SketcHHousE 'POWER HOUR' [Week: #02]

Here's week two's batch of early morning warm-up sketches. Really starting to enjoy these exercises & believe it or not, getting up so early isn't as much a battle anymore... A lot of good & helpful feedback is being shared between myself & the guys I'm doing this with so looking forward to seeing improvements as time goes on...

Oh btw, hop over to the blog we've set up for our little online sketch-group! Feel free to 'follow', spread the word & join in even! The more the better... Details & info on what we're doing can be found there [SketcHHousE]. Hope to see you soon- Have a relaxing weekend folks = )

-M-

Loose Paintings #1

Here's one of a few very loose study paintings I'm doing during spare time. Just experimenting with a few different techniques in contrast of how I'd normally work... I call this one, 'The Dancing Girl Harlot'... Yep... I kinda like her.

Hope you's guys dig?

'The Dancing Harlot'

 -M-

SketcHHousE 'POWER HOUR'!!! [Week: #01]

Hey all! Hope everyone's had a nice week? or if not quite nice, hope you have something exciting lined up as a treat for the weekend = )

This week has been great! & no I didn't win the loto [I live a less complicated & happier life than that]; no, I've managed to discipline myself enough to get up SUPER early in the mornings to spend a solid hour sketching to 'warm up' for the day...... of course when I say "super early", I REALLY just mean 7am.......... & when I say "discipline myself", I ACTUALLY mean with the help of two good [fellow artist] friends of mine.

We basically agreed it'd be a good idea for us to meet online each morning [via Skype] & spend an hour sketching together. [The outline] is to give ourselves two to three themes we'll focus on each month [to get the most we can out of them without spreading ourselves too thinly].... This being the inaugural week, we decided to kick things off with a theme of 'Dynamic Poses'... [Join in].

I have to say though, aside from the burning of my eyes getting up as early as that [to sketch!?!?]... it's AWESOME! It's gratifying artistically & from a self discipline standpoint [try it!].... Now I think about it, it's actually really more of a ["support group"] than anything else... I dunno, you decide. Here are a few of my sketches to help formulate your answers:

Have a great weekend people!
-M-

Time lapse Fun!

A little time lapse footage I actually forgot to post showing the process I took from digital sketch to final digital painting... Hope y'all like?... New updates coming soon- stay tuned folks... Thanks!

"TERRIBLE, I know"...

I must never again in my life neglect my blog...
I must never again in my life neglect my blog...
I must never again in my life neglect my blog...
I must never again in my life neglect my blog...
I must never again in my life neglect my blog...
I must never again in my life neglect my blog...

x 1000... 00000000000000000000000.......... 0






Wow, so it's been a good few months since I posted.... TERRIBLE, I know. My only excuse... [which now I think about it, really isn't a valid one...... so let me not bother explaining]. Anyhooow, on the UP side, I have actually been keeping up my creative productivity [just haven't blogged about it]. Below are a few doodles, illustrations & digital paintings done over the past few months. Browse through & I hope you like.


As always feel free to comment = )
More to come...
_______________________________
BELOW: A few caricatures I've done over the past month as part of a weekly 'just for fun' quiz I recently set up for friends of mine on FaceBook... I usually throw it up on Sunday evenings [8pm UK time]. If you're in the neighbourhood, stop by, add me & feel free to join in the fun! Who knows, you may be the lucky winner & receive a FREE caricature of yourself too! It's all good clean fun >= )

BELOW: Line Art...


________________________________________________
BELOW: Some doodles...
   

Captain's Log.....

Star date.... 13, 7, 2010...... I've been a real fan of the original [Gene Roddenberry] series for years now but actually only just managed to get them all on DVD, including the feature films. Such a shame the series only made it to 3 seasons but for how cleverly creative the storylines are I guess it makes them that much more of a collectors item. I remember watching episodes on TV as a kid & being totally mesmerized by the adventures Kirk, Spok, Bones McCoy & the rest of the crew went on. The costumes, makeup fx & [almost pantomime] lighting were great; even the now not so special "special effects"..... & on top of that I had my phase of absolutely believing Cptn Kirk was the coolest man in the galaxy...... I believe he still is!

