Sunday 29 September 2013

Drawing Jam #2 - How to be Indie

Here's another drawing jam! This time around, we were given the task of taking a movie character and gender-bending them.  Here's the female version of Indiana Jones!




Go see more of the work from the Animation Students here!


Tuesday 24 September 2013

Nothing is Ever "Just a 5 Minute Re-Colour"

This was a really fun concept sketch for my Hero & Villain project for Character design.  I felt a mighty need to bring the scribble in my sketchbook, and ended up spending a lot of time fixing it up.


From left to right: Erebos, Katherine, Byron

My hero, Katherine, is a fast talking, overconfident wizard in training from the Northern Province of Ethès.  She won't hesitate to speak her mind and is easily goaded into violence, and as a result is often kicked out of the bars she frequents.  She is very much in-tune with her physical self, and as a result is naturally talented in Elemental magics, as opposed to magics that are centered around the Mind and Soul.  


When the Eastern Armies marched on the Northern, Central and Southern Provinces, Katherine was forced to evacuate her home to the Central Province with her mother.  There, in Zojiri, the Capital of the Center, she runs into the Illustrious Byron of Salentios, a powerful wizard who mastered all three magical branches at the age of 19.  Noticing that Katherine has incredible magic power without any proper training, Byron takes her under his wing to help her unlock her full potential, much to the irritation of the apprentice he had already taken on.  With the approval of her mother, Katherine takes up residence in Byron's laboratory in Patrid, and begins her life as an apprentice wizard alongside Erebos, the most insufferable Easterner she's ever met.


The villain, Erebos is the proud, stuck up, great-grandson of Spyridon, the founder of the Jenpa Academy of Wizardry (the JAW) in Eastern Ethès, and will not hesitate to remind you of this if you try to cross him.  If you have the impression that this is the only thing he can possibly brag about, you're wrong, as his knowledge of the Magic of the Soul, which revolves around Illusions and the Exertion of Will, is wonderful for his ripe age of 28. Although, he did have to go through 12 years of training at the JAW to accomplish this feat (as most wizards without exceptional natural talent often do, [he often neglects to acknowledge this]).  Spoiled and lazy, Erebos uses his magic to accomplish any task he deems "un-challenging", such as sweeping the floors with telekinesis.  In order to teach his son humility and discipline, Erebos' father sends him to Byron for an apprenticeship.  Under Byron, Erebos is stripped of all the luxuries of his past life, and has to learn to use a broom properly, while studying the other branches of magic.  

When Katherine arrives, Erebos is disgusted by her.  He views her as barbaric, and refuses to acknowledge her as a person due to her Northern heritage, and lack of education.  As he was one of the few members of his family who was not naturally good at Physical Magic, Erebos' disdain of Katherine is intensified even more.  As a result, Erebos will intentionally try to distract Katherine from her studies, and they often get into fights, which are not always broken up by Byron, leaving his house a grand mess.  


(( I didn't fill out a character sheet for Byron yet, so I actually can't say much about him, sorry! )) 


I spent way too much time on this, and that's ok.

Check out more work from the Animation students here!

Friday 20 September 2013

Drawing Jam #1

 
Every week, our instructor gives us a "Drawing Jam", which is basically just a fun drawing challenge for us.  For the first week, we were given a sheet with a bunch of whacky shapes on it, and were given the task to create something out of the shapes.

See more art from the Animation students here!

Wednesday 18 September 2013

Matilde Expression Sheet

Matilde is finally finished!  I know I didn't have to do any clean up for her, but it was hard to make out her expressions as they were in my sketchbook.  It looks better this way, and I feel better about it.

Anyway, Matilde is a low-maintenance, hobbyist gardener who loves getting things done.  If she's not in the garden attending to her tulips, she's on the patio with her neighbours, sipping tea and commenting on how lovely the weather is.  If someone ever needs help, Matilde is the first to know and the first to offer a helping hand.

Despite Matilde's kind-heart, she is prone to catastrophic temper tantrums when something doesn't go according to plan.  As a Clawed Cow, Matilde is a naturally powerful, destructive woman.  Her strong legs propel her forward, and her claws tear through trees and earth.  If something has upset her deeply enough, she will run for hours, destroying everything in her path without mercy.  When she has calmed down, she is able to think clearly again, and tends to realize that what upset her wasn't that big of a deal at all, much to the annoyance of her friends, and herself.
 

Check out the work of other Animation students here!

(Bonus sketches!!):




Sunday 15 September 2013

Early Matilde Expressions [Character Design Assignment 01]


Samples of my first Character Design project.  This is Matilde, my muse.  She enjoys conversations over tea, gardening, and is prone to fearsome, destructive mood swings.  I've been drawing her a whole bunch lately, trying to iron out some complications that came with drawing a bull-bear-anteater type character, (how are those claws even supposed to hold a teacup anyway??) and made lots of progress with her over the past four hours.  Exactly 22 pages in my sketchbook are all about Matilde, and I want to draw even more of her! 

 Here are some close-ups of the drawings:


Thanks for stopping by! Stick around for more Matilde and other drawings!  You may even see some animations soon!

Check out the work of present and previous NBCC Animation students here.