Tafti

After five weeks of work Tafti is pretty much done. I still want to change the audio track and may tweak a bit after the weekend but overall I'm pretty pleased with him :) Enjoy.

Feathers Animatic

The animatic for my Feathers animation. My apologies for the eye burning pink, I had originally intended on adding colour to the panels and that was just the base of the sky but then time and other projects got in the way.

Feathers Storyboard

A rough layout and storyboard for my Feathers animation, still subject to change, naturally

Tafti Update

Just updating with some Tafti stuff for Feathers. Some character thumbnails and a short yaw animation to test the colour scheme I'm thinking of going with,

Just Hangin'

Tafti has the wrong idea about perching methinks.

Inspired by a little sketch I did of him in uni, just an excuse to test the colour scheme I'm thinking of going with for the animation.

Moar

Another dump from my sketchbook. Some Tafti heads with the help of a little blue-tack head I made and an adorable sculpture made by fellow animator Chloe Howley. Also some more Loomis and some rough ideas for other pics I want to do.

It's Been a While...

...so here's an update :)

Firstly some sketches from Andrew Loomis' Figure Drawing for all it's Worth, an awesome book for anyone wanting to study figure drawing.

Now some Alaya sketches for the current idea of planning for my final project and a shot of her with her grandfather Iolo just to test out their colour schemes.

And finally more stuff for Feathers, I've been working on Tafti's design and apart from the colour scheme and wings I have to admit he has changed a fair bit 

Little Changes

After going in and animating earlier this week I came to the realization that while I love taller, more realistically proportioned characters when designing I just loath trying to animate them, and I'd rather not spend the year cursing a light box every time I see one.

So I gave in and decided while I still intend on using Tafti and the 'Feathers' idea for one of my modules I'm going to use him, and the cartoon version of my character Iolo (here written as Yolo to help people pronounce his name right) in a simplified style. Because by gum I enjoy drawing them, they may not be uber impressive but they make me happy to pick up a pencil.

Next up I need to clean up Tafti as well as think of a way to make Alaya, who is Iolo's grandkid, into a cartoon to work with him when he's been shrunk down to pretty much her 'realistic' proportions.

Here's the Yolo redesign, some of you may recognize him from a series of short animation tests I did earlier this year.

Now the rough Tafti redesign. 

Say Cheese

Just some quick expression tests of Tafti done while listening to Dance with Dragons.

Cloud Tests

As promised here are some cloud tests to try out the look I have in mind for Feathers. 

Long Time No Post

(UPDATE) I've added the sketches I promised, needn't have worried about waking people up, but that's another passive aggressive statement altogether)

I've not posted in a while, well....for nearly a week, so figured it was a time for an update.

I decided to spend today trying to finally nail down the (current) character for my final film, and while I have several more pages of sketches to upload I don't really want to wake people up with my monstrously loud scanner so will update with those tomorrow.

I've had really trouble settling down with a character design for this guy because while I knew I wanted an angel I hadn't decided on a personality and for me knowing the personality is really how I tend to think of a character and looks seem to come after. After finding a name for him, Tafti, the personality followed and then his face. I know his colours are very close to the original angel I've posted but knowing how I'd like to have the sky and clouds in backgrounds I decided they really were the best to stand out against them. (I may do some studies of these tomorrow to give you guys an idea of what I mean)

So here's the first proper pic of Tafti, more to come...hopefully ;)

Now following is a secondary RP character that I doodled in about 30 mins in-between struggling with the angel design, at this point it just wasn't working so I figured drawing someone I already had a pretty good idea about would help me unwind. (Yup, it's another southerner, this time a doctor called Tohlo) 

Flying High

Another concept-art piece for Feathers. This time testing out ideas for clouds as well as another bird design, this time it's a purple-crowned lorikeet.

Faces

Different face experiments for the angel guy, I realize I accidentally drew some familiar looking types from other ocs of mine, that's my fault for looking through old stuff before hand I guess, damn you visual memory :P

Nonetheless I'm quite partial to 1, 2, 3, 5 and 11

Bust

Not that kind of bust :P

I decided to break out of cartoony mode for a bit a sketch a bust of Alexander the Great from a reference photo I took while at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, has been handy project wise as well considering I'd like to include some sort of Roman/Greek look in the angels and it will probably come from the hair and face of the character.

So Many Colours....

Decided to continue the idea of giving the angel a more bird like colour-scheme but before i settled on a final I figured I'd do a few samples using colours referenced directly from birds. I like the kingfisher from my Fly my Pretty pic and from this the sun conure and budgie. I'm not that keen on toucan or eclectus but as it's an experiment I forced myself not to change it. 

Sketch Dump

Over the past couple of days I've been doing some rather rough sketches to start myself thinking of my final project for third year. I'm quite keen on using angels but haven't yet nailed down a story but for tagging ease I'm going to use the working title of 'Feathers' for all posts concerning this project. Before I did that I figured it'd be a good idea to study real life things that I want to try an include in the final design of the angel.

To start off I did a couple of of portraits with references from photos I have on my laptop just to try out different facial types.

I've decided I'd like the angel to do a lot of emoting through body language and use as little speech as possible, so over an afternoon I studied a favorite Mr. Bean sketch of mine to see how he used body language.

Because I want him to do a lot of acting through his hands and feet I figured it'd be prudent to sketch them too, references again were used - my own hands and feet, which is why there's only a right hand and no left - I can't draw with my right :P

Now, what are angels without wings, naturally the obvious thing to look at are birds, so here's a couple of birds for you. The first page is references from images again on my laptop and the later are real life geese in the park.

Fly my Pretty!

Fly!

Because who doesn't love angels...and colours... 
...and clouds.


For my Myths and Legends module next semester I've decided to go with angels because, by feathery-goodness, I love 'em. The idea of somewhat poncy petty boys flying about telling people what to do makes me laugh, of course it is extremely helpful that most male birds are vain at heart and it wasn't much of a leap to go from a guy with wings to a guy with wings and bird-like colouring. 


More experiments to come as  try to find one I could animate, that doesn't sound too hard does it.