Mike Winn Art and Animation

Drive By New Year Posting

2012-01-07T15:16:00.000-08:00

Hey gang! Happy New Year!

Need to update this little corner of the web so really quickly:

Hard at work on ARMSmasters still. We've got our voice actors all in. Our pre production is just a little behind schedule but I have faith we'll produce a stellar final product.

I've begun re-assembling the Pitch Bible and planning the creation of an 'Art Of' book as part of our Kickstarter incentive packages and fund raising.

This is, as the title says, a drive by posting so for more information continue to visit my deviant art page and the ARMSmasters Production Blog! Awesome collaborative work by myself and Mel Miller up above.

The Littlest Angel and Other Assortments

2011-11-16T08:41:00.001-08:00

I thought I'd drop a post on this!

This was an animated film that I had the pleasure of storyboarding about a year ago as a lead storyboard artist alongside some great fellow artists - some of whom are helping out on ARMSmasters. Well it's released now and it's full of cuteness and sugary goodness. It's a great feeling to see things you storyboarded come to life. Not the first time but it is one of the earliest feature films I had the pleasure of being involved in. It's a wonderful thing for sure. Now that the film is out the greenlight to show some of those boards and drawings exists so I'll be putting some of those up soon!

Something else I'm working on and have been since mid August are a series of 2d sprite style animations for an Independent Game studio named Lantana Games! These guys are an awesome crew and they're inspirational. It's great to see their efforts coming together. The game is called Children of Liberty and I am responsible for all of the main character animations and I will probably also be doing their story illustrations as well.

ARMSmasters is in high pre production gear right now. We're working on the script, voice actors, and as of this week will be starting conceptual art and storyboarding. Check out these character lineup images done by myself and the esteemed Mel Miller?

Work in progress flats for Riot as part of another poster image. Keep checking in on us guys!

Alive again and Commissions

2011-10-15T22:41:00.000-07:00

Well I have recently returned from an 11 day stay at a hospital and a 2 week period prior to that of intense pain and discomfort all beginning with what is believed to have been a bad spider bite. Ow. I'll spare you all the details but suffice to say I was suffering with a deep infection that I'm actually not completely over yet but thank God I'm at least home again and once more starting to catch up on things.

The 4 week and counting hiatus has hit my income up severely so I'm actually opening up commission work again. This is something I haven't done in a long time due to being too busy but I could use the portfolio work (and the funds!) - Particular details on how to commission me can be found here: http://mikewinn.deviantart.com/journal/45093062/ but to summarize, contact me via email at mwcreate@yahoo.com - I am doing $20.00 sketch commissions of a single character. Payment is to be handled via paypal. If you wish to solicit my services just email me to initiate the contact and we'll talk. My journal entry on deviant art has more information.

In the meantime here is an image I did just prior to getting sick, of Kongou. This image was used for the Toonbots Animation group for an ad in an animation magazine called Kidscreen. I've never drawn Kongou so angry-happy. He looks like he wants to eat you.

Hey Hey Kids

2011-08-20T16:40:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile since I've updated this blog. I begin this art dump post with another collaborative showcase of myself and Mel Miller, solidifying the lead character 'Riot' for the ARMSmasters Project! As usual let me put my plug in for you checking out the ARMSmasters Blog since that is where most of my professional activity is when I am not doing freelance. But this place is also near and dear to me and as I update it I know you folk will follow the links!

There's alot I wish I could talk about but until it's more then just wind and air I'm going to hold my peace and just say we've been very agressive and active in the aftermath of the Pitch Party. In addition to that this weekend sees the release of Spy Kids 4 and my name is in the credits! They, uh, mispelled it! (lol) So I'm listed as Macheal Winn. No worries, it's ironic and I didn't see it happen to anyone else I knew but I'm in there.

For now I'll leave you with some sketches, some of which exclusive to here for now as they haven't even been posted on the other blog or on deviant art yet though they will be soon. Thanks for continuing to drop by!

Animation Magazine Pitch Party Voting

2011-06-20T16:37:00.000-07:00

First, I realized I never posted this bit of work by Mel Miller and myself - a collaboration that produced the, then current, final model for Aeslyn the Noble Sorceress from the ARMSmasters Project. Since then I've envisioned a few alternate costumes for her but this is your principle basic model. It was fantastic getting this nailed down as she's been an elusive character for quite some time.

On to the purpose of this post though! Voting for the Animation Magazine Pitch Party has begun! I'm very excited to be taking part of this with the ARMSmasters Project. You can find our entry and others here: http://www.animationmagazine.net/events/voting-begins-for-animags-10th-annual-pitch-party-contest/

The competition this year is very fascinating. It's great to see the quality go up year by year. I feel ARMSmasters is in good, and in some cases tough, company! We'll see what happens but please stop by and cast your vote for the property you feel most drawn to and believe in. Voting lasts from now until this coming Sunday. I'll be making additional posts to this end as time moves ahead. Thanks for your continued support and continue to visit our production blog!

Animation Magazine Pitch Party 2011

2011-06-10T05:01:00.000-07:00

WOW! It has been AWHILE hasn't it, you poor neglected blogspace!

In reality, most of my blogging has been over on The ARMSmasters production blog so shame on you if you haven't checked it out yet! Since most of my 'for fun' art tends to be ARMSmasters related if it's not just loose doodling and sketches, it'll show up there and on deviant art a little faster then I get around to posting it here.

I have an excuse though! Shortly after Mel and I began working on the model sheets we both got hired by one of the local studios to work post production on a major feature film that'll be out in the next month or so. We're talking 60 hr work weeks here. This, obviously, cut into our productivity for the 'for free despite being for our future' ARMSmasters Project since that is a donation of time and energy and we must keep freelancing to be -able- to donate time to ARMSmasters. Soon we will be initiating a major fund raising effort for ARMSmasters but even then, that will have to wait until after we are done with these 60 hour work weeks and get a break.

