www.gilestimms.com

Work in progress for my next project at UCLA. These are color comps and character designs for an animated music video for “Dead All Along” performed by the amazingly talented, Ceri Frost. This is a terrific song by Ceri.

Logline: Peekle the faun, a mystical animal link to nature, realizes that he and nature are dead to mankind.

The death spoken of in the song is the death of man’s reverence for nature. At one time, man recognized that animals represented a mystical link to nature and the divine. Peekle is a spirit animal or totem animal who linked man with nature and the divine, and facilitated man’s communion with nature and the divine. Now, man no longer sees the spirit animals and has forgotten how to commune with them. Peekle is therefore dead to men, and nature and the divine are lost to us. The words and music of nature no longer inspire men.

Work in progress, hand drawn and Photoshop.

Croc character design. Vector graphic created in Flash.

Still image from my animated music video, Manifestations, with music by Welsh composer, Ceri Frost.

Created with Photoshop and After effects.

It’s been a while…some drawings from our trip to Maine, summer 2008.

Sad fox. Pencil test and layout sequence. Made with TVPaint. Work in progress

The latest version of the animatic for my 2nd year film, as of last week. This was drawn in TVPaint and timed out with Final Cut. I think the timing is closer to what it should be, though the pacing of the film needs more work…among other things.

Work in progress, no sound.

The revised fight scene animatic for my 2nd year film at UCLA. Drawn in TVPaint and timed out in Final Cut. Work in progress.

The latest version of the animatic for my 2nd year film, as of this week. I haven’t decided on a suitable title yet. This was all created with TVPaint (an amazing piece of software) and timed out with Final Cut.

Work in progress, no sound.

‘Super,’ pen and ink and photoshop. Another personal poster project for the band, Super Furry Animals.

This started off as a pen and ink drawing. However, I wasn’t at all happy with the original drawing so I coloured the pen and ink image in Photoshop. As soon as I started the drawing I knew it wasn’t going to turn out well…so of course it didn’t.

Here’s the original pen and ink drawing.

To find out more about the Super Furry Animals, visit the site, www.superfurry.com.

‘Ysbryd, Prince of Animal Ghosts,’ pen and ink, brush pen and Sakuras on Bristol Board, 6″ x 9″

Like a lot of people I like films, literature and art that tell the stories of dark heroes. I wanted to figure such a hero in one of my pen drawings, so the above drawing is about Prince Ysbryd who roams the animal underworld. I think pen and ink is a great medium for creating darker images.

I may have been inspired to go darker after reading the great article on Camille Rose Garcia in the March issue of Juxtapoz. The interview with her is good and she talks a little about her process; her explanation of her characterization process is briefly explained, but very interesting.

Angie and I also saw two rather dark movies both of which I would recommend: ‘Memory of a killer’ and ‘North Country.’ ‘Memory of a Killer’ is a Belgian crime-thriller that tells the story of Angelo Ledda, a vigilante style dark hero (see Wikipedia reference). Angelo is an elderly hit-man suffering the onset of Alzheimer’s who takes on a hit job that prompts him to turn on his employer. The characters are somewhat typical for this genre, but they have enough twists to become compelling. To find out more about “Memories of Killer,’ visit www.imdb.com and to find out more about ‘North Country,’ visit www.imdb.com.