from existing audio from the 'Golden Grinders' episode of Wild Grinders. This is to help with timing and smooth animation and also to help boost my portfolio.

Success Against the Odds

I'll be entering into another competition ran by the National Accident Helpline company where the brief is about over coming the odds. I plan on doing something simple to help portray this.

I plan to create an animation of a man who lost his legs but through will power and help, he was able to race again. Here is a clip of what I have done so far.

Being Human Competition Update

I finally decided to go with this type of illustration for the competition. I feel it defines being human really well as humans on a daily basis juggle aspects of their life whilst trying to deal with the clock constantly ticking behind them. Only humans have to deal with such a hectic and often stressful part of life. I feel this entry shows this well.

Wedding Commission

I was approached and asked to draw a couple who was going to be married in the next few weeks. They offered their price and I happily took on the challenge. This is what I came up with for the happy couple.

I also thought I'd add in this that I noticed whilst drawing this. I went back to a drawing I did 6 months ago and I can already see a huge difference. It's nice to improve!

Mersey Forest Animation

I was given the chance to create a small advert to help promote The Mersey Forest company who specialize in planting trees and making certain areas of the country look more visually pleasing.

This animation is something a little different to what I usually do. It was a way to help show I can branch out and do other things....Get it? branch out? because it's a tree branching out and....never mind.

Being Human Competition

I have come across an interesting competition brief that is open to anyone. It's about what it means to be human and it can be a narrative or anything as long as it's creative. I plan to look into a few ideas I can use for this brief. This will be a great way to get my name out there so I will be entering this competition once I finish my animation.

Lux Animation

I decided to discontinue the Suzuki animation as I couldn't think of anything suitable for their brief. Instead I decided to do the Lux animation instead. This one wont be ready in time for the deadline so this will be purely used for my final project and nothing else.

Lux Brief:

Every woman wants to express her beauty and a LUX woman is no exception. She is confident, she feels beautiful and feminine and believes that she is born to shine. People notice her wherever she goes: her beauty is mesmerizing and sparks admiration. And she knows it! How should she express her beauty to make her shine even brighter so that people would love and adore her even more?

Show us, through an inspirational and insightful video/animation or an exquisite poster, the ideal beauty moment for a LUX woman, when she fully expresses her beauty, which will trigger more love and admiration around her

Of course, for her, this is an ongoing journey. She is looking for different ways to make her beauty stand out. She gets some intriguing and exciting suggestions such as:

Use her CHARM: Her beauty is part of her charm, that inevitably impacts others around her

Take pride in her ELEGANCE: It is more than beauty. People recognize it from her poise, her grace, etc.

Add a touch of GLAMOR: there is a bit of glamor in whatever she does.

Now it’s time for you to show our LUX woman the best way to put her beauty in the spotlight. The above suggestions could be right or wrong and you can agree or disagree. If you agree with one of the three, please base your work on it; if you think of anything else that could work better for her, please show it in your work.

Since Lux do shampoo products, I plan to create a animation based on how beautiful your hair can look with Lux shampoo.

This is how I envisioned the story would go after some discussions with my tutor:

After agreeing with the story, it was time to go about the final animation. My animation consists of Photoshop work and Toonboom for animating.
Here are the Photoshop images that will be used. The parts I haven't drawn in Photoshop will be parts that I will be animating in Toonboom.

 This establishing shot will slowly pan into the woman who is applying her lipstick.

 She has no lips here as they will be animated in Toonboom. She will be applying her lipstick in this shot.

 This shot will have the woman unpinning her hair and her hair will gracefully flow down her back.

 We'll then cut to two men minding their own business but then they'll suddenly look up at the girl in amazement as she enters the room.

 A slow pan up will happen here to show how beautiful her hair looks.

This long shot will consist of the girl flying gracefully with her hair flowing behind her. She'll fly from one end of the office to the other whilst the men will stare at her in amazement.

The final shot, which I don't have a JPEG file of, will have another guy reading the news paper outside and as the woman leaves, he stares at her in amazement too. The Lux product will then fade in showing the shampoo she uses.

