Finally, here is an update with some artwork from a R&D piece that Hendrik and I worked on at Soap Creative for the Monster Art Show to celebrate Halloween.
My role as the concept artist/designer was to come up with the character visuals while Hendrik modelled and rigged the character to implement into Unity to work with the Kinect. It was lots of fun as it was more of an experimental interactive piece of art for the opening night of the exhibition.
Digital concept art painting of the character
From basic shapes, to sketches, to finger painting, to a black and white volumetric study
3d model with the textures that I painted over
Here is an actual quick screen recording of the work in progress:
Ahoy! Happy International Talk Like a Pirate day!
To join in the celebration, I would like to share a little treasure by giving ye all a sneak peek first ever video preview of Team Pok Pok(Dan Adijans and I)'s mobile game, Captain Skyro. Arrrrr! Enjoy!
It was real fun to work on the video preview. It's is still work in progress of the game but we thought that the Talk Like a Pirate day was a good excuse enough to share with the gaming community what we have been up to during our spare time.
First, Dan and I brainstormed a few rough storyboards in terms of the sequence and flow of the screens. We have a solid library of assets now already created for the game. So it was an easier process to grab the graphical and audio elements that we wanted to show and put it in a small video trailer.
The fact that we are at a very advance stage of prototyping, we were eager to record some of the game footage. Then it was a matter of editing and animating, which I have done a lot lately and been enjoying more and more...
In the end, it's not really a proper game trailer, but just a fun little teaser to celebrate Talk Like a Pirate day! Yarrrrr!
You can learn more about Team Pok Pok (made up of Dan and I) here.
We are also honoured to be featured on Kotaku here.
Last weekend the ZZZ collective, consisting of Okayboss, Marko and I, was invited at the Sydney Opera House to be announced as the winner of the animation competition. We were really surprised to have been selected by the judges, but we worked hard through all the rounds and it was an honour to receive the top prize for creating Run Amok.
The announcement was to be made just before the final event of the Graphic 2011 festival: Gotye concert. There was a quick rehearsal before the show in the empty hall, but even then my legs were shaking as I am so much more comfortable sitting quietly and animating in front of my computer.
Backstage and then on the stage, with Run Amok.
Then came the big moment. Run Amok was projected inside the packed Opera House, which was a first by itself, but I was too nervous at that time to realise.
Each one of us agreed to say a few words, even I did but I can't remember why now. Fortunately I had my part of the speech scribbled down on post-it note!
It was a short nervous speech at the Sydney Opera House but well prepared on a post-it note.
After the speech it was such a relief and just a matter of going back in the audience and enjoying the mind blowing show by Gotye. On our way back to the car park, it was also nice to be congratulated by random people from the crowd who recognised us. Awesome night.
Thanks to everyone who voted for us and supported us through the rounds of the competition as it was the first piece that ZZZ Collective created, the first of many to come... so like us on Facebook, follow us on Youtube or Twitter to keep in touch!
Here is the third and final part of the animation collaboration with ZZZ collective for the Graphic 2011 animation competition.
A big thanks to everyone who voted on the previous round to get us to the final round of the competition. ZZZ collective consists of Okayboss, Marko and I.
Recently completed a 30second animation collaboration with ZZZ collective for the Graphic 2011 animation competition. The theme for this year is ESCAPE.
It's now open for public voting from 18-20 July. Then the top 20 goes
to a judging panel to cut it to the final 10 to progress to the next
round. Now we need some votes if you want to see the next episode!
Just follow these easy steps and we will be eternally grateful.
The sketches that worked, were used as a solid base for the general art direction. Still, lots of different styles were quickly experimented with before a rough colour speed painting gave some sense of where the animation could go.
Colour and style treatment experiments
The blueprint sketches were then used as reference to model the characters in 3d space. Low polygon modelling techniques were used due to my limited technical modelling skills. This proved to be much faster to model and rig.
Low poly modelling of the cowboy and dodo models
Wire frames of the models
A rougher stop motion style animation was then also better suited. The time restriction of the competition deadline also contributed to the simpler and more experimental direction of the final animation. More experimentation was then made with the animations in After Effects to get the desired look and feel.
Below are some final screen shots from the short animation.
At first, as usual, a lot of time was spent
sketching and doodling around to look for something that might feel right. It
can sometimes be a long journey of exploring new ideas and combining with old
ones. When presented with the theme referencing the USA, of course the theme of classic western movies came up and out of nowhere cowboy sketches started to pop out.
Cowboy standing out from the crowd
Character taking shape
blueprint for the modelling phase
For a recent project, there were some random dodo doodles flying around but the dodo concept was not used. Then it all kinda merged together: a cowboy who tries to ride a dodo...
Dodo sketches on the fly
Part 2 will show the process of developing the unique visual and animation style for El Dodo Freedom...
Those are some old bird illustrations done for a pitch.
Amazing how sometimes when you dig back trough old stuffs, you can find them more interesting than they were originally... maybe after I've been playing Angry Birds too much.
