squidliness

Ganon WIP flash thing

2010-04-05T21:58:00.001-04:00

Something I've been tinkering with, hopefully I'll get back to it and finish it someday. There's not really too much left to do, I've just been dragging my feet and drawing comics instead.

Website is a go

2010-04-05T00:32:00.000-04:00

Now keeping my comics over at thepunchlineismachismo.com, planning on updating Mondays.

Disregard what I said before

2010-03-23T02:40:00.000-04:00

Yeah, I'm actually gonna start a webcomic for real. In the process of registering a domain at the moment.

Romancing the Sten

2010-02-02T11:10:00.000-05:00

I appreciate that even though he wasn't a romanceable option in Dragon Age, BioWare at least acknowledged that people who find seven foot beeftank bronzed and dreadlocked Kirk Douglases attractive would be into him by having half of the female party members talk about what a hot piece of militant Islamic Borg man meat he is in their miscllaneous party nattering.

That said, I am disappointed that I couldn't get him back in my gypsyelf's tent to reenact all those seven foot beeftank militant Islamic Borg bronzed and dreadlocked Kirk Douglas x Turok the Dinosaur Hunter fanfictions I'm sure already exist on the internet.

I think I'm gonna start posting my video game comics here

2010-01-23T21:37:00.000-05:00

It'll be like a webcomic except I won't pretend that it actually has a schedule.

The Mighty Manotaur

2009-10-15T21:00:00.001-04:00

And there's that minotaur I said I was finishing up.

Public Transportation

2009-10-12T23:49:00.002-04:00

Some things I doodled on the train back and forth to London. I guess I worked on a minotaur too, but I'm actually finishing him.

Port Tihq

2009-10-05T00:02:00.002-04:00

Little fishing village in a comic universe I've been working with. Sort of like if people discovered a second Australia back when all of the different empires were out exploring and colonizing places, but this one was full of dozens of species with the same degree of sentience as humans. Now, in the modern era it remains a self-contained Darwinian society with haphazard central government. Large cities are the most "Westernized" with top-of-the-line technology, unified legislative bodies, and the most socialist programs in effect. Further out from those you get rural areas where creatures still live in clustered townships with electricity, but the ruling power is much more along the lines of small-town behind-the-shed politics. Even further from that is the wild zone, the Old West of the island. No electricity or official government, where anarchy only functions due to the threat that a bigger fish might come along.

Most of the humans on the island are related to people who moved there as fugitives. Any sentient creature can legally kill another for food or in self defense in any part of the country, so humans typically don't choose to relocate there unless they're running from something worse than the threat of maybe someday being eaten by a giant talking lizard.

Help?

2009-09-29T23:18:00.004-04:00

I've been getting an exorbitant amount of weird Asian moonspeak spam comments on my posts lately that I think are possibly trying to convince me to buy timeshare condos or bootleg leather belts. Anyone know how to filter spam out of the comments without turning them off completely?

Annnndddd.... I guess here's a scowly Kratos pinup so this post has some art in it. Remeber, chicks dig guys with exceptionally developed depressor labii inferioris muscles. Nothing says "MANLY" like an expression of perpetual dissatisfaction.

Bust Commissions

2009-09-20T04:10:00.004-04:00

This is basically how I made rent this month.

Dread Sarcopt Menu Console

2009-09-05T21:49:00.003-04:00

Menus for the Dread Sarcopt, the large slot is for the active character or item, the smaller ones display the animals on your team or the items in your inventory depending on which option you have toggled. When a character speaks the box swaps to the leaf background to display the text.

Still need to make the popup menus for the help, load, and quit buttons, but theyll probably be in the same style with the tethered logs and leaf or wood backgrounds.

Nicky Two-Vests

2009-09-03T12:39:00.002-04:00

Cast of characters I'm working on for a comic written and created by Brett Parmenter and TJ "Dave" Dimos. They're still in-progress but we wanted to line them up and see what they looked like together so far, make sure the colours weren't clashing and all that.

I need a hero

2009-09-01T17:59:00.002-04:00

More Dread Sarcopt stuff, it looks like we'll have the sprite running around in the environment and do most of the emoting with icons in the dialogue box. I'm sure there will be some specific bits of animation when she's interacting with other animals and using items, but for all intensive purposes this will be the bulk of her acting.

The sprite's a really simple three-frame walk cycle. It's kind of funny because it means walking forward and walking backward would be the same animation, so if you stare at her waddling in place you can make her moonwalk with your mind.

Of bunnies and blaster canons

2009-08-31T12:46:00.006-04:00

Final design for the bunny hero in Dread Sarcopt. I should have the walks for her sprite finished sometime soon. Just really simple three-frame ones, then all of her emoting will probably be done in character icons in the dialogue box.

Working on a comic pitch package for some buddies, so I should be able to show off the cast of that soon, but in the meantime here's a joke that started with the best intentions but went horribly wrong about halfway through when some friends and I were talking about drawing in different styles.

Hunt for the Dread Sarcopt

2009-08-25T03:22:00.006-04:00

Some character concept work for a point-and-click adventure game I'm doing with my buddy J.R. Hill, of Time for Cute.com.

It's the story of a bunny on a quest to save her friend from the giant fish monster who bit their boat in half. Along the way she can collect items or make friends with other animals and utilize their skills to help her on her quest, by land, sea, and air. J.R.'s doing the writing, music, and programming, I'm doing the design and animation stuff, and helping out with the brainstorming.

