Finito!

5 years of intense study is over! Deciding to return to education was totally, absolutely the best thing I have ever done :) Thoroughly enjoyed my time at Motherwell College and DJCAD and happy to say I have no regrets.

Somehow we managed to get the film finished to the standard we were aiming for with no cuts! That was always a worry for me as I think it would have started to fall apart with to many cuts.

The plan now is to get the film into some festivals so unfortunately unless you come through to the DJCAD degree show you can't see it yet.

I've got that nice crash you get when you go from loads of work to no work at all so I'm taking a few days recovery time then it's time to find a job heh.

Here's my showreels! Got a bit more modelling to do for the texturing one but got time to do that now!

Jan 2014

Last leg of the honours degree is just about to begin. I can't wait to finish. Out of excitement obviously!

I spent the last month working on my dissertation about digital comics. Here are some pages I drew up traditionally for it.

The idea was to compare how the scene would be done in print and how it could potentially be done for digital.

Here is a mockup of the digital version of the scene. Ideally it would be interactive but I had to settle for an animation in the time I had since I know zilcho about programming.

I also started making Saltire as a 3D model. Some WiP screenshots follow. The plan is to get the edge flow right in Maya, sculpt in Zbrush and texture in Mari. Depending how time goes I might have to just use mudbox since I'm already familiar with it.

Itching to get back to this and The Divided.

Lastly, here are some turnarounds of some texture work for Six and Rob and a turnaround of Eron from Book of Nemus that I sculpted and textured for the axis interview.

Great backshots in the thumbnails there. I rendered them out as HD so go full screen :)

BoNp1 colours

Got so tired of not being able to get to my personal work. Powered through a bunch of uni work then sat up all night finishing Book of Nemus page 001. Woohoo! On my way to having it online like I planned at the beginning of the year! Another 10-20 years and I'll have the whole saga finished.

Not sure about the painting over pencils method. I'll give it a few more pages and see if I want to stick with it. I might try and get the first scene done like this and online by the end of summer.

Anyway, here's the page. Need to go collapse into a heap now.

Breather

The last few weeks have been nuts. Tonnes of freelance work and uni work on. Finally got everything due in dealt with on Monday morning this week when the last big thing was done- our peer review for the divided. It seemed to go really well despite being cut short by a fire alarm. I was pleased that everyone got the story from the animatic and no one mentioned any of the things I was worried might come up as issues which is great! It would've been nice to have some sound but there just wasn't enough time! I think we will do one more pass at the storyboards once we have the character designs locked down. For the next week or so though all ill be doing is concept work. Hooray!

I've had to let a few things slip recently due to just having so much on all the time. It's quite gutting cause I'm usually so ocd about organisation but at least its not been out of laziness or procrastination!

I'm planning to get to loads of personal work this week. I've already nearly got Riku rigged. A bit of painting weights tomorrow and hopefully I can start mucking around with animation. 

Still plodding on with Book of Nemus as well. 

Here's the first page so far.

Might get it painted by this weekend. Lettering is already done.

Also going to start modelling a "realistic" human. I've been wanting to do it for a while so it'll be good to get that started and I feel that I'm at a good enough level with modelling and texturing to make it look really good.

I'm going to have grey hair by the time I finish this degree.

Update

So much for updating weekly. After new year and Christmas I sort of lost my work ethic. The first month of this semester was awful. I felt like I was putting everything off, doing bear minimum work. I felt like my pitch for the honours year film was pretty ropey, didn't do nearly enough concept work etc... etc... On the plus side, I was sleeping really well.

Well the work ethic has returned. Been getting through loads. Did a bit of work on my 3d hand trying to learn how to do sub surface scattering.

The bugs in the model still annoy me but this was more of an exercise in learning how to set up the shading networks and so I can try and make a full human model.

I finally finished pencilling the first page of the new Book of Nemus comic, a personal project I've been working on in my free time (lol) for the last few years. I'd gotten 40 pages done before around 2006-2008 before deciding to call it quits and go back to square one due to my horrible lack of writing talent. I'm much happier with the scripts and development work this time and the page is looking great.

I'll get it painted and lettered ASAP and set up a new blog for it.

Work on the divided is moving on well as well. Very happy with the work everyone has done for it so far and the storyboards seemed to go down quite well at last weeks production meeting. 

Got our peer review pitch coming up next week for which I'll need to properly prepare the presentation. I'm usually ok and confident in knowing enough about the work we have to just go up and talk but I think this time I don't want to leave anything to chance. Wee bit nervous about it for a change as well. Guess that means I want it to be successful and well received.

Riku and Taro are textured now and rigging is in progress. I showed Tone tonight how to set up the toon shaders in Maya so hopefully she'll have Rin done some time this week. It's going to be awesome having them rigged. I really think we'll end up making a short animation with them as well over the next year.

Lastly, I got the graphics for the slenderman mobile game done as well.

Really pleased with how it turned out. The grayscale style works really well for it.

Well, thats it. Its 215 AM and I am typing a blog instead of sleeping. Least I'm working loads again...

Just need to keep this work ethic up for the next 15 months. Piece of cake. 

Eron Head 3d Model

Modelled in Maya and Mudbox.  This was my first go with Mudbox. Its a really impressive program. I had a lot of fun sculpting this. I'd sit down and start and before I knew it a whole day was gone! 

