Hikers

 

https://tapas.io/episode/2513822

The first page of my webcomic is available today. It's not much, but hopefully it will grow into something more substantial much like God has allowed this art blog too.

I decided to make a webcomic as a means of practicing and refining my art style. To that end, The Hikers is a webcomic without dialogue about a man and his dog making their way to a mountain while fending off demonic beasts. It was inspired in no small part by Thatgamecompany's Journey and Giant Squid's The Pathless. I wanted a simple visual narrative so I could focus on writing instead of dialogue. 

New pages will be released at the end of each month. God's will be done. I love you.

Victim of Gravity

 https://youtu.be/qpFbU12YyUc

This is a video I made for my Character Animation class in my most recent semester of Graduate School. I was given the models for the mannequin and pot, and I did the animation. I originally uploaded it with a time code, but it blocked a lot of the video, so I edited it. This animation was done in Maya.

Yes, unfortunately this video has nothing to do with the classic Schoolhouse Rock! song of the same name.  I just thought the name fit, and I couldn't think of any jar-related puns that worked. Unfortunately, this video has some obvious errors. The pot is clearly floating between his hands and doesn't quite move in sync. I tried to figure out how to constrain the pot to the hands, but I wasn't able to before it was nearly time to turn in the project. I'll figure it out some other time.

 God be with me this summer, now, and forever. Amen.

Fayth Character Doodles

Nothing very serious. These are some doodles I made while traveling this weekend. This character and style was inspired by an indie platformer game I saw a few years ago, but I can't seem to find it now. I don't know where it is. I remember the secondary girl character could float some, and there was something to do with light as a theme. I wish I could find it.

Anyway, I wanted to draw this character as an experiment with changing proportions. This character is only slightly taller than three heads, but her forms are constructed the same as I've been trying to do for most of my characters now. You'll notice the space between her shoulders and neck.

God be with me. I love you.

Short Stories

So for the last week, I've thought about posting some short stories that I've already written onto this blog. I'm a little surprised I hadn't already. These have been done for about a year. Two of these stories (Abbess Janet) were written for a class in the last semester of my senior year of college. The other is a children's short story I wrote with the intention of submitting it to children's magazines. I never heard back from where I submitted it, so I figure there's no harm in putting it here.

Madison's Dad 

The above story is the children's story I wrote. It's very realistic, but I was still inspired stylistically by Louis Sachar's Wayside School stories, which are a personal favorite of mine, and Robert Munsch's short stories, especially Stephanie's Ponytail, which is another personal favorite. 

For this story's moral, I was inspired by my own life as well as a story told by my pastor at RUF in Clemson, Reid.

Janet of the Last Monastery (Prologue Story)

Abbess Janet of the Last Monastery

These next two stories are the stories that were written for class. I was inspired initially by a description in Andre Norton's "The Toads of Grimmerdale", which we read for class. I was also primarily inspired by the animated film The Secret of Kells. As a warning to parents, I should note there is some violence in these stories and the mention of blood. When I presented the first draft to my class, they all wanted to know more about the Gloom Sisters. I knew the backstory of the Gloom Sisters myself, but I hadn't included it because I didn't think it was important. In the final draft, I wrote it out, providing the creepiest part of the entire story. 

Some readers might recognize the influence of Samurai Jack's Daughters of Aku in the Gloom Sisters. I was also inspired by the obsidian weapons of Pitch Black's army in William Joyce's E. Aster Bunnymund and the Warrior Eggs at the Earth's Core! the book.

Thank you, God, for another year and for everything. I love you. Amen.

Door Versus Alien

 

This is an animation I did last semester for a class. The alien model was provided to us (a link is in the description of the video on YouTube if you're interested), but I made the door and did all the animation. My sister said it was like Veggie Tales. That made me really happy.

God's will be done. Thanks for this.

Taking Lessons From Eastern Animation

 

 

 

Doodling with pen, I studied and practiced some characters from anime until I figured out what I was missing in my own drawings. Then, I was able to create this drawing. I've long admired eastern-style animation for being able to create aesthetically beautiful characters with so few lines. They've really broken down what makes a drawn character attractive to look at. Many western animated characters have "Appeal," but most character designs could hardly be considered attractive. This is somewhat intentional on our part too. Ever since The Simpsons, American creators have been competing with each other to make equally nonsensical, avant-garde character designs that still read as human. Look at Phineas and Ferb or Gravity Falls. To be clear, I don't personally dislike this style. I love Gravity Falls and Phineas and Ferb. Fanart of those shows has featured on this blog. I owe my practice in art to Gravity Falls and its simplistic character style. I just want to be able to do something else.

It took me a long time to figure out how to make something like this consistently and without a specific reference. When a character looks attractive, it doesn't feel like a lot of work has been done. It just feels "right." You'll notice on Atla here (the character pictured) the shading of the eyes, how the shoulders are formed from misshapen rectangles rather than circles, that the shoulders are connected to the neck with a concave curve instead of a straight line. These were some of the elements I misunderstood.

One downside of doodling with pen is that your practice work may bleed onto the next page. I tried to mess with the contrast and colors of the picture so that my drawings on the opposite page were not as distracting. I'm sure someone who has more understanding of camera work could do better. 

Praise God. I love you. God's will be done.

Evan.spp

  

 

 One of the classes I'm taking this semester is Surfacing class, where we design textures and surfaces for objects. This is the model I came up with for the organic model assignment. Evan was created using a website that's name I forget which creates randomly generated and rigged human models. My teacher introduced it to me. I'll have to ask about it later. 

I want to be able to create a 2D look in as short a time as possible. To that end, I'm interested in learning about cell-shading and creating 3D models that appear two-dimensional. A lot of the animation industry and research right now is geared towards finding ways to make even more complex and realistic simulations of the world with the technology available. As soon as one effect becomes easy, they push themselves to another even more complex effect. I think this is somewhat absurd. There is, of course, a place for pushing technological boundaries, but technological advancements should be taken advantage of to produce work that is beautiful but cheap and time-effective. Imagine a world where a 10-year-old could use easy-to-understand software to create a beautiful CGI film clip. That is more what I'm interested in.

As you can probably tell, Evan here is my first attempt at anything like this with 3D software. The black outline around him is a slightly larger Evan model with the normals reversed (this is animator talk). The rest is hand-drawn with a poly-fill tool and a normal surfacing brush in Adobe Surface Painter. If I was to remake Evan, I would lift elements such as his collar and buttons off from the model. For now, I'm satisfied with what this has taught me, and I look forward to finishing this model and giving it eyes.

Praise be to God. I love you. Happy Easter.