My Little Pony, Drawings and Lauren Faust.

Over the holidays I've been keeping some sketchbooks. I've picked out my favourite drawings as a lot were scribbly messes. Most of them are doodles I've done which I like. I also bought some ProMarkers, so I've been experimenting with them too.

 This is a character I named Martina. The brown haired boy who I've set to be her boyfriend originated from the show; Gregg with 3 G's. Based on the character design of the Nickelodeon show As Told By Ginger. I'd been a big fan of this show since it's release in 2000 and continues to make me smile.

A lot more scribbles and doodles. I'd been watching a few episodes of As Told By Ginger, my favourite character is Dodie. Ginger's shy, dorky friend who I began drawing on the side. I also drew Gregg with 3 G's again. Nigel Thornberry also makes an appaearance too. I began playing with the ProMarkers on here, mixing tones for skin and using the blend pen too. I completly ruined Pocahontas's face though, I was testing whilst the ink was dry, only to realise it leaves a nasty smudgy outline.

Crazy lion thing.

I've begun drawing people out and about, carrying my sketchbook where I go to practice. 

I also started some tutorials on drawing hands...

They aren't great but I'm going to continue practicing.

I also started a visual diary. I didn't keep this up very long, however here are a few of the pages I drew:

So yeah. 

I've also been watching a lot of cartoons on YouTube which have provided me with inspiration for character designs;

Lauren Faust, character design and animator of hit shows such as Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends has re-designed the My Little Pony franchise completly. Her designs are modern with a cutting twist making them original and appealing to all ages. They've become an internet phonomenon with viewers ranging from 4 - 40. I've become a big fan of the new My Little Pony, the characters have incredibly emotive faces along with beautiful animation. The characters have been designed uniquely with interesting (if not slightly) stereotypical personalities. Rainbow Dash being the 'tomboy' Pegasus pony of the group, whilst Fluttershy the quiet, polite animal lover. Lauren Faust has removed the sickly pastel colours of the elder My Little Ponies to create bright and vibrant characters. I'm taken by My Little Pony. It's got witty humour, compelling storylines and incredible characters.

I've also gotten back into The PowerPuff Girls, which I used to love as a child.

I love the simple character design of the PowerPuff Girls, alone with the strange creativity behind all the bad guys. Especially Mojojojo.

Gregg with 3 G's, Dodie, Ginger, Nigel Thornberry and As Told By Ginger all belong to Nickelodeon.  (c) Nickelodeon.

Simba & Pocahontas (c) Disney.
My Little Pony (c) Hasbro and Lauren Faust
The PowerPuff Girls (c) Craig McCracken and Cartoon Network.

Old

But I still love it.

Bad Apple!!

My friend Harley sent me this pretty sweet animation. It's called Bad Apple!! By Touhou.

Modelling and aniamtion in Maya

This is a round up of what I've been doing. We've got officially 9 days left until our hand-in. So it's all hand on deck at the moment.
After a critique on Friday, I was assigned Creative Director of the project, which I'm really enjoying at the moment.
I finished the texturing, got that sorted. Phoebe added her creative magic and made some fantastic scenes. Maggie has completed the stop-motion intro and is now working more detail into it. Kylie's been working within Flash adding in all the characters now, so far I'm really pleased with what everyone has done.

I've also animated Brian flying, which I've exported as TIFF files for Phoebe to import into Flash to work with on the backgrounds.

These are all quick playblasts on Maya. These have changed a bit, only general messing about to make them look better. We'll also adjust them needs be in Flash too.









With the Copic Marker, I've added a green tip on the end of the pen to make it look like the cap. On the back I've added a quick little texture;

 I thought adding this to the end of the pen to make it look a bit more realistic to the style. I also added the copic logo to the pen too;

I made the pen longer as well for it to look much more realistic. So far things are working well.


Copic Markers are (c) of Copic, Japan.  No copywrite infringement intended.


 

Title sequence Texturing and Maya

I'm almost finished texturing the Marilyn Monroe scene for our project, I'm still working on the floor, but here is a run through of what I've done.

