Monday 3 September 2007

My Deepest Apologies....


HI everyone, it’s been a long time since I’ve posted, so much for my one a week promise. I think I’ll try and do two posts a month for now. Thanks to everyone for the positive feedback on my showreel. I appreciate it deeply. Before I go on, I just want to take this opportunity (seriously) to apologize to my friends, family, LAS class mates and tutors, National Gallery Administrators, bloggers and anyone who has shown interest or helped me for the past year, for not finishing my final project in time for the gallery screening. I really feel like I’ve let a lot of people down
including myself. After my trip to Marrakech (a wonderful trip which was made special by my lady, I definitely owe her a big apology) I fell into a slump and managed to pick myself up out of it 3 weeks later. I have no excuses; I got in my own way. So I promise no matter what, I’ll continue to work on the final, gallery or no gallery, till it’s done. I have given up the right to quit. Once again people….I’m sorry. I won’t let you or myself down again.

Following are some of the things I’ve been up to for the last few weeks, some seen, some unseen.
















Test Composite from Libra Bear Vids and Vimeo.

Character Design.
I wish I could have pushed some of the design a bit more, made the characters a bit more larger than life. I feel they’re a bit bland. I also think the cupid character doesn’t feel like he belongs to the same world. I like my take on Father Time the original God of Death. My first design of him was very Zeus-ish with wings. It’s only after I did some more research on him, I decided to make him a little darker. The stick of his scythe is based on the shape of the staff Moses holds in Prince of Egypt. The blade and the white bandage is a tip of the hat (or rip off, you decide LOL) to Bleach. The show is about death Gods so I thought hey, why not use that with my death god. Father time definitely went through a long design process and set the tone for the rest of the characters. I’ll post the variations later. One thing I hate with him is the model of his wings. They look very flat and dead so after I did the model I drew some thumbnails of how I want his wings to look and feel. The model won’t be so rigid. Venus I find, is really hard to keep on model. I still really struggle to draw her. I tried to look at actresses with square faces, Selma Hayek, Angelina Jolie, Minnie Driver to name a few. Her eyebrows are far too thick. I only noticed it when I cleaned her up. In the film, I’ll make them thinner. I wasn’t sure what colour to do her hair, at first it was to be blonde, but I thought that was too typical. My class mate Nick Hanks told me I should make it Ginger and showed quite a few paintings of Venus with ginger hair. The most significant being The Birth of Venus by Botticelli.
Cupid is based on a statue I saw in the V&A museum. I’ll post it next time. Being the god of erotic love, I wanted him to be a bit spoilt, and almost evil. It’s strange, every time I’ve shown the animatic, people always comment on cupid. He doesn’t even do anything. A bit like Boba Fett in Star Wars. He’s so popular but he only has 10mins of footage in the first trilogy (come on, to be an animator you have to be a bit of a geek)

Backgrounds.
This is something I’m really gonna compromise on. I’m designing them as I go along. I wanted the backgrounds to have a painterly feel to it, a bit like Studio Ghibli, but I can’t paint like that, and If I could, it would take far too much time. This film will definitely skip clean up stage. I wanted to really push the backgrounds. I went around London and took loads of pictures, anything that looked Grecian. Then take elements of the photos and fuse it into my picture. My understanding of perspective is very poor ( I learnt how to draw watching cartoons and reading comics, I’ve skipped a lot of the basics so I’m trying to atone for my sins now) The environment will be quite misty and clouds will be moving at different speeds along with mist. The colour versions are just tests.

Video
This is just a test to see what the final composite might look like. The clouds will be different and cupid will have hair. Might blur the image a bit more to soften it.

Generally the Art direction is all over the place, but I’m learning a lot, which is the main thing I guess

And that’s it for now. I’ll try and post more in two weeks.

And Again….
Wes

PS Just started a new blog, Just for showreels librabearshowreels.blogspot.com.

15 comments:

David Beer said...

Hey Dude, looking good, as always, keep the Faith buddy!

maarten said...

Hey man,

Thanks for your comment on my blog!
Amazing stuff man. I absolutely love the designs, I don't think they couldve been done better!

You really are an incredible draftsman. Really really inspiring!

Makes me wanna draw bad! And then feel sorry for myself hahaha. But hey I just started and I can always hope to ever reach the level your on now.

By the way I thought I understood Matt Williames' tutorial, but if you didn't understand it, how can I possibly have. Haha. I probably misunderstood it or something.

Hmm long comment, well hoping to see you around!

messytimbo said...

looking good buddy. seen a lot of it b4, i need to see some of your sketch book stuff, and don't tell me you haven't been sketching anything. you must'av busted out a couple of sketches in Marrakech.

in the test video i think the clouds are moving to fast. my eye instantly was drawn to them, and if they are moving that fast in other scenes it might be distracting.

i'll chat to you soon.

libra bear said...

Thanks for the comments guys,

Maarten, You probably did understand what Matt was talking about, I'm the kind of person that only gets things when I do, I'm sure what he was saying was simple, maybe Im complicating things.

Tim, I did one sketch in Morocco, and It's not even good. I'll post it maybe. I haven't done much life stuff. Haven't really been out much. I really miss it, but don't worry, soon as I start work or something I'm hitting life drawing like the plague. Right now my sole mission is to finish this project. As for the clouds, this scene is non exsitent, it was just a test. Thanks guys

Nick said...

Hey Wes,

Good to see you're sketching still and loving the Artwrok, it's such a massive strength and asset.

Good luck getting a job mate, sure it won't be too long, eh? And still waiting for your final film!

flaviano said...

the showreel doesn't work, "stream was not found" is the message.

anyway you're fucking talented man!

Jamal O said...

Great looking work here.

maarten said...

By the way, I absolutely LOVE the backgrounds. Great use of detaills just beautifull!

Urban Barbarian said...

Egads, man! Some excellent work here! Very inspirational!

Unknown said...

WOW!! IT's wonderful to see all these design and conceptual works of yours!

Daniel M.C. Alvite said...

ey wes, well done, after a long break you made a nice post, the characters mdel sheet are amaizing. I just wanna see the film..

maarten said...

Thanks so much for your kind words and tips! I'm so incredibly glad that there are people like you who can be bothered to help me.

Sorry for the late reaction, I've been drawing and sketching a lot lately and I also did a new animation (which took quite long cause one of the pins of my animation board broke haha).

By the way your not crap at explaining things at all! It was very usefull.

Anyway.. I linked to you, hope you don't mind and I guess I'll see you around.

Tim Moen said...

hey dude. stuff is lookin good. thanks for your comments by the way. i really really like the design of the woman. the face is really well constructed and appealing.

maarten said...

Hey,
Awesome tips man! I'm gonna try the circle in flash right away! I think that will really help me understand spacing better.
About the eye blinking when turning your head, after you mentioned it I realised that that indeed is what people do when they turn their heads. It's
one of those things that are... so natural that you hardly notice them. Ofcourse animators should notice such detaills, hopefully it's a trainable skill.
Thanks a lot for your positive feedback on my animation man, so motivating!
On the shoulders, I tried it in front of the mirror too before I made the animation, it's true, there's this range within you can move your head without moving your shoulders.
I love how much you wanna learn, man even though your already really good!
Talk to you!

Daniel M.C. Alvite said...

hey wes, thanks for the advice, the paper over the tablet is great, get o god grip. cheers