Old Project Roundup: Mysteriously Sporty Characters

Next project from down-the-back-of-my-sofa: an early-stage pitch I did last year, for some sporty characters. I can't go into much detail about this project, or the client, but here are some preliminary roughs which never got to see the light of day...

I was hoping to see these characters animated with a mixture of gloopy/fizzy CG and jerky traditional animation (for the facial expressions) and running, jumping and hurdling around live-action filmed environments, leaving colour and animation in their wake.

Except they didn't, because they fell over at the first hurdle and some other much shinier characters sprinted past them. Ah well.

Branson Pickle

I don't understand why so many of my doodles turn out looking like millionaire "playboy" Richard Branson. It's quite disturbing.

Especially with the absence of any clothes.

Shunted

The opening night of ArtInIndustry was an amazing success. People came, people looked, people made deformed sockmonkey monsters, people got drunk, admiring glances were made, music was played, people watched some episodes of my new Grip Wrench thing, and we got trapped in a lift with a fisherman and a copy of the London AtoZ.

 

And the best thing is, it's still on for another 3 days. So get yourself down there tonight, or friday or saturday night. I'm having a night off tonight, but I'll be back tomorrow to deface faces, and attack arms with my marker pens. Just like in this wonky photo:

Grip Wrench seemed to go down well, with the auidence laughing, and mainly at the bits that were supposed to be funny. Although many said I have a sick and diseased mind, and I should be put to sleep before I damage the world any more.

There was loads of beutiful artwork to see, although I need to look at it all again as I got completely caught up in Nickys Making Things Club workshop last night. It was quite surreal to see so many people in a club all sitting on sofas sewing and making. My attempts at drunken sewing led to all the eyes falling off our attempt at making sock monster conjoined twins, thankfully I had a talented seamstress to patch them up again before the blinded pair stumbled into box of pins.

Jaypeg got some better photos of this little corner of craftiness. And I'm sure there will be more turning up on the internets soon. Although, of course, it would be much better to get down there and see for yourself, and join in..

ArtInIndustry

Tipi doodled

Thanks everyone that came along on Sunday to Stokefest, and to all those that offered encouragement while I carried on doodling with what felt like a broken hand. It was a great day: hot sun, cold beer, felt-tip pens, bikinis and spray paint. Thats what I call a good day.

Here's some of my doodling on the tipi. More photos on Facebook, and a few are starting to turn up on Flickr when I did a search earlier. 

It's hopefully going to have some more work done on it this week and then the final piece will be displayed in a exhibition very soon, watch this space..

Rexboxhornypants:

A glimpse of SteakZombies panel alongside mine:

Time to pack up and find a pub:

Unitard

I knew my latest episode of Grip Wrench needed a unicorn scene, so during the weekend started sketching some whilst sunbathing, which brought on much amusement from my lazing-around-in-the-sunshine companion. I couldn't see what was funny until she pointed out I drew my unicorns with the horn on the end of the nose, rather than on the forehead.

(the other unicorn on that page was drawn after being shown the error of my ways)

I'd never thought about this before, and had always drawn them that way. I must have been been the laughing stock of the Fantasy Arts Guild. I don't know if they have a Guild, but I expect they do, and spend many a fun-filled evening in the tavern ordering flagons of ale from the "barkeep" and taking turns with the Cloak of Invisibility(+3). I better make sure I don't draw my dwarves too tall or my dragons with fur or I'll get punched on the nose by invisible assailant smelling of Real Ale.

Anyway, thanks to her input I've managed to draw a proper Unicorn now. Here's the final result which I'm currently animating. Horses (and horses with mythical horns) are a nightmare to animate, but a nice challenge.

Funny how all girls, no matter if they are artistic or not, seem to be able to draw perfect horses, when its the one thing that most artists say are particularly hard to draw. I guess it comes from huge amounts of doodling in the back of school-books before discovering they were more interested in having a boy than a pony.

BAD-EGG

Todays egg-based theme inspired me to doodle a egg wrestler. He's warped from years of performance-enhancing drugs, with a bulletproof shell and yolk-stained underpants:

Computer Arts Projects 102

Something landed on my doormat this morning, or at least the patch of wooden floor where I should have a doormat. Issue 102 of Computer Arts Projects. It's got a tutorial by me in it, showing how to make huge stompy monsters stomp around in a monsterious manner. Here's a preview, showing the illustration I did to do with it:



Its a really interesting issue, all based around character design, and purdy cover by Tado.
Plus my friend Jules has got a great illustration in there too.