I have been using super cheap sketchbooks forever so as my last one was just about done with I decided to treat myself to some Moleskines as I see everybody recommending them all the time.
They are very lovely things indeed!
Here is a couple of super quick doodles I've done so far.
They are all done trying to do caricatures from photos of people I found on the interwebs
I am currently about to start the fifth week of the character design
course. I am having so much fun with it and it really has helped me to
get creative with my drawing.
Here is some of the doodling I've been up to when not working on my assignments.
I have been doing a lot of doodling in my sketchbook lately then scanning them in and giving them a quick colour in photoshop. I am really enjoying this process and shall continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
Then I have some drawings from photo reference. Either photos I find of the net or from Stephen Silvers Posebook
Then here is just some general doodles and playing around with new photoshop brushes and what not.
We worked on character lineups and implementing all that we have learned so far. We got given Pirates as the main theme which was super fun to play around with
I can finally give a little update on the project I was working on for 3 months.
A short behind the scenes was posted on the main youtube page last week and I can now share one some pictures of the puppet I spent most of my time working on.
The tree warrior aka 'Twig Boy'
I started out with a wire armature then built up the sculpture with balsa wood.
I also sculpted a few heads out balsa wood to finish him off
By the time I had finished that it was time to for me to go down to Aardman for two weeks. When I got back he had been molded and cast in silicone. My buddy Adam did an amazing job of casting him and doing an even more awesome job with some back painting to get a a super real wood effect. The puppet has a ball and socket armature built by the super talented Wes over at http://www.animationtoolkit.co.uk/
Then came the meticulous task of layering the puppet with more balsa wood to add lots of nice sharp branches and to also help it look even more realistic in regards to being formed from a tree. I think after he was finished I ended up adding some more to him but unfortunately I didn't get a photo after he was fully finished but he doesn't look much different then he does in these photos.
I also made him some shield's from big chunks of bark with wire attached to secure it to the puppets arm.
I am really proud of how this chap came out.
Here is the behind the scenes video where you can see some of the amazing things that was happening around me.
There are some ridiculously talented people in the video and am so privileged to have worked beside them all.
Check out the awesomely awesome Chris Randall/Second Home Studios website http://www.secondhomestudios.com
The character design course is going great and I shall post up some of my recent doodles at the end of the week.
What better way to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon then to update this here blog.
I have finished my time at Second Home Studios and it was fantastic. Being surrounded by so many talented and creative people was such an honour. I cant wait to see how everything looks when its all finished. We were doing stop motion visuals to accompany a large scale stage show of Lion the Witch And The Wardrobe
It really is going to be fantastic and I can not wait until we go to see it. I shall let you all know how it turns out.
Last week I got a spare bit of time to spend a day playing with an armature I had bought over Christmas. I wanted to to do some very basic exercises
I wasn't very happy with them at all so I posted it on my facebook page asking for some feedback which I got from some very amazing animators. Hopefully I will get the chance have another go and try to put some of the feedback to good use.
Last weekend I also started an online course which is 'Character Design With Nate Wragg'
I am a very big fan of Nate's so I couldn't miss out on the chance to get tutored by him. I want to focus on character design a bit more so I can apply it to my stop motion work and also to get my drawing to a level that I am happy with. You can see Nate's work HERE He has a very impressive credit list for the films he has worked on. He has done a lot of work for Pixar to name but one.
I didn't know whether to start a new blog for my illustration work but have decided I might as well keep everything in the same place. So I will now be blogging my doodles and illustrations as well as my stop motion work.
Here is my first submitted assignment to the course. We were asked to create a monster out of simple shapes and this was my attempt. I got some great feedback from Nate and was happy with the result.
And here is a group shot of some of the other monsters I did whilst playing around with the shapes
This weeks assignment is very cool and I shall upload it once I'm finished later in the week.
I spent the last coupe of days working on another illustration which I am very happy with and what I think is my best to date. I spent a bit of time working on the pose and trying to get the right look I wanted to achieve which is getting closer and closer every time I do a new drawing.
'For The Fallen'
And a small close up on his face
That is it for this rainy sunday! I shall be back with more doodles very soon
Well well well what a month March has been!
It started with the end of my few months being a visiting lecturer at Birmingham City University. That was pretty cool and I got to meet some great people.
Then it was also the start of a new job at the awesome Second Home Studios where I am doing some puppet making and model making and maybe a wee bit of animating too. We are doing some really cool stuff and I will hopefully be able to share some when its all finished.
But then on the 11th March I had to leave Second Home for a few weeks as I made my way down to Bristol to start a two week work experience position at Aardman in the model making department on 'Shaun the Sheep Championsheeps'.