Science Fiction Double Feature

2009-08-21T14:08:00.005-04:00

I'm not sure if anyone in the western world doesn't have funtiems memories related to Rocky Horror Picture show. Be it sneaking around to watch it without getting caught when you're younger, awkwardly watching it with judgmental parents, awkwardly watching it with parents who are entirely too into it, being locked in an isolated woodland cabin with a handful of friends and no music other than the original soundtrack on vinyl, being mistaken for a hooker walking home from a live stage showing, tricking someone who doesn't know what to expect into watching it for the first time and seeing them freak out when Tim Curry pulls off his cape in Sweet Transvestite, or being tricked into seeing it for the first time without knowing what to expect and freaking out when Tim Curry pulls off his cape in Sweet Transvestite, everyone seems to have a Rocky Horror story to tell.

I've heard people complain that the movie is overrated and I think I'd have to agree to some extent. As much as I love it, the film on it's own probably can't live up to the hype that surrounds it. It's the Rocky Horror social and cultural phenomenon that makes it something special, though. I think that's the magic of cult movies, very little of the appeal comes from watching them alone in your basement but the real fun of the whole thing is spreading the movies on to your friends like some kind of underground cinema virus.

Now you're a man, a man man man

2009-08-18T16:52:00.006-04:00

I always wonder when I see people (okay, predominantly teenage girls) write stories about manly man characters acting completely emasculated. I guess swooning over staggeringly sensitive men who act like no interesting and competent human being ever would isn't unexpected for young women but why choose these dudes dripping with machismo? I suppose it's entirely possible to be attracted to the aesthetic of the macho soldier types but still be so unapologetically girly that they still want to see them acting like shy, sensitive Twilight stand-ins á la any novel with Fabio on the cover, but then you have the alarmingly popular trend of people who not only rewrite the character to act like a stammering, flower-picking ponce, but completely redo their aesthetic to make them young and long-haired with delicate-as-a-flower features. If you say you like Ganondorf, but in your head Ganondorf is a seventeen year old Japanese vampire prince with hair like a Kingdom hearts character, who goes to starbucks and gives Link butterfly kisses.... well... you don't really like Ganondorf at all.

At least I know that if I ever want to carve out a chunk of the teenage girl market for myself, I can sell fancomics about a 98 pound Marcus Fenix going to highschool and taking bubble baths. Hey, who am I to judge? Maybe all the face-poundings that came with dressing like an emo-goth-skater-hipster and writing sad poetry are what motivated Mr. Fenix to pick up a weight set and start carving out his way to Delta Sergeant.

That said, here is a picture of something unabashedly manly. consider it an apology from me to all of you on behalf of Girls On the Internet. Depending on how things go he might end up showing up in some comics, and I guarantee it will involve nothing but eating meat, blasting heavy metal, firing guns, and amassing harems of bikini models.

Terminators is serious bisons

2009-08-17T09:31:00.005-04:00

When I was watching Terminator 4 and John Connor was shaking up the resistance to break into Skynet and rescue the boy who would become his father, I thought the movie was getting ready to present us with Connor's grim realization that he is personally responsible for the entire war against the machines. If his father died and he was never born, then Skynet would have no reason to send the Terminator after him in the first place. With no original Terminator, there would be no arm left as evidence and ultimately Skynet would not be constructed at all.

I suppose it could be argued that if Skynet was worried about not having the chance to exist they could just send a whole Terminator back for proto-skynet scientists to dissect and put the machines ahead of the game. Though if that was the case, I'm not sure what's stopping them from doing it anyway.

Time travel is messy business.

Abdominal muscles and you

2009-08-10T03:01:00.005-04:00

Oh yeah, did up another one of those tutorials, this time on the musclebound male physique and how it relates to character design. You know... for those days when you have a huge cast of beefy dudes and you aren't sure how to vary them beyond giving them different hair cuts...

... I'M LOOKING AT YOU, STREET FIGHTER II: THE ANIMATED MOVIE...

It may seem like I'm ragging on bodybuilders here, but that's not the case, I think more people just need to consider what the difference between muscles for show and muscles for work is. Not every guy who can kick your ass is gonna have diamond cut abs.

This is also posted in one piece on my DA gallery for people who want to download it but don't feel like saving four different files.

More commissions

2009-08-10T02:58:00.001-04:00

Some other things wot I was paid monies for.

The only political leader who will never disappoint you

2009-07-30T04:51:00.004-04:00

Mike Haggar, star of the Capcom game Final Fight along with those other two jerks who weren't Mike Haggar.

commissions

2009-07-16T02:44:00.005-04:00

In no particular order, some things wot I was paid monies for.

THIS IS DELICIOUS

2009-06-08T05:19:00.002-04:00

Updates on the Bison bison, coded for MUGEN by the talented PotS and animated by myself.

I can't actually play the game because it won't work on my Mac, but people have been uploading videos with him to youtube so I still have the chance to see him in action.

If you'd like to play with him, just drop me a line. I've got the files and I can mail them along to you

And One More Thing

2009-06-01T15:41:00.008-04:00

Some miscellaneous updatables...

A character cast I've been developing recently. Not going to go into their details right now, though. I think I'll be saving that for something else.

Some item art for the currently in-progress Lurapets site. Keep on the look out for it to open to the public at www.lurapets.com

It just occurred to me that I haven't posted a still of this intro pan from my film anywhere, so here's one that you can look at to your heart's content.

Fuzzigator March

2009-06-01T00:26:00.004-04:00

Did this one up today for fun after I finished a bunch of Lurapets Items.

He compliments the Mudkip from last year.