But on to the real purpose of this post. At the very last second I found out about the Animation Magazine Pitch Party, where every year they open their August issue up to contestants who are trying to put together independent properties and put ideas together to pitch to the animation industry. It's a great opportunity to get exposure in a way that we simply could not do on our own at this stage. No matter what, all entries get printed in their magazine which hits all major bookstores and reaches animation junkies and producers world wide. On top of this, you have a chance to obtain placing through voting by Judges from the industry, an editors choice and a Readers choice. For me, the fact that we will be printed in Animation Magazine is signifigant enough but placing in any category in the contest itself would be mind blowing.

So in a hurry, with barely two weeks to do it, Mel Miller and I hashed out an ad in the same fashion we did the blog banner. I did the composition and rough layout, though this time I did work tighter then the banner, and Mel did a final line and her awesome colors. I blocked out the ad mockup and she finished it off and actually put it together, making some adjustments for space. The result is what you see at the top of this post.

Voting for the online readers choice should begin soon with the winners announced July 1st. Stay tuned to this space or, better yet, visit The ARMSmasters blog, for more info and vote for us!.

P.S. - if you don't vote for us then at least vote for my buddy, Dwight Williamson. Though helping out on ARMSmasters I encouraged him to get his own idea, High Speed Waffleman, out there. He'll be in the magazine as well!

Tyr - FInal Model

2011-02-21T14:04:00.000-08:00

Haven't checked out our ARMSmasters Production Blog yet? Well what're ya waiting on!

Hop over to http://www.armsmastersproject.com and check out our thoughts, artwork, animation and follow our progress as we work diligently to bring The ARMSmasters Project to life and produce some fun animation and designs.

In the meantime check out this above image - another collaborative effort between myself and Mel Miller. Now Tyr was already a fairly tied down character but we still needed some final tweaking and refinement and a real good color pass on him to bring him into line with how we intend for the final film to look - and so here he is! Mel is doing a fantastic job tightening up my initial sketches and rough layout designs and her linework over my initial passes is creating an interesting result that maintains my designs but is made more elegant and finished.

ARMSmasters Production Blog

2011-02-04T21:53:00.000-08:00

I'm going to keep this short and sweet :)

Check out our production blog at http://www.armsmastersproject.com

We're moving into full swing on pre production and production on The ARMSmasters Project animated short and pitch bible and the blog is where we will be archiving our efforts.

In the meantime check out this amazing banner that was done by means of collaboration with a certain Miss Mel Miller. I get a kick out of posting this but though I did the roughs, the magic of clean up and color is all her. This and more art will be showing up on the production blog so head on over!

Tyr - Color Render Passes

2011-01-31T06:59:00.000-08:00

Tyr Hammer Shadow Passes from Michael Winn on Vimeo.

Some quick and delightful news. Another color sequence is done and soon I'll be compiling a more definitive finished character teaser. A public production blog is also being worked on at: http;//thearmsmasters.blogspot.com - expect more news and information regarding that, this week.

Kongou Render Tests

2011-01-17T20:10:00.000-08:00

Kongou Zoom In Renders from Michael Winn on Vimeo.

The ARMSmasters Project (Animation, Pitch, Story, Etc) is coming along nicely with the support of friends and partners. Here is the latest series of render tests featuring Kongou. Again the end look is going to likely be a nice use of gradient colored shadows and lighting effects but I wanted to set varying attempts side by side just to see how different shadow styles might stand out on the character. Some styles work better then others on some characters.

Keeping Up With The Jones (er The Blog)

2011-01-17T20:02:00.000-08:00

I promised myself that I would stay up on keeping this thing updated and by God I'm gonna do so!

Very little to say here save that here's a dump of some images, recently scanned, sketched and drawn up. Collection of sketches, marker studies of other art and rough layouts. http://mikewinnart.deviantart.com has more. I've also finally dropped cash for am intuous 4. I'm getting all high tech and stuff.

Aeslyn Renders

2010-12-30T21:23:00.000-08:00

Aeslyn Render Tests from Michael Winn on Vimeo.

Those of you who have tracked my vimeo posts back to my vimeo account have had access to the various animatics, animation tests and other varying posts that have gone up related to the ARMSmasters Project.

This latest post is a bit of milestone for our short progress as it represents a nearly finished shot with lighting and shadows on it. In short here I am just going through several shadow variations in order to see what styles work best with the finished art and animation and how it also relates to the original vision I had. The very last test represents a sample of how we hope to have the completed short look when all is said and done.

I'm not going to embed every last video I post on vimeo as some of them are brief tests but if you visit my account you'll see what we've been up to.

Long Overdue Updates - Toonbots

2010-12-30T21:05:00.000-08:00

toonbots 2010 Demo Reel from Chris Carden on Vimeo.

Alpha Omega Animation Design is the business that I founded with the help of several business partners with the intention of doing entertainment animation work and design work but to also be an outlet for the development of our in house intellectual properties. At the same time we are production partners with another up and coming local animation house which is serving as a collective hub for great talent and collective work. This animation house is known as Toonbots. You can check that reel out up above.

It's been way, way, way to long since I've updated this blog. The short story version is that I've been working full time as a storyboard artist a ta new CGI studio, and while that happened I had a shorter stint on -another- feature film as a freelancer, and then I've been diligently trying to art direct, produce, design, create and promote ARMSmasters and other side projects along with my business associates and friends. In short the last half of 2010 was enormously busy and things began picking up. It's only fitting that I begin returning to attempts at regular updates to this blog going into 2011. I've quite abit of art and material to get uploaded as well as plans to get a public production blog up for ARMSmasters. For now I'll start with some video posts. First being this one about Toonbots with others soon to come.

ARMSmasters - Rebuild

2010-07-31T21:39:00.000-07:00

ARMSmasters Second Edit - Complete from Michael Winn on Vimeo.

Another amazing milestone has been reached in just a short space of time via the dedicated efforts and work from the Alpha Omega principles and a group of energetic, hungry, passionate and enormously talented animators and designers who stepped up to help us polish off the work the originals had put into the trailer. Second clean up passes, reworking of color and additional After Effects work went into taking this trailer up to the next level of professionalism and we're still not done and aiming for a final product (and a longer piece.) Mel Miller, Patrick Stannard, Mike Blazowski and Niles Bontrager all laid their hands on this and are owed a debt of gratitude. Now for the hard part!

Some More Sketches

2010-06-03T23:10:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been doing some style explorations of some artists that I enjoy. I usually play around with these other styles while trying to loosen and warm up. Lately it's been kind of hard to just sit down and start drawing so I've been trying to kick that habit. Sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn't. Dry periods are some of the things we have to just deal with. I seem to be coming out of mine, which is good, since I have alot of work to d in order to get the ARMSmasters Rebuild under way not to mention business related endeavors! The first two sketches were such style studies. I really enjoy the art of Balak, an overseas animator and artists. Don't much care for the overly adult material but I like his overall playful style and I wish he'd do more of that. Lesean Thomas is another favorite of mine as well. This was just a uuick take on one of his Tessai pieces he did. Tessai being a Ninja Scroll char.

The other sketches are just misc. sketches. I've been finally getting over the struggle of really putting Aeslyn to paper in a fashion I'm pleased with. Getting a final design for her that I'm satisfied with will be a major accomplishment. She's just been a big challenge but I think I'm almost there with a little more tweaking and some additional opinions.

The rest of this is just an image dump of some older images including some of the first of the storyboard sketches I started putting together for the ARMSmasters rebuild. Im excited and happy to have the additional help related to it and I'm looking forward to seeing what we're all able to do.

Speaking of New Art

2010-05-18T19:54:00.001-07:00

Speaking of needing to get new art up more often and faster. These pieces are overdue. I was trying to get these ready for the con but - oh well!

Still I'm pleased by the progress of both of these pieces so...here they are!

Top Animation Blogs - Wow!

2010-05-18T19:41:00.001-07:00

http://www.guidetoartschools.com/tips-and-tools/cartooning-and-animation

I recently received an email that astonished me. I was honored by these people to be included on their list of top animation blogs. This is something I would have never ever looked for or believed that I qualified for. I consider myself a 'not bad artist', sure, I obviously know how to draw and animate, but it's humbling to be included in such a thing.

This is an amazing list and it pretty much hits just about all the blogs that I could have reccomended myself with the exception of just a couple - but really it'd be impossible to hit everyone given the wide degree of talented artists out there and the variances in tastes, style, etc. I only hope I can continue to be of some help and inspiration to aspiring artists and animators.

I guess I'll need to be more diligent about updating this thing from here on out!

Kongou the Mountain

2010-02-01T12:43:00.000-08:00

Bio:
The enigmatic giant known as 'The Mountain' has been active in the frontier for many years now. His colossal strength and resilence coupled with what seems to be a cheery personality make him popular in the Relic Hunter ranking system and in the epic underground tournaments that litter the frontier. He, among several others, are drawn into the conspiracy by being hired by the empire as bounty hunters to track down and capture Aeslyn and The Logos and as such he first appears as a powerful antagonist who seemingly cannot be stopped. However, he soon demonstrates having an agenda of his own and in the end comes to a crossroads of deciding what side he's truly on.

Though seemingly a member of a reclusive and rare race of Gigas (Giants) only a few know of his true status as a sentient Ancient ARMS or are aware of the colossal limits of his physical abiliies due to such augmentation. With fists that can shatter mountains and strength enough to swing battleships around like a club, he may very well be the strongest physical creature in the world and furthermore has the ability to evolve his form into different stages to further augment his might. Awakened from an ageless slumber by the myserious Emmisary, Kongou seems to have an agenda of own that relates to the mystery of the Ancient ARMS and the lost civilization of Xanthus, but such epic motivations and past histories remain shrouded by a buffonish and oafish attitude and outlook on life...."

Kongou's work in progress bio for the ARMSmasters Saga. Soon I will be starting a production blog as I continue work on the demo, art and proof of concept for the storyline. This is what I consider the final definitive version of Kongou. I've posted this character from time to time on this blog and he's clearly evolved from when I first designed him as part of an assingment in a character creation class, up even through my senior thesis of 2008. I've done maybe one other model sheet variation of him in the past but with this one I had my eureka moment and settled on proportions and costume that finally fit what I was after, making past efforts obsolete.

Tyr the Machinist

2010-01-27T12:39:00.000-08:00

Bio:
"On the continent of Acania, the abundance of magic technology requires specialized arcane engineers known as Artificers to help maintain the status quo of this Second Age of Magic. Their mastery of machines and mana enable them to devise wonders from massive sky ships to crystals capable of storing memories and transmitting thoughts. Hailing originally from the militaristic nation of Stormgarde, Tyr is one such Artificer. Tyr is a powerful engineer machinist who, despite his brawny physique, would much rather be pouring over the schematics of an arcane engine and directing a Craft Warren rather then swinging Myllonir, his enormous hammer around in battle.

His crowning glory was the design and launch of the massive warship The Fenrir, during the twilight hours of the War of Magic and Tyr served as Engineering Chief aboard this vessel while his wife, Freya, commanded the ship. A terrible injury cost him his left arm but he replaced it with a Rune Graft, a type of prosthetic limb that actually enables him to focus his arcane machines with even greater effectiveness. The experience, coupled with several of his creations being used in ways not intended by him, disillusioned him with war and the affairs of his country and so he abandoned the military and accepted exile and retired to a small town in The Frontier, even though it meant seperation from his wife. In the aftermath of the war he met Riot and Inari and formed a Relic and Bounty Hunter trio with them albeit he served as the more level headed member to their often clashing egos and personalities."

