A Progress in Work

Apparently I am a double major?

Well, week one at SCAD is officially over, and I am now diving into my second, more intensive week.  So far the biggest thing I have noticed is that Animation is really a double major here, you’re expected to be versed in both 2D and 3D.  While this isn’t a giant surprise to me, I have only had experience as a 2D, hand-drawn animator and wasn’t sure what to expect from the realm of 3D and Maya (the program used to make 3D animation).  Well, so far they are VERY different in approach.  I do feel like I go into a totally different way of thinking from one to the other…I’ve only scratched the surface of the surface of 3D, but so far it makes me wish I was an experienced sculptor, cause it seems those skills would be quite useful.  That being said, I AM getting the hang of the software rather quickly, thanks to some help from more well versed friends and putting in a lot of extra hours in the Grad Lab (Oh, Graduate students have their own computer lab, btw.  It’s nothing special, sadly, but I do love having it as I feel more important and hoity-toity.  I think it should come with a better meal and have a Foosball table in it, hehehe)

So, my first 2D animation project is due in class on Wednesday.  We had to do the classic assignment, animate a bouncing ball!  Actually we had to do two, a tennis ball and a bowling ball, showing we can depict different weights.  I’ve done this assignment before, so my teach allowed me to take the assignment a little further so I wasn’t bored   I had meant to upload movie files of I have so far here, but I forgot to upload the files from school, oops.  I shall post them tomorrow so everyone can have a look at my (semi) progress.  Our next assignment in an ‘S’ curve, we have to show something moving with part of it lagging behind (ex. seaweed waving in water or a flag blowing in the wind).  I’ve not done this assignment before, so I’m interested to see how difficult it is….right now I’m considering animating a person fluffing out a big sheet, but that might be too ambitious….

Until those movies get uploaded, I’ll hold you over with some concept sketches I’ve been doing for leveL (my webcomic, for the uninitiated). I’ve decided to redesign ALL the characters in an attempt to have a style which is more my own as well as more fun to draw….I started the comic off about 7 years ago in an anime-type style and got sick of it after about 2 years but decided not to change it for the consistency of the comic. I’ve decided to hell with that and am just going to completely facelift the characters and press on with the comic where I’m at, providing a brief little mini-comic explaining the decision. Once I’ve finished the current episode I’m writing, I’ll go back to the begining and redo the pages at the beginning of the chapter to match the style so we have a cohesive style for this particular ‘section’ of the comic, that way I can offer it in print, etc.

Alright, here be the new cast! I’ll start with Erato, one of the villians. I’ve redesigned him most recently, so the process is still somewhat in my head to discuss. Here he is in the old style, fellow with the blue hair:

I decided to give him sharp, bird-like features. Originally I also wanted to give him an very short, almost buzz-cut hairstyle:

I quite liked the haircut actually, but when I tried to see what he’d look like with his big cape and collar on, something of the imposing effect was lost with just an egg-head poking out the top of his silhouette. Thus, I decided to give him some jaggedy hair (and tone down some of with wrinkles o_o;)

Lastly I colored the image, opting to try a soft-shading technique as opposed to the sharp, cel-shadded style I normally use:

And there you have it! Just for fun, here’s a layout of all the main character redeisgns, colored with cel-shading. Some of them got more severe facelifts than others, haha

All these characters are copyright me, feel free to check out the website at http://www.levelmanga.com!