The last issue of Y: The Last Man came out today, and it was a great close to an incredible series. It really pulls at your heart strings, and allows you to reflect on all the great times you’ve shared with these characters. I haven’t read everything by Brian K. Vaughan yet, but I’ve loved everything as I try to. He is such a brilliant storyteller! If you like this, Ex Machina and Pride of Baghdad are also completely worth your time. And Pia Guerra’s art throughout the series has been phenomenal, so well stylized, and incredibly clear. What an achievement in comics this run has been! Even if you have never tried comic books before, give this a shot, everyone I’ve recommended it to has loved it. Especially non-readers.
Because I received so many compliments on my pastel figure drawing last week (check it out), I thought you might want to see a few other pastel pieces I scrounged up.
This is quite an old fruit and vegetable still life, but I enjoy the reflective quality of the fruit and surface, and the color of the wall. Then I have two self portraits: the pointing one is the older (and least successful) of the two, but I like that I was at least going for the foreshortening and distortion. And the colors have some life to them in the inquisitive one.
Another class I am taking right now is Figure Drawing. And let me tell you: at this point it feels so good to just be drawing again. It’s been three years since a model has disrobed in my presence, and as weird as it sounds: it was nice. The pure art center of my brain was ready to go almost instantly. And here comes a wide sampling of durations, poses, and techniques…
There’s a lot of great stuff going on in the computer generated art scene, it’s a nice mix of programming prowess and personal expression. I made one that combines nature-inspired vector shapes with a color sampling of this image. It is also a drawing tool, one in which I made massive amounts of swirls in. The faster you move the cursor the more it throws down and in wilder rotations. The longer you hold it in the same spot, the more blurry it gets. And each time you click it switches to a different color. Here are my results, overall and up close:
Around now I got into Cinema 4D all the while looking at reference photos on the Internet. Here is the yet-to-be jointed model of the astronaut:
And here are a number of different unused textures I tried on the dinosaur.
Having refined everything to this point, I got the characters rigged, and could get down to animating. First I had to set up the environment, including basic lights, and the backdrop, which was used for each shot, although each shot got a different Cinema file. Then came the most time consuming aspect: keyframing each movement just right. Finally, I rendered out each file, slightly upped the contrast for each in Photoshop, and imported them all into After Effects. This is always helpful for spotting a few edits (down to the frame) and spotting mistakes. Lastly, I spent a while making the sound effects in Audacity, and added those into After Effects for another render. After receiving some feedback at my critique I went back to make a few small tweaks (like adding the glass “plink” sound). At long last, the movie is ready to be put online, and here it is!
At this point I needed to think in terms of shots for my storyboards.
I thought about it in terms of moods. I needed to establish a calm steady typical moon scene, then build some mystery and suspense in a dark shot from below looking up. Then just burst into the energy of the action sequence with more angles and quick cuts. The crash suddenly stops the action, and so it starts to hold on the struggling astronaut to re-establish the tension. The dinosaur has the obvious advantage, as there are extreme tilts on the point-of-view shots of the characters, but this only serves to confound your expectations when it suddenly cuts to an even profile shot again. The dinosaur, nor the astronaut can get what they want, the climax is the stalemate. Resolve with the logo, and a little tag at the end, to convey a sense of time and persistence. Note that a number of shots in the storyboards have gone through refinement, most often flipping to making sure that the action occurs left to right.
I thought it might be fun to show some of my process work, so let’s delve a bit deeper into my video piece, Prehistoric Park. I had come up with what I felt was a good gag one day, and had kept it written down in my pad of concepts. Knowing that it would be action-oriented, fairly quick, and carried by a big reveal, I decided it would work best as a 3D animation. It needed carefully controlled lighting to not reveal the joke beforehand, it had fanciful characters (astronaut, dinosaur) at a location not readily available (the moon), and the overall tone seemed a bit like it could have been a movie spoof on the great cartoon The Critic.
First things first, I began to flesh out the idea, here is my very first write up:
Idea Description Fade from black to reveal an astronaut. He hops along, and plants a flag into the ground. There is an odd rumbling noise behind him. He turns around to reveal from the bottom up, a towering beast. None other than the king of the dinosaurs… a tyrannosaurus rex is standing before him! The astronaut hesitantly begins to step back. The massive dinosaur roars, although the sound is slightly muffled. A chase ensues, with the astronaut speeding away in his moon rover, but alas the dinosaur’s stride is too great, and it manages to flip it over with a flick of its tail. The astronaut, now pinned under the upturned rover, sees the dinosaur towering over him. It leans down, opening its jaw with terrible ferocity. Cut to a side view, the tyrannosaurus is not able to get the astronaut into its mouth, as it has a gigantic glass bubble around its head. It stretches its head as far as it can and continues to snap its mouth forward, but it is obviously of no use. A logo appears, “Prehistoric Park 8: Even I Can’t Believe We Made This!” The dinosaur picks its head up, apparently annoyed by his lack of progress… but then tries once more, snapping its jaw repeatedly.
I also began to do some concept sketching, trying to pin down the personalities of the characters.
I did it, I braved the hordes of people to stay up all night (especially hard after you’re full of turkey), waited in line for hours on end, and eventually managed to wrest from the clutches of the indifferent store keepers my great prize. I managed to get Rock Band for my 360, and let me tell you, it is the best rhythm game experience I’ve ever had, perhaps even the best gaming experience in general! It is so well designed, and fine tuned: the presentation is top notch (especially the opening movie). And the actual game play is phenomenal. I have never had so much joy, it is really a communal experience getting a full band together and completing an intense set list. It is so cooperative you are rooting for those struggling, and cheering when successful. I don’t think I’ll be playing much else for a long while.
Also known as “Rat Race”, even though you’re actually using lab mice. Lab mice that are high above Earth’s orbit. It will make more sense when you view it.
I know I haven’t posted for quite some time, but that is because I have been working hard on finishing up my finals. That includes designing an online portfolio, writing a paper, writing a journal, and two projects. The first project I finished is for QTVR:
