Bird Number One Concept Art

Here is the concept art for bird creature #1, provided graciously by Nigel Sussman. Stay tuned as this progresses into out first completed character.

First Round of Concept Art Sketches

We just started working with a guy named Nigel Sussman. He's a flash developer (programmer? Like I know the difference) and illustrator up in the Bay area, which is where James is now located. He's got some great illustration skills, a real strong sense of line and the good sense to realize that doing some drawings for this project was a super-cool thing to do.

Did I also mention that he hosts his site on Laughing Squid? Yeah, that means he's down with the digerati hipsters and pixetelegensia crowd.

W00t!

Thanks for coming aboard sir.

We'll have sketches up soon but I thought a shout-out was in order.

Cheers.

Why Does the Bird Have a Prussian Helmet?

I don't really know. But it's kind of funny. The bird on the top left also has a key slot on its chest. I'm not sure what key might go in there, maybe it's a wind-up key to get the bird's interior clockwork mechanisms going. Maybe it's not but the key slot would be really ornate, with filigree and etching and cool stuff like that. It's fit into a torso that's more utilitarian than aesthetic. The torso's made up of a bunch of bolted on panels, or screwed on panels, with holes cut out for the feet and head.

The wings don't work at all like real bird wings but they pivot out from a couple of axles perpendicular to the imagined spine of the bird. The lower right wing is made up of lots of overlapping metal leaves (feathers).

Yeah, so that's that.

Moving Onto The Animatic

Looks like I'm on a weekly update schedule, which I'm not very proud of but it's a schedule at least.

So, the brief is in the hands of an artist I've worked with before. He's giving it a quick pass for clarity and to assess the reasonableness of what I want to get versus what I'm paying. It's not that I have no money to spend on an artist but it's more along the lines of, I'm offering one day's day rate and asking for, probably, more than one day's worth of work. Nevertheless, it's very important to me that I am offering paid work. All of the time in this industry you see "offers" for people to do free work because it'll "look great on their reel/portfolio." Now, I've done free, low-budget and work-in-trade but on this thing, I don't want to go that way. If an artist I already had a relationship with offered to do the concept art in trade I'd probably go for it, but I'm not going to approach someone I don't know hoping that they're in the mood to throw me some charity. This film is, for me, a real project and I intend to treat anyone who works for me on it professionally.

Enough time on the soapbox. One place I am planning on going for some free help is the CG Society forums. Now that the storyboard is considerably tighter (though probably not "done") I feel like it's time to get the animatic cranking. Earlier, before our change of direction, we brushed past the animatic but I think that this time it's important to make one. It'll help us really suss out our shots, it'll suggest which shots are just plane lame and can be cut and it'll give us an idea of whether or not the structure of the scenes makes any sense. In order to work on the animatic, I returned to look at the camera rig I was building a few months ago. That's what I'm going to be asking for some help with. I'm pretty happy with that I've built but it's not working exactly as intended. I'm hoping someone up there can throw some pointers my way.

I'll post screens and the MEL script once it's in a place I'm happy with.

Cheers.

Behind Schedule, Still Working

Ver. 01 of a brief is done and I've got a few initial feelers out to an artist I've worked with in the past. I'm tempted to put the brief up to give a sense of where we're going, design-wise, but 95% of the reference in the brief isn't our work and I don't know that I want to do anything that would imply that it was. I could source it all but that would be one hell of a long post and I've probably lost links to some of the stuff along the way.

One fun thing has been going through a lot of forums and blogs and putting together a list of artists we're planning on contacting for the job. I've been scouring the forums over at CGSociety and ConceptArt and spending a little bit of time on Deviant Art looking for good folk - and finding plenty. Our problem is going to be that we don't have a lot of money to spend.

Now that that's somewhat in motion, it's back to storyboards. I'll start posting them as soon as I have enough frames that are working for me to make a decent post.

Cheers.

Bird Sketches

This is another character we're going to try to get some help with. These mechanical/clockwork birds are becoming more important in the story and we want to make sure that the designs for these ends up being as good as it can be. These initial passes are telling me more what the birds shouldn't look like than what they should look like - but that's important to know.

This is some sort of mecha-dodo bird. Odd shape, not very menacing. The bird(s) in our short need to be able to do some menacing. This one is not spooky in any way. Nevertheless, I like the placement of the seams along the body shape.

Here I've moved from paper and pen to Sketchbook Pro and Wacom. I like the combo. It works for me. The sketches though...meh. The one colored bird head is ok, but that's about it.

And this is just my menacing guard bird. It works for what it is, but it's not much more than a notion of a menacing bird. It's not yet an illustration of one.