Part of Tyr's Bio for the ARMSmasters Saga. As I gear up to create the animation demo from this stage forward I will be occasionally posting completed model sheets, color references and character and world bio's to start actually unveiling the world story and concept abit more for feedback. I'd also like to put more thoughts out there as to the what and why of the design.

Tyr is one of the first original characters I created for what would eventually develop into the ARMSmasters world. He started out as a quick design I did for a creative visualzation class where we were to do a storyboard based on Man vs Machine and the story I did was 'Super John Henry' The Super John Henry character was one I kept playing with design wise and in time I ended up with Tyr whose name and prosthetic arm and story of him and Fenrir is a nod to Norse Mythology as well (though in the mythology it may have been his right arm, not left.)

Now the new model sheet process I've been doing has been a blast but an exercise in learning better precision drawing. I also love drawing on 16 field paper! But yeah that's a literal 'luxury' and I get so guilty when I have to do over!

Quick Work In Progress

2010-01-24T13:26:00.000-08:00

It's been awhile since I've updated here, obviously. Far to long. Truth is I've been drawing but also busy and then of course thee's the big balance between posting more finished artwork as opposed to posting works in progress. I seem to have lots of works in progress but only a few finished pieces but thats just how it goes. So - to assuage y conscious regarding neglecting the blog I'll just..toss up these works in progress consisting mostly of sketches and loose pencils and maybe, just maybe, follow it up with something more complete.

ARMSMASTERS - EDIT

2009-12-02T14:24:00.000-08:00

So I've been playing around with this for awhile now and its resulted in a new edit of my original Armsmasters Project film with older and newer animatic parts added in as well as some rougher animation pieces, some of which have been posted here and some of which has not.

This new edit is closer to a more defined pilot then a light narrative like the last one in that it skips from scene to scene and is timed more to the music (lifted from Gurren Laggan for the interested)As a result a few characters have multiple designs in this piece such as Riot and Mountain in particular, but it reflects the pace, tone and mood a little better then my original film - which makes sense as that is fairly old and both the concept and myself have progressed since then. So here it is.

Keeping It Going

2009-11-06T14:05:00.000-08:00

So I might go a month between posts or have the ability to do several back to back to back posts. Look at that! So now that Shot Bar is out I'm going to toss up some of these. These are a collection of some of the favorite head shots of mine that I did for the game. Basically for the game I did just about all of the art assets (bottles, labels, pour animation, expression changes on the characters.) As I noted before it had to be kept to real simple animation but in the end really super animation would have probably distracted from the potential pace of the game. All in all I had to do quite a few characters but they were all bust shots. Some of the above shots were first passes after which corrections had to be made. I learned quite abit on streamlining my own work flow through this project.

I think I'm sold on the whole flatting plugin. I've never been able to get crisp flats like this before. I've gotten the color flat process down of course but this method just really works. If your lines are crisp and tight, this works. There are a few tricks though. First you need to get the line art layer to all black and white or as close as possible. Sometimes you might need to use Image > Adjustments > Threshold to do this but using Levels might work as well. I like using Threshold though but then after awards you may need to go in with the pencil and close in line breaks that might occur. Then you duplicate the line art layer and use the flatting plug in. I just leave it on the default settings suggested on their own site - and it works. It fills in all the closed in areas with their own color and then you just go in with the paint bucket and replace. Between this and still playing around with a cel shading style, I've been able to more quickly do some color pieces and enjoy doing so.

Shot Bar

2009-11-04T10:42:00.000-08:00

This past spring I had an opportunity to work for a company in regards to the release of an Iphone app puzzle game named 'Shot-Bar.' I pretty much did all of the major art assets for the game. Character Animation was unfortunately forced to be very limited to subtle expression changes considering the involved budget but I'm pleased with its final look with all of the assets together and running. Check it out. Better yet; try it out! We want these independent game makers and others to do good!

Model Sheet - Updated

2009-10-30T15:25:00.000-07:00

I kinda like how this portfolio page looks overall so I'll just post the entire page even though some of this art is new. In particular I did a pass at coloring Kongou's new front face design (which of course -now- the older faces are all off model if I go with this new one. Hah.)

As I may have noted before, his facial features are all much more rounded out now, leading to a much heavier, squashy, chin compared to before. It won't have the chiseled from stone look of Tyr or the 'Hi. Shonen Hero here!' look of Riot but rather much more weighty and massive and should be fun to do squash and stretch and heavy secondary action with. In fact I might just start some tests right after I do a few more mouth shape drawings.

I also stumbled across a plugin for photoshop that makes doing color flats so easy (assuming your lines are really tight). I came across this plugin from this guy's blog This guy is so inspiring and awesome he makes me want to Dropkick and Legsweep him!! I mean, do we honestly need anymore intimidation out there??

Anyway: http://projectwaldo.blogspot.com/ - check him out! But this Flatting plugin can be found http://www.bpelt.com/psplugins/flatting.html - It was tricky to figure out at first but I got such crisp flats on Kongou's head that I almost want to go back and redo some old pieces now - but I'll save giving it a true trial run on a few new ones I'm working out. If someone else tries this out, let me know how it goes and I can try and help.

Tackling Model Sheet's Again

2009-10-21T21:44:00.001-07:00

So ARMsmasters is being more seriously and diligently pursued of late. In fact I may be putting a website up related to it, or at least a dedicated blog, to chart the progress that's happening. It's been very cool and quite interesting. Here's an alpha line up of several of the characters as they stand so far.

