Storybeats, Boards, Leica... The Whole Thing!

Here's my entire storyboarding project for the second half of first semester.  This story went through lots of revisions along the way.  Several different people came up with fun ideas for this story to help it along, which is how I found out that storyboarding really is a group effort.  Had it not been for different people's input, I would have settled for simple ideas much more easily instead of trying to come up with more creative/fun ways of telling the story.  Anyway, I'm really starting to ramble, so here's the whole process:

Character Lineup

Story Beats

Storyboards

And finally, the leica reel

I made a few final revisions for the leica reel.  I also added in a gradient sky in each of the panels in order for the white army to read a little more clearly, but it also helped to establish a more overall mood.  I would have loved to add in even a few more fights for the pawn to avoid, but I simply didn't have the time.  Alright, that's all I have for now, hope you enjoy!

Caricatures and... Double Layout!

Sorry that it's been a while since I've posted.  First semester just ended yesterday and it was super-busy!  Anyway, I have a ton of things to post, so I'll start with these two assignments.  I already combined character design and layout in my previous post, so why not do it again?

The caricatures were fun to work on.  I kind of began to get into a rhythm as I did more and more of these, and it comes as no surprise that I like my later caricatures more than my earlier ones.  I really hope to do more of these, because it's helping me a lot in terms of character design.  Okay, here we go:

And these are for our final layout assignments.  I choose to do my own environments for this one.  It was fun to work on this, although I did not have as much time to spend on these as I wanted to.  I'm still happy with the way it turned out though.  The last three images are related to one of the first two images.

More final assignments to come soon!

Layout or Character Design. No... Both!

Yay!  Another combined post!  So this is both layout and character design.  They were both done a while ago already, but I haven't had the chance to upload them yet, so here goes.

I was not able to get as much rendering done one these as possible, and I even with I had a little bit more time to make certain things stand out a bit more, like the sails of the ship or the characters nearby (alas, a 90% marker has limits).  I had fun with the waves though.  Still not sure if I like them, but I think they're a step in the right direction.  As for the characters... no structure.  Enough said.  Well then, onto character design, shall we?

Oh hey, look!  I forgot to add the eye-lashes on the first pose of the girl!  Oh well, minor issue.  One of these will be used for my character expression animation (most likely the guy).  These were fun to work on, but here too, I wish I had the chance to spend a little bit more time on these.  Deadlines are deadlines though, so this is what I got.  Alrighty, busy last two weeks!

Walk, Run and...

... a ridiculously rough interaction.

Not to mention, an interaction that turned out nothing like I imagined it to be.

Regardless, I'm happy with the way the walk and the run turned out.  The interaction was something I had only a limited amount of time for, and I straight-ahead animated it as opposed to the usual key-framing and such.  It shows, but oh well.  I hope you like the walk and the run though, since it was interesting to work on them!

On a side note, I'm happy to say that I finished reading the first volume of Drawn to Life, by Walt Stanchfield.  Such, SUCH a great book!  Highly recommended!

More Rats!

Yes, I have even more rats to show you guys!  Basically I did this painting of a sewer.  And what do you find in sewers?  Hmm, lizards, crocodiles, bats?

No.  Rats.

Figured I hadn't done enough of those yet lately, so here are some more.  The painting assignment, by the way, was to paint an interior.  So I went with a sewer after lots and lots of scribbly thumbnails.  I painted it with gouache, again, because I love the way gouache looks in the end (although oil paint probably has my favourite finished look).  Hope you like it!

I'll try to stay away from rats for a while :)

Animals and Characters... in One Post!

Yup, I'm combining yet another post!  These are drawings from the Royal Winter Fair trip from this semester.  The requirements for this year's work that had to be submitted was much less than last year's, although I still drew a lot of gestures that I didn't end up using.  Anyway, here are the drawings from this year's trip, both gestures and studies:

And here is character design from a couple of weeks ago (forgot to scan it before submitting it then).  I had a lot of fun with this assignment and really wanted to do well on it.  Did lots of studies and research thingies.  It actually took me the majority of the reading week to come up with the poses.  Some I'm more happy with than others, but overall I like the outcome :)

I want to learn how to draw fabric!

Lively Layout

So yeah, this post has both life drawing and layout in it.  Yay!  A lot of the life drawing is from the first quarter of second year's first semester (nice and confusing).  I don't have too much to say for the introduction, so here goes!

These pretty much go up from 30 seconds to 10 minute poses.  Some of these I like more than others, but it's always good to see what parts of the body I still need to improve on (everything, haha!).

This is what happens when you get one of those evil metal pieces in your Conte sticks.  They're really hard to get out, and they will probably ruin a page of newsprint or three in the process... Blah!

These are all from the Royal Ontario Museum!  The first page is gestures, ranging from 10 to 15 minutes in length.  The middle one is a study which took me... three hours?  And then the addition of three muscles on top is what the third image is.  Neat assignment!

I drew a horse!  I had a limited amount of time for this one, since I had to work between classes which meant I had to leave my elective class early.  The teacher was okay with that though, so all went well :)  Sorry for the bad cellphone-camera quality on this one: it's the best I could do before submitting the drawing.

And now for layout!  Basically, throughout the semester so far, our (awesome) layout teacher has assigned us to draw chairs and cars.  Eventually we also had to add characters to these chairs and cars.  Here's a compilation of all the drawings I did.  Some are better than others, so there's always room for improvement!

And finally, our first "official" layout assignment of the year, for which had to take three of four given thumbnails, research them and draw them at a larger, more refined scale.  After cleaning the drawings up, we rendered them with markers.  I haven't touched markers for several years (and even before that, I only really used them once or twice), but it was actually really nice to do!  Anyway, I hope you like 'm!

And that's all for today!  I finished another character design assignment as well, but I haven't had the chance to scan those yet, and they're currently with the teacher.  I have copies of the rough versions which I can use for referencing my animation though, so all should be good there.  Have a good day, all of you!