PINGAS

Mama Luigi put it on the fridge.


Some animation I've been interested in lately.

Abigail, a 3d animation by a student at Ringling College of Design. The students at Ringling do some amazing short films. They aren't always the best animated, but the design is through the roof. Every student seems to come out of there with a beautiful illustrated quality of art.

Tenacious D Rock Song The poster doesn't know who animated it. I assume it was someone who worked on Timesplitters 3 due to the character models. Really amazing animation.

Sproessling by Anne Breymanna German stop motion animator. It's a short film about a woman who orders a baby making kit that grows the baby in a pot like a plant. Something goes wrong and she unleashes something evil. There is something about stop motion animation that makes it easy to make scary short films. I think it's because the animation is always a little jerky even in the hands of the best stop motion animators. But that's what makes it so great.

Watch out for the Starkfin

Man, I can't believe I forgot to upload this. I drew Ryan in that muscle and bones class last term. This was one of the better ones.

Bus People and the New Short

Pretty much every artist that rides the bus draws the people that ride it from what I've seen. It's a blast because A) free models and B) You never know how long you'll get to draw that person so it builds up how fast you can memorize a look or face. An actual quote from Cat Boy aka Crazy Legs as I awkwardly waited for a bus with him. Luckily he didn't recognize me.

The new short idea:



The initial idea is it's an apartment complex (the set is just a hallway and the main character's room) where a shy, nerdy girl is attracted to her neighbor but too nervous to tell him how she feels. This builds up until it seems he is going to be leaving her forever so she breaks and confesses. I'm planning to sync up the video to the song Faraway Vol 2 by Apocalyptica (and bits of just Faraway) so that way I can stay on course. Here are my initial random nerds. No sense of rhyme or reason.
By this time I had an idea as to her look so I was fleshing it out a bit. Changing her race and head shape. It was hard to find references on the internet because according to the internet, a nerdy or geeky girl is any female who has glasses. This is a fallacy. Glasses do not make the nerd. However, to get across that she is a nerd, she needs glasses for the short. Some common nerdy traits are sweatshirts, unkept hair, and a lanky or stout body shape.
I hit gold a few days ago when I drew up the upper left face. I found a weird face shape someone drew so I went off of that. That look she's giving in the upper middle is exactly what I'm going for. I'm still working on her love interest, but he seems to be making himself. I like how she is very rounded and short but he is squared and tall. The short is going to be toon shaded in 3D with the style like Codehunters and two short films I've seen from Ringling College of Art and Design (that being Lindsey Olivares' "Anchored" and Gigi's "Gretel & Hanzel").

Also, if you haven't seen it, watch Doggy Poo. It's hilarious that people got paid to make a film like that. Trailer

Stronghold Final Designs

The project was just dubbed "Stronghold" so the name is still up in the air.

The turnaround images on the right are the final designs I passed off to Leif and his modeler(s?) to work on. From what little I've seen, they look pretty good. There were some problems with the proportions in my turnarounds, but I pretty much expected that. Leif said it wasn't that bad, but something I should look out for next time I draw one out.

Probably the hardest thing was getting the finalized version of the Queen and the Knight. Leif had okayed the Mage and the Guardian, but he wasn't quite satisfied with how the other two were going. I really amped it up for a few days to get them done, but he was getting finalized characters that he hadn't okayed. I was a worried that he'd get them and say something like," well, they'll do". On the other hand, he was really excited about it. In fact, Leif was the most excited I had ever seen him since we had met.

Overall it was pretty iffy the whole time, but I had fun. Hopefully this might turn into another job down the road.

Game Character Designs

So in my spare time, in between the other spare time and the regular time, I've been working in a project for another senior classmate. He's a game art guy so his whole resume is riding on getting a working game done. He's pretty smart because he's getting a lot of other seniors to do various parts of his project while he controls the whole thing as the game director. He asked me to do the four main characters of the game.

The Queen was described as a woman who has a skeleton for a body but a human head. The character is undead and is more powerful once she dies (which makes her character one of the best to use). I had a pretty clear image of her being very above everything else because she is a queen and that she gets even more powerful after she dies. I was also advised to use mechanics in all the character designs, excluding the guardian.