I recently begun seriously retackling the model sheet process and started with a super familiar character in the form of Kongou. I found that I draw him somewhat differently then I did when I first did those face model sheet's some time back. My real intention was to do what is called a 'construction' test. For character animation, even the most simple characters need constructon breakdowns so that other animators can see the basic shapes involved and learn how to draw the character. Also when you are the designer and the animator and the artist it's easy to not think about things like this because you're doing it all but when you have a 'crew' of people, friends or co-workers, who also have to work on the same project, being able to decipher the what, how and why of a character is very important. It's no longer about your instinct.

A friend of mine tackled doing a construction drawing of Kongou's head and then I did a second pass over his rough sketches. What we found was that Kongou's basic face construction is somewhat egg shaped, though somewhat more bottom heavy much like some caricatures of a gorilla. Alot of his features extend around his head from the ears. There are other things that can be gleaned as well. I'll be doing more of these sketches now and also tackling the finer details of the character's face and then the body.

Moar Animation

2009-10-19T20:31:00.000-07:00

Pencil Test Reel from Michael Winn on Vimeo.

I was recently able to complete an updated reel that I'm much happier with compared to my last one. It's much shorter and more condensed with some shots re-timed and some newly tied down shots.

Getting to this reel was abit of an annoyance. I was working on some new animation and spent lots of time doing so but then decided it wasn't going to go into the reel! Let's hear it for wasted time! It's so easy to start with big plans then realize you have no time at all and then run out of time all together.

But working on animation is as much trying things and deciding what doesn't work as much as it is going with something that does so such 'waste of time' isn't really a waste when viewed in light of learning. Or so I tell myself!

I've a slightly longer version of this reel, by about 30 seconds or so, that I'll toss onto youtube soon but for now, have this one.

A Quick Post

2009-09-26T19:33:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile since I"ve posted and actually I've been doing lots of art and animation related work I've just neglected to catch my sites up. Here's one of a series of commissions I've been doing, lately. I'll start catching up sketches and other assorted things soon.

Kongou Cel Shade

2009-08-26T21:53:00.000-07:00

I'd already uploaded this image but decided to re-tackle it after I talked with some friends and got some ideas - and this time I decided to pay attention to..you know..light direction, volume, etc. Silly unimportant things like that.

More seriously, I'm happier now and when I first tackled it I went into Cel-Shading frenzy, trying this and that without really paying attention to some basic things. Now I think I'm locking in a personal style for this type of coloring. It's still got some creative lighting going on, but hey, I'm an artist - so that's my prerogative (and I'm sticking by that excuse over it being 'a mistake!)

It's been a busy month or so. Lots of things happening that should be fruitful. More posts on this and that soon.

Axis Mundi - Armsmasters

2009-08-07T11:21:00.000-07:00

Axis Mundi: - The World Pillar - World Tree - Cosmic Axis, Center Point of Creation -

This is what I'm thinking of calling my Armsmasters 'shonenesque' action fantasy project/pitch as the story points develop more and the character cast solidifies and grows. I started this as a piece as another exercise in cel shading techniques and because I was lacking a good group shot of the most complete of my character designs - and though this is still a WIP - having done this I feel I can mostly let go of these guys and start tackling the next group (about 12 distinct characters total)

I'm on my vacation in about two days so we'll see how much sketching and drawing I get done when out!

Thou Shalt Not Neglect

2009-07-10T17:00:00.000-07:00

Things have been somewhat busy of late with a few side projects and some personal projects and some paid projects and family emergencies and just tons of stuff - but here - have some old sketches. Been a little slow on the rendering side these days, but got some plans for that as well, soon!

Color Line Tests

2009-05-22T00:20:00.000-07:00

Nothing much to say here except that not long ago I was doing some quick color tests on a few shots. Just beginner ones. I never did plan to take my film all the way to color and even right now I'd rather move forward then backwards. Normally this sorta thing would be the purview of a completely different department but us 'indy' folk and school animators have to be one man studios, so to speak!

Now the color flat tests are self explanatory but I also wanted to try my hand at doing tone. Unfortunately at the time I didn't really know the 'process' for doing tones properly so I sort of winged it! I'm sure to the eye of the FX artist the tone tests aren't all there but it was my first time, at the time and I'm okay with how it looks for a first attempt.

May 2009 Reel Edit

2009-05-20T18:28:00.000-07:00

First new pencil test reel I've uploaded here in awhile though I've had a few other ones. The difference being that the other ones I've had, I've not uploaded due to having animations I can't actually show yet due to freelance contract obligations - what's on here I'm comfortable with showing as it's mostly a re-cut of my older reel plus some new personal works and freelance work. I was even too lazy to change the music, hah. But if it was working, it was working.

I like this edit and made some adjustments based on suggestions given to me. It feels more complete now and together as opposed to disjointed and I look forward to adding new animations in.

Fite Scene!! Rough Animation

2009-05-20T00:07:00.001-07:00

Some time ago I decided to start putting together a very rough sequence of animation and started to put together a new series of videos using the characters I had created for my world/story/project/whatever it is - Armsmasters. So what we have here are a series of pencil tests + animatics for a sequence that takes place during a tournament between the characters Riot and Kongou. It's simple and incomplete. Very rough animation with a few tied down - but it's a work in progress and an in process exercise and I need to post more of these and experiment more. More to come soon.

More Unposted Art

2009-05-08T12:22:00.001-07:00

I've not been totally lax, just bounced back and forth between some freelance projects and teaching and getting my new portfolio and reel together, and new submissions, and etc etc etc.

Some works in progress here.

A New Look - Whoops, Where'd My Links Go....

2009-05-08T12:11:00.000-07:00

I've neglected thee, oh art blog, for too long now - and as you are at present my online 'website', I must fix this situation with some new updates....Oops, I deleted my long link list.. Gonna take awhile to get this updated.

In the meantime have some art! The above are some layout drawings from my revisiting of my characters from my senior film last year. The beginnings of this were seen not long ago when I posted the start of some revised model sheets. We'll see how far I go with making this more sophisticated!

