C.E.U Weaponry In Design

So on the similar plan as the Titan that I digitally painted before. I want to have this painted at an obviously higher quality then the Titan, with absolutely NO outlines. I want this to be completely dominated by its colours:

It’s not much at the moment but this alone has allowed to access some problems that i am having already.

For starters this is taking way to long to do. I clearly need to get my tablet out and start using it (I still have very little practise with it and thus at the moment am very confident with it).

This is slows down my development time for my other ideas. In the last week or so I’ve been developing more ideas for my Teddy cartoon, this machine above is a result of one of the races of teddy’s world. This massive machine is basically an example of the appearance for the military based race called the C.E.U. I don’t want to get too into it at the moment as I want to get this finished and uploaded as it’ll have some information about the C.E.U. and how they came to be.

But for now, I’m going to take a crack at this with a tablet and also try to improve my painting techniques by utilising this tutorial.

Step Above Progress

So this is probably the most I can add to this picture as of now:

The Lightning was fairly simple to pull off after I had a gander through DeviantArt tutorials. I increased the contrast, add a few more details to the ground and gave a slight cloudy sort of effect around the Titan.

One of the problems for this picture is that in the original design I forgot to add the other four feet of the Titan and I didn’t really want to ruin this by trying to add them digitally.

As a big note, this whole picture was coloured with a mouse. I don’t know how to use a tablet effectively enough (as in, at all). So I didn’t want to add the other feet with a mouse as it would come out horrible.

Something I particularly like about doing this is that as I progressed through the piece, I found myself slowly removing more and more of the line art, making it feel more professional.

The lightning was basically a step of a jagged load of lines of various sizes, given a purple outer glow in a layer style and given a colour overlay to match the colour of the glow.

All in all, I like how this picture came out. The tools for this involved the Dodge, Burn, Oil Medium Wet Flow Brush ans Smudge tool for this whole picture. I plan to use this technique to work on other pieces, but I want to apply this method while using a tablet.

Hope you like it.

Current Progress

I thuoght i might just make a short post, keeping you up-to-date wit hwhat I am working on at the moment. i have decided to take the progressive step to digitally painting a piece of art i drew before that has already been uploaded. Here it is currently:

I’m going to work on some of the lighting as I don’t seem to of given the sun (the main source of light) a more exact position. Also want to work on progressing more into the flat sand, give it some depths and also some distance as well as it currently looks flat. Thats it for now.

The End before the Beginning

I thought I would take an opportunity to post some stuff that I have been working on for Teddy. Yep, I shortened the name of the cartoons to just Teddy as it seemed to fit better. It’ll probably change again in the near future.

Well, not everything I do is immediately planned for Teddy. Sometimes I do something then I see some potential for it to be applied to Teddy and manipulate halfway through process to fit with the themes of Teddy. This is one of them.

This came up about the time I finished the face of the massive construct. Now admittedly the image here isn’t actually completed, I forgot to add certain parts to the picture but I’m not going to mention what.

Now for the title. One of the processes that I take when developing a story (including the whole Teddy story) I like to write the beginning and the end. This gives me a clear idea of where I plan to start the story and also where it will lead to in the end. This is the end, obviously.

The idea behind this ending is this:

From the depths of the mass waste pits, clambering through the distance walks a mighty mechanical titan. In size it stands taller than two whole city spires on top one another. With a massive rectangular body, it seems more like a carrier then an ultimate weapon of destruction. Its intentions are simple, to once and for all rid the planet of all life, real and artificial. It lumbers slowly, dragged along by its six electrocyde legs. because of the sheer size of the machine, each of the legs have oversized magnetic-amplifiers. These have the sole purpose amplifying the power of the electrocyde allowing it to move the metal monsters several hundred tonne feet.

Its face is simply for intimidating qualities, with the eyes being mostly for show. They allow sight but because of the machines sluggish movement and response, having a near zero powered retaliation processor, its sight is for nothing more than looking for big enough objects to consume.

The intentions of the machine is to consume all that it can see, reprocessing what it eats into pure energy. This is done by the metal scraps travelling through what could be considered an artificial digestive system that uses various grinders, crushers, smashers, benders, twisters and other means to generate power from the actions of destroying the scrap. This energy is partially used to keep the beast running (Approximately 0.00001% is used to power it, this gives an example of the next bit). The rest of the power is stored within a mass generator located in the skull. Once fully powered it uses this as a concentrated amount of energy that is used to literally evaporate anything within its path. As an example of the sort of power that this concentrated beam could have, its power level is similar to about eight nuclear explosives erupting at the same time. The beam is that powerful that it is uncertain that the force of the beam won’t destroy the machine itself.

 The concept of the story is that Teddy has to fight this machine. Yep, the four and half-foot Defender will pit against the two hundred foot Terminator. I haven’t decided if teddy will win or lose and what will happen afterwards. I just know that this is something that I want the story to lead to and near end at.