BISONNNN

2009-05-31T02:23:00.003-04:00

I've been working on something else this week, but at a friend's encouragement I think I may actually hold onto it and use it to put together a pitch for the Nickelodeon International Open Mic thing. It's probably not a likely sell because it started as more of an Adult Swim show type of sense of humour, but it'd be good practice.

So instead here's a sample of a Bison bison I made yesterday for a friend of a friend to turn into a M.U.G.E.N. character.
The gif format kind of messed up the colours, he looks more like this but I hear he might be remapped anyway so it could be a moot point. I realized how much fun it is to blow off steam with these short cycle animations, you can just toss 'em out and be done and onto something else in a few hours.

Garbage day

2009-05-23T17:49:00.007-04:00

Does anyone remember Cosmic Osmo? I think that was my most cherished childhood video game. Something about the atmosphere of the whole thing. Even though it didn't have a goal beyond "explore this weird solar system" I think playing that was the most immersed in a game I can ever remeber being. I'm pretty sure I've seen games since where the whole goal is just to run around and try to find what you can click on, but none of them had the same... just... MASSIVE SCOPE that made Cosmic Osmo what it was.

I was thinking that a point-and-click game of this variety would be fun if a big part of it was devoted to exploring a world like that. Like set up the Suburbs, the Basements, the Sewers, and Factory or something and cram them full of Easter eggs that you could always go back and root around for. The conventional style of point and click adventuring would allow you barter, trick, and deduce your way into more areas to explore in, but there would be plenty going on in the different rooms aside from the standard gammut of tools to pick up. Maybe also make it sort of a choose-your-own-adventure idea, where sometimes you have to choose between opening a path to one area or to another one completely, then having multiple endings available depending on the choices you make.

Originally I was picturing the characters in my head to be something bland and serious business-y. Like, a totally neutral looking model of a human that could be the nameless avatar for people to apply themselves to. Then I started wondering what motivation a totally average Joe-Somebody would have for rooting around people's garbage and going into their houses in the first place and stumped myself. Then as soon as I started giving distinct features and personalities to the main characters, the idea for the story really started to click itself together. It could just be a game about two bag ladies who ventured into the suburbs on the night before the bulk trash pickup because they know that people in suburbs always throw out the best crap. Then all the weird stuff starts to go down, but the creatures bait them on with the promise of treasure at the end if they persevere.

Multiple endings for the game would give completely different ends to the story, like there could be one where the two of them manage to do right by the shadow creatures and are eventually lead to piles of gold and treasure, another where they become the crowned queens of the underground beasties, another where they wake up back in their cardboard alley hut assuming that the previous night's shenanigans were all just a dream, things along those lines.

It's entirely too easy to take contrasting characters like these and give them diametrically opposing personalities as well, but I'm not sure I like the idea of that. I don't think there needs to be "a friendly one and a crabby one" or a "smart on and a dumb one" or even any clear one in charge who cows the other around. I think they work well as two generally well-meaning people, the short bandana-clad one being a little ditzy and gullible while the taller one is more prone to stress and second guessing. So both have flaws that give them some personality, but they're on respectfully equal footing in the friendship.

New Summer Challenge time

2009-05-20T02:16:00.007-04:00

Okay, time to get my money's worth outta this here free blog.

Now that the film is done and I have nothing to keep my BEASTFAST ART PRODUCTION schedule up, my new goal for myself is to come up with a new concept every week and devote at least a page of concept art to it a day. I have other things I'm working on too, but this'll give me some focus instead of running in circles and feeling like I'm spinning my wheels. And maybe eventually I'll learn how to draw environments too. Either way, I should be posting an entry every day or two with new sketchbook pages and more ideavomit for whatever the story is.

This week's concept du jour is something Mel and I came up with while we were sneaking around in the middle of the night to pick at people's trash and find fun things worth scavenging. I did manage to find a Watchtower bible to rebind into a sweet sketchbook but THAT'S A STORY FOR ANOTHER DAY....

Anyway, the idea was for a 2D point and click adventure style game. The suggestion that a big cat-house thing out for collection might be haunted surned on the idea that you would have to rummage through trash to get spooky creatures hiding in the dark to help you. I went home to ponder over it some more and thought it would be cool to have a sort of Jacob's Ladder kind of alternate world going on, where you would basically start the game in a normal suburb at night. Eventually something a little out of the ordinary like a talking cat or something to that extent would up the weirdness. You would get keys into houses that would be empty but otherwise normal, and be able to find more peculiar things inside of them that would attract weirder shadowy creatures looking to strike up bargains out on the street. Eventually the interiors of the houses would start to get more shabby and decomposed, until finally they're just empty rooms with monsters waiting inside to talk to you.
This second page of stuff isn't really anything to get excited about, it's all VERY HEAVILY referenced from the 99Rooms (an awesome site I reccommend you check out if you are at all interested in artsy graffiti or urban decay). Anyway, very few things are cooler than spooky, delapidated buildings, while very few things are lamer than suburbssssss... so I got to thinking that the garbage picking could just be the start of the adventure. Like just the first world you have to explore. Eventually you could make your way into a basement that would just lead you through to catacombs of old factories, and that's where the real meat of the game takes place. I think it's something that would be akin to an urban version of Myst, where the environment is the most important aspect of the whole thing. Things shouldn't just be blatantly in-your-face blaugh scary Silent Hill style keeping you in the dark, but the whole world would be ore focused on making things seem just off enough to be unnerving. I'm thinking akin to the execution of Gorrister's level in I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.

So that's Sunday and Monday's art, the Tuesday Wednesday stuff will be up whenever it gets scanned and assembled and all that. I'll blab about it some more when I get my next post together.

The Chronicles of Turghot and Dragam

2009-04-29T12:35:00.001-04:00

The Chronicles of Turghot and Dragam from Kelly Turnbull on Vimeo.

Whelp, that's four months of my life.

Hello Blog

2009-04-17T18:47:00.004-04:00

How are you today? Long time no see.

So the film is done, I'm just waiting on an original score before I can post it online. I guess I have postable promo stuff I can flaunt in the meantime.

Lobster Boy there belongs to my pal Tracy over at http://romance-ment.blogspot.com/.

Turghot and Dragam Layouts

2009-01-12T20:41:00.003-05:00

Worked with that first scene a bit and did two of the other establishing shots. Each of the three locations has it's own texture set, with their apartment being assorted pieces of paper, the alley is all rust, and the park is different watercolour splashes I did up. I may still mess with the saturation in the park, I'm not sure it looks how I want it to yet.

Muscle Tutorial thinger

2009-01-03T04:07:00.005-05:00

This came about after talking to a friend who said he wanted to improve at art but didn't know how to break out of his rut and try something different. I started drawing this as a "this is the easiest way to draw a relatively satisfactory cartoon head" thing and it just ballooned out from there. It doesn't cover proportions and stuff like that because there are a billion billion tutorials and anatomy books that can tell you "a person is so many heads tall, a head is so many eyes wide, ect". I made this because no one else seemed to have a quick reference for origin and insertion points.

This has been up in my DA gallery for a while, but people have been asking for a printer-friendly version so I'm uploading the individual pages here.

Things to Consider - Don't lose the character through the Gimmick

2009-01-01T04:22:00.011-05:00

So I figure as long as long as I have a blog and opinions I could theoretically be putting on it, I may as well be like every other jerk on the internet pretend that people actually care about what I have to say. If any of you (the two people who watch this blog) disagree with what I'm saying, feel free to call me on it and I'll try to explain what I'm on about.

So anyway, first topic up for discussion;

This is my story about a psychic ninja farmboy who fights the Evil Dragonmancer King that's trying to take over the world.

Hey, that's great. Why should I care?

Something that's been grating on me more and more these days are people who write characters that are all gimmick and no... character. If you think of your character in your head and you can't envision them as the same person without all the bells and whistles, this is probably something you are guilty of yourself. So this evil dragonmancer fellow, why is he planning to take over the world? He just feels like being a bastard today? Has to assert his evilosity in case people were starting to forget about it?

If your character is defined by their magical powers, you haven't designed a character, you've designed a power. At this stage, you're on par with every remotely creative person with the ability to articulate their ideas to others. If you can't add some solid motivation to back that up, no one has any reason to care about your characters until you team up with a writer who can.

The secret to writing a character worth their salt is to consider Maslow's Pyramid of Human Needs;

This Pyramid represents the basic concerns of a human being in ascending order of triviality. The lowest levels of the pyramid represent the lowest common denominator that all people can identify with. As you climb the pyramid, problems will generally matter less.

The bottom of the pyramid represents life-or-death needs like food, water, shelter, air. No one in the world will ever question a character's motivation to not die. Matters of life and death will always interest an audience, so even a character who sits at a high level on the pyramid can be stripped down to a basic need for survival in the climax of a story.

Less important than air, but still of pretty high concern is safety. The feeling of unease walking home alone at night, fear of losing your job, and health issues are all fairly universally accepted as important motivations and can easily turn into life or death struggles in their own rite.

Love or belonging is a fairly light, inoffensive problem for a character to overcome. On it's own, it's a status more suited for comedy, as it lacks the drama of life-or-death struggles.

Respect amongst one's peers is in a similar boat, and is the last really relatable struggle you can put your character through. Self-actualization is more of an abstract idea that can lose your audience, as a character whose only struggle is to be the best at what they do is not terribly entertaining if they can't be stripped down to a more basic need in the pursuit of that goal.

Conflict is built out of characters gambling their place on the pyramid as they attempt to raise their status, and characters cannot climb to a higher level if the needs below them have not been met. For example, a character will not be worried about getting the girl if they are in the middle of drowning. The more a character stands to lose, the more an audience will care about them. Eboneezer Scrooge can't get the people to respect him until he opens up and makes the community love him. However, if he can't change his ways he'll die an early death, alone and uncared for with people looting his property.

People are quick to call "Mary Sue" on characters they feel are overpowered, but the problem with these characters is not in their copious volume of powers, it relates back to the pyramid as well. "Mary Sue" characters are generally boring because they're rich and everyone wants to be their friend and they have a smoking hot significant other and they're the best at what they do. They're already at the top, so their character has no room to arc. A protagonist can have rainbow hair, fourteen wings, and laser beams shooting from their purple eyes and still be interesting to read about if they have some kind of real human struggle in their life that the audience can connect with. John Arcudi's character Major Bummer is a handsome, indestructible superhero with inhuman strength, but he's fun to read about because he's always losing his jobs at fast food restaurants and VCR repair shops when his bosses are angry about having to clean up after his massively destructive battles at work.

The stories that stand the test of time to be told and retold through the generations are the stories that can be broken down to these basic struggles, because it will not matter if the protagonist is a psychic ninja farmboy, everyone will always be able to understand what they are going through. You can strip them of their powers, put them anywhere in the timestream, and they will always be the same character at heart. Fairytales and fables are especially good examples of this.