Quick Feb Update!

2009-02-07T22:27:00.000-08:00

Yeesh, it's already been a month? Yeesh, it's already been a month? - Well not quite. I suppose I last posted on the 25th of Jan, but still, it's already Feb. The year is moving along swiftly. The sudden arrival of freelance animation deadlines plus some other looming things caused me to have to step back from doing personal work. I had wanted to post the rest of Kongou's model-sheets up and his action pose in one go, but I'll settle for bits here and there.

Also, for something unrelated - I'm doing some work on the side for a local gaming event and this was the logo concept for it. So more WiP stuff here. They decided to go another direction with the logo, (they planned on selling t-shirts and so couldn't use copywritten characters which is fine - there was just a little miscommunication at first but thats the nature of the beast) but I figured I'd post mine anyway as I really liked how the silohettes of Ryu, Ken and Chun-Li came out. Fodder for future fan-art rendering.

Quick Jan. Update

2009-01-25T12:59:00.000-08:00

In between paid projects and submissions, I've been working on noodling off and on with my own pet story and project as some of my storyboard samples should show, and I've been anticipating amping things up to another level in terms of finished quality and final products. These are just two images of what looks to be the final variation of my cast of characters for my action-fantasy concept. First up is one familiar to friends and visitors; Kongou.

For Kongou I decided to dial the proportions down to something that would be a little more 'animatable' whiel still retaining the trademark Hulk+Juggernaut+King Kong hugeness that the char seems liked for. Although some recent marker renderings had me playing with shorter hair I went back to the longer hair because I felt it helped to contrast the aesthetics of his broad features and I felt brown hair was more 'earthen' like since the characters theme are warm colors and earth tones and elemental abilities as part of both personality and abilities.

I shortened the three strands jutting up from his forhead considerably from what they were like in my senior film of last May but added the grey-streak in there to break up the colors of the face just a little bit. Also the Sumo-Wrestler inspired brush like pony tail contributes to the notion of the character as a super-powered martial artist, sumo-wrestleresque grappler.

I"ve not completed the front-view yet for the body but the goal is to do a front model shot, a front 'pose' shot that's fully rendered, some more facial expressions and some close up of his few accessories (in this case the shows, gloves and bracers, club) and finally an official profile. Then on to the next:

New Sample Boards

2008-12-26T02:40:00.000-08:00

I cranked the majority of these out over the course of a day or so in order to book end some older ones I hadn't finished yet, mainly to get some better storyboard samples for my portfolio and I tried to make sure I incorporated some tips I received from a professional board artist I was very fortunante enough to make contact with.

I've had this vision in my head for a long time now of these characters and this world setting and this was just an effort to create some conflict between two characters. I actually timed this out in animatic form and others felt it read just fine, which was a good thing. (Needed a couple of timing tweaks at the time.) I'll get around to posting that animatic at some point soon.

2008-12-25T18:00:00.001-08:00

More rendering of older sketches and drawings. A bigger update with some more storyboard drawings is on the way.

Cathak Darius - WIP

2008-12-16T12:48:00.000-08:00

This is a Work In Progress of a character named Cathak Darius. It'd been awhile since I tackled photoshop rendering and I felt somewhat rusty with this hence it's WIP status. I sort of just dived in with the intention of trying new things out - so it's still somewhat rough, in my estimate, and obviously unfinished but on its way though I may never actually totally finish it.

Darius is interesting in that he's a Fire-Aspect Exalted (those familiar with the game know what I'm talking about - if you're not then ignore this part.) yet is described as wearing alot of 'cool' colors as opposed to your usual association of warm and hot colors for 'Fire'.

Moar Art

2008-12-12T14:11:00.000-08:00

I've had the opportunity to get some nice little projects onto my resume and portfolio but now I'm kicking it up a notch in terms of sending things out there to studios in hopes of looking for more long term work.

Here are some marker renderings plus rough sketches with quick color slapped on them. Recently I started getting into the habit of taking rough sketches and just tossing color on them in photoshop just to see what I got as opposed to feeling like I needed to have super clean line-art to color for 'finished pieces'. Color without fear or care for it being super neat is quite fun, no?

November Art Dump

2008-11-07T14:00:00.000-08:00

It's been awhile since I did an update on here. Things have been pretty interesting but in a mostly good way.

These are just some rough designs and sketches and all that. It's self explanatory really. I do have some animations I've been doing as well but I"m not at liberty to show them yet due to them being for actual projects! The last image was for some freelance work, recently done, which was a fun experience.

Storyboard Re-Dux

2008-10-07T13:49:00.001-07:00

Board's done as part of a project pitch related to WinX club. The board's passed and were apparently liked quite abit, but other financial reasons caused the project to go in another direction.

Recent board's as part of a animatic and short-film project. These are still very much in progress but I wanted to show how far along the boards were at this point.

Some of these samples are a repost, albiet a slightly more finished re-post. I've not totally neglected this blog yet!

Commissions - WIP

2008-07-28T22:31:00.000-07:00

Some WIP Commission Requests. One is in a more complete stage then the other but they're both works in progress.

Art-Dump: Mid July

2008-07-13T18:41:00.000-07:00

Mid-July update of the blog via some portfolio pages and newsprint sketches. I've got alot of drawings like these just sitting around. I'm enjoying the freedom of just drawing on crappy newsprint paper. You dn't feel as obligated to produce anything worthwhile and can just draw. Alot of times I feel like I"m just wasting marker paper or even sketchbooks and copy paper. Not so with newsprint.

Storyboard Images

2008-06-25T19:50:00.003-07:00

Storyboard Page samples from my portfolio:

These three pages are an action-scene sequence from the Armsmasters Project featuring Riot and Tyr's entrance scene.

Boards done while in school as part of my final project. Enjoy, I think!

