Abstraction/Character Design Project

I drew my earphones with the fancy retractable thingy...

I liked the way the chord wrapped around the retractable thingy, so I zoomed in on that made it more abstract...

I liked the way I drew the chords in the last drawing, so I made 'em look more fluid and organic...

...and came up with this as my character. (the ray gun was inspired from the original earbuds)

The assignment was to draw an ordinary object as realistically as possible, zoom in on a particular area of the drawing, re-draw that area and abstract it, then repeat again. Then, take whatever you came up with and create a character out of it. Here's what I came up with.

Character Design - Group Pose

The robot sidekick, cyborg villain, heroic mechanic girl and her sister (a.k.a the "other" character)

This is a composition (with color, obviously) utilizing the hero, villain, sidekick, and the "other" characters from the design assignments from previous weeks. I'm still learning Photoshop, and anyone who knows Photoshop could easily rip this to shreds...but I had fun painting this thing.

Learning how to do lighting...

Much thanks go to Laura Nettles!

I'm trying to help out on the BYU student film "Butcher'd Meats." They are in need of lighters and so... I'm attempting to learn more about lighting. Laura Nettles (who is amazing) helped me light shot C-20...which is the bell that starts the fight between the protagonist (Clarence) and the antagonist (Paddy).

Character Design - Good Girl Gone Bad?

VERSION 1 - When I first drew her, I thought her shoulders were a little hunched-looking

VERSION 2 - pretty much the same as version 1, but with more relaxed shoulders and different shoes

My drawing teacher, Jared Greenleaf, suggested that I add another character to the traditional "good guy, bad guy, side-kick" line-up. He mentioned how in most Japanese manga or anime, there's a character that turns from good to evil or vice versa (a la Darth Vader). This character design is meant to be that very character. I see her as being the big sister of the hero who ends up becoming a bad guy and then at the last minute, becomes good again. Instead of a giant wrench, she has a screw-driver sword...keeping with the "giant tools as weapons" motif.

I might color her with Photoshop, or even draw her "evil" version...but who knows.

Character Design - Action Poses

Sidekick...

Good guy...

Villain...

These aren't action poses...but I wanted to draw spaceships that looked like the style of the characters. (short attention span)

The assignment was to take the characters I designed not to long ago (the good guy, sidekick, and villain) and think about how they would move if I was to animate them.

The spaceships were just...well...for fun.

Thunder Unicorn! Holy Wow!

Lapsing into total geekness, I found a picture of a creature called a Thunder Unicorn from the Japanese Yu-Gi-Oh card game. It's the coolest thing I've seen in a loooooong time.

(NO I DID NOT PAINT THIS...even though I wish I did)

Canned Unicorn Meat - http://www.thinkgeek.com/caffeine/wacky-edibles/e5a7/

My roommate pointed me to Thinkgeek.com, a lovely website where they sell canned unicorn meat. There are two things I love: lightning bolts and unicorns, and seeing this picture made me giddy. The website has lots of cool (and geeky) stuff and I strongly recommend a brief visit.

3D ANIMATION PROJECT - The Insect Assignment

The assignment for our Intro to 3D Modeling class was to create an insect. That's it. I decided to create a giant scary worm (something like those worms that tried to eat the Millennium Falcon in Star Wars or that thing from Tremors)

The assignment turned into a disaster. I tried texturing the model in Mudbox, but couldn't get the displacement map to load in Maya for the render. I ended up copying the entire 2 million polygon mesh from Mudbox and pasting it into Maya...which Maya didn't really appreciate. It ate up my memory and things started crashing.

I'm pretty happy with how the model turned out. The environment, lighting, and background could use some work...but I used up all my time making the worm look as cool as possible. (sigh) Another consequence of poor time management...

ANIMATION PROJECTS - Bouncing Ball & Flour Sacks

The Flour Sack Ballet - Being a retired ballet dancer, I gave the sacks a bit more human qualities and had them do a Pas De Deux (duet)

The Walking Ball - I decided to have this guy's head be the bouncing ball so that I could animate a walk cycle (which turned out to be harder than I thought, but very informative)

These were my finals for the Intro to 2D Animation class with Cynthia Hogan. We had to animate a bouncing ball and flour sacks moving, jumping, and falling. I'm pretty happy with how they turned out...but I would've like a lot more time to clean them up. The class was only a block class, but excuses excuses....   The timing is pretty bad (especially on the flour sacks) and I might work on them more in the future, time permitting.

Gesture Drawings - Part 2

I believe this one was a 7 minute pose. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

Tried to go for the Ryan Woodward-esque shading on this 10-minute pose...

These are some gesture drawings from the 4:00-10:00pm class. (Conte crayon on smooth newsprint) I'm sorry if they're a bit dark, the pictures were taken with my trusty iPhone.

Hellboy Mudbox Render

I made this on Mudbox whilst watching tv. My goal to is to become a Mudbox maestro someday...

Character Design Project - Mechanic Girl (colored)

I don't know jack diddly poop about Photoshop, but I know how the brush and magic wand tools work. I liked the design for the hero from the last assignment, so I added in color "paint-by-numbers" style.

Character Design Project - part 2

The daring mechanic hero (witty, brave, funny, but sort of obnoxious at times)

The robotic sidekick (logical, no humor...pretty much the opposite of the hero)

The evil, cyborg...uh...villian. (the more I look at it, the more it looks a lot like the guy from the GI-Joe movie)

I'm thinking this girl will be the hero's older sister. still working on her design and what role she'll play. We'll see what happens...

Same assignment, only I had to connect the hero, sidekick, and villain somehow. Everyone I talked to said they liked the little mechanic girl from the first attempt, so carried it over and went with the "cyber-robotic-coolness-meets-steampunk-weirdness" motif. Here's my attempt...

(still plain ol' pencil on printer paper with pigment and calligraphy pens)

Character Design Project - part 1

She...really wasn't a hero, sidekick, or villain. I just wanted to turn the furry purse into a worm creature.

This was the source image

As part of a design project, I had to create a hero, villain, and sidekick from the black and white photograph the teacher gave. Anyways, here was my first attempt. What was interesting is that the person I intended to be the hero was not who the teacher thought. I guess you guys can choose for yourselves.  I'm planning on adding color to them with Photoshop later down the road...but we'll see.


(If anyone cares, they were just plain ol' pencil on printer paper, inked with pigment and calligraphy pens)

GESTURE DRAWINGS - part 1

gesture drawings are currently a work in progress...but here are some of my better attempts.

FIGURE DRAWINGS - part 1

some figure drawings...huzzah! (close your eyes kids...most of them are nakey)

Ants on a Blog

Hello friends! I'm techo-tarted. I don't know how to use any of these fancy new software programs. Beyond that, I'm not really sure how blogging works. Granted, it shouldn't be THAT complicated...since soccer moms and grandmas can handle it, but I'm also REtarted. So, if the blog looks like a crap or if I mess up a post...be nice. Hug your monitor and I'll pretend like it was meant for me.

This blog will (hopefully) be totally self-centered. Obviously you don't mind since you're still reading...but it will showcase my best attempts at creating artwork as well as any random things I find or think about. Yes...it is in fact a blog.

Farewell Friends!
           Wazley