Inktober 2014 - mid way

#inktober

I have been participating in the #inktober movement again this year. I am half way through and it is a lot of fun again... Follow me on instagram to see more and for frequent updates!

Create STUDIO - Making Of

After the pitch and approval of the concept, