Reban - Final

I just wanted to show some final images for my character development.

The first one is the final part of the animation. The point where Reban brakes the big stained glass and escapes from the laboratory.

I wanted to give an impression of movement with the crystals in the first plane.

Didn't like the way the broken stained glass looks and also it needs some blood (lol). I wanted to show a different type of crystals in this picture.

This one is just a dynamic pose trying to express more the colour I want for Reban.

This last one, I did it just for pure anger of leaving my USB and not being able to work on the environment's colour, but at the end was the picture that I liked the more. It's a scene of Reban in the test tube, connected to several machines to study him.

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Reban - Crystal environment

The final stage for our project was to build an environment for our character.
Since I'm basing all my images on the scene where Reban is escaping from the laboratory where he's been captive all his life, I decided to make work on this one for his environment.

To give an idea of living in a steampunk-like world in the 1800's the laboratory has been adapted in an ex-church with a gothic style. The place is in a cliff just outside the capital city.
Inside the place, the whole attention is in a big test tube where all the scientist test and study Reban's crystals to create a new fuel that will help them win the war.

Even thou I come from an architectural background I never got a chance to make a gothic structure, so I was really eager to work on this, but due to some issues with my computer and time wise I couldn't give the essence of it. Also, mixing this architectural style with steampunk is a meaning of working on details. (hell of a lot of details)

This is a colour sketch I made first to get a general idea:

At the end I decided to take off the multiple windows in the main tower and leave just the big one in the back (the one that Reban jumps through). The final design of the stain glass was simple and modular, but if I felt that if I went into more details or even a specific picture for a design it could steal a lot of attention.

From here I tried my best to make a perspective, but since it was hard to decide from where to make it and because I love the way 3-point perspectives add a touch of drama, I ended up making a cut to the building so that the inside and the outside could be visible.
It might have ended up looking weird because of the walkway around the test tube, but it was one of the most difficult parts to make.
Also, it is on black and white because my computer was misbehaving and the work I did at school I lost in my USB. (bad excuse, but true :( )

I know it still lacks of detail (and colour) but I think I aimed to high at the moment, since it took me more than expected to do this, but I got the idea of having the building covered inside out on pipes comming from everywhere and more steam ducts.
One of my inspirations for that was the bath house from Spirited Away like in the picture below



Also I made the plans and elevations of the lab, trying not to go too technical with it but still showing the more important parts of the buildings and its measures:

First the plan.-

The front view.-

A cut viewing from the center of the main room to the main entrance.-

The side.-

And a cut on the side to see the test tube properly.-

I didn't wanted to put aaaalll the measures to avoid making the image to congested. I used autocad to make them, and photoshop to save them in a web-friendly file so some details got lost in the process.
I hope I was able to transmit the whole concept of this building (otherwise the past four years of my life where a mere waist of time lol).
Once again, I feel really sorry for not being able to bring a colour render of my final product...

Reban - life in crystals

The animation that we had to make for this project was based on a flipnote and 20 frames.
To be honest, I underestimate this process; I thought it was going to be an easy job and that 2 second animation was nothing.
At first I had an ambitious plan in mind of having Reban standing there and while his crystals and expression changed the view/camera was going to spin around him from the front to the back and at the same time zooming out. When I actually tried to draw that I realize after 3 frames that I had no clue how to make that happen.
So after that, I had in mind to make a scene showing two guards and Reban jumping down in between of them and as he hits the ground he killed both of them. Once again, a scene too complicated for 20 frames.

At the end I decided to plan more properly and be a little bit less ambitious for my first animation, and since I was working on some images related to Reban's scape from the laboratory, I decided to focus most of my illustrations and this animation for this scene, so I came with this storyboard:

Basically he jumps down to a walkway that surrounds the massive tube he was in, then jumps up to the hand rail and finally breaks through the stain glass in front of him.
This is the final result:



At the end it was composed on photoshop at 12 fps, and it didn't came out too bad...
I did wasted loads of time doing details and trying to get the crystals to change shape as well, but since is such a small animation and is in black and white, those kind of details get a little bit lost.
Another big mistake I found much later on is that he's not suppose to have the hoddie at that point of the story, but ...I suppose that's not so important at this point.

Also, I'll try next time to get a reference for movements so that I can manage to capture a more realistic scent of movement.
Anyway, this was my first attempt and as such is got some special value for me ♥

Jerad S. Marantz

Remember the Kraken in the recent film clash of the titans or the amazing creatures of infamous 2? Well if you do, then I assume you understand the high quality of work that the concept artist Jerad S. Marantz does when it comes to creating fantastic creatures.

I came across this artist by accident, and almost refused to take a look at his work since part of the title of that post included the film sucker punch, which I never wanted to see after watching at the trailer.

Thankfully I had a look at his work and realise what an amazing artist he is and how many interventions he has done for many projects in the film and game industry as he is the lead designer at the Aaron Sims Company.

Anyway, what calls my attention from his work is the amazing detail in the textures that he puts for most of his monsters. Mixing that with an incredible ability to render and you get real life-like creative monsters and creatures.

After watching all his work, I got got really impressed at the ones for Zack's Snyder’s Sucker Punch, so I think I'll give it a chance to the film.

Even though my project with my character Reban (and also Belina) doesn't go that far, I always had the thought of adding this kind of creatures at some point in the story being Belina the one creating this weird creatures. If I ever keep with the story, I hope by that time I have a good technique level to achieve concepts of this quality.

Meanwhile, have a look at his gallery and start stalking /following his blog

Thought of you

While thinking and doing some storyboards for my flip book animation, I decided to look at some traditional style animations. Most of the works that I found where part of famous animations and really detailed final works.

Then I came across with this impressive artist called Ryan Woodward. Apparently ever since 1995 he's been doing commercial works for Hollywood mainly, but leaving aside of all the works he has done for Warner bros. or Walt Disney Studios, I'd like to focus on one of his most recent works part of the project Conté Animated which involves concepts of exploration of the human body, 2d animation (the illusion of life), contemporary dance and experimental processes for the better understanding of art.
Putting all this forms together to support a central idea of the complexities of intimate relationships.

What I found interesting is that rather than focusing of creating a narrative that communicates a define story, he decided to explore an individual experience unique and personal that goes straight to their own sensibilities.
Just have a look at the video and you'll see what I'm talking about:

Thought of You from Ryan J Woodward on Vimeo.

Impressive isn't it?
This short was a winner award of merit in Los Angeles Cinema Festival of Hollywood Fall 2010, The Indie Fest award winner, 2D or not 2D animation Festival Golden Pencil winner and many other nominations. No wonder... animation should also be applied to some other forms of art like this one does. Expand horizons.

I know that for my tendency at the moment to do things detailed and my 0 experience on animation, I wont be able to achieve anything close to this, BUT I do intend to work a lot more in a fluid way of work and a to improve my observational skills to a higher level.

Have a look at Ryan's Conté Animated website.

Reban - Crystal Archetype

REBAN'S ARCHETYPE

While building a character, we need to think about every aspect possible this with the main purpose to understand him/her better and be able to show and develop a more accurate personality.
Reban, being the main character, would fit into the description of Hero due to his unusual circumstances of birth and the series of traumatic events that will lead him into his quest (and not to mention his supernatural ability), but in some way he's also got a similarity to the Child archetype due to his age and the way he reacts thanks to his horrible past. Also he will have to act mature and take responsible decisions after escaping the laboratory.

I wasn't sure which style to go for, but at then I went for the one I feel more comfortable at the moment (just not to make things more complicated...I mean, come on! drawing crystals itself is complicated!). But I'm definitely trying new styles for future projects.