Artwork and Story Reel

2008-06-12T14:15:00.001-07:00

This is my Artwork and Storyboard and Animatic Reel. Not much to say here, but it's the basic reel I've been using lately for this.

Art-Dump!!!!

2008-06-12T13:30:00.000-07:00

Job Hunting, Resume Posting and also working freelance, cause a guy's gotta drive and eat, is a huge time sink - but I'm still alive. I'll be dressing and re-organizing this blog very soon because it's likely this will become my professional presence online coupled with deviant art, until I have the sustained funds to keep a web-space open. Thanks for all the comments and views of my film as well. I'm going to continue to tinker with it and produce what I hope is a sort of 'pitch' animation for what could be a series and so I'm not entirely done with that world yet. The above are just some random sketches, a Street Fighter study, etc. Stay tuned.

Traditional Animation Short - Armsmasters Project

2008-05-01T00:56:00.001-07:00

Well here it is and this is certainly a personal milestone of mine. This video represents the completion of a goal in the form of four years of study at the College for Creative Studies. I'm both amazed and humbled by my experiences the past few years.

The Armsmasters Project is kind of my ode to all things action-fantasy and adventure. This thesis film occupied a great portion of my time and energy and working on it was an amazing experience. I look at it and see all sorts of things I could have done differently but it's as much about the journey as it is the final project. There are all sorts of little homages to various animes, american films and comic books sprinkled throughout this piece. The premise that spawned this piece grew out of a concept that I will continue to pursue over time and I will revisit this again.

This version of the film is at about 99%. I have some background layouts that are still going to go in and some minor compositing issues on a couple of shots. I may re-upload it in a few weeks and I might even try dropping some color onto a few shots but for now I'm satisfied and ready to begin the next stage in my life and begin my career.

Thanks for all your encouraging words, critiques and more.

Kongou Revision

2008-04-11T09:09:00.000-07:00

My original version of Kongou wasn't 'bad' per se but it wasn't what it could have been. I wrestled with a pose and design for this character over and over again and then finally found it just, out of the blue. I'm really happy with this new version, so much so that I pulled down the old one!

Overall this reflects the design, size, personality, etc more of the character and it matches the other characters much better. The perspective of the pose coupled with his size means his face is not quite center focus though but thats why we do personality head shots as well. It's a sacrifice to get that 'towering' feel.

More Draw-ings

2008-04-05T01:07:00.000-07:00

Two more characters that are part of my env & chars and senior studio project. The revisions of Tyr and Inari. I did some older images of these and it's a good feeling to see the improvements I've made over the past year. These are much stronger renderings then their original versions.

I've been wrestling with some 'artist-block' over Kongou. I'm no longer happy with the new picture I did and trying to revise that as well but it's hard to get good poses for characters with those proportions. Ah well.

Old School Sprite Studies

2008-03-05T18:38:00.001-08:00

I got into the habit of studying sprite animation from some older games. There's just some simply amazing animation in Capcom's Street Fighter's Third Strike. I highly reccomend visting sites like http://www.newwavemugen.com/~zweifuss/, saving these buggers and going through them frame by frame. You'll see some amazing poses. I did, or half did really, a few sheets based on what I was seeing. I'm so glad that traditional hand-drawn 2d sprite based fighting games aren't going anywhere with games like BlazBlue and King of Fighters XII taking it HD.

Some New (Old) Images

2008-03-05T18:29:00.000-08:00

I was fortunate enough to get featured, for a time, at my school by the Animation Department for my sketches, design work, characters and so forth. This was right around the holiday season at the end of last semester. It was really amazing that it happened but I couldn't help but feel a little akward for obvious reasons. I'm not a 'spotlight' type of person and there are many great talents in the dept. aside from myself. At any rate, some of these images are from around then and some of them are more recent. Just catching up on updating this thing.

We've Come A Long Way!

2008-03-05T15:07:00.000-08:00

I'm getting into the habit of updating this blog. I've got it, so it's time to use it!

These designs are the final and ultimate versions of the characters I've been working with since around a year ago this time when I first started Advanced Story Concepts. Now I"m in the second semester of my senior studio and tieing these characters down into a full animated stage. I'm happy because I was able to maintain their likeness and most of their costume details while having these slightly more detailed illustrated versions of them (although in the animation Riot is sans jacket..cause..I just don't have the time!)

It's all working out nicely now and I'm excited to get to the end of these 8 weeks.

Sen. Project - Pencil Test Animations

2008-03-05T15:04:00.001-08:00

Been awhile since I've updated this, so it's time to get cracking since I graduate in 8 weeks! These are just some pencil tests that are tied down from my senior project. It's come a long way since those layouts I posted some time back! I'm pleased with it's progress and think I'm on track to finishing it up.

Animation Layouts

2007-08-03T15:24:00.001-07:00

What I've done here are some layouts on animation paper for certain shots and characters. I think some of these might be overly ambitious and then again some might not be. We'll see! Overall I was just trying to solidfy the drawing style, char design and camera shots. I feel that, among other influences, Kawajiri of Ninja Scroll/Vampire Hunter D/Highlander/Animatrix Program fame, is a big one for me along with other things as well.

Ultimately I'd like to do something that has interesting character designs and art but also still moves fluidly - not sacrificing animation for detail or vice versa. A good balance. But this is just a start anyway. These aren';t -all- the ones I've done but some of the stronger ones I liked.

Deliquent Artist Refuses to let Blog Die!

2007-07-17T14:59:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile since my last posting. Those of you who care! Been actively busy this summer. My overdue balance to CCS is down by half now but I still got some ways to go. I should be good to go by mid August, I"m thinking.

I needed, desperatly, to overcome an 'artist block'. So of late I've gotten back into the habit of just sketching and just drawing and letting whatever come out as well as looking over works by other artists, that I admire. I have no problem with using references, see and encourage others to do so since it helps identify other techniques and to strengthen your own. So here are my contributions to the world of random doodles and some char design.

