Fresh Updates!

The ARMSmasters Project Teaser from Michael Winn on Vimeo.


Wow! Several long months without updating this sucker! Not counting older irrelevant Kickstarter posts mind you - cause those don't matter anymore as we did it!

Well it is mid Nov and much has happened but if you're keeping up with us over at http://thearmsmasters.blogspot.com then you should know this already! But for the off chance that some of you haven't been over there yet - and especially for any new faces I've met at the wonderful CTN event, have an update!

Expect a post-CTN post here and on the ARMSmasters blog. Great things have happened here. We've met some major people and made some fantastic connections and we look forward to following up on all of them.

Updates will continue to be sporadic on this but if you wnat to keep up with me, don't forget to check out The ARMSmasters Blog!

The Littlest Angel and Other Assortments

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!

Hey Hey Kids

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!

Tyr - FInal Model

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

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

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

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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)

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

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

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

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!

Kongou the Mountain

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.