In-Class: Mickey and Pluto

Viktor the Bat #1: Initial Design

 

Viktor was a working-class, office-dwelling vampire in-hiding. Since he had spent so many years repressing his powers, he got himself stuck as a vampire bat one late night while working overtime for a client. Now that his secret is out, he must work late night after late night in order to keep his job. He is sleepy, clumsy, shy, and quietly eccentric. He is also driven, hard-working, and helpful.

This is the first character design for this class. I once had a conversation with some fellow strange art-school friends about the bats that flew around our giant ART sign at night. We discussed the necessity of an urban legend regarding students that never slept enough while attending school would inevitably turn into vampire bats and fly around campus's sign for the rest of eternity. This character started more so as an Vampire-art student who pulled one too many all-nighters. Due to his hip vegetarianism, he never had enough energy to change back into his more human-friendly form. After more drawings, I felt more attracted to getting him out of the same setting I was in and into a work environment - picturing a bat trying to do office work among normal, much taller human beings seems very funny to me.

Spheres on Spheres

Life-Drawing Week 1: Welcome Fest

CCAD's Welcome Fest was this Friday - I stuck around for a bit so I could draw some of the bands jamming as well as some people getting their dance on. These are the first life-drawings I've done in this sketchbook, but I did some more last week which I will post on my other blog. When I took Cafe Sketch last fall, I had to keep up with a similar type of life-drawing blog.

Space Puppy Thumbnail Revamp

This first week of school was seriously fantastic. Character Design is my new favorite class, I couldn't be more excited about Porfolio, and I should be brewing up something fun in Interactive Design... this year should be fun!

This week I had the chance to talk to my Animation II, III and now Character Design professor about these new thumbnail boards I worked on the last few weeks of summer (after I finished Hardcow).  I did my best to really think some things I'd overlooked through as far as continuity of shots and layouts, but my teacher was able to point out some issues I'd missed even after this new pass.

For anyone who doesn't want to know the ending, obviously, beware of the spoilers (I'm looking at you, mom)!

Some of the critiques I got were to watch the battle flow continuity from left to right. I got some pointers about keeping the ship's crash in the beginning more funny/realistic by having the duo fall down and have all of their ship be upside-down, changing the shot when the alien wave is revealed, adding a POV shot of the puppy zapping the aliens, adding a scary mouth shot of the boss, adding more funny cat things and lots of more places to add anticipation. After some more thumbnails, I will be ready to do some full-scaled layouts and get some backgrounds brewing. I hope to have a finished animatic on it's way (here's my old one)(here are my initial thumbnails)!

Weapons of Mass Creation 4 - Sketchy Notes

A few Saturdays ago Jon and I headed up to Cleveland for Weapons of Mass Creation. It was a totally worthwhile experience - not only did I get lots of free stickers out of it, but I got a wave of motivation just in time for senior year. We were listening to speeches from design professionals all day!

The speech that spoke to me the most was by Alonzo Felix (the first page of notes here). He described how design is related to things such as architecture, food, film-making, and music. In regards to music, he mentioned a quote by an improv Jazz musician: "Music doesn't come from music, that's like saying babies come from babies." He related it back to design (and to art as a whole, for that matter) - we are constantly influenced by all that we experience, even more importantly, those experiences that are separate from our "work". Those individual experiences will give us our own unique voice over time.

Another extremely moving speech was by Jen Adrion and Omar Noory of These Are Things (mostly drawn on my second page of notes), discussing the ups and downs of surviving as a designer - a much needed perspective I feel for anyone who is trying to "break in". The talk was highly anticipated by Jon and I, considering these young designers are CCAD alumni. We had the chance to talk to them afterward, too, which was definitely one of the best moments from the weekend.

Summer Sketches: Part TWO

 

More sketches from this summer in Columbus, including the Posemaniac's gesture app and Drink & Draw.