This was the reference I had to the scene from our animatic. The rectangle being the poster in which he flies out of and which Phoebe is currently painting. Once this is done I can then put this into the scene and render it out to a high standard.

 (listening to: Opeth - Still day beneath the Sun)

Texturing the wall was a bit of a pain. Trying to make it look seamless. However because I wanted the bricks to look small there would have to be a seam. Luckily I figured I could cover this with posters to hide it easily. I began texturing the wall with the posters (see below for pictures) These are all taken from previous Creative Review's I photographed. On the top image you can see that I took some pieces from Creative Review that were featured to turn into posters. However the 'Do this or Die' poster didn't turn out straight and has a slight curve to it. I tried to edit this in the UV texture editor however I couldn't make it look completly straight. To make the posters I created some polygon planes then textured those to create the posters.

 I had some problems whilst texturing this;

(Listening to: Placebo - Running Up That Hill)

 I'm still working on these, however I've managed to hide the posters that don't work that well.

I had a go at texturing the ground, however I wasn't happy with this. Instead I decided to use a plain grey lambert instead. I'm still unsure of this so I feel more experimentation will be needed.

So far I'm quite pleased with what I've created. I just need to work on the floor and when Phoebe has finished the poster painting, add this in.

I like this.

Title Sequence - Big blog

I've been pretty slack with my blog, however I have been really busy. So here's a round-up of what i've been up to.
On Friday we had a critique about out animatic (made with Sketchup and Flash)



After a long discussion with the tutors, they decided we've spent too much focusing on other ideas than promoting the idea of graphic design. They gave us some good ideas on how to make it much more graphic design relevant such as influencing colour, keeping to simple bright colours rather than mixing colours. Keeping the animation itself crisp and fresh. They also hugely emphasised the use of typography within the graphic design world and within Creative Review. Taken in this advice, we went off with more ideas now buzzing with ideas.

Sunday 15/5/2011.

I walked to Woodlane Library after spending Saturday discussing with the girls the routes we were going to take.
I took some photos for research (Yes I have my Nikon back!)  looking through back issues of Creative Review (a big big big thank you to Rachel Dare, who helped in suggesting some good issues to look at)

I also looked at some of the first issues of Creative Review from 1987 which I found really useful, especially the advert pages.

Monday 16th - Thursday 19th

Maya Modelling. We've discussed our roles within the group, I am the main modeller as we wanted to bring in some 3D elements to our animation. I've begun modelling the scene of the city, it's pretty much finished now, I just have to add the textures later on.

This was my reference from the animatic.

 Here I began modelling, basic polygon shapes, working on the pavement and considering the angle I thought looked right.

I didn't like the perspective from the side angles much, I decided to model it from a straight on angle instead.

Dreadful lighting, but here is a basic view of how I started it. I made the buildings into letter shapes, here you can see the 'h' building.

More letters made, C, h, A, T and L. (It wasn't meant to spell out Chat, that was an accident) Again, the lighting is horrible. Sorry about that.

Having some critique from Phoebe, she suggested I add more letters into this and work on the perspective.

Working with the perspective...
I also added a lower case 'i' to the left hand side to make it feel much more 'full'

Perspective sorted! I was quite pleased with this, I showed it to the group, via our Facebook group. From the critique I got back it seems the group really like it :)
Now for lighting...

Too bright...

Pretty much sorted :) Maybe a few tweaks here and there. Nevertheless, I'm quite pleased with the outcome so far.


We're texturing this with hand-made textures mostly. Some digital textures will be added to the road and the houses in the background.

I made some cardboard letters last Wednesday/Thursday which I have used as printing blocks to create a texture we intend on using. These are the textures we'll probably be using.

A mixture of paint, printing and collage. I'm hoping the newspaper one will work well, as this is a mix of collage and typograhpy, however I also like the cardboard printed one and the newspaper which had been painted over.

I'll post up some of the textured images tonight hopefully!