This has got to have been the best two weeks of my life so far. I helped out with making some background sheep and also got to do a few sculptures that will hopefully make it into an episode. One of the biggest rewards was being around super talented people and seeing what they get up too and even learning a few things here and there ;)
Another reward was getting to see puppets from Pirates nearly everyday and staring them in the eye! Weirdly enough they don't ever blink, you will never win!!!!
And not to forget all the things I saw for Shaun, I got to see some of the animation units and was completely blown away by the size of the sets and just how magnificent everything is.
I should be able to post photos of what I did when the episodes air.
I really did not want to come home!
A big thank you to everyone there for taking the time to talk and show me what its like at Aardman. Maybe one day I will be back for a longer period of time.... you never know
Here are a few drawings I have done over the past couple of months as I don't like doing a blog post without having something to show even if they bare no relevance to what I have been talking about :D
These two are just quick things from when I went to Bristol
My entry to last months Laika Challenge
A couple of doodles from a 30 day drawing challenge that I keep dipping in and out of
It has been quite a while since my last blog post. I think I say this every time now but time really does fly quickly when your busy bodying about!
Recently I have been concentrating on developing my sculpting skills. A while ago I asked my good buddy, the amazing JEZ TUYA if I could have a go at sculpting one of his characters but never got round to it and also I am a HUGE admirer of his work and was scared of messing it up beyond recognition. Then a few weeks ago I decided" Hey, if I mess it up no one is going to see it, right?"
He has so many awesome designs and I found it hard to pick one. In the end I decided to try out a few.
This was a great exercise for me as it made me look at shapes in a way I wouldn't have before. Jez really does know his shapes!!
This is also the first time I have properly sculpted in Super Sculpey. I never really liked it before as it is really soft but I have been following other peoples formulas of working with it. Basically I sculpt the main shape of the head with a few details like eyes mouth and nose then I will bake it and add hair and beard. Then bake it again and add anything else that needs to be done. I leave the body till last as I know I can work with the head without ruining it.
Due to not having much display and storage space I have only done character busts and it also saves on the amount of sculpey I have.
I had so much fun doing these sculpts and learned a lot from the whole process. I am also quite surprised at how quick it took me to do each one. I think Captain Ahab took me a night and an afternoon and probably the same time for the other two. Maybe one day I will paint them.
Dr Jekyll
The past week I have been working on one of my own designs that I had in my head. It was supposed to be Jack the ripper but as usual it didn't quite go to plan. I ended up having to paint this chap as from all the baking that he went through there were a lot of really burnt parts.There are a few things Im not to happy about with it but I am totally taking it as a lesson learned situation. You first have to be bad to get good, right?
So here is Dr Jekyll
And a few other different shots of it
So that's about it for the moment. I do have some really super dooper exciting news to blog about but not until the end of next month. But I am sure I will do more work in between then and now to blog about. So until then "Never give up! Never surrender!" super geek points if you know what that is from :)
While I have been researching new mould materials I have also been playing with a new way to make puppet heads.
After previous puppet head fails I have been looking at ways to make a light weight head. I have developed a simple technique. It has probably been done before but I've never heard of anyone doing it or documenting. I'm quite happy with it.
The core of the head is made out of Styrofoam with a piece of K&S secured in to the bottom for neck wire or a smaller bit of tube to slot int. Then Its just a case of skinning the core with a thin layer of plasticine.
I was fairly happy with this but I fixed the K&S far too close to the chin leaving him pretty much unusable. Still it was a good first try.
For the next head I did exactly the same thing and made sure the K&S was fixed further back leaving enough room for it to have a fair sized chin.
The next step was to cut out a space for easy keying replacement mouths and covering the whole head in a surgical cloth tape to give the plasticine some extra grip.
Now for the fun part, Sculpting!!!
One problem I did come across was how too keep the eyes in place firmly as when I tried to manipulate the they would end up completely moving or popping out. This was solved by sculpting the eyelids around the eye to keep them secure. I will still need to look into to this for future heads as it may not be desirable with certain character designs. But it will do for the moment.
Then after a bit of smoothing and adding a mouth
As I'm not working from any particular design I couldn't decide whether he looked like he could be a small chubby kid or as an old chap. I asked peoples opinions over on TWITTER and most suggested an old chap. I did a quick bit of a draw over to see how he could look and was quite happy with how he would look as long as I could get it very similar to the photoshop make over.
I was also quite surprised that he looked like a better and updated version of my old friend from my first student film 'In with the old out with the new'
I am really quite proud of the old chap and is definitely some of my best work so far.
I have also mixed the plasticine for the eyesbrows with bee's wax as this makes it a lot harder and holds its shape for much longer. I am thinking that I will also do this with his mustache.
Here is the final head. (Click for a bigger view)
I just need to make a few replacement mouths and also a few replacement mustaches. All in all I'm really happy with this test.
I'm wondering if I should bring back the old mender and give him a new story or just to create a new character for him. Hmmmm so much to do and so little time.
