Gettin my character design on

Was having trouble coming up with an idea that was realy grabbing me, we did some foundation style Illustration vomit to see if we could find any good design chunks in there but it didn't turn out too successful.

I liked a few of the faces but because of the speed we were drawing them it was clearly stuff i'd drawn before only much worse. When I got home i tried to think of some random characters that would appeal to children (and me) without having any story in mind, this realy isn't the right way to do it at all but I guess im just a maverick.

I like the Robot guy and the blatent Ratatouille rip off but can't think of any great back story for them, especialy not one that would get the kiddies pumped. Might try and use them as side characters but gotta come up with something more along the lines of the research i've done, think about school, best cartoons are set in school. Come on man!

Now, What makes a kick ass kids show?

There have been some seriously awesome kids cartoon shows over the past few decades and everyone has memories of their favourites, i could list the ones i loved for hours such as 'Biker Mice From Mars', 'Road Runner' and even 'Ramsey's Brothel Nightmares'.

Unfortunately when doing research like this there is an enemy that constantly misleads me whilst trying to preserve the innocence of my childhood, his name is nostalgia. It's hard to remember which cartoons were actually good and which were purely dancing pretty shapes and colours that appealed to my inner idiot.

After much reflection and asking other like minded individuals (by that I mean losers) i've come up with a few outstanding examples of cartoons that stand the test of time and are still hilarious no matter how old you get.

Recess!!

Recess was and still is incredible, the focus on the 'Laws of the playground' was such an accurate depiction of how as kids we'd make big things out of little problems that at the time seemed like life changing decisions and experiences. Also the different social groups were amazing and beautifully showed the food chain that forms in every playground, what made this program so relatable though was how it was fronted by a group of misfits that didn't assign to any of the groups but still had to play by the unwritten rules. This is probably the group that most of us were in so we can remember having to do something when we were young that we didn't understand but had to because the older kids said so, come to think of it that happens no matter how much you age.

I would love to come up with something with similar themes that bridges the gap between childish and adult issues whilst also being funny as shit.

Spongebob!

The amazing thing about Spongebob is that I am now officially a grown man and this is still one of the funniest shows out there, and not just cartoon. I know not everyone gets it but one of the things that appeals to me is that it's just fun for funs sake, no morals of the story, no hidden messages just retarded fun full of funny voices and ridiculous faces. They keep pushing the exaggeration of the characters so much that it's like a hit of heroine or summat when you finally see a new contortion of Mr Squarepants' face and it always makes me piss myself. It's one of the most visually stimulating cartoons around and also seems to have the widest age range.

There are so many influential toons i've missed out such as almost everyone from the golden age of cartoon network like Dexter's Lab and Johnny Bravo that seemed to master combining contemporary art styles with equally as contemporary humour. Then action packed numbers such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, i don't think there's a man alive under 30 that doesn't have a favourite hero in a half shell (Michelangelo obviously).

Im gunna strive to create something that can be relatable to by kids and adults alike but always remembering that the main thing is that it has to be funny and true to real life experiences whilst being fantastical and visually appealing. Piece of piss.

Whoa, what is this place?

Jesus it's been a while, i was doing this lame sound project and you know, making a video game so sorry for the neglect. But what's this? a new project that requires character design, live action tests and real animation. Better get this shit blogged.

So we are now working with live briefs from real companies which is similar to working with a live bomb in the fact that I only have a short amount of time before it blows up in my face. Therefor for the next month and a half im gunna be trying to cut the most awesome wire i can. They are all competitions and we have to follow specific criteria to please each of them, heres a list of the fat cats and what they want from us.


SEGA - Need a piece of work to celebrate the 20th birthday of Sonic, even though only about three of that boys life deserve any sort of congratulations.


FAIRTRADE - Basically come up with a new short to advertise and gain more awareness for fairtrade products, sounds lame but these guys have
had some pretty good adverts so far


DISNEY - Yeah that's right, Disney. They want us to design and animate a brand new character aimed at children aged 9-14 for a series.


BBC - Summat to do with Iplayer, need to make an interactive interface I think. Basically that aint happening


MASTERS OF CLOCK MAKING - I think that's their
name but these guys want a short film that increases interest in the concept of time and somehow demonstrates how it works???





It's got to be Disney right, not only do i love designing new characters but i have the mental age of a 9-14 year old so this should be easy. Was thinking about doing the Sega one but i would have to use Sonic so that's character design out the window. Back soon.

There's A Lot Of Space Up In Space

Once i knew my exact sequence and i had finished all my modeling i did a quick animatic using stills and just whacked a bit of text. Hopefully give you some idea of how it's gunna turn out.

Thought I'd show ya how the landscape and layout changed throughout the process, testament I think to just how much I was making this up on the spot. This was my first shot at the moon's surface

As you can clearly see this was shite, not only is it boring but you would pretty easily be able to tell it's just a flat plain with a few bumps. Went back to it and tried to make it any kind of good.

