I Lied!

First off you guys might notice that the blog's layout has changed again for the better , that's all because of the awesomeness of Loxy, she was kind enough to spruce the lace up a bit so big ehugs for her :)

Now on to the lying, earlier I said that the Loki rough as as rough as is gets, well that's not entirely true. Earlier this morning I can up with an idea for a pic I wanted to do so before I left for uni I made my own version of a post-it. I'm putting it here to remind myself to do more work on it, as I work I'll be posting WIPs so keep a lookout and feel free to point out any mistakes :)

Can you tell what it is yet?

God of Mischief

A god after my own heart :P

Here's the finished version of Loki, the Norse God of Mischief and Lies, a cookie to anyone who knows why he's carrying mistletoe.

Mistletoe and....

Loki?

Started designing my own version of Loki today, first I added him to a pic of Thor fellow artist Matt Garbutt did in order to get a somewhat similar look between the two and then did a colour test that is now almost certainly going to change, I'm now working on a full bodied pic but thought I'd stop to share what I had and show you all the ugly side of art.....my rough uninked, uncleaned, sketch. The horror! The horror!

A Blind Man Catches a Bird

As part of our summer brief we've been asked to find a myth or legend and create a character and make a small animation for it. I came across this story in Alexander McCall's collection of African folk-tales, The Girl Who Married a Lion. I decided to tackle designing the blind man, this isn't the final design by a long shot (like I'm about to try animating him :P) but it is a start, a concept pic to get the feel of the character down. He isn't from any particular culture, I used an amalgamation of a different cultures, most notably Massai and Zulu.

Experiment

A quick 10 min sketch than turned into an experiment, first did the doodle on the right and decided to turn it into a young Iolo, perhaps with a view of designing a character I can animate with over the summer, and then went on to the one on the left giving him features more like those seen on his older versions. Currently undecided on which I like best.

Normally I wouldn't post such sketchy stuff but I wanted to map out the design process and I figure a good way is to document everything I do so I can take a look back later.

Oldies

By request posting up some old stuff from last summer.

A Curvy Lady!

As promised ;)

Another southern costume design, she's merchant class so she wears less layers and less patterns than the upper ruling classes but that doesn't mean she doesn't like colour.

Not a Curvy Lady

Not the lady I promised but a lady nonetheless. Here's another Logic Fairy for you guys.

Wednesday Doodle

Because.....it's Wednesday....it's a doodle and I couldn't think of a more interesting title. :P

Wanted to doodle a southern fella but he ended up having more northern features, so made him Rhammi's kid and then had fun trying to figure out his colouring.

Did do a curvy lady too but she's just the basic lines at the moment so will put her up tomorrow.

Okapi....or not.

Wanted to doodle something 'southerny' today so decided to tackle their mounts, while they do have camels and horses (small horses) there I also wanted to give them something more exotic. Being quite a fan of okapi I chose to do a variant on one of them, unlike their real life inspiration these creatures are far smaller, being more the size of ponies, they also have smaller ears, and more camel-like feet to spread their weight in the sand, their fur is mostly short excluding the long tail brush they have to swat away flies and keep themselves cool. The wild ones are mostly sandy-dun colored but like domesticated horses their tamed cousins have been bred into all manner of patterns and variations.

Not invented a name for them yet, so for now lets stick with not-exactly-an-okapi. 

Live Long and Prosper

As a wind-down from spending most of the afternoon inking I decided to get a quick sketch down of an actual logic fairy, part Vulcan, part fairy, entirely odd.

Arianne

Decided to have a go at designing a costume for a woman and so keeping with the 'southern' vibe I've been in yesterday I decided to try my hand at Arianne, Iolo's sister. It's tricky trying to keep the same look I've had for all the male southern costume ideas, I'm hoping it'll come through once I've inked and coloured.

Costume Design

I was messing about yesterday attempting to animate a more detailed human head and as usual if I have spare time things sorta spiraled out of control, I decided he needed a body too so spent the rest of the afternoon and evening designing that.

This guy is a character of mine called Rhammi Sohello, he originally came from the North which is a culture similar to viking age Europe but he met he met the Southern king Diego and followed him south to serve as a translator and went once there went a tad native.

Page o' Faces

Inspired by Matt Garbut's expression page of his character, seen here I decided to have a go at doing some of my character Iolo, many of you will have seen him in his little cartoony form but this is the real thing. He's one of my favorite characters to draw and as I want to expand my library of expressions expect a lot more of these as well as more pics over the summer of Iolo and others, going to FMX has given me a kick up the backside and I've decided I need more work.

For now...

Don't make Iolo angry....you won't like him when he's angry.

FMX

I've been and still am at FMX in Stuttgart, Germany, since Monday. So far it's been a tiring but also very inspiring experience, today looks to be the most hectic day of the week. Thus far we've seen how the young Jeff Bridges was created in Tron: Legacy, though it was 3D it did give some handy ideas about lip synch and character expression. We've also been to several recruitment talks, including The Mill and Disney. Afterwards we spoke to Dawn Rivera-Ernster at their recruitment booth and she gave some very handy feedback for which I am grateful, even though I was nervous as heck at the time. Now we have an hour free before we go and see how they made Egill, the Last Pagan, so tootles and see you guys there :)