Posts Tagged ‘photoshop’
ROBOT Love – Here’s a robot design I made for a character concept as part of a music video treatment. Hand drawn, edited in photoshop, built in 3D (2.5D) and rendered in After Effects.
Below is the pen and ink, original drawing showing the character design of the robot bits.
Fairly simple :)
The above is a still from one of the animated sequences I illustrated and animated for Jeffrey Blitz’s new documentary, Lucky. Lucky premiered at Sundance 2010. I was fortunate to work again as an animator and illustrator with Bill Barminski from Walter Robot on this production and it was also great working with Jeffrey Blitz. I found Jeffrey to be a very intelligent and challenging director. The sequences were animated in After Effects, with the illustrations drawn and colored/textured in photoshop.
The reviews of Lucky have been positive and it seems people also liked the animated sequences, as this review from Scott Weinberg testifies “with nifty animated interstitials full of interesting jackpot stats.” You can read Scott’s full review here:
http://www.cinematical.com/2010/01/27/sundance-review-lucky/
I’m excited to see the full film. Please leave a comment if you’ve seen the film and let me know what you thought, thanks.
Faerie and baby color comp illustration for a freelance animation project. Hand drawn on paper and colored in Photoshop.
This is the animated video I completed for the UCLA Anderson School of Management for their home page video and call to action campaign. It’s an animated video of Max Ohlendorf’s original audio application for the MBA program at UCLA. The production company was Fraser Communications.
Hand drawn, Photoshop and TVPaint elements with compositing and animation in After Effects.
My entry for Illustration Friday, ‘Fast.’ Created in Photoshop and After Effects.
Detail
Detail
I approached the design of the illustration as though I were going to animate it. I drew the cut-out character, props and scenery on paper in pencil, and then pen and ink – archer, bow, arrow, tree etc. Once scanned into the computer I colored and textured the drawings in Photoshop and then imported all the cut-outs into After Effects where I set up 2 scenes; one of the archer in the forest, the other of the arrows. Once the scenes were complete I rendered them out and brought them back into Photoshop to create the final comic-styled illustration.
Some more freelance illustration work I did for Walter Robot. The illustrations include a retro styled phone, television, LCD watch and a fictional YAWNS store-front complete with cars and trolleys. This prop and environment design and illustration work was for a commercial treatment. All illustrations created in Photoshop.
I thought I’d explain the design process for my characters from my animated music video, ‘Dead All Along.’
In the image above you can see the original character design drawing, top left. All the characters for ‘Dead All Along’ started on paper, first as blue pencil drawings, then as pen and ink. I scanned the drawing into photoshop and tweaked the levels so that I the texture of the paper is visible – I really wanted to make the ‘Dead All Along’ world seem as if it was a paper world, almost as though an Edward Gorey inspired book had come to life.
Once in Photoshop, I ‘cut out’ each part of the character so that it can be animated in a cut-out animation style within After Effects. This character didn’t have to animate too much so it only has 9 separate bits, including 2 heads for the blink (eye open, eye closed). You can see the separate body bits in the bottom right of the above image. I cut and separate the body bits using the polygonal lasso tool in Photoshop creating a loose outline of the body part.
For coloring, I like to color in Photoshop. I use Photoshop because I can easily combine textures with the original character drawing and also because I like to be able to experiment with color ideas. I typically use textures in my coloring process and the characters for ‘Dead All Along’ were also colored with a lot of textures. I keep a texture library of textures on my computer that are scans and photographs of textures, patterns etc. One of my favorite set of textures is a book of origami paper that I scanned in – I used several of these origami papers to color and texture the characters in ‘Dead All Along.’ I’m also fond of the Maxon collection of comic patterns, and I have several of these scanned that I use. Below you can see a screen-shot of my texture library (top), a screen-shot of the textures and layers of the coloring process in Photoshop (middle), and a sample of the texture palette I used for the bird (and yes, that is a wallpaper pattern from the 1970’s :)
A still image from the opening scene for my animated music video, ‘Dead All Along’ performed by Welsh musician Ceri Frost.
Here is the revised treatment for the music video.
Logline: Enchanted by a fairy and transformed into a faun, a child called Yorick briefly journeys in the fairy kingdom, but when Yorick returns to his family he discovers that he and his family are already dead.
This is based on the myth of Tir Nan Og, an alternate or parallel universe, a place where time stands still and there is no sickness or death. The fairy kingdom is said to be a hilltop one, but invisible, or composed of magnificent underground cities. Fairy kings and queens rule there. Humans who enter the fairy realm cannot leave once the door closes behind them. Those who do leave may find that years have passed on earth during what was, for them, but minutes in the fairy kingdom.
I’m working hard on finishing this up this weekend so that it can be shown at UCLA’s PROM, the Animation Film Festival, on June 6th :)
Hand drawn and Photoshop with compositing in After Effects.
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.
This is the title drawing for ‘Dead All Along,’ my current animated music video project at UCLA. ‘Dead All Along’ is performed by Welsh musician, Ceri Frost.
Hand drawn and colored in Photoshop.