In the story of Beauty and the Beast for example, it does not matter at all - AT ALL - that the beast is a monster. What the audience relates to is a character who needs to find someone to love to ascend to a level of esteem and self-worth who meets a girl that is also looking for a sense of belonging. Her father falls into a struggle of security, so she leaves and in turn puts the beast character into a life or death situation. People will always understand and relate to this no matter what setting you drop the characters in. This is why Disney traditionally bases their movies off of fairytales, mythology and popular books, the stories have already proven their worth. It doesn't matter if Blackbeard is a cyborg, Robin Hood is a fox, or William Sikes is a new York Loan Shark, the character is still the same as they ever were.

This is a clip from the 1973 Jesus Christ Superstar starring Ted Neely and Carl Anderson as Jesus and Judas.

This song is about the flagship figure of the Christian religion, but it has nothing to do with his connection to God or the miracles he's performed. This song is about two friends, one of whom is concerned that the other is letting his ego get dangerously over inflated. The story of Lancelot and Guinivere is that of a man sleeping with his boss's wife. Ganondorf is a dignitary who goes power hungry and loses sight of the positive intentions he started out with. Princess Leia is the uptown girl who falls for a backstreet guy.

What it basically comes down to is that writing fantasy stories is like drawing fantasy creatures. Dragons may not exist, but people can tell if they are believable or "realistic" based on how relatable they are to real animals. In the exact same way, the stories that stick around are the ones people can relate to real situations. Frills are the spice that draw people in, but it's not worth the effort if you don't have the meat to put them on.

Old fashoined barbarian yuletide

2008-12-24T04:14:00.004-05:00

Merry Christmas, folks.

Turghot and Dragam layout stuff

2008-12-18T21:45:00.002-05:00

Testing out the colouring style I plan on using in my film. I'd kind of like to get some more contrast in there somehow, but I'm thinking that this is going to be the general look of it.

Three Reasons I've been bad about updating for the past year or so

2008-12-13T05:18:00.004-05:00

Sorry this blog has been going so stagnant lately. It's not that I haven't been keeping myself busy, so here's what's been sponging up my time for the past year.

1) The Celestial Ox:

Third year group film I was a part of last year. I did about a third of the boards a few layouts and about 45 seconds or so of animation. The scene where he adjusts the shell mic thing, the scene where he delivers the message and everyone cheers, and the from where he starts pulling the cart to the end were all my doing.

2) The Colosseum

Colosseum Audition: Page 1 by *Coelasquid on deviant ART

Comic tournament I joined at the end of last summer on DeviantArt. 32 people each submit a couple of their own original characters, then are matched up against each other in five rounds of elimination. Each round comes with a prompt for venue and lasts about 2 - 4 weeks, depending on how late in the game it is. The whole comic is scripted and drawn within that time, so it's an interesting way to work. You're never sure how much longer you're going to last before you get eliminated or what prompt and charcaters you'll have to work with in the next round, so you have to be careful in judging how much of your story you want to tell.

I managed to make it up until the last round (which is still being judged at the moment), so I was fortunate enough to get the chance to tell my whole story. The final count ended up at 105 pages in total, so I officially managed to draw a graphic novel in seven months of free time. The whole story is collected in it's own gallery here.

3) The Chronicles of Turghot and Dragam

Fourth year thesis film I'm working on this year for school. Hopefully to be finished by April. I'm just getting into the layout/rough animation phase of the project, so I'll hopefully have some more stuff to post soon.

The Usual Suspects

2008-07-23T18:18:00.004-04:00

Some characters for story I'd really like to try making a webcomic out of after I gradutate and know I'm gonna have some free time.

3rd Year Films Trailer

2008-04-22T02:14:00.001-04:00

WATCH IT AND BE AMAZED!

Still Alive

2008-01-14T08:37:00.000-05:00

Again, been neglecting this place and posting most of my stuff on DA. Here's some stuff just to show I still love this li'l ol' blaug. Oh, and if you have time, check out the link I added on the side to Jim Smith's blog as I have recently fallen completely in love with his stuff.

Ivan Drago, the Terminator, and Robocop fighting zombies. Forgive me, this is a girlish fantasy of mine.

Christmas card type thing I did. Some characters from a comic project I sparodically work on. Honestly, I just really badly wanted to draw a 1957 Ford Thunderbird.

Jetpack Viking challenging the Victorian nobleman Chaptor to a bout of fisticuffs while Agnes,the loyal sidekick looks on.

Those fellows I used in my Walk and Run animation last year, now in living colour.

Resident Evil fanart. Someone suggested the joke to me and it was too amazing to pass up.

Barbarians and some other things

2007-11-30T12:46:00.000-05:00

Some fourth year film ideas and ugly doodles of rock stars for no particular reason.

Not a slasher

2007-11-28T19:21:00.000-05:00

Drawing people getting hit in the face is a lot of fun.

Layouts

2007-11-23T23:57:00.001-05:00

Took a break from animating to get those layouts taken care of. This isn't the final composition that the shots are going to have, I just made all of them a few field sizes bigger than was necessary to give myself some wiggle room.

I totally used to work here.

Action Analysis Rough Animation

2007-11-16T04:34:00.000-05:00

Words can't even begin to describe the number of issues I have with this right now. Every time I watch it I hate it a little more. Still, uploading it so that my parents and the four other people who watch this blog can see the progress so far.

I think this is the maximum amout of animation I can put out in a week and a half, I'm totally running on fumes right now. Ah well, time to recover, tweak things, and start cleaning stuff up.

Action Analysis Scn1 test

2007-11-08T02:42:00.000-05:00

This is what I can do in two days worth of free time.

woo.... Six more scenes to go.

More Slashers

2007-10-19T07:36:00.000-04:00

Action Analysis Storyboard

2007-10-08T13:33:00.001-04:00

Storyboard for the Action Analysis Assignment. Figured I'd work clean to save some time for myself when when I start doing the layouts.