Anyways, will be working on a series of Star Trek themed illustrations over the next few weeks. Here are some roughs I've worked up so far. I know there are other fellow secret 'Trekkies' out there so hope y'all like [more to come over the next few weeks].

A.T.A Development Work...

Thought I'd post up some of the concept/ development stuff I did for the 'Tag Attack'...... I didn't actually explain before but one of the main things I was hoping to achieve in my piece was the overall look & feel of a movie or mystery series made back in the 1960's. It's a very specific style of editing & acting; down to little details like editing mistakes, damaged film frames during transitions or cuts to a proceeding shot, even also to the way d.o.f is used [love it!]. Main inspirations on this were James bond flicks [Sean Connery] & believe it or not, cheesy Elvis movies from the late 50's. Also a piece of work that caught my eye last year sometime was illustrator Kevin Dart’s trailer/ titles for “A Kiss From Tokyo” animated by Stephane Coedel. Won't go into it too much right now but I absolutely loved it! Anyways, below are series of stages I went though leading up to the finished sequence.

///CHARACTER RE-DESIGN/ ROUGH SKETCHES///

Early on I knew I wouldn't have the time to put as much into the animation of the character as I would have liked, so dint spend much time designing him as a whole person. I knew he wouldn't move much at all so once I was happy with getting his face the way I wanted I just worked out his main pose & that was it; animating only his breathing motion & hospital gown umm... draping in the wind.

///COLOUR THUMBNAILS/ BOARDS///
Again I didn't really have time to get too bogged down in detail with the development process so decided to just use these somewhat detailed thumbnail sketches as a final storyboard... [they made sense in my head]

///FINAL BACKGROUNDS///
Photoshop- digitally painted 

                                                                               






///BACKGROUND 05 time lapsed Artwork///



///BACKGROUND 04 time lapsed Artwork///

ATA-Episode 6

So it's been a little while since my last post but hopefully my blog will forgive me as it's not all been in vain.... For the past few weeks now I've been working on & off on my episode for the 'Animation Tag Attack' & finally here it is... Had to cut short the precipice I was planning to end on due to time but think I'll add that in later on here as some what of an alternate ending.


Actually had a lot of fun & learnt loads working on this so it's been a nice little breakaway from commercial work. Hope you guys like it? All comments are welcome! Watch all the EP's together & let me know how it reads to you; it's interesting to see how each person interprets the narrative/ order of events so far.  I myself can make some sense out of it... Whether it's right or not, who knows [haha] but I guess that's what this little creative exercise is about........ ENJOY!         = )
PS: will post up some concept stuff soon...

Tag! You're IT!!!

Talented Animator/ illustrator/ musician & all round cool guy Christen Bach who I had the pleasure of connecting with through the Berlin Pictoplasma Festival was kind enough to invite myself & co-director Ewen Stenhouse to take part in his 'Animation Tag Attack'. [similar to the 'psst pass it on' collaborative film project]:

"Each participant gets 4 weeks to produce between 5 and xx seconds of film. When the time is up, the clip gets uploaded to the blog and the next one in line takes over. It is up to each individual creator to pick the style and media they want to work in - and to decide how they think the story should evolve."

He's hyped us up quite a bit, which I guess can only be a good thing right?.....[gulp]..... NO PRESSURE! I'd always wanted to take part or set something like this up but the opportunity never really presented itself. Just think it's a great way of exercising creativity, a good means of improving narrative skills & collaborating with other filmmakers. Once all the films are pieced together the end result can never really be bad I think; it's just interesting to see how each story fuses with the next.

It's kicked off to an interesting start with some pretty cool pieces, all using different techniques. Love the hands on the character of EP_03 in the close up shot & Christen's piece [EP_01] I'm still trying to figure out how he got that look... cool stuff! I'm actually up now after this piece by Oren Mashkovski.



..... LET'S GO!