 

 

With the shots ready, I can animate them in Toonboom and then edit it in Adobe Premier and add music to it etc.

Wild Grinders Storyboarding Progress

After looking over the script and practising the characters, I finally got work on storyboarding the script. This contains the thumbnails for the first 2 pages and the beginning of the clean up version which I will update during the week.

This is just another attempt at the Wild Grinders style. I wanted to keep practising the style until I got it down perfectly. As an aspiring storyboard artist, I have to learn to adapt to certain styles.

This is the thumbnail draft of the storyboard.

Finally here is page 1 of my storyboard. I will upload the rest once I have finished them.

Update:  Here's page 2 of my storyboard.

Page 3

Page 4

Finally, here's page 5

Small Contest

This is for a small contest for a Pokemon banner where two or more Pokemon are interacting in a really expressive way. I chose to do this.

Update: I ended up winning the competition that I entered this drawing into which game me a real boost in confidence!

Animation Test

I wanted to share a little animation practice that I'll be doing over the course of the months. It's still pretty choppy, but I will work on it.

Suzuki Competition

I have decided to try my hand at an official competition with a strict deadline to help prep me for the real world once I leave university. This project is all about Suzuki's motor products which involves designing a 30 second animation which helps portray their product.

Here is the context of the product:

Context

Life is short. People want to live it to the fullest. There are only 2 ways of living it: One is for those couch-potatoes who stay at home watching TV all day and secure themselves within their comfort zone, living every day in the same way. The other is for those who are willing to challenge themselves, regardless of how big the risks may be, no matter how old they are.

This challenger spirit is natural to SUZUKI, a world-known automotive manufacturer. Suzuki’s engineering spirit all started from the challenge on how to provide high quality cars and exciting driving experience to people around the world. It never ceases to surprise people with compact, light but beautifully designed vehicles with powerful and fuel-efficient engines. It wants to celebrate the challenger spirit that made the brand so far and inspire people to take a challenge to change their lives.

They have given a brief guideline of what they would like:

Brief

Show us in an appealing, exhilarating and inspiring video/animation that taking up an extraordinary challenge can change people’s ordinary lives and the world around them.

We are not looking for a clip of an extreme sport featuring a professional or dramatic sob stories. We want to see stories with ordinary people, maybe who are facing difficulties, or who want to change their lives and their society through a challenge, in a positive way. It can be a personal challenge or it can involve a group of people and become a team challenge. You should depict how this challenge can make a positive impact in these people’s lives and even onto the world around them. Let people feel the excitement, exhilarating fun and the positive energy of the challenge.

I have exactly 30 days to complete this animation so I will be uploading various design ideas and maybe a very quick storyboard to show my progress.

University Project: Drink Driving

One of my projects for the 2nd year involved creating a short animation advert about the dangers of drink driving. My theme was 'Dry Humour', so hopefully I achieved that in this animation.

New Year

For the new year, I plan to add in more personal work and engage more with my Blog. I want to share as much work as I can so 2014 will be a fresh beginning.

 This picture was a commission I was asked to do a few weeks ago. It's a character that is half human and half Vaporeon (Pokémon)

 This was a birthday present to my wonderful mother for her 47th Birthday. Happy Birthday Mum!

 Another birthday present to a close friend of mine!

 Another drawing of my wonderful girlfriend Tiffany.

 Since I want to be a storyboard artist, I decided to try out a few dynamic shots like the one above.

 This one is an example of how my art has changed over the years. It's true that practice really does make perfect. I still have a long way to go though.

 This one was done for another commission I was asked to do. It involves a Mega Lucario tripping over his very long appendages.

 This was another birthday gift for a friend I did.

 I did a little experimenting with this one. I was asked to draw a very close friend's character but I tried to make it look like it was a screenshot from an actual anime. Hopefully I achieved a official effect.

Finally, this is something I did out of my own time. I drew my favourite Pokémon and my avatar as seen from the on-line Pokémon game, PokéMMO.