Saturday, December 20, 2008

Tempest Skies

This was the next phase. Taking the costume concept I liked the best and trying to refine it a little. Even at this stage, I still haven't quite nailed down the overall look.



Tempest of the Skies

The rest of the costume concepts. Blogger wouldn't let me post them all at once.

Tempest Sky

The first round of sketches.

Really rough costume tests.


Tempest Blue

Yes, it's a bit late, but its still Saturday. Technically I'm still on schedule.

Anyways, this post consists of some concept art for a game that's been on the back-burner at work for a while. I don't know how much I can say about it without violating my non-disclosure agreement. What I will say is that the game has a fantasy/steampunk/WWII kind of environment. The character art that follows is that of one of the characters.

In this post I'll start with some of the reference I choose to work with. My goal here was to make the character as distinct as possible within the bounds of the setting. Trying to achieve that, as well as incorporating idiosyncratic features, is pretty challenging. I wanted the character to look less like a steampunk character, and more like a CHARACTER that just happens to be from a steampunk world.


I picked this actress for facial reference because,......well.......she has a distinct face. That and the fact that I'm firmly against the gross overuse of redheaded heroines in most media (specifically animated series). I specify facial reference because the character is in her 20's and this actress clearly is not.

Well,..... not SO clearly. Eh,...... I going to stop talking now.

The rest of these are just costume reference.



Saturday, December 13, 2008

Paperdoll Extra

In the last post I forgot to add another thing I worked on for the video. It's just a line of sea creatures used repeatedly for a crowd scene.



Also, here's some minor edits I made to the Teresa Fish(Band Vocalist). I've got some other stuff to post today, but those might come a little later. Check back in the evening, or early morning depending on how long my day is.


Alllllso, I can't remember if I posted this already and I'm too lazy too check. Here's another character that wound up on the cutting room floor. Hakaider Shark!!!

Saturday, December 6, 2008

Punks, Rastas, and Disco Anglers!

First up in our little aquatic adventure is the Blade Runner Replicant Fish. This unfortunate creature was "retired" before making the final cut.


Next up is the Hot Topic blow fish. Unlike the previous fish, this little guy will be appearing in the music video. His final incarnation is in the first image at the lower right-hand corner.




Back fresh from the 80's is the Punk Fish whose final form can be seen in the center of the 2nd image.



Ah, the mellow Rastapus. His final design is the iamge in the top right-hand corner of the 3rd page. I personally think the one one the left-hand side was a little more fun.

Oh, one of the band members has arrived! It's Seahorse Patrick, the guitarist.



Appearing next is Jack Fish, the bass player. For this guy I worked off a preexisting design (seen at the top left) and edited it a bit. I also got to animate this one. For compositing purposes, I had to put blank space at the end of the animation.

These are all in Flash btw. I'd take a good ol' paper and pencil anyday, but whatever.

Slap dat bass hard!!!

http://studentpages.scad.edu/~dahill21/portfolio/Jack_Fish_Guitar8.swf

Back from Scarborough Fair is the groovy 60's Cuttlefish. Her animation had to be rushed a little to meet a deadline.


http://studentpages.scad.edu/~dahill21/portfolio/60%27s_Cuddle_Swim15.swf

As we descend deeper into ocean, we at last reach the bottom. Here we find some of the more
"interesting' creatures. Finally venturing out of his den of despair is the Emo Eel. Can the sun ever shine in the murky depths? Can a heavy soul ever escape the grasp of the abyss?





The Idle animation is the only one that I didn't clean-up and color.

http://studentpages.scad.edu/~dahill21/portfolio/Emo_Fish_Idle12.swf
http://studentpages.scad.edu/~dahill21/portfolio/Emo_Fish_Notice6.swf
http://studentpages.scad.edu/~dahill21/portfolio/Emo_Fish_swim17.swf

Our final entcounter is with the Disco Angerfish. Upon further study, the Disco Angler appears to bare a strong resempance to Gunther.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbYtqAWDF2U

He's got that creepy 70's porn star vibe to 'em.

Oooooo, you touch my twa la la!








And so end the first of a long line of postings.

Tune in next week. Same Bat-time. Same Bat-channel.

Back from a long absence

My, my. It has been a while hasn't it.

Well, I've returned and this time with a definitive schedule. Since work keeps me working pretty long hours during the week, I've decided to start doing weekend posts. Every Saturday sounds pretty good. I'll be posting some of the stuff I've been doing at work (the stuff I CAN show). In addition I'm committing myself to working on some personal projects that have been in the queue for a while now. Most of these are series' of concept work that I've been wanting to do, but there's still the matter of that lip-synch animation I mentioned in the last post. I'd have to use the cintiq at the office If I wanted to get that started.

There's also a post I've been working on has to do with some common themes I've noticed here and there regarding "A hero's journey". Often times I see stories in which a protagonist must face a rival, face himself, face his antithesis, and finally face his ultimate nemesis. There're also the matter of color association. The hero is usually blue, the rival red, and the antithesis black. I talk about this in depth later.

As usual the posts are gonna be pretty broad: works stuff, personal stuff, casual sketches, or just a topic I feel like addressing. The first the thing I'm putting up are some of the work I did for the Paperdoll music video. We at Anthem Groups have been working on that for awhile, but other projects have sucked up a lot of time. All that's really left to do is compositing and as soon as thats done, the video will be online.

Here's a link to Paperdoll's website just for a frame of reference.
http://www.paperdollband.com/

On the project, I was an animater and lead character desginer.

The music video is aquatic-themed with all the band members being represented as fish. There's also a lot of fun archtypes in the video, which you'll see shortly.