Design 1 with Lawrence Marvit

We just finished our first week with Lawrence Marvit, who is trying to teach us graphic design in a desperately short period of time. It's been great fun, and it's nice to get a more academic spin on what we're doing. We've had all sorts of crazy assignments, from giving dynamism to boxes, to describing graphically the taste of boxes or the sound of jazz, to finally creating a Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde piece.

FYI this is supposed to represent dark chocolate.

I'm starting to realize the scope of the field I am going into... I don't think I will stop learning new things about it until the day I die. Luckily, I find that to be an exciting thought.

Final Day with Julia Bracegirdle!

Today we present our stuff, including how our characters evolved, etc. :) My maquette is complete and I have thrown together some improved character designs for this presentation. Great stuff!

If you have any interest in the story this was based on, you can hear it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI3oI6wtU_A

Until next time!

My First Maquette

So we've had to make some character designs from a short story (called Dr. De Soto) and we had to pick one to make into a maquette. This was a real technical challenge for me and it's far from over. We've had very little instruction in maquette construction so this has been a pretty adventurous day. Lots of fun nonetheless!

I chose the fox to make into a maquette, and ended up making him a bit too big, but after several hours I think he is coming together.

He still needs a tie and top hat, but that is for tomorrow.

Photoshop Monsters

 So we've been having a pretty interesting week with Julie Bracegirdle, who has been teaching us alternate methods of character design. Here are some photoshop monsters I made yesterday as part of an exercise. We had to write a little bit of fluff about them as well (probably my favourite part), I have put that up here too.

Tetraclops Malculatus (Latin: The Four-Eyed Spotter) is a hellish beast spawned in the pits of my laboratory, and as such defies all attempts at classification any more specific than a rough suggestion of Kingdom.  A crude beast, it tends to wallow in the dark before making a surprise attack by latching on to its prey with incredibly powerful pincers. When attacking, it unleashes a hypersonic scream capable of dazing most ordinary creatures. These screams continue as it devours its prey alive, and as such its eating rituals are punctuated by constant screaming - both of itself and its prey. 

Aspis Erosus (Latin: The Serrated Bee) is a characteristically violent arthropod, prone to flying and attacking in swarms, hunting down and destroying larger prey with a ferocity that reminds one of the feeding frenzies of the Piranha. Do not let their diminutive size fool you – they are highly violent even when caged and it is my personal opinion that it is easier to shoot and dissect them than to keep them.

EDIT: We had to put them all up for display outside our class like some kind of gallery abominate. I took a photo. :D

Snapshot

Little shot of what I'm working on in Bo's Photoshop class. Great to finally be getting structured lessons. :)

Bits and Pieces

These are some bits and pieces I felt like uploading as production nears its finish. So far the short is shaping up good and I have learnt a great deal over the last two weeks, including pipeline, organizational and communication skills in a creative environment. It's really cool that TAW throws you into the thick of the action in your first two weeks.

Most important of the lessons this has taught me is to kill your darlings. I've had to scrap a few pieces for the good of the short.

This is the character work for the final shot.

A few references can never go wrong.

This is a scrapped piece, it didn't match the style we'd set.

This is what the earlier image became.

With only two days left the clock is ticking! We show it to the entire campus at 9AM on Friday. :)

Working at TAW

So the first week at TAW has come and gone and I have some work to show for it!

For our first task we have been given two weeks to make a 30-second short in a completely random group. It has been pretty interesting to finally do something like this and to learn first-hand the challenges involved - especially with a short time period and a mixed group!

Basically we're doing a short clip on a vietnamese town being evacuated and then bombed. I've had to do a lot of character and environment design and I've learned a lot about colour! Here are the villagers and soldiers I've thrown together for the short. They purposely have a rough look to them, as we were aiming for a stylized, textured puppet look.

I still have a background or two to do and some polish, but the short will be shown to the entire school on Friday, so the deadline draws near! It's gonna be awesome. :) Really enjoying TAW and I eagerly look forward to future projects!