Own work

In relation to my previous blog entry, my influences I decided to post some of my own work that might have never been dreamed up by me if I didn't have fantastic artists like Tite Kubo, Yana Toboso, Tim Burton and Takeshi Obata to inspire me!

A young main villain for one of my story ideas.

The main character of a comic I hope to write

One of my characters from the same comic

This was the very first sketch of my 3D character who is also featured on my model sheet

Another comic character

Lambton Worm character

These two bottom pictures are the sort of things that I can base a character off.

ARTISTS FEATURE- Tim Burton Yana Toboso Takeshi Obata Tite Kubo; My biggest influences

Among all artists, the following four have influenced my own style perhaps more than any and have been sources of inspiration for my own characters.

The first is Tim Burton-

Tim Burton is my definition of a genius. From his beautiful, delightfully gothic and artistic films to his rough, sketchy and quirky character designs. His style has had a profound effect on my own since I like to put a twist of darkness in all of my illustrations and I feel I was drawn to his artwork from a young age.

Surprisingly he started out at Disney as an animator but was sort of cast off to the side by his superiors since his work was a bit too creepy for the happy and pretty Disney artwork that was being aimed for instead. 

…I can see why. Can you imagine a Disney song being made about this?!

This proved to be just what he needed as he now had control over his own work and one of his ideas he came up with was the story of the Nightmare before Christmas. Though he was apparently hardly ever present for the production of the film it was his designs and ideas that gave it such charm in my opinion.

The loveable Edward Scissorhands was Tim's own creation

The Red Queen - Alice in Wonderland

Burtonised Harry Potter- things doesn't get much better than that!
His style has become so popular that people use it to portray other well known characters .

Yana Toboso

Yana is the author of the popular manga series Black Butler. 

I absolutely love the amount of detail she puts in to each and every panel of her work.

Grell

Undertaker

Here are some rather old sketches of two of my favourite characters. I loved their style so much that I tried to emulate it and it was at this point a couple of years ago when I did these that I was beginning to grasp how to draw decent hair!

From left to right; Ciel Phantomhive, William T Spears,  Ronald Knox, Grell Sutcliff, Sebastian Michelis

Takeshi Obata

Takeshi is the illustrator of the immensely popular manga Death Note.

Unlike most manga, Takeshi's doesn't have overly exaggerated features such as massive sparkly eyes that are drawn on women. The style is much more sophisticated and realistic which fits with the semi-realism of the storyline despite it having shinigamis (death gods) and a notebook that kills people!

Light and Ryuk

Mello, Near, Light, Ryuk and Misa

Ryuk, Light and Rem

Mello

Mello

A quick painting I did of Mello

L Lawliet

An old sketch I did of L (I like to think I've improved!!)

Tite Kubo

Kubo is the author of another one of my favourite manga/animes - one of the most popular series of all time.

His artwork is unique but I admire most his diversity in his character design and his ability to execute complicated plot lines through his action packed panels- though he seems to be leaving his backgrounds rather stark of late!

Above all others it is Tite Kubo who wins the award of having the biggest influence over my own artwork. It is through trying to replicate this style and incorporate aspects of it into my own that I have become more familiar with anatomy as well as drawing manga eyes and hair.

Here are two paintings i'm working on of one of my favourite Bleach characters.

Lambton worm storyboarding module and animation production SWOT analsyis

One of my earlier modules was Storyboarding, something I had been looking forward to with great anticipation since beginning the course in September. This was because I had never really done any real storyboarding except one that I included in my portfolio. It just so happens that I used the same idea from that storyboard in this module and developed it further.

A few examples of the panels from my original storyboard are shown below.

These three portray the worm wrapping itself around the body

Putting his helmet on

Spikes shoot out of his armour

At the time I was unaware that Storyboards aren't like comic strips where the pictures have to be detailed and neat. As a result I spent about two weeks making a nine page storyboard! 

I learned from this module that storyboards are basically thumbnails of pictures that can be as sketchy as you want as long as you can understand the action and it is clear so other people too.

From that point, once the action is decided, the storyboards can be refined, coloured and eventually made into what is called an animatic- a reel of storyboard frames that can be accompanied by music or voice acting.

After my storyboards were complete, I found making an animatic very difficult since I wasn't used to the software which was After Effects.

As much as I was looking forward to this module, I found I didn't particularly enjoy it because it was so time consuming and I feel I may have picked an overly ambitious project for a beginner!

Strengths- I was able to clearly present my ideas through storyboard panels to determine what action was happening and when.

Weaknesses- I became bored with colouring my final panels after having spent a lot of time drawing them out

Opportunities- Newfound knowledge of storyboarding, keeping in mind it it often best to keep things simple the first time you try them!

Threats- Since my panels took so long to do, I didn't finish colouring them until the day before the deadline which was bad time management on my part.

The entire storyboard is shown below: