Progress On The Board

Not posting anything just yet because I've not been able to run it by James, but the board's coming along quite nicely. Another sit-down or two with it and it'll be done. I'm not blocking out the shots all that completely but I'm taking them far enough to know what'll need to be modeled and what won't. I'm using this board as a chance to get more familiar with Sketchbook Pro and it's going pretty well. I'm still not as comfortable with it as I am paper but it's one hell of an app. I do wish it had a slightly broader range of brushes than it does but it's good. I like being able to add color quickly and easily, which is one thing I don't do when I sketch on paper.

Hopefully next week I'll have some progress to report on the concept artist search but even if that takes a little bit longer than hoped for, there's still plenty we can do while waiting for designs. There are matte paintings to paint and there are plenty of city elements left to model...This sucker is still a ways from being done.

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.

Character Design

With a title like "Character Design" you'd think this post would have some pictures. Alas but no. More than anything else, this is a post to kick myself in the pants and get a post up so that this thing doesn't succumb to blog-fade.

What we've been up to is looking at characters and sketching some and really trying to nail down who our main character is. When we first began this, we made a decision that we'd not go too "AmeriManga" with our main character. It's that I'm not a fan of the style, it's more that it's ubiquitous. AmeriManga characters are everywhere these days.

But, some of my favorite character designers show a definite manga influence. And a good AmeriManga character is also a good character, simply put. So I've opened my mind to that look a little bit and we're making progress in creating our girl.

I'd love to be able to show some sketches soon, with the understanding that I'm no character designer, but I don't have a scanner and my best drawings so far have been on that old analog paper. I am starting to make a transition to doing more digital sketching with Sketchbook Pro but I won't be doing really good work in it for a while, I think.

Cheers.