This was definitely an improvement, the craters in the middle make all the difference when contrasted with the mountains up the side. After that i added in the elements i had so far, baring in mind this was "pre-teleporters"

So I'd already identified that i needed more to happen in the sequence but also knew the background could do with a bit more jazz, I knew I didn't want to apply a texture to the ground as it would take away from the cartoony look. I made some random space junk to scatter about the place heres the design then a shot of the scene with them in that also contains the teleporters.

So as the landscape gets a bit more littered it instantly looks more interesting, i also slightly changed the angels of the satellite and the dish so it wasn't just a straight line.

After i was happy with that I created a texture for the space backdrop and for the Earth on photoshop and applied them to a couple of spheres in the background. Heres what the finished scene looks like. (I also added a couple of extra pebbles)

Not too shabby.

Something's missing

We had to do a layout of our plan for Rosy using research and photoshop, did a bit of tasty annotation as well.

Impossibe to read on here of course but you get the jist, it was while doing this and the storyboard in my sketchbook that i realized that not enough happens (apart form the destruction of the Earth), i was really happy with how it's begins and ends but thought it needed summat extra in the middle.

Either because i couldn't think of anything else real to do or just because i thought it would be a cool I decided to add a pair of Teleportation Pads in the mix, this was my first design.

As you will see later they now have more of a golden rim and the middle is orange, i also changed the balls on the top into rings.

Yeah.... It's Hard To Test Stuff In Space

Thought I'd better check out some test videos from the Mars Rover so I wasn't animating blind quite so much.

The main thing i noticed, other than the fact it's looks almost exactly the same as mine (thank you) is how fast it can zip around. I thought these guys were supposed to trundle at a few miles an hour. I think on smooth ground he'd do just fine.

Well heres summat seemingly pointless, I tried to re-create the see-saw effect pretty crudely but i'm afraid i didn't happen to have a scaled down satellite and helmet.

Not much to get from that but it did show me just how fast it would get launched in the air. Obviously though I'd made it harder on myself by choosing a location that doesn't really care much for gravity.

Oh Thank God... They Actually Look Okay

So Here are the updated versions Of the stuff below, also A first look at the layout, backdrop and just to keep it real, my UFO.

What a couple! I noticed that for some reason the darker i made things the more unprofessional it looked. Thats why i tried to avoid using grey's and blacks and either use shades of white or bright/light colours

It was hard coming up with a colour scheme for the Rover because they are usually chrome or silver and i hadn't quite grasped things that reflective yet and like i was saying grey just looked shite.

And so's to completely contradict myself heres a big grey object. I did think about this but i realy wanted to go for the classic saucer 'mars attacks' type look and as they were mainly in black and white films this just looks right to me.

This is the very first shot at the layout also the background has since received a face lift. Pretty much a no frills version of the final thing. I know this to be exactly what the moons surface looks like, according to Wallace and Gromit.

Even Tyra Banks Would Dig This Modeling..... Ha!

So i'd decided to do the space theme whilst in Rosy's class, I of course did this without thinking of what an absolute pain in the arse it would be.

"I wonder why everyone else is doing stuff in a sealed room??"
Anyway what's done is done, i started looking for stuff related to space travel/exploration an maybe threw in a cheeky bit of sci-fi as well.
This is some of the research that i did and the first stage of the models.

The obvious feature of both and of most of the ones i looked at is the blue wings, or solar panels if you wanna get fancy. This is my attempt.

This was my first bash, added some more detail later but we'll get to that. I'd decided to use it as a see-saw so i took some artistic license with the main body, also the front doesn't look so much like a boob when it's coloured in.

Decided to go for the industrial type dish, these guys are pretty well recognisable so it would be hard for me to mess it up, let's watch.

Like i said, pretty standard stuff, once again added a bit more spice later on but you get the idea.

Now i know this fella is a prototype but im not exactly going for realism here. Wanted it to be like summat out of The Jetsons.

See what i mean, pretty sure they don't have antenna like that anymore but we've got four weeks, what dya want from me.

I knew as soon as I had the idea for this theme that i wanted a Mars rover involved, even though my animation happens to be set on the moon so i assume he took a wrong turn somewhere. From looking at research i could see that the main factors were the box like shape, the wheels and in some cases the head and neck like structure at the front. Kinda like a cross between Wall-E and a camel.

Question, what's round and a total bitch to try and make six of that turn separately to the chassis? Yeah i think you've got it. Have added an antenna and some detail at the front since but i was pretty proud of this little dude.

This was definitely the easy part and it nearly killed me.

My First Date With Maya

Knowing that we had the impossible task of doing an animation on computer software that I couldn't even begin to comprehend I thought I'd practice by having a go at flattering myself in 3D.

Ere's a few stages of this most horrible process

So freakin weird, kinda like using clay but without your sense of touch.

Slimmed out the face a little, was lookin pretty special.

Not sure why i put this stage up as it is simply terrifying.

My god it's beautiful! So this took collectively around 10 hours, it starts to become clear why i may have been brickin it over this particular project.