Action Analysis Concept stuff

2007-10-01T01:55:00.000-04:00

So basically I stopped posting stuff here over the summer because I realized that with the amount of art I was making I was probably going to run down my blogger storage space a fair piece. If you want to see the stuff I've been working on for the past four months, most of it is up on my DA Gallery. Some of it might still make it up here, but I want to keep the focus of this page more on my animation-related endavours.

Some concept stuff for a 30-second action analysis animation I'm doing for school. Slasher dude is hanging out in an industrial basement. He hears a strange sound so he sneaks off to investigate. In the process of slinking around, he bumps into your token towel-clad horror movie bimbo, jumps in fright, takes a moment to catch his breath, and cautions her to cover up because "there are psychos out there."

2007-05-21T02:47:00.000-04:00

And In contrast to the scribbly stuff, some of the finished art I've done in the past couple weeks as well.

I watched every episode of the Maxx one night and decided that he's my absolute favourite superpowered hobo ever. That line in the first episode where he complains about bubble bath was too cute.

Lobo crossed over with Brock Samson. By far the manliest being conceivable.

Big gray musclebound gypsy thing, original character of mine. Did this over my breaks at work during the first week to play with their fancy tablet.

More original characters, done for a bi-weekly themed drawing group. The theme was "struggle"and I just wanted to throw something silly in with all the serious angsty art the subject was inpiring.

Voltron made of real lions for a trade with Thweatted.

Comic doodles

2007-05-21T02:10:00.000-04:00

I never stop doodling. Ever. The stuff here is just the tip of the iceburg as far as what I've drawn since I got home goes. Everything here's comic-related, most are jokes, some of are requests. None of them took longer than about 45 minutes to an hour.

Hopefully there's something to entertain everybody here.

Happy Mother's Day

2007-05-12T03:31:00.000-04:00

You should bring home a big gray leather-clad biker dude to show her just just to see what happens.

Teach Yourself Strata!

2007-05-01T16:59:00.000-04:00

So this is what I spent all day at work doing. I swear to God, this program makes me miss Maya so much. Please excuse terrible skinning job... that was as good as I could get it without doing horrible things to the computer out of frustration. And it's a really nice Mac, so I don't want to hurt it.

Apparently this is the software they used to make Myst. Or so I hear.

End of the Year

2007-04-20T14:22:00.000-04:00

That's right folks! School just got out and I haven't slept real sleep since I woke up on Tuesday morning! Here's a smattering of the stuff that's been zombifying me over the past week.

Face I did in Maya for Digital modelling. It's the bad guy from my Western storyboard sans hair. Made him look kind of like Lex Luthor...

Background for my Muzzle/beak animation done for painting class. Kinda makes me want to get it all cleaned up and coloured just to see how it would look...

Panning layout for painting class. It was intended for us to do our diagonal pan for Johnny's class, but I'd already handed that in, so I just redid a pan I did for first year.

The hero from the old New Zealand-ish zombie movie "Braindead." He was kind of cute in an awkward, skinny, hawk-nosed Englishman-y kind of way. Not for any classes, I was just trying to stay awake until Painting started.

Dolph... just because I like drawing him.

Tank Girl and Lobo

2007-04-14T22:30:00.000-04:00

Say cheese.

This is Sparta

2007-04-13T00:04:00.000-04:00

'Cause it's not like I had real work to do this week, or anything like that.

Beak & Muzzle semi-cleaned up

2007-04-12T13:01:00.000-04:00

I can die now.

Combo Art 2

2007-04-09T01:36:00.000-04:00

Pirate Jedi in honour of my good buddy Cap'n Will.

Dancing Reverse Mermaids in bacon skirts as is relevent to Tracy's interests.

Ravenmoose wolftaur eating a rabbit because I miss Manitoba.

Seoras Family

2007-04-08T17:16:00.000-04:00

Commissioned stuff for Rametarin on DA. Original characters of his for a monthly webcomic he's trying to get off the ground.

Beak Sync

2007-03-31T02:09:00.000-04:00

Posting the bird on his own because the crocodile got a solo clip too. I'll probably post the two of them together sometime within the next couple weeks.

Combo Art 1

2007-03-24T13:24:00.000-04:00

Sometimes when I feel like the style or subject matter of my art is getting stale, I brainstorm things that my friends like and combine two of the themes together into one.

Ninja Robot, drawn in honour of Igor's love for all things both mechanical and stealthy.

Cowboy of Barbaria for Steve and his affinity for Westerns and burly, axe-weilding Norsemen.

I guess as long as I'm uploading art that I've done for other people, I may as well throw up this dragon that I did for Adam last semester.

Just some more fun stuff

2007-03-19T07:23:00.000-04:00

Escaflowne doodle, Folken with his grrlz.

Their couch is melting...

Dolph Lundgren and Brandon Lee co-star as the worst cops in the history of everything.

"Damn, Huritt. I can't believe you're not a girl. You so fiiiiine."

... If you saw Hedwig you'd think it was funny.

Guess who my favourite of my four storyboard characters was.

Western Storyboard

2007-03-13T04:53:00.000-04:00

Storyboard assignment in which we had to create a classical story with a hero, villain, love interest, and comic relief set in either a Medieval, Victorian, or Western era. The storyboard was supposed to be 30 - 40 panels long, showing one sequence of the story as a whole. It also had to take place in a town, prominently feature a stagecoach, and include a diagonal pan.

