June-Aug 2015

I just finished up helping Gary out on a games project. This one I found much more enjoyable to do. I got to do some animation on it as well which was an interesting experience! I spent most of my time at university doing everything but animation and most that I had done had been 2D hand drawn but once I got into the swing of things I started to enjoy the process.

Here are some of the character designs for the game. I modeled, textured these guys, the fight arena and animated most the alien fight sequences with the other characters.

And some of the environment concepts with a render of the finished model.

 

In amongst all the freelance work I made this storyboard for a 3D animation. I'm not sure when it'll be animated but I really like the start of it and am particularly happy with how a couple of the shots turned out. I definitely want to do more storyboards like this future.

I've also put together a new showreel which can be viewed below and done a couple of storyboard art tests also linked below.

Showreel

Jam Media Test

Cartoon Network Test

I've still been plugging away with some comic work too. Here are some pages. I've been working in a bunch of different styles as you can see!

   

At the end of last year I worked on a 3D version of Top Trumps Turbo. Below is a bunch of concept work and screenshots of the models. The game was released on Steam earlier this summer. It was a good experience to follow on from Dare last summer and was nice to see a game through to completion and have it released.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/343180/

April 2015 The Divided

It's been about a year since we finished "The Divided" for our degree. I submitted it to some festivals since then but had no luck :)  Here it is in all it's glory. Many thanks once again to all the amazing people who helped it come together. 

I don't know how to put into words the feeling of satisfaction and pride I have from completing this film. It was personal to me in a lot of ways and it's the first time I've produced something on this scale that I am really proud of. I can only hope every film maker feels like this when they see a project through to completion and release it.

The Divided from Gary Welsh on Vimeo.

The last couple of months I've spent working on comics and storyboard stuff. here's some snippets of what I have been doing.

One of the things I worked on was this Storyboard Art Test for Jam Media. I completed this using Photoshop for the actual frame drawings and put the board together in storyboard pro. Once I got used to storyboard pro I found it really useful. Especially the output formats for the final boards.

I spent quite a bit of time trying to get it up to a professional level. I'm sure there are still some obvious errors in there but drawing a line under it for now. Many thanks to Andy Eracleous for taking the time to give me some advice as well.

These first comics will appear in the Universe comics anthology , I imagine at some point in the summers this year, from the Masters comic studies course at Dundee University.

Both the scripts were great too and a lot of fun to work on.

The first story, By Cletus Jacobs, was about a guy who day dreams of being a super hero. It had a great mix of superhero action scenes and contrasting scenes of the characters mundane day to day life.

They were done entirely in Manga Studio 5 ( which I am slowly falling in love with!) I'm really happy how they turned out. The brushes in MS are a delight to use. Combined with working on a cintiq I think its as close to the feeling of working traditionally you can get without , y'know, actually working traditionally.

The second comic was a bonkers story about two giant monsters fighting in a city being filmed by aliens. Totally nuts but great to draw! It was written by Ricardo Serrano Denis and you can find some more of his work here http://onedegreeseparation.blogspot.co.uk/

I've also been developing a sci fi comic with an writer overseas. Here's a couple of panels from the first pages and some concept work

I did a bunch of concept work for some of the characters and overall look before starting.

Some ship designs for a sort of recon vessel. I think you can clearly see my influences :p

This is what we settled on for the space suit.

I also storyboarded the entire scene opening scene to get an idea of how everything would be laid out and how the action would flow. 

Moving on.

I got to do some life drawing last night in Glasgow for the first time since University life drawing classes finished in April. It was great to get back into it. I'll definitely be going every week I can - I realised I really missed just drawing since most of the summer was spent working in Maya and Photoshop. 

I also got the chance to do some animation for one of the Masters films at DJCAD. This is the first time I've animated in a couple of years and it scratched an itch. I'd been wanting to do a bit more for a while but hummed and hawed about doing it when I had so much other stuff to work on so getting the chance to do it as part of a project helping Lilly out on her film was fantastic. 

I've more or less decided I'll be doing little bits of animation here and there now and have been watching what tutorials I can on Digital Tutors before it expires.

Here's the shot I did for "Tug of Biscuit."

"Lapin", sadly, is on the backburner 'til we all can find some work. It's not going to take much more to finish it and get it releasable on the app store but right now it just isn't the number one priority.

Other than that I have mostly been getting set up back home and looking for work. 

I'm planning to have a good think about what's next creatively. 

I've got a few ideas for various things I'd like to try and what skills I want to focus on developing further. But I think I really need to narrow it down further to one or two things.

I also think I have found some inspiration for my next story. It feels good. After completing the Divided I was a bit lost on what to do next because that story was so personal to me for a long time and I'd spent years mulling it over in my head and developing it. After completing it, it felt that there was something missing from me. I don't know how else to describe it :) But something clicked the other day and I think I'm on to something!

We shall see! 

Dare 2014 Week 6/7

Pretty much in the last week now. We've a couple days next week but that'll mostly be for last minute preparations. We'll have a decent build by the end of this week with everything we wanted to include implemented in time for Protoplay. In the last couple of weeks I've been mainly focusing on getting all the extra UI/screen info ready and working on the game trailer. Here's the game trailer first.

Wish I could say I've enjoyed the UI design anywhere near as much as the character design but I can't. It's something I always feel I struggle with and this lot has been no exception.

Here's the last model I completed at the start of week six. We put this up on twitter around that time but I've since fixed the roof  which was way too large. I couldn't see it til it was pointed out! Was a strange one.

Theres a couple more small bits and bobs to add to this one too but this is almost all the 3d stuff we will have in the game for Protoplay in one shot.

I finished up the start screen today Quite happy with the overall look. Shortpaw will be the 3D model with some animation over final screen. This was mostly created using existing models obviously with a couple of extras modelled and textured then the whole thing was comped in Photoshop with extra painting on top to tidy up some areas, add depth and add a bit extra detail to some parts.

I made most of the UI over a mocked up shot of the game so I could get an idea how it was going to look in-game.

The icon is a bit of a failure actually. The initial one on the left here was way to busy for an app icon. I sort of hope we get some other use out of it. Even with the gradient fading out the background I think it's a bit weak. If I get a chance I'll have another crack at it before the weekend. 

Below is a bunch of the UI and game asset stuff I made. All done with Photoshop.