More Bethness :)

Another try for Beth, hope it's better ^_^ again, a few different ones, just showing progress or options :)

Avoiding Character Work -_-

I have been, unfortunately lol but I did take some time to look at doing a background for Beth - I'm working on some others at the moment, but this is the only finished one so far (I've done it twice actually, but accidentally deleted it the first time -_-). I wanted to put it up here as I've loads of different versions of this one because I used different combinations of two sheet textures and four floor textures. Putting them all up on here means Beth can see and tell me which one she hates the least XD They're very different from the other background artist's - his have much cleaner lines and he's started using this lovely spirally thing on the walls, all black and white inkness, very nice :) so nevermind, at least I got to do some stuff, and I still have more to do :) Sorry though Beth >.<
So yeah, here you go ^_^

*sigh*

So, not feeling particularly fond of what I'm doing at the moment. Had a sweatbox today and, while being very helpful in critical parts of the work, it was also a little confusing from a students point of view. I'm struggling with the style of my Buffy characters at the moment, as the simplified shapes is just not how I draw usually, and I think they're plain and well, ugly really. I mean, Willow and Buffy I mainly like, but the whole set is just no where near where I want it. Usually I'd go for a much more human-esque look, but tutors and fellow students all said they really liked my shape-based designs, and I thought I was on the right track. Yet in the sweatbox, they just said they didn't work at all and they simply didn't like them. It's annoying because I already hate them lol and I can see why they don't like them because I feel the same, and it's been a frustrating process just getting the designs this far. Sometimes I just don't know what I'm supposed to do. Sitting down and typing this helps my thoughts get into some sort of order, and I see now I haven't gone far enough in making the characters work as stop-mo designs - I forget that, as models, they can be detailed, complicated and intricate, like the work I've always loved, as long as they are buildable. I've been lost and just drawing for the sake of it, instead of really thinking about how I want these pieces to look.

I'm going to step back from what I've been doing and really look at how the characters are and how I want them to be portrayed - I do like the shape-based design, but on top of that I think there's a lot of room for a very stylised pen look, bringing back my Burton and Gorey influences, and then painting them up a lot in ArtRage or Photoshop in a very 3D manner, to try and get that Stop-Mo feel. I've such a long way to go, and I don't even want to do this area of work, so it's hard to keep motivated, but meh, let's just get on with it -_-

On the plus side, I'm enjoying my Star title sequence stuff and using ArtRage is fun - a lot more traditional feeling and the look is really lovely :) I'm doing some interesting Collab stuff for a 3rd year too - backgrounds using a lot of texture, and one using scraperboard, which will be great fun to do :)

Other than that, I've been honing in on the areas I enjoy - fixing and colouring animation in Toon Boom is something I really want to work more in, so I'm really looking forward to doing Sian's film, and learning more about sequential art and comic books too, because that's where I want to go: sequential artist (storyboards, comics, graphic novels, webcoms etc) and Toon Boom colouring ^_^ do NOT want to be a character/background artist, I'm just not good enough and I don't have the passion lol

Oh well, moan over, back to work!

Back To Production :S

So after a few weeks of Advanced Tech, which technically we're still in the last bit of, we start back up on our Production part of the Final Major - eeeek! Still, it should be interesting, though I was horrified to see we now have to do Sweatboxes, which means regular presentations of our work >.< I hate that stuff, but I know it'll be vital practice and well worth it for the feedback, so I'll just grin and bear it. In the meantime, I'll pop my Advanced Tech stuff up on my main blog, and post a few things I forgot to put up here before. So here are some Buffy base colour tests, expression and pose sheets, and my Production breakdown/charts.

Background Sketches and Colourscript

Just thought I'd upload some of the very quick bg sketches I did on ArtRage - just testing colours and layout, making quick notes of what ones I want in my animatic. Also have the colourscript development and the colourscript itself - it's very rough because I wanted to just focus on block colours, and if I start to paint in any more detail, I'd end up with it far too complicated -_- I hope it'll be ok!

Deadline Approaches :(

So I'm only going to be quick, as I have serious amounts to do! I had to work from 7am til 2pm today, so had a late start on the art stuffs :/ looks like a lack of sleep for me tonight. But it's all good ^_^ *dies* Anyway, below are some more sketch sheets and Character Construction Development sheets for my Buffy stuff, and a new Rough Storyboard sketched out for the Title Sequence. Not too much left to do, but what's left is important, so I better crack on TT_TT

Aaaahhh I'll Never Finish!

Ahhh is right >.< I've gotta finish all this pre-production work to finish by tuesday, and I'm completely behind because the tutors never seem to like what I've done. Then again, I'm not all that pleased with it either, so I can see where they're coming from. I really don't know if I'll finish it all on time, and now I've got the new Advanced Tech brief, which, though it shouldn't be too hard, is still more to do. So right now I'm very stressed and determined not to sleep until I pull my finger out (metaphorically) and get this all done!! Below are the rough storyboards that I used for the rough animatic storyboards, one page of sketched stuff for the star, and lots of Buffy development -_- I'm thinking of going with some of the lower designs and directing it towards a stop-motion outcome. What do you think?