With the help of a character sheet I manage to get this for Reban:

Physical Description:
12 year old // blond-brunette (just the inferior back of his hair) // 151cm height // mid-tanned skin // eyes amber // crystals always popping out his forget, neck and part of his back // crystal colour is normally turquoise but changes with emotions // sharp teeth // basically the only wears a short overall and rarely any tops, due to his constant change of shapes (crystals)
Character Traits:
He doesn't know much about his past...ever since he has memory he’s been changing from hand to hand like an animal. He’s been spending his past few years in containers and only been able to establish contact with a few scientist. Right now, he’s being studied to make use of his crystals as an alternative fuel for new machinery, that is planed to be used in war.
Character Background:
-Family Background: Unknown
Story based on early 1800’s with a steampunk-like environment in which some countries are about to start a war.
-Habits/Vices: Very curious about everything, and even though he’s language skills are not very good, he’s always asking questions.
-Education: None. He learned basic language by scientist and previous owners.
-Personality: Curious and scared of people.
-Likes: Anything new. Food. Natural landscapes
-Dislikes: Needles, medicines and vegetables.
Motivation
-What is his goal?: After he’s realised by the daughter of a scientist he run off with her. His new goal is trying to merge into society, learn about his past and try to find a future.
-His plan to achieve goal: With the help of just a few people he´s trying to escape from being used as a tool for war.

People have been asking me if he's an elf or an imp, but I never got to think about it in a deep way. My original plan was him to be a human (with deform ears) and the only difference with the society would be his skin colour, but that only because he's in a european-like society where most people have white skin, but this doesn't mean that in that world, in other countries, there isn't any others like him.

As for the design, like I said in the previous post, the crystals change in shape and colour, and later on, he will be able to control them by controlling his emotions.

This are some of the crystals' shape according to the last post that I did, just picture the colour on them :)

For the colour scheme I didn't do many variations, since i knew I wanted a good opposite-like look of a classic european person, so the skin had to be tanned, and for contrast I went with blond hair and amber eyes.

Lili Ibrahim

This time I'm going to talk about Lili Ibrahim, a Sweden artist based in London who's studying Illustration and animation.

I was just looking at her website and couldn't help to fall in love whit her work. Thinking that she's a student like us and she does that quality of work makes me want to push myself a bit further to improve (probably she's not a student anymore, but still...she's awesome).

Apparently she's got a lot of inspiration from acting, which would explain a lot in how well she represents facial and body expressions.
Just like me, she's aiming to work on the game industry and for that she has done some work in 3D using software like Zbrush, maya and 3D max, but for her illustrations she uses Photoshop CS5 and a Wacom intuos 4.

I strongly recommend to pay a visit to her website, deviant account or tumblr account, and have a look not only to her final illustrations, but also she's got an amazing quality of sketching (which is something I still need to work more on).
She's got a really nice technique on digital painting, in which she changes a lot from the original idea, but I think this gives you a really good opportunity for polish the final product, instead of getting stuck in the original idea, which might not be as good. You can see her process in some tutorial she made for her deviantart profile.

Looks like we've got a big competition or even better a good companion in the concept art industry.

Jace Wallace

While trying to look for an alternate type of drawings that could take me one step aside to try different styles, I remembered one artist that I've been following for a while (not stalking). He's name is Jace Wallace; an american concept artist and illustrator who seem to have done more works about fashion and naked women than anything, but still, the way he works is just impressive.

Proportions and shading for skin is one of his strong aspects that I admire, but also the composition and originality in most of his works is impressive itself.

Something that I notice while looking at his blog is that he refers at his works as "sketches" or "doodles", even though for me they are really professional looking... I suppose that's call talent.
For my character, Reban, I'm not even trying to change my style, since 1) I don't have enough time to do everything again and 2) it would look awkward to have to different styles in the same project, so I'll stick with it for now, but I'm definitely going to try to be more quick with my sketches from now on... at the moment I need to improve my quantity of ideas, and then the quality.

by the way...this is his website

Tetsuya Nomura ♥♥♥

Well, I know manga-style animation shouldnt be part of my portfolio, but I still can help to hide my respects and admiration to Tetsuya Nomura, a japanes artist born in October 10, 1970.
He's been my inspiration since long time ago, specially because he's the responsible for the character designs and concept art of franchise such as Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts.

