Concept art from the year

These terrifyingly bright ones are inspired by the works of Jolomo and Pam Carter, although I haven't achieved any of their beauty or finesse at handling (digital) paint.

Jolomo

Pam Carter

These were all early ones, working out how this whole textured, swirly-wirliness was going to work.

More Nina concept art

This is the sort of 'final piece' I've been working on. Le sketch of the attic in which Nina dies.

I changed the perspective to make it feel smaller and claustrophobic. 

And added grimy textures to add more atmosphere. 

I thought I was finished with the previous one but I decided to add Death in (in the same style as the film's character design). I tried some brighter colours and thought yellow was a nice angry and violent colour, but it wasn't quite working.

Dulled the yellow down a bit, shrunk him and added flowing lines as if he's materialised from the room itself. 

I decided that Niina needed to change style so I re-drew her in the same style as Death. However, i had some trouble making her looked hanged; she looks like she's just chillin' there. Also added shades of grey to Death, to make him look more corporeal.

Think I finally got the hanged look down. Added the shade to Nina as well, but more extreme as she's directly in the light from the window. 

Bombshell

I had to make a big decision today that I'm both happy and unhappy about; to drop Kelpies for the time being.


We have little over 2 weeks until hand-in and a month tomorrow until degree show, and we're barely over the halfway mark with scenes. Because of assessment (which asks for us to have 2 specialisms, with work on a minimum of 2 films with one of the specialisms, meaning that the films are technically not needed, as I could have worked on my specialisms by themselves instead of working them into a film) most of us in the Kelpie team are starting to panic that we don't have enough specialism work, and would like to concentrate on that to beef it up. That then leaves the 10 days after hand-in until the degree show, and even then it'd be pretty impossible to pull off the amount we still have left to do to a standard we're happy with. We will continue to carry on work with Kelpies after university, but unfortunately we won't have a film to show at the degree show. This saddens me greatly, but it would be far more disheartening to see a film I wasn't happy with being shown, and to have received a poor grade because I wasn't concentrating on my specialisms. This just really shows how important time keeping is, and that it's important to judge that there are certain challenges that are just too big (horses and water spring to mind, anybody?)!


Alas, it's a shame, but it's not the last Kelpies has seen of the world :)

Going back to scene 14

I decided that the hills in the version I thought I had finished were actually too flat, so I came back to it. I took the outline off, as the other scenes didn't have it, and added some shadows in. 

Also a colour key I whipped up for the others to use.

Rejigging backgrounds

This one is just fixing the background before I hand it over to Steph so she can do her painting thang (putting Murdo and the sea and the boat in etc etc, same as I've been doing). Again, overlayed textures, swirly-wirliness, clouds etc.

Colour corrected, as the one above was looking a lot darker than the other scenes. 

DOJ-CON

On top of doing animation and concept art for Dancing Nina, plus that, directing and more for Kelpies, I've been working to help organise DOJ-CON, a popular anime convention/degree show fundraiser. The most artistic input I had in it was designing the posters and flyers for the day (although this isn't all I did; think emailing/meetings etc etc). This was both fun and hair-tearingly frustrating.

The after-party poster/flyer

The flyer

The main poster

I'd like to say that none of the actual artwork was done by myself (we commissioned a couple of artists and they produced this lovely work). I just put the posters together, and fitting all that info in was way harder than it should have been.

Scene 6

Pretty much the same deal as before. Overlayed texture, render of the water painted over, Charlies rocks that I also used in scene 19. This is the scene what's really bright and sunny and unsuspecting of misery, and Murdo's rowing past 'his favourite islands'.

It was suggested that hills in the background looked too flat in the version above, so I added some shadows, and lightened the rocks a bit. (This is just a crappy screen cap so forgive the poor quality) Also with added boat (a 3D render to be painted on top of).

The finished scene, colour corrected, although I think it might be still a little too bright. I kept the lighting on Murdo similar to that on the characters in the interior scenes and  I also had to paint over the boat more than I expected as I had to move the oars and it was quicker to do it in Photoshop than to wait for another render to be passed to me.

Scene 14

I've had to do some editing to Charlie's background, because as lovely as they were, they weren't quite what I was looking for (I did still use some of Charlie's work here, so I'm not taking full credit for these). So a similar dealy with these as the previous ones; a render of the water and then painted over, a texture overlayed on the hills, with nice swirly wirly lines. 

This is the scene in which the mist starts to roll in and it get's awfy chilly and Murdo starts to get a bit freaked out, so I also added lots of misty cloud layers that can be moved about to get the effect that it's rolling in. The same with the higher clouds, the opacity can be turned up to make them look dark and menacing.

Update on the still image deelio

So this is where it's heading at the moment. I've been working with Charlie's backgrounds (the rocks are her work, but I've edited them), and Erin took a render of the 3D water and passed it over to me, and I worked on top of it, using a lot of splash shaped brushes. The render isn't necessary but it seemed silly to waste all those months of work on it, so at least this way it does make it into the film :D It does also make it easier to paint the water, as I just have to go over it with the appropriate brushes/colours.

And with Murdo popped in, textures added and colour corrected (although sans-oars at the moment). I'm pretty happy to carry on with the other scenes with this style. It shows the story fine, and looks a lot more how I envisioned the film in the first place (I felt we were kinda losing it previously, when we were still animating). Once we comp some rain in and put the sound effects on, the audience won't even notice it isn't moving :P