A Few Chaps

I have now finally finished The Character Design course. The past 8 weeks have been pretty darn amazing. I have learned so much and feel my work has definitely improved although there is still a lot that needs to be done to get me to a place where I'm confident in my drawing. Practice Practice Practice!!!!!!!!

This diagram sums up my work ethic exactly at the moment

 The reason I wanted to do the course in the first place was to help me design better characters which in turn would make more appealing stop motion puppets with designs that I will be happy with. So this is something I am about to start working on. I just need to gather a few new bits and bobs of supplies that I've run out IE. silicone.

Here is all 8 weeks of my assignments from 'Character Design For Animation With Nate Wragg'

Week 1. Shape Language

Week 2. Using Shape Language to create knights/Templar type chappys

Week 3. Character Line Up

Week 4. Focusing on head shapes

Week 5. Story Telling Moment

Week 6.  Matching the styles of Jay Ward and Ronald Searle

Week 7. Animals!!

Week 8. Basic Model Sheets with characters we have already drawn in the course

Well there you have it. 8 weeks worth of work squeezed into one blog post.

Meet Morris

While most of the UK were out partying and celebrating the Queens Jubilee, I was inside sculpting myself into a plasticine ridden trance. What started out as just a quick head sculpt turned into a full blown character bust. I had a lot of fun with this chap. I would really like to be able to push this style of character into my puppet making. I would love to see the heads cast in silicone but I need to stock up on all of my molding and casting materials before I can think about doing it. Anyway, Meet Morris!

Digital paint job

And a few close up shots

EDIT:
I completely forgot that I had filmed a turnaround video using a motorized turntable that I forgot I had. Its not amazing or lit nicely but you get the idea

The Sculpt Of Carl

I have finally managed to get a bit of sculpting done!
I wanted to see if the kind of characters I am designing at the moment translate to 3D so I started with a really quick 15 minute sculpt just to test the waters. This was only around 1.5" and sculpted this small to make sure I could focus on shapes rather than detail.

Then it was time to move on in a bigger scale.  I went through a few of my character designs and picked out Carl The Thug. I didn't want to necessarily sculpt the thug character but more use the design to play around with.

Then it was pretty much a 7-8 session to sculpt it. I didn't take any progress photos as I was far too sucked in to sculpting.

So here he is

I would really, really  like to turn this chap into a fully fledged puppet but I just don't have the the space to do so at the moment. Hopefully in the near future this will be possible

Edit:
A digital paint over just to see what he could look like in colour.

Sketchbook doodles

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

A Flock of Doodles

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. 

Character Design Week 3

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

Character Design Week 2

We looked at silhouette and poses. I got some great feedback and I still need to find the time make the changes that have been suggested.

Character design course work
Week 2

And here are few extras that I did just having some fun with shapes

'The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe' Update

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.