Monster Sketching

Last Saturday, I got together with some friends for a St. Patrick's Day party. Besides the eating, socializing, and movie-watching, it was also an opportunity for everyone to get some artwork done. Most artists work alone unless in a school setting or a drop in life drawing thing. But different than most of those was everyone was working on their own project rather than everyone on the same thing. I took this opportunity to clean up some very rough sketches I had done and, even now, some of these drawings still need some clean up in some areas. It was an enjoyable and productive night and many of us have talked about wanting to do more group art sessions like this. Here are some of the monster-themed sketches I was working on.....

The Hunchback. "The Bells! The Bells!!"

A crazy guy. I need to adjust one of the forearms to match the other.

A little vacationing devil guy.

A risque Bride of Frankenstein gettin' down with Frankie including a line swiped from Colin Clive's Dr. Frankenstein character from the 1931 film.

Zombies are all the rage. This one's arm is a little short and curved. I may fix that or leave it.

Evil Genius! Channeling a little Steve Carell there.

Return of the Turns!

And the turn arounds are BACK!!! Aren't you glad?? These things have been taking forever. And I'm not done yet since these are only the pencil tests. Above is for the Queen Eloise character. Like the Filby character last semester with his coat, I had hoped the Queen's open skirt there would make this one somewhat easy. Granted this is only a pencil test but I think I was hoping for a little better. There are some minor things to fix for the final version with her earring and mole, the two things not symmetrical. But that really shouldn't affect the visuals of this test much here.

On the other hand, and I do mean hand, the character of Moore isn't completely symmetrical ether with the main difference being that one hand is open while the other is closed. This really stands out on the pencil test so I'll have to create slightly different drawings to fix that instead of just reflecting some of the shots.

And here is the Worker character again. My 3/4 to profile and back again transitions were too severe of a jump so I made my old 3/4 shots 2/3 shots and created a couple extra poses as 1/3 shots to smooth it out. And then those new drawings were flopped since this character was symmetrical enough that I could get away with it. Although I do notice the hands not lining up on some shots, I do see an improvement. The other characters with their 8 drawing turns I was running on 7 frames per second. But with the four extra drawings, I could speed this one up to 10 FPS. The faster I run it, the smoother is looks but, obvious, you hit a point where if you run it too fast, the spin is too quick to see anything. So ten was about right for the correct spin speed with the extra information.

It is late and I'm going to let these marinate for the night and look at them with some fresh eyes in the morning. After that, I need to move quickly to correct them, ink them, and color them this week since I need to be shifting to my backgrounds later in the week. My goal is to have all four turns colored, inked, and locked down for Tuesday of next week's ACME session and then the character model sheets and backgrounds ready to show with the turns two days later for the mid-term.

Monster Cards Set 3

Another round of Artist Trading Cards done in-between projects. This wasn't for a group thing like the Tiki and Krampus ones but are some independent ones I'm working on in my spare time to sell at the Alternative Press Expo in the fall.

I have several themed sets that I'm working on but these Monster and Creature cards all have a unifying jagged black border around them and will all be toned in grays rather than in color (a nod to the classic horror films).

Below is the whole set which I'll paint some grays into later.

5173 Workers

Awhile back, I posted a design for a standard worker from the year 5173 for my TIME MACHINE project. Here are some more character designs for some specific characters. If anything, these are really third layer characters. Above is VERNE, like most of the workers underground, he's got some bulk. Verne as red hair, a goatee, and the back of his neck is shaven into stripes (trying for something new and interesting in the future). As bad as working conditions are in this future, apparently there is always time for hair grooming! :)

Above is another worker named Shunro. She's sporting a mohawk.

Above is Traven. Like Shunro, she's a big and strong female character.

Above is Burroughs, who likes green hair dye, apparently.

While the era of 5173 AD is my own creation not in H.G. Wells' novel, I wanted to ground it with elements of the past and their look into the future. The City of Lon in the future and the underworld workers is a bit of a nod to the film METROPOLIS. Wells was a bit of a socialist so this worker revolt has those elements as well. And the final nod are these character's names. VERNE is taken from Jules Verne. SHUNRO is from Shunro Oshikawa. TRAVEN is from B. Traven. And BURROUGHS is from Edgar Rice Burroughs. All of these people were authors who wrote adventure novels and some wrote science-fiction and were futurists.

The Queen's Guard

Wow! A whole week without a new post?? That is very unlike me. I try to post something new each day even if it is some old sketchbook art or just a series of art spread out over several days. It isn't like I've been goofing off. I think I was just stuck in one of those situations where all the art I was working on was not completed and ready to post. Turns needed finishing and drawings needed to be inked. But I should have a bunch of stuff to last me several days.

The above is another secondary character design from my TIME MACHINE project. This is your standard guard outfit for Queen Eloise in the year 5173 AD. I will not be making a turn animation for this but I did want to get it inked, scanned, and colored to preset for the mid-term in class.

Doyle Character Turn

Turnaround animation for the Doyle character. I don't see any glaring problems with this one so I'll check this one off as done. At least two more turns, corrections on the Worker turn, and some character designs to finish up along with my backgrounds this for month. Busy! Busy! Busy!

Here are the individual color drawings for your perusal....

Well Crap!!

I've been working on the character turns that never end. Part of the problem is I'm not finding a lot of time outside of class but I'll need to strive to find some time to get these things squared away. I did think I wrapped up my first final turn, a Worker from the year 5173, but the little problem I saw on the pencil test looks more pronounced on the final inked and colored version.

So, crap, I ain't done with this yet.

But I think I got it figured out. The above video shows a mash up of the pencil, inked, and final turns. There is a little wobble but I think the part that bugs me is the jump from the profile to the 3/4 is too severe and I'll need at least two more drawings (front and back) between those steps. Really, my 3/4 is more of a two-thirds and I'll need a 1/3 in there to smooth it out. Look at the below drawings to see what I mean.

 Look at the jump between the above and below. Too severe of a transition.

 Above, the "3/4" and below, the back. Too similar.

 Look at the jump between the above and below. Too severe of a transition.

I can't spend forever on these things even though it already does seem like an eternity. But I have about three more to finish. I did originally plan on picking one and giving it some extra drawings to experiment with smoothing out the animation beyond the basic 7 drawings needed for a turn and it looks like this will be the one.

Back to the animation coal mines I go....