BIO
Tetsuya Nomura was born in Kochi prefecture Japan on October 10, 1970. Fans of his art probably know him best for his work on the Final Fantasy series, and for his habit of often influencing his character art designs with his personal tastes in fashion and silver jewelry. Originally starting off in a vocational school creating art for advertisements, Nomura was hired by Squaresoft at the age of 21 to work on battle monster graphics for Final Fantasy V in 1991. Pleased with his work, Squaresoft next appointed him as graphic director for Final Fantasy VI in 1994, and in the following year, gave him the role of character designer for the production of Final Fantasy VII.

Nomura's first major character design role, FFVII. Nomura's involvement in Final Fantasy VII didn't stop at character design. He created storyboards for the many impressive summon sequences, covered monster and logo designs, and even had some influence on major key events in the story, including the idea for Aerith to die. The huge worldwide success of Final Fantasy VII further secured his position as one of the controlling minds behind the series' design and direction. Nomura worked closely with director Yoshinori Kitase on the development of Final Fantasy VIII, heavily contributing to ideas for a 'lighter' story and a school setting. He acted as lead character designer and battle visual director, setting the feel for the game with his designs for characters, clothes, weapons, and Guardian Forces, as well as sequences for limit breaks and summons. He also added personality details and some choice vocabulary for the characters he designed.

Illustration for Parasite Eve II. At about the same time, Nomura's design talents were hired into other games, including Parasite Eve, Brave Fencer Musashi, and Ehrgeiz. When Square entered the PlayStation 2 era in 2000, Nomura served as character designer for the company's first major titles on the system, The Bouncer and Final Fantasy X. It was shortly after that Kingdom Hearts would mark his first role in fully directing a game, while still providing the concept art and character designs as well. The game was well met, and Nomura resumed the same role for Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories and Kingdom Hearts II.

Nomura's clothing designs are a hot topic among his fans. Nomura has often cited the Final Fantasy series' original character artist Yoshitaka Amano as a great inspiration with his detailed whimsical illustrations, even crediting him for the idea behind Edea's design in FFVIII. He also credits motion pictures, music videos, and magazines as a frequent source of inspiration when drawing and making storyboards. His interest in motion pictures has further been demonstrated in his direction of the CGI film Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, in which he also served as character designer for. Nomura employs a variety of mediums when drawing, but he most often uses the contemporary technique of first making sketches on paper, then scanning the lines and further processing the art on computer, where most coloring is done digitally. Early sketches on paper are often created with mechanical pencil, though he has also been known to make use of colored pencil, as found in his illustrations for Final Fantasy VII.

Currently, Nomura continues to be a busy and influential designer in video games, overseeing the art direction in the three Fabula Nova Crystallis: Final Fantasy XIII projects for PS3, as well as director for Final Fantasy Versus XIII. Other present projects are Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII for the PSP, and It's a Wonderful World for DS.

Artist's Video Game Work
1992 Final Fantasy V (SNES)
1994 Live A Live (SNES)
1994 Final Fantasy VI (SNES)
1995 Chrono Trigger (SNES)
1996 Super Mario RPG (SNES)
1997 Final Fantasy VII (PS)
1998 Parasite Eve (PS)
1998 Ehrgeiz (PS)
1998 Brave Fen. Musashi (PS)
1999 Parasite Eve II (PS)
1999 Final Fantasy VIII (PS)
2000 The Bouncer (PS2)
2001 Final Fantasy X (PS2)
2002 Kingdom Hearts (PS2)
2003 Final Fantasy X-2 (PS2)
2003 Final Fantasy XI (PS2)
2004 Kingdom Hrt. CoM (GBA)
2005 Sam. Lgn. Musashi (PS2)
2005 Kingdom Hearts II (PS2)
2006 Dirge of Cerberus (PS2)
2007 The world ends with you (DS)
???? Final Fantasy XIII (PS3)
???? FF Agito XIII (PS3)
???? FF Versus XIII (PS3)

There's a lot a could talk about this artist, speaking about his style that's very iconic and that if you look at the artworks of all this games in order you can tell the evolution in him.
What I find more inspiring at this point of creating a character is his ability to make iconic and unique personalities and looks on his characters.
I assume that his passion for fashion is what gives a really outstanding costume, but at the same time he designs a personality in the character that manages to stay in your memory. Once you play several games in which this characters appear you can easily tell which ones he design.

Right...like I said he's been one of my influences, but not that I've decided to leave this kind of style, I'll try to make this artist one of my last manga-concept artist...
(but still...LOOK AT HIS WORK!...isn't he amazing?)

Reban - Concept of crystals

Right, I already presented the character that I decided not to go for, so now (after a long time) here's my final character: Reban.STORY

Basically the story around him is based similar to Belina's: On a steam-punk-like world (somewhere around 1800's) in a European-style map where countries are about to go into war, and for this machinery is one of the main weapons for the country this story is based (haven't given a name yet). So, because steam is the main source of energy, this country has been trying to develop secretly a new type of fuel that would maximize the power of his weapons, giving them an incredible advantage over the rest of the countries. This is where Reban comes into scene. From an unknown background, Reban is not only different in his skin colour, eye colour and shape of ears, but he also grows crystals out of his body (mainly forehead and back). This crystals change form and colour according to his mood but since everything part of his memory has always been in a laboratory (mainly in a tank) he know nothing about it and therefore he has no control over them. He learned how to speak, read and basic general knowledge from the scientist that have been taking care of him, but none of them stayed for long to establish an emotional bond with him. The story begins when Belina (I decided to use her in the story anyway lol ), daughter of one of the scientist goes to the laboratory with his dad, and finds that in the massive container (I'll give a better idea with some draws about this) there's a boy that looks about her age, all surrounded with medical probes and half asleep. She feels sorry about him, about how lonely he must feel, so she goes beyond the allowed area, and gets as close as possible to him. There's a connection between them, so she decides to get him out of there. By doing this, she creates pressure in the container that start braking up the glass and at the same time made Reban's behavior unstable. His crystal change and grow so much that make a hole in the container, so he jump out the latter and being surrounded by scientist that are trying to get him back, he jump through the big stained glass in front of him. He jumps straight into a river that's quite far down the cliff. This is where the story begins, because now he has to try to scape from the people who want to finish the experiments and find out about his origins while trying to blend into society.

INSPIRATION
I got the initial idea of crystals and the mystery/beauty around them when a friend from home told me that he had just been to this incredible Crystal caves in the north of Mexico, and after showing me some pictures I became obsessed with crystals, to the point of watching some videos of how crystals grown in fast motion.
There where so many of them that I liked the idea of giving them an emotion (kinda like the meaning that are given in some esoteric believing).
Also, the steam-punk idea came from the royal armory museum visit that we did (there are some pictures in my previous posts). So the idea of an industrial world taking over society to a different level than it really did. Mixing machines steamed-based causing a quick rust on most metals. Also, the size of them is bigger than electrical machines since they need a source of motion to work.
Buildings still with a Gothic/baroque influence and the use of still and glass to additions and modification is taking place.
Here's my mood board that can give a better idea of the dressing, architecture and some ideas for machinery:
Next post will be some of Reban's first ideas and the final concept, meanwhile hope you like the concept :)

1 - Collect (b)

And here's the pictures form the Royal armory museum.
I've never been a huge fan of guns and all that, but I got really impressed of the amount of creative weapons that have been develop during the years. This is where I got the idea of a steam-punk environment, where fire weapons are not as develop leaving traditional weapons (like swords, axes and bow) to take an important part of the action.

Since I knew I wanted to do an action story, I wanted to give chance to many different ways of battles.
Also, I like all the details they put on some weapons, so that also can be part of my story since is in a time after the Gothic era, so all the remaining of buildings and designs still all over the place.
Rusted metal, machines integrated to animals and humans (like the pic of the bird-creature made of metal) and the lack of electricity if what my story is going to be like.