Friday 24 December 2010

Past the Sell-By-Date

***Anything I post now is technically after the hand in date, so won't count towards my mark but some of it's stuff I shouldve had on here already... and other bits tie in with the last couple of projects and research I've been posting already...***

Ok logo keyring idea... now i've finally had a bit of extra time to realise what i shouldve done... I've mocked up a keyring idea using some air-dry clay because I've used sculpey in the past and although its great for fine detail... i hate having to bake it to set it! Even so, the air-drying clay took nearly 2 days to set properly! so... maybe I should've just gone with sculpey... Rather than just relying on the one design (running with scissors), the OK logo is something I created a while ago and is something I enjoy.. it feels more personal than some of the other work ive done in the past and more like what I want to create in the future...



I'm aiming to make a fairly final prototype.. then I want to create some rough molds from it and then cast some resin prototypes from that... depending on how they work out... i may paint some but I have also picked up some Glow In The Dark (GID) spray paint... so i will definitely be testing that out!

I even got a bit carried away with the excess clay i took and made these simple characters ... (based off of the little guys i made during the Diesel brief)


I wouldnt use the clay to make anything small scale due to its poor fine detail quality.. but sculpey would work a lot better if I was to finally mock up some of these characters I keep threatening you all with!

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One thing I missed off my 'green eyed' post was about Pixar's animated shorts. It's not only their feature length films that capture my imagination and are filled with characters but some of their animated shorts are even better.. in particular... "For The Birds"... similar to Wall*E (and Tom&Jerry).. it doesnt have any speaking characters, instead the narrative, emotion, thoughts and feelings of the short and its characters are shown through subtle "facial" expressions, mannerisms, posture and of course editing and camera angles... there's a lot more that goes into something like this.. but the trick is to make it look flawless and to hide the technical side so you focus less on how its made.. but more on what its showing!



Now often, Pixar seems to be the only name in the business.. but I keep forgetting just how much success DreamWorks Animation have had... It was 'Kung Fu Panda' which stood out as one of their finest achievements but I've also recently seen 'How to Train your Dragon' which has now become another firm favourite of mine. I like seeing all of the behind the scenes work that goes into making these characters... working out how they move, how their weight sits around their frame/skeleton and all of their emotions/facial expressions...



When you look through 'The Art Of Finding Nemo'.. you see concept work from various artists, each with their own interpretation on how a character could look... but for Kung Fu Panda, Dreamworks animation were so in love with the work of Nicolas Marlet that they only used his work as a basis for their 3D character models.

"He was so unique in his solutions that I had a hard time finding other people to emulate it,"

"Some of the rules we followed were actually his, like we don't stick necks straight up out of torsos and then put animal heads on the top or it just looks like a guy in a costume. Instead, we have the neck coming forward, so the head and neck and body are really one unit."

says production designer Raymond Zibach....

All quotes stolen from Peter Deruge's interview from Variety.


Similarly, they must've have done the same for 'How to train your dragon'... taking Marlot's designs to define the general "look" of the characters...



however, I didn't realise until talking to Miss Rosie Wilman (2nd Year Illustration course) that Chris Sanders actually took control over designing one of the main cahracters 'Toothless' the dragon. Knowing this suddenly makes his particular style of illustration jump out! I started seeing similarities from his other work coming out such as the big eyes and wide mouths.. (much like Stitch from Lilo&Stitch).






I've gotta keep these things in mind as I attempt the Disney brief over these next few months.. and also have to learn After Effects! :(

1 comment:

  1. Those characters are brilliant, and the key ring is great too, did you ever get those printed on shirts?

    Marco.

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