So, yeah, hopefully we'll be getting some help on these sketches soon and then, armed with awesome orthographic views, we'll be modeling fools.

Cheers.

Girl Sketches - First Pass

None of these sketches are really nailing it but they're a sampling of where my head is at- sort of - in terms of the main character in the short.

She's a skinny girl, 9-12 years old maybe, tall-ish and gangly. Here she's rocking a very simple ragamuffin outfit, colorful patches accenting a plain, utilitarian dress, striped sleeves and maybe colorful knee socks to add character. Not too dissimilar from Sally in Nightmare Before Christmas - but our girl is alive, and not a puppet seamstress.


Abstracting the head shape a bit more, trying to work with simple shapes and not being too concerned with realism.

This looks a bit more like someone's still kind of hot, hippy mom, than it does like our girl.


A couple Courtney Crumrin-inspired sketches here. I'm a huge fan of this book, though it's not really a direct inspiration for this short. Maybe the next project....Who the hell knows?
And lastly, a girl with some spunky attitude, demon eyes and a scarf.

Yes, it's quite the mixed bag (and there are others I'm not posting) but it's been a good exercise for me. I think that we're in a position where we can start talking to a concept artist or two for some help in taking this character - and two or three others - all the way to completion.

Small Art Direction Re-Think

Don't wait with bated breath for the next AO-shaded model post. We've had a small change of art direction. As we develop the concept a bit more, we'll start throwing up some reference images and, eventually, some tests of the new look.

The reasons behind this change are myriad, some purely practical, some aesthetic. I don't have a full-blown post in me right now but I imagine that one of us will explain our new choices before too long.

Stay tuned.

Clock Faces, Round One

I'm too tired to type much, so I'll let these incomplete clock face explorations do the talking.

Cheers.

Thinking About Clock Designs

Based on James' last post, I've decided not to stress about the base of the tower. I did a little bit of new modeling, concentrating on the actual clock part of the clock tower, then decided that I needed to go back to the drawing board. Literally.

So instead of pushing around polys and CV curves, I spent the better part of the night surfing the web's best watch porn site, The Watchismo Times and making sketches for the clock face. I've got some drawings that I like. I'll turn them into Illustrator art tomorrow and pick one or two to move forward on modeling. The clock face is, in some ways, the focal point of the clocktower. As such, it should look damn cool.

The images over on Watchismo are so freakin' good, if I make something even 60% as good, we're gonna be stoked.

Cheers.

Clocktower Screens

I feel like I've been modeling my arse off and that I still have soo, sooooo, soooooo much more to do on this.

I did take the last three days off of modeling. I've been working from home, which is great in a ton of different way, but it makes getting work done after work that much harder. After sitting at my one desk for ten hours, I really don't want to sit here for another four. I love my desk, and my home, but I need a break from it sometimes. What I need is a decent laptop, so that I can leave this room and spend the evening modeling in the living room. I am accepting donations for the laptop fund. It's currently at $0.00.

So, about the screens.

I'd been unhappy with the legs/feet of the clocktower when I first posted shots of it, so I went in a different direction with it. After looking at a lot of steam engine photographs, I thought it'd be interesting to have the base of this thing be an old, rusty train engine. I'm not even 50% done with the modeling of the train chassis but I'm not sure that I love it. It may not be the right solution for this one piece. I'm gonna spend the rest of the night away from it and see what I think of it tomorrow.

What I'm finding is that not having done proper concept art for the 'tower, modeling is going very slowly. Every piece that I'm building I'm figuring out as I go along and I feel like I'm probably not getting the absolute best results I could ask for. If I don't like the train parts when I look at this tomorrow (and after talking about it with James), I may hit the paper for a while.

Cheers.

Been Doing Some Modeling

I've walked away from the camera, for the time being. Instead I've been working on the clocktower, which is the central feature of the plaza we see in the first shot.



The first two stills are from the active camera view, the third is more of a "money shot" to show off some of the upper parts of the tower. It's still far, far from being finished. I had a couple of concept drawings to work off of, but they were unspecific for some of the features so I spent a fair amount of time trying this & that out as I modeled.

The obvious question is, do the gears work? Uh, yeah, they'll move and all but they won't really "work," so to speak. No gear will actually be driving anything else but they'll all move as if they have real purposes. That's the plan for now, at least.

Tired. Goin' to bed now. More screens in a day or two.

How Steampunk Are We Gonna Go?

Not sure, but here's a decent steampunk link to think on as we delve into art directing our first shot.

How To Draw Steampunk Machines

And one more,

Brass Goggles