Book of Nemus Chapter 1 Cover

Potential cover image for the first part of the revised Book of Nemus web comic. Been procrastinating on the actual page 1 for a while now. Script has been ready for a bit. Guess this is an ok way to not actually draw the first page. Least something is being achieved heh

31/07/12 Update. Added some detail.

01/08/12 Update. Minor mucking about trying to get an idea of what to do with the background. Will probably change a lot from this. Ill see what I think when I come back to it after some sleep.

02/08/12 Painted that stuff in a little bit.

02/08/12 Wee bit more.

06/08/12 Some detail on the city. Just need to finish off Eron and add some final touches now.

08/08/12 Gonna call this done now. Need to make up the font for the title next.

Book of Nemus Environment Paintings Completed

Should have finished these ages ago. Here they are. Happy they are done now.

Book of Nemus Image Inked

Inks. Used Pigma Micron pens.

UPDATE: The manga pens suck for this kind of colouring. Or I suck at using them. Ill paint it in photoshop soon.

Book of Nemus Drawing

I did this to try out these manga pens I've bought. Need to ink it first. 


Beil and Eron from Book of Nemus. Just an idea for a scene near the end of the story. Still got to work out the details so this might never happen :]

Environment Concept Stage 7

Added detail to the first one. Photoshop is not merging layers properly so calling it a night.

Environment Concepts Stage 6

Started adding colour overlay layers.

Environment Concepts Stage 5

I added some more detail to the 3rd one and then worked on 2. They are all at a nice stage now. Looking forward to adding colour next time.

Environment Concepts Stage 4

More mucking about with the last one. I really wasn't happy with it. Still a bit iffy but getting there. Need to play with the values a bit more.

Environment Concepts Stage 3

The first one is nearly ready for some colour. 3 is coming along but I've had to try and get rid of the similarities to 1. Still working on that. 

Got the grassy effect in the foreground by accident but decided I liked it. 

Still not sure what I am doing with 2.

Environment Concepts Stage 2

Here's the second stage of my 3 environment concepts for Book of Nemus. I've sort of been itching to get back to them but also putting off doing it. Go figure. 

Anyway You'll notice that the third one is unchanged. I'm supposed to be working them all at the same time to the same stage of completion. I got carried away on the first one tonight. 

I'll pick up tomorrow before work on the second and third one and get them to the same level as the first. I want to get them finished soonish so I can produce a few more so I'm going to try not to get bogged down with the details as much from now on.

Environment Concepts

I started a few new environment concepts for Book of Nemus. Going to keep posting the step by steps here as it's keeping me motivated.

Nemea Prime Stage 7

I'm nearly done. I tried adding in a reflection but it just messed up the composition. Guess he's on some sort of a balcony then. Hehe.

I also got a bit lost on some parts as well and felt like I was being a bit too precious with the details so I feel good about calling it done now. I'll see if I can improve on the next one!

Just need to add in a title and crop it some for the banner image.

Nemea Prime Stage 6

Spare hour before I go to see Tin Tin. Did  wee bit more painting.

Book of Nemus and Insular Art

Over the last year or so I've been slowly reworking a web-comic I worked on a few years ago called the "Book of Nemus". I co-wrote and pencilled the original version for the 43 pages we managed. 

They can still be viewed here:  

http://www.webcomicsnation.com/shoxstudios/sandsong/series.php?view=single&ID=88866 

This is the first page of the second chapter

of the original Book of Nemus story. You can

See the symbols for water and stone on the

banners in the background.

It was a great experience. I got to work and collaborate with people from around the globe, learned a lot about  storytelling and sequential art that you just can't get from reading instructional books and I was really into the story, the characters and the world creating process. 


Well, various things happened and it ended up in limbo for a while then unfortunately we just had to call it a day for a while. So yeah, I've been re-writing and developing the story on my own over the last year. I'm trying to apply everything I've learned whilst studying animation over the last few years about concept art, character and environment development and visual narrative. 


One of the things I liked originally about the design of Book of Nemus were the symbols created for the logo to represent water and stone. They're great designs by an artist named Rob Richardson, and they really helped add some extra character to the environments in some scenes. 


(http://apps.robsart.net/Blog/ He's got some nice pieces of work up on his blog so go have a look!)


So I've been thinking how I can push that further with the designs of the revised version and been looking for ideas and inspiration for new logos and monograms to act as insignia for the various parties in the story. A couple of things discussed in this mornings lecture grabbed my interest regarding this. 


The first was just general designs based around the "insular art" style and the second was medieval monograms. I always kind of liked Gothic architecture and design and having a closer look at some of the works in the lecture today got me thinking about how I can integrate this into the Book of Nemus.

Here are a few examples of the style I want to try and work into the design of Book of Nemus.

This one is the Chi Rho page from the Book of Kells. It's just stunning. 

There's so much going on with the patterns, shapes and colours.

I like this one because it's so abstract. This is exactly the type of image I would want to design for Book of Nemus. It's and old Medieval Celtic model of a cats head.

The two below are other examples of the complexity of these types of design.

I'm going for a sort of mix of cultures with Book of Nemus really. Some of the way the politics of the world are set up is based on ancient Rome with a Senate of powerful people from various houses making up the ruling body of the empire but a lot of the architecture I want to have looking very harsh and reptilian as the aliens themselves are sort of based on reptiles and amphibians. 


I think the recurring shapes and designs in Gothic art and architecture would be a good match for this as I can probably have them represent reptilian spines or ridges etc....