011611_scene_6

Here's what I end up with...

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011411_robosan_cave

Just a sketch for today. Nothing too fancy.

011311_cave_study

Doing this again because I can't be productive otherwise.

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011211_sketches

I love my sketchbooks and this past year I was a little less than diligent with them. I very desperately want to change that. I've had my current sketchbook since last June and that's far to long for the 176 or so pages that are in there (front and back). I'm going to make an effort to keep studying and making sure I put my imagination down on paper for no purpose other than exercise again this year. It's something I've sorely missed. Here is a drawing of Rachel from earlier this month.
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011111_storyboard to background

Today Stephen and I were working together on Robo-san stuff for 7 hours or so in my apartment as the snow came down outside all day long. Pizza, a friend and digital painting is always a good time, right? Right. So after finishing the texture map for the body of the rock monster I showed the arms of yesterday I got to working on Scene 6.

Scene 6 is a troublesome beast because I decided it'd be a great idea to have some radical perspective shifts in the animation. The nice thing about it is it's a more exciting shot than our previous idea and it allows for flexing of some cinematic animation muscle. And since that's the medium that Stephen and Ben are working in, it's good to push it any way we can. Gotta look good in the showreel, after all. The problem for me, as I said before lies in the perspective shift and I banged my head against the wall in black and white for a while before manning up and trying with color. I ended up trying to subdue the angle a little bit for a while before realizing that was a crap idea and going back to the storyboard version shown above as my reference. The background image is really going to be much, much larger than this, but I wanted an example to talk about.

After figuring out all of that nonsense, I think finishing it will go a lot faster. Whether slow or quick, I'll just be spending a while painting clouds tomorrow...so many clouds....


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011011_texture.

So when you're working on a team, I've learned, you don't always get to do the absolutely most fun things in the world. One of those things (in my opinion) is texture maps. Though when I think about it, they're only not as fun as painting full paintings, like yesterday's cave study, because they're not a space, they're just a wall. Regardless, they're important and they give me an opportunity to practice my use of edge in a fairly monochromatic manner.

These are some rough samples of the UV mapping I'm doing for a character in the Robo-san project. I'm currently horrible at edges and I've been struggling to make the maps work. Luckily, I'm privy to the fact that this fellow (seen above) is on screen for all of 10 seconds at best, and you'll never see some parts of him. Still, I'd like to learn how to texture better. Any suggestions?
I'll show more interesting things tomorrow

010911

of challenge in painting caves.
Always takes forever to get back into the groove. I still struggle with color. Here's a study. I find a lot

First shot of Robo-san film.

You can now see the first scene of "Robo-san to Wan-Chan" on youtube! Look out for more in the future!

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Gears of War 3

Here's what's going on. I got to do some fun storyboarding work a while back on this fan-made Gears of War 3 trailer. It was a collaborative effort by TheDuoGroup, Kootra, Treadster Media and Sound Wizardry. Check it out. I'd recommend checking it out on youtube for the full effect. :)

Here you can see a little bit of how my contributions stacked up...

Robo-san continued...

I started off the summer with pretty vague goals. Mainly just not to be a lazy swine. My more lofty aspiration was to collaborate in making my Robo-san into an animated short. Since that time there has been a lot of exploration and creativity in everything accomplished between myself, Ben and Stephen. I'll try to make a few posts summing up what's happened so far.

this is a pixelfied version of a pencil sketched storyboard done on index card.

Building off of the initial story, the three of us brainstormed on where the animation could go. Ultimately we decided there would have to be some significant changes but for the most part it would follow the same story arc of the book. From there we got right to storyboarding, first in pencil on index cards and then I took it into Painter for the digital treatment. I spent a lot of time working out the best compositional choices I could for the story so there would be little changes later.

digified storyboard.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Ben and Stephen were hard at work translating my (far too) rough orthographic designs into models for the characters. Suddenly my drawings had leapt into the dazzling third dimension!

During this time I had to suffer through actually thinking about how all of the characters would actually work and look from every angle, including the spaceship, dubbed the S.S. Goldfish by Ben. Wan-chan got a pretty severe makeover since I wasn't really pleased with him when I was painting the book and I just hadn't had the time to figure him out then.

While Ben and Stephen were still modeling I began doing UV maps, a very new concept for me, and it took a couple of tries to start understanding how to get things to look the way I wanted them to. Robo-san and Wan-chan had about 40 maps each, the goldfish had just a few less, some of which I just finished today.
All of this is about a month and a half's worth of work (in addition to some Mario Kart and Super Smash Brothers). 75+ frames into the storyboard and I'm still not quite done yet, but it has taken us at least to the point where Ben and Stephen can begin working their magic and start animating. There's a lot more to do, for now, I'll leave you with the title screen concept.

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