My story was more or less written in an MSN chat one night between some friends and I as a joke. Obviously it's been tweaked a bit since the original concept (wherein Brokeback, Hedwig, and Some Like it Hot jokes were plentiful, the cowboy was the love interest, and the hero's name was "Rolls With White Man"), but I'd like to think that it's still kind of funny.

Muzzle Sync

2007-02-23T02:20:00.000-05:00

Now whenever I listen to any song from Avenue Q with Rod and Nicky singing, all I can see in my head are my crocodile and plover bird.

He's going to be paired up with the bird when I animate it a couple weeks from now.

Human Lip Sync

2007-02-13T03:08:00.000-05:00

After listening to Jack Nicholson say "I'm not gonna hurt'cha!" over and over again, several hundred times at varying speeds I have to say, I completely understand this character's motivation.

Playing With Underpainting

2007-02-04T01:37:00.000-05:00

Felt inspired by the concept art from the Bouncer and decided to give underpainting with crazy vivid colours a try. Some gypsy guy, Iggy Pop, and Chad from Bleach, respectively.

Corpse Room Sketches

2007-01-28T19:29:00.000-05:00

January 25th was International Draw Severed Human Body Parts in Jars Day. I was out there celebrating, where were you?

Skelefaunidealie

2007-01-21T16:06:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure exactly what's happenning there either. Just saw Pan's Labyrinth and I'm riding high on all this inspiration I don't have the skill to utilize well.

Gotta force myself to learn how to make dynamic, interesting compositions.

Twilight Princess Art

2007-01-02T01:00:00.000-05:00

My little Brother got Twilight Princess for Christmas and knowing how much of a fan I am, decided that he would only play while I was around and beat the entire game before I leave so that I could see the final battle against Ganondorf. To celebrate him finishing it today, here's a stack of all the art I've done since he started.

Renado with Ooccoo. Renado's great, it's like someone just took all the qualities I like to draw and mashed them into one character. That said, it's not a great drawing of him, couldn't think of anything interesting to do. I just wanted an excuse to draw Ooccoo, she's as bizarre as you can get and still be completely adorable.

And just 'cause I wouldn't be the Kelly you all know and love without Ganondorf cheesecake, have some Ganondorf cheesecake. I'm trying to force myself to try different colouring styles, and this was like pulling teeth. I dunno, I barely got it this finished before I just got sick of it and decided it was as done as it was ever going to get. I'm thinking of using the lineart to do a better version sometime in the future.

I love love LOVE Ooccoo. She has that stubbly little fluffy chicken body and she gobbles when she runs... She's weird looking, but she's still the cutest little alien-headed chicken harpy I've ever seen.

Dag, yo. For a little three-foot imp thing Midna's got some serious boo-tay.

... Just wanted to draw Midna and had to come up with something to do with all the empty space...

Yeah... the postman was a fun guy.

New batch of tablet art

2006-12-22T13:17:00.000-05:00

Just so you guys don't think I'm slacking off over the break. Did these since I got back, all on the tablet in photoshop, most of them this morning.

Character belongs to Livejournal's Rantingmule. I signed up for a character art exchange thing and got him this month. It was fun to draw, he's supposed to be this muscular, shaggy-haired, scarred, tattooed junkie, so basically the sort of thing I always draw when I'm left to my own devices. I had higher hopes for this picture, but it refused to turn out the way I wanted... so, meh. Did it over the course of an evening or two between bouts of sickly napping.

House/Wilson stuff, because someone told me they wanted to see more of it. And if someone tells me to draw something, it's usually pretty likely I'll draw it for them. Spent about twenty minutes on it.

Vega's great, he's my favourite Street Fighter character. I would (.... /have...) bought the games entirely for his presence in them. Played with the perspective in this one, but wasn't overly satisfied with the results. Meddled with the anatomy to the point where his abs kind of started to pudge out. I dunno, despite all that I'm not overly offended by the end product. About an hour or so of doodling this morning while I watched inane talk shows on CTV.

People say I should draw more women, so I tried my hand at one of those pink haired Elfen Lied things that always seem to be having their limbs torn off. Tinkered with it for a few hours but ultimately got bored of it and left it as it was.
On that note, the cartoon wasn't bad. Kind of an overly-cutesy style for a cartoon about people being torn limb from limb, but meh. I have to say I got a kick out of the way the character's horns changed dimensions every time they moved their heads, though.

Felt like drawing Sailor Moon.

Felt like making her look less... Aryan...

Started this late last night sometime, finished early this morning.

Bryan said he likes Harley, so I drew Harley.

Maybe half an hour of doodling sometime this morning. After Sailor Moon, before Vega.

So the moral of this story is, catch me in the right mood and suggest something to me, chances are I'll draw it for you. Also, even when completely incapacitated by illness I still can't stop drawing.

I should force myself to be more like Igor and experiment with digital painting instead of just doing the same sort of stuff over and over again. Gotta let go of those inhibitions, just get messy and figure things out.

Expression Change

2006-12-16T02:21:00.000-05:00

Last project of the year, I'm animating whatever I want. Just big tough men beatin' each other up and acting like sucks. Yeah. That held my attention long enough to keep me awake for 80 straight hours.

New Links, Doodles

2006-12-07T03:51:00.000-05:00

Hey! We're getting into the holiday season, aren't we? Time to start celebrating, Squiddums style!

And by that, I mean draw a scribbly, unfinished picture of two men groping each other and put it on the internet! Add a sprig of what could pass off as holly for extra festive appeal.

Aww, I want it to be Christmas time.

Went about reshuffling my links. I made a list for sites our instructors have, webcomics I like, and general interest stuff that would be separate from the fellow student stuff. I stuck a link to my livejournal up since this place is just for art and I tend to post a lot of jokes I find, amusing flash cartoons, Youtube links and the like there.

So far I've managed to track down Mayerson's blog and Emslie's online portfolio, but if anyone knows of sites any of our other instructors have I'd much appreciate links. The Unofficial Animation Archive is great because it's full of model sheets. If you know any needy first years working on their head rotation assignments, it's a good place to send them. Mad Creator Productions is the illustrator Gris Grimly's site, who is one of my favourite artists. As I track down sites for them I'm hoping to build up a good crop of links to internet galleries for artists I like there (By the way, if anyone knows of a website devoted to Stephen Gammel, I would love you forever if you passed on the link). The Supernatural Image Board is kind of cheesy, but it's a great place to track down spooky reference photos. 99Rooms is there for the same reason, but it's much more artistically done as well as entertaining. Maybe a bit unnerving if you visit it late at night, alone, in the dark.... Retro Junk is a fun site for the nostalgia value.

Other than that, I just stuck up a couple webcomics I enjoy. Girls With Slingshots and Ugly Hill are pretty standard gag strips. Red Meat is made from a series of cut-and-pasted comic templates with different text. A little like Dinosaur comics except far more disturbing. Perfect Stars is a marker-drawn art deco style strip.

Now, as long as I'm updating this thing I may as well add some art. Not much to show off at the moment, besides some scribbly notebook doodles.

Fuzzy Llama thing, Billy Idol and Iggy Pop as five AM dictates I should draw them, and a fish guy I started that isn't really going anywhere. Just so people know I'm still drawing.

Cranberries

2006-12-01T02:38:00.000-05:00

My story for storyboarding class. Depending on how the leica turns out, I may post that here next week, but for now here are the drawings I used in my pitch a couple weeks ago.

Cranberries is the heartwarming tale of a girl and her zombie, who unintentionally ended up looking kind of like Nemesis if he really let himself go.We open with the little girl standing outside a TV salesplace of sorts, watching as the newscaster warns people that the zombie scourge has put the public on red alert.

Hearing footsteps behind her, she turns around to find herself face-to-.... belt buckle with a hulking tank-of-a-zombie.

Lucky for her he's a friendly zombie! The two go off to find a park to play at somewhere.

Unfortunately, the zombie plays too rough for the little girl, and she ends of on the bad end of many unfortunate playground mishaps. She tells off the zombie and sends him away, not wanting to be his friend anymore. He leaves, alone and dejected.

The zombie turns back to look at her one last time and sees that she is about to be hit by a truck! He runs into the road and pushes her out of the way just in the nick of time!

Unfortunately, zombies are not made of tough stuff. The zombie is left as a gooey pile of organs on the pavement. The little girl cries for the loss of her friend, but the trucker shows up with an idea...

Cut back to the park later that day. The little girl os on the swingset with the zombie, wrapped up in duct tape, pushing her. Fade to black and happy ending and all that jazz.

Awww.

Walk and Run

2006-11-30T01:24:00.001-05:00

I think the sacks-with-dollar-signs on them really enhance the "Space Bandit" image.

In thec yborg-driven future they will have no need for backgrounds.

Contrasting Characters

2006-11-13T07:49:00.000-05:00

Characters I designed for the walk-and-run cycle animation assignment due at the end of the month.

ASOMO, an ex-space pirate who decided he was too much of a softie to make it as a bad guy and decided to persue a career as a bounty hunter. In his decidedly more organic days, ASOMO was revered as the best at what he did and known for always successfully apprehending the criminals he was sent after. However, after squaring off against an exceptionally skilled group of space-bandits and coming up short every time, he heard word that the Haunda corporation was in the midst of trying to develop the perfect cyborg and volunteered his own body in hopes that this would give him the edge he needed. Tragedy struck when a rival corporation beat them to the chase and the funding to the ASOMO project was cut. ASOMO himself was left unfinished, but still fully functioning and able to return to his previous life. He still retains his cheerful disposition and strong sense of duty despite the way things turned out for him and remains on the lookout for the band of outlaws he was never able to catch.

Before he was redesigned into the triumph of technology he is today, BANDIX was the entirely human leader of a gang of notorious space-bandits. Able to slip away from even the likes of the greatest of the intergalactic police and bounty hunters of his day, BANDIX grew worried to hear word of Haunda's ASOMO project. Ever the opportunist, he schemed to send one of his best men to pose as an employee of Haunda and leak their secrets to a rival company, one which he had donated his own body to. When the BANDIX cyborg was completed first, Haunda was hit hard financially and the ASOMO project was dropped.

Despite all of his formidable upgrades and sabotage of ASOMO, BANDIX still finds that he has to keep on his toes to avoid capture at the hands of his worthy and entirely capable opponent.

Dunno why I did this much backstory for what's going to end up being ten seconds of animation... just got bored, I guess....

Scribblehs

2006-11-09T16:20:00.000-05:00

Couple of tablet doodles, because those are fun. Top one is of Ganondorf turning into his werepiggy form that I started this morning to kill time, bottom one is the Centipede from James and the Giant Peach that I did over the weekend or something.

Man, was that guy the coolest anthropomorphic centipede ever devised or what?

Weight Lift & Toss

2006-10-31T07:56:00.000-05:00

Chester McZombiepants returns home only to find that poor groundskeeping has rendered his grave utterly inaccessable. Mild inconveniance ensues.

Happy Halloween, by the way.

2006-10-21T18:25:00.000-04:00

Started a blog 'cause all the cool people have one. Figure I'll just use this as a dumping ground for character designs and other miscellanious school junk.

Stuff to come when I have stuff to show.