"I Like Them French Fried Potaters"

Character Design Classwork Pt. 2

We had an interesting assignment tonight. We were told to draw and fill in shapes that make up the gesture with a marker or the side of a pencil and draw our characters based on those shapes. It was one of those situations where it just sort of clicked and suddenly a lot of things made sense to me that I struggled to figure out before. Here are some of the results.

 Here are some of the thumbnails I used as a basis.

Character Design Classwork

I've been in taking Character Design at the Animation Institute with Stephen Silver for several weeks now and it's been absolutely wonderful. Unfortunately we're heading into the last few weeks. It's been very imensely helpful Here are some of the one minute gestures from the beginning of the class.

CTN Wreck-It-Ralph Panel Caricatures

A few caricatures I did while watching the Wreck-It-Ralph panel in the hotel lounge.

CTN Gesture Drawing After Dark

And so ends my first year at CTN. It was well worth the time (and the money.) I attended David Pimentel's Gesture Drawing After Dark session on the first night. We all did quite a few in the time we had. They ranged from one minute to five minute poses.

Final Business Card Image

After cleaning up and inking the previous image seen below,

I ultimately decided that it wouldn't work. While I liked the expression my teacher, Stephen Silver, brought up the fact that some of the smaller details would get lost on such a small card. But I wasn't about to give up on my little mouse! So by his suggestion I simplified the shapes and went with a more rough sketch look.

I think it get's the point across well enough. In retrospect I probably should have shaded in his eyebrows. But all in all I think this will make a worthy mascot for my card.

Potential Business Card Mascot

I've been designing a business card for the last few days for CTN. This little guy's the latest contender. I'm in the process of inking it and making some much-needed adjustments. Here's the progress so far. 

Storyboard Exercise - Jaws

I've been watching a lot of Steven Spielberg films lately. He is after all my favorite director and I'm very much looking forward to seeing Lincoln in a few weeks. As a storyboard exercise I decided to try sketching up one of my favorite scenes from Jaws which is the first time we see Brody, Hooper, and Quint together. I love the dynamic between them and how over the course of the movie they seem to keep switching roles between each other.

Hands

A few more sketches from the plane ride from New York. I use to absolutely hate drawing hands, now I kind of enjoy it. But I still struggle with variety. The extremely talented story artist/ character designer Toby Shelton posted some great examples of hand variations. Every now and then I find myself doing a page of these hands.

Horned Owls

I found myself taking a sudden interest in owls a while back, particularly Horned Owls. I still had some old photos I downloaded and winded up doing a few sketches on the plane home from New York.

Airport People

I visited New York recently and spent far more time at the airport than I was suppose to. After a while I found myself sketching some of the people around me. (I think a few of them saw me.)

I showed this to my aunt and she told me they all looked like the same person. Guess I should work on eye variety.

BEARS!!

Grizzly bears to be precise.