I think this’ll do it for now. Probably missed loads of stuff but for now I plan to build this as a 3D model on Lightwave and also paint the image above in Photoshop.

16/3/2011… So it was a Wednesday

So I thought I might do a sort of upload of what I had done for the day. I decided in this quite late on (like now-ish) because I realized that I actually got a fair amount done today. Which was nice. So to start of I’ll show you the progress of the 3D model I am working on for some 3D animation:

Then later into the day I attended my usual life class on a Wednesday and did the usual art stuff. Only I didn’t. Instead of using generic charcoal with the boring and dull black and gray textures, we dived head first into COLOUR. My lord the lesson was the brightest and most enjoyable i had ever had. I managed to churn out some pieces I was also happy with for once (I’m a skeptical artist and also dislikes using any medium that isn’t a 2B and pad). here are the pieces that I did in order of completion:

Not too bad in my opinion. the idea was to use colours to portray the various tones of the model without using shades or other black tones. I used yellow for the brightest points, red for in between tones and the dark green for dark tones.

Then finally the designs for our upcoming stop motion animation. I decided to have a go at putting together a schematic for the cupboards. honestly, I don’t like it. It doesn’t show enough information for it to be accurately designed and also its my first attempt at making a schematic so it was kinda shoddy. Well here it is anyways but i hopefully will have a better designed one by tomorrow:

Well that is all the stuff that I accomplished on this faithful (it’s technically Thursday as I finish this) day. Hope to accomplish more tomorrow.

Storyboard Design

First of all, I apologise a thousand times in advanced if what I have done strays away from what was asked… Sorry.

I had originally drawn out the storyboard like any old storyboard that everyman and his dog does. the basic squares sat next to each other and the poorly sketched representation of the events as they unfold.

I then decided to fancy… fy it. (fancyfy is a word, it just looks a bit off. Give it a chance, it’ll grow on you).

I’ve marked with arrows the order in which the panels go, incase the order was a bit off. It works just like a normal storyboard except that it looks like a page from a comic. The angle shots of each panel establishes the shots in the animation. I’ve included any movements of the camera (per say).

Here’s the first and second page, which should make up the thirty seconds for Teddy to meet his mortal rival, Axva:

Camera shot abbreviations:-

CU = Close up shot. This is typically the characters face or a single limb. also if the attention of the audience is wanted to be directed  towards a particular event or object.

MS = Medium shot. This is a shot used to show a character from waste hight, or two to three characters up close in discussion or performing an event.

LS = Long shot. This is to show a whole character, a bunch of characters or a large event (such as an explosion for example).

ES = Establishing shot. This is typically used at the beginning of a scene, directed towards a location or building, to show the audience where about the current events are taking place.

Pan ^<>v = Camera panning in up, left, right or down. This is for a circular pan, typically no more than 180 degrees movement, to both add to the shot and to show more of an event or location that cannot be typically displayed in single long shot.

The two images above show how Teddy survives an explosion atop the building (the explosion is not seen) and smoke is clearing. We then see the smoke completely clear and a voice calling to Teddy to get his attention, which it does. We are then presented multiple close up shots to parts of the Axva character, as this is the first time he is seen in the full. We then get different angular shots as both the characters converse, with close up shots of an important remark by Axva and surprise reaction from Teddy. We then have a final extreme close up of Axva as he threatens Teddy, to add significant drama to the end part of this scene.

Good Character Sheet

The good character sheet for Teddy. This is the protagonist for my cartoon “Teddy”. Makes sense considering the cartoon is named after him.

A later model design from Axva, both the characters were designed by the same creator. I haven’t decided on a design for the creator, no doubt he’ll have a white coat and be all science… y. Not really decided if the creator is a good or bad character either.

Probably will be brought in a character design no doubt.

The little notes on the electrocyde is one that I came up with quite recently. Basically they’re different states of the electrocyde. the main idea will be to define the characters. The yellow defines the protagonist (and other good characters), the red is for the antagonists and also the purply-blue, which is for robots that are being manipulated (controlled) .

Bad Character Sheet

This is the character sheet for my bad character Axva, from my currently in progress “Teddy” animated series. He is pretty much identical to teddy other than that he is a later model design of T.D robots.

The bigger machine is a husk that Axva uses to travel and also construct things quickly (Axva attacks the varies spires, and he usually does this by sending various numbers of constructs to do his work for him).

Was hoping to upload many more of these in the last week or so but never really found the time to finish one of my character sheets. But I decided to make an absalute concerted effort to get another done now (not un ambitious, just been really busy with other projects).

I’m still missing alot of information about the character and from the chracter sheet. What I plan to do for future uploads is present images of characters and settings that have had initial thought before being developed visually. Even to the smallest point of giving them a name.

I do however like how the characters are coming out, obvious improve over time and I’ll learn to develop better ways to present my character sheets as they’re coming out a bit too rough at the moment.

Again, this one was just so I could get another one uploaded… The methods I’m applying at the moment for colouring and outlining are still taking longer then I would like but unfortunately that’s where time takes presidence.