The mage was a bit tricky at first. When I was told to give them a mechanical edge I figured a mage could be anyone who seems to do something magical, so an inventor/tech guy sounded like a good idea. Another angle I'm trying to push is the fact that he has the best move radius of all the characters, so I decided he should have some vehicular transport of some kind. A jetpack or mechanical legs.










The knight was supposed to be not the cliched warrior type, but when you think about it, what isn't a cliched warrior? He (or she) came in two variants for me. 1). A bulky, thick iron armored trooper or 2). A thin, skeletal swordsman. I also came up with a tribal female design, but I think that would clash with the opposing forces. My vote is really on that weird tank bot guy. He's like a living iron clad.































The Guardian is supposed to be the home team's weapon against these mechanical warriors. If the queen/mage/knight mange to beat him, then he will fight for them for one round. The keyword for the guardian was Babylonian style. Lots of horns and beards really. At first I stayed with the art style, but after a while I thought, "This is the guy who is supposed to look tough and someone you would want to be on your team for a while". That's where I branched out and made him more Conan looking and then bestial in the lower drawing. If he's a guardian he doesn't have to be human or physical.

Flash Series Idea

I've got a new idea for a flash series. I've had the idea for a couple of years, but this time I'm actually fleshing it out a bit.

The Premise:
It's a girls school for goddesses in training (high schoolers). The episode flow would be like every other teen drama, only the have crazy classes and god-like abilities. It's like the movie Sky High, only not the last part of the movie where things get really dumb. I might have a boys school near by so they can interact, kind of like the two camps from Camp Lazlo. My only joke so far is the fertility goddess and the war goddess have to take some general classes. The fertility girl has to take a war class and the war girl has to take a fertility class. The war class would be like gym, only with weird stuff like fighting trolls and wielding maces etc. The fertility class would be based off of the age old home ec assignment where students have to care for a fake baby. Since they are gods, it would be funnier if they had to carry around babies like the gods do(i.e. in their foreheads or elbows). So the whole episode the war goddess would have a big lump on her face, maybe it could conflict with being war-like, I dunno. Other things that might come up in the story is goddesses that aren't human like anthropomorphic (mermaids and Egyptian cat people) or elemental ones (living fire, plant life, or water).

The Students (no teacher ideas as of yet):
Goddess of War: She's a tom boy who eats raw meat at lunch time. Kind of like a Norse god.

Goddess of Fertility: Bubbly and doesn't know the extent of how much guys want to date her. She's like that girl that everyone wants to date, only she has never dated anyone. (I can't explain her character very well for some reason)

The Trickster: The typical chaos god. She screws up plans or puts tacks on the teacher's chairs.

The Artist or creator goddess: She's the one pictured above. I figure she's one of those angsty arty types, only instead of painting or writing music, she makes creatures.

Goddess of Wisdom: Every show needs a nerd. I don't know much about her yet, but I figure I'll need her to make inventions or sciencey stuff.

Goddess of Death: A small, quiet, goth girl who kills stuff.

Goddess of the Sun: This is the optimist. If I ever figure out what she looks like, she'll be one of the main three characters (fertility and war being the other two). She's that character who convinces others to do stuff that would advance the plot, a leader of sorts.

Goddess of Love: She's going to be that token preppy girl who rags on all the misfits. A cheerleader type.

Goddess of Nature: A hippie girl. I might cut this character or just make her a very minor character.

Right now I'm trying to create the characters, then simplify them so I can easily animate them in flash (the hand drawn way not the flash libraries way).

Project Sasquatch

Here's some stuff from the short film I'm working on.

The main characters are Sasquatch the... Sasquatch, Apple Sasquatch's fairy friend, and Vincent the mean bat/vulture.

It's a story about not resorting to violence as an answer, because in the end you become what you hate.

For a simple animation test of Sasquatch, check it out here [Link]

The short film will resemble the test for the most part. It's going to be hand drawn in flash (no libraries, just a Wacom and a dream), but the background won't be in flash. I'm going to put the flash animation into After Effects, then insert the background elements. The background is going to be a totally different medium than the animation. I'm thinking either clay, 3D, or maybe just cut out textures of things such as grass or bark. We will see. I'm also hoping to convince a sound design student to do my audio so that way I don't have to do it and he/she gets something for their reel.

So far I'm about 20% into the animation. Not exactly where I wanted to be at this point, but I'm really pushing for my best work, no slouching this time.