Gojira Gumballs

2007-05-22T16:06:00.001-07:00

Traditional-Tech3 final. I had fun doing this. The character was inspired a by the cyclops from Hercules and Tantor from Tarzan. We had to do commercial spots for fake products

Dragon Walk Cycle

2007-03-26T19:58:00.001-07:00

Four Legged Walk Cycle of a pretty hefty and proud dragon guy. This is failry tied down and cleaned as far as my pencil tests go.

Mountain That Walks Lip Synch

2007-03-26T17:02:00.001-07:00

"..Not my fault being the biggest and the strongest. I don't even exercise!" as voiced by the late Andre the Giant as Fezzik circa the Princess Bride film. I thought both voice and quote were perfect for one of my animation-characters 'The Mountain'. The lack of clarity of the voice is due to the quality of the .wav file. When I have a better .wave file I"ll re-upload. Who understands Andre well anyway!

Kongou the Mountain

2007-03-10T19:12:00.000-08:00

Second rendering I've done in Photoshop in over a year. I'm pretty pleased with this and I'm going to continue doing my main-characters like this for as long as possible. (2 down, 8 to go I think?)

Obviously this is the full character art for Mountain That Walks - who I have some other concept renderings of further down in this blog. The difference between computer rendering and marker-concepts is fairly clear I think. I'm pleased with how this turned out. I posted a version with a grey-background at http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/50589089/ - but I also like using a white-background since I think it pops the character out a little more. (Unfortunantly you can also see more errors if you have a keen eye but oh well!)

Desperate Artist Refuses To Let Blog Die!

2007-03-04T12:51:00.000-08:00

This is spring break for me and I thought I'd concentrate ont hings like producing finished art, getting a demo reel going and trying to be productive without having classes and deadlines breathing down my neck. (Yeah Right!) I've decided to toss up some random images and sketches just to keep things flowing. Some of this is olderstuff and some of it isn't. It's a collection of character and location sketches and design concepts. I tend to have a very unfinished, animation style, quality to my work. While I need to do more finished art and more renderings then I do, I just enjoy tossing down quick lines and layouts and moving on to something else. Drawing quickly and moving on. According to this one Character Design book I have, that makes me something called a 'Blue Sky' Designer or something or whatever!

Traditional-Tech2 Final

2007-02-27T14:00:00.001-08:00

Traditional Tech-2 was mostly about doing a character animation short. I've got a big-guy named 'The Mountain' that I draw and animate alot and I based a short around him. This is a mixture of very rough animation plus cleaned up plus some sound effects. It was a good leanring experience all and all and I knowso much more know as a result of going through this.

Fairies Aren't Real!

2007-02-27T13:12:00.001-08:00

This is my most recent traditional animation pencil test, just completed this past Saturday. The assingment, 'Big and Small' was basically intended to have us show contrasting size and weight between two characters (or a character and an object). I had quite abit of fun with this one

Traditional-Tech-3 Sound Synch

2007-02-27T00:40:00.001-08:00

Well I can't very well make a blog about animation without posting animation tests - and after hell and high-water via Youtube and my account name and everything else..I'm rady to also post tests!

This is just a sound synch done earlier this year in my traditional animation-3 class. The girl is still very rough but will probably be cleaned up more for my reel. The fat guy is fairly clean animation for me (I usually animate very roughly and with a very heavy gesture style so this is super clean for me.)

Mountain That Walks

2007-02-26T23:53:00.000-08:00

Those that know me know that I have always liked 'the big guy' archetype in comics, film, animation, etc. I'm talking about characters like Marvel's Colossus, Thing, Juggernaut and Hulk as well as characters from games and anime. I draw them alot also and so naturally I'm going to include one among my cast of characters for my senior thesis. Mountain That Walks (aka Kongou) is a character I"ve worked with for a long time in terms of design and concept. These drawings are model sheet drawings via marker and ink for my project but I'll get older images up as well. A Hulk/Juggernaut archetype, this guy is a giant and is alot of fun to draw as well as animate.

As I get a final design done and settled on, I'll do actual photoshop renderings an full bio's for him and all the other characters.

Adv. Story Concepts - Zion

2007-02-26T23:26:00.000-08:00

Well it doesn't make much sense for me to create a blog about my art and animation and time at school and not put anything related to those things up - so what follows are some of my initial designs for what will be my Senior Project in the 2007-2008 new year. Right now it is tentatively titled The New Saints Legends and it is basically my homage to Exalted, Battlechasers, Cannonbusters, Final Fantasy, X-Men and all those great action/adventure cartoons that I grew up on and that are also still going today like Avatar. As we only have about 2 to 3 minutes, the premise is simple; a group of heroic characters in a high-fantasy world of superhuman warriors, magic and super-science, come to the aid of a city under siege. It's basically an excuse to do something fun with some fun looking characters while telling a story intended to feel like it is part of something larger. As time passes I'll continue to post concept art and even pencil tests and hopefully, if I'm still maintaining this blog by then, a the final thing.

Here we have some concept art for one of the lead characters; for now named Zion. I wanted a character that was a blend of the heroic archetype, mixing knightly, samurai and ninjaesque aspects together. Through Zion's design, the setting tone is hopefully conveyed as something that is future-fantasy. These are just marker renderings over some pen drawings in an attempt to create some beginning model sheets.

Baby Animation Blog Emerges From The Screaming Void

2007-02-26T23:13:00.000-08:00

I decided to follow suit and be a follower, thereby starting up my own blog where I can toss up quick animation tests, sketches, artwork, and other assorted rants and raves that are viewable by more then the mindless denizens of Facebook and such places. This is a baby blog so be gentle. Beginning baby links and limited content abounds. Hopefully I will keep this site relatively updated as opposed to the status of my current webspace and my unwillingness to update Deviant Art. So let it be!