The Inspector - Maquette

He's finally finished!

There are a few things here and there that I'm not too happy with but it does its job as a maquette and lets me see the whole character in 3D. I'm not too keen on the colour of the plasticine hence the reason for all the black and white photos.
I will add the digital paint over soon but I think I am actually going to physically paint this chap at some point so the digital paint will really help to make sure I get the colours right before hand.

16" Newplast plasticine

Edit (28-07-12)
Digital paint over

It's that time of knight!

I did this the other day when I had to have a few hours break from sculpting. I dont really have a "studio" area so I have to sculpt where ever I can which results in hurty achy back pains.

Anyways... to say I'm excited about the 'The Dark Knight Rises' is an understatement.

I AM BATMAN!!!!!

The Butler and the Detective

Hello there!! At the moment I have given myself a task to keep me active. I am currently working on my own project where I can concentrate on character design and also take my time with developing the characters. It's a theoretical short film about a Butler who is a criminal master mind and a detective who has spent the last 10 years hunting the butler down. I don't really have much of a story but I have enough to explore the characters. Maybe one day it will be a real short film but at the moment this is not financially or logistically possible for the foreseeable future but at least it is a cool little project to keep me creative.

 So here is a bit of development so far

The Butler

After doing a few more similar designs I decided this was not the look I wanted for this guy.  I did a couple more head drawings and was feeling a bit more happier with the shapes

After doing these I still was not feeling the design so I did another set of heads but this time kept in mind that I want him to look very creepy, smug and snake like... you know... like a criminal mastermind :)

I was happy where these where going so I picked one and then moved on to visualize the whole chap and came up with this

The Detective

I already had an idea of how I wanted this chap to look so it didn't take me too long to find the design I was happy with

This was the first drawing I did and found it wasn't what i wanted.

After a bit more of a play around i came up with my detective

I then added a bit of colour and set a scene

With all of this designing I was getting the itch to sculpt one of these guys. So I picked the detective :)

I did a quick head sculpt to see how the design translates to 3D

Happy with this I decided it is about time that I try making a full body maquette as I have not done this before. Doing character busts has become a bit of a comfort zone habit so now its time to change that.

Here is the armature. I used some hard packing foam to bulk out the stomach and then wrapped it in a kind of rough masking tape to the plasticine something to stick too.

After I blocked out the main shape I found I wasnt really feeling how it looked so I took to photoshop and did a bit of layering with the drawing to see where I was going wrong. I also did a bit of jiggery pokery with the actual drawing to change the pose to be more suited for sculpting

Thankfully this helped me out quite a bit and got back on track

So that's where I have gotten up to with documenting this maquette. I have gotten further with it but I'm going to save the rest of the progress photos for when it finished.

In other news, the series that I did some work experience on at Aardman has been on the TV over the past few weeks which means I have had the pleasure to see the sculptures I did all finished and moving in the episode 'Swimming' from 'Shaun the Sheep Championsheeps'

They dont look like much to excited about but at least I know that they originated from my hands. The original sculptures will have been doctored to how the animator needed to do the shots, so they added arms and glycerine for water (I think)

I managed to take a really crude photo of the TV paused but at least you can see the characters. I have got a photo of the actual sculptures from when I finished them but I don't think I'm allowed to post them so these will have to do :)

I hope all is well with everyone! Until next time!

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.