Deadlines and Christmas is a coming!

Me looking for more time.

How is it nearly a new year??!

I am not ready for this!

I really want to put up the third year work I've been working on but due to the fact they may be applying to festivals later I cannot share the goodies.

So far the first semester has gone really well and I honestly can't wait for next year when we will be working a lot more in depth on the third year projects and live briefs.

Dissertation on the other hand...more mental preparation may be needed.

Surrealism & De Chirico

For another group project, I had to study and try to imitate Max Ernst's paintings and De Chirico.

I still have a lot more to work on but this is what I've observed and digitally painted so far. 

De Chirico, The Enigma of the Arrival and the Afternoon 1911-1912

This is a swatch I came up with from observing his different paintings.

Using the same angels that appear in almost all of De Chirico's paintings, I tried to apply it to a background concept piece for the project.

I struggled with finding the balance between the darker areas and the light.

I also learnt very quickly that the colour black was never really used for his extreme shadows but dark greens and reds instead.

For some reason, this was my favourite part of the digital painting I did.

I really like how subtle the circular window looks.

Compared to the other areas of the digital painting, this area looks most like a real painting and also naturally three dimensional.

Reminds me a lot of Shaun Tan's work and his paintings.

My show-reel, updated and re-edited (2015-2017)

Test animation for The Monk

Short 'proof' animation to show and test out style and backgrounds.

Really happy with the progress so far :)

Character designs for 'Muse in the Museum'

Recently working on my friends Pick N' Mix project and I was put in charge of coming up with some character designs.

My friend already had some rough sketches of how she wanted her characters to look like and what their personalities are like in the story.

As the style she got marries very well with the style found in 50's cartoons, we decided to stick to that for inspiration for how the characters might look.

Using block colours and clear shapes.

I look a lot at The Jetsons and Rocky and Bullwinkel.

I really liked the different range of shaped used for each character.

From ovals to tear drops and simple circular heads.

This one was my first attempt at Thaila, our protagonist in this story.

Her character is the Greek goddess of comedy so I tried to find ways to convey her personality through the colours and her pose.

Wasn't very happy with this one although I did like the fact she didn't look conventionally feminine.

I was trying my best to go away from the tiny waist and pink tones.

 This was the final design I ended up with which I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

Most importantly, my friend was very please with the design.

I found that putting in the paper texture somehow made all the shapes and colours work together a lot smoother.

Pick N' Mix: Final characters

Carac - The cart driver

The Abbot

Ulric - The naive friend

Brom - The protagonist

I was debating whether Carac's character design would be better for a main character but then I thought that since this is for a witty, dark humour I actually prefer my protagonist to seem to visually blend in but use that as a contrast to his rebellious personality.

Pick N' Mix: Character designs

As my project is set in the middle ages but has to be influenced by work from St Ives school of art.

So for my characters I tried to marry Julian Trevelyan's paintings of people with the dark strong lines from medieval wood etchings.

'Paddle Steamer', 1986, by Julian Trevelyan

Some of the first designs were interesting but I didn't really feel like they felt right in my settings.

But then I started to play around with the main shapes of the characters and this time I felt like I was reflecting a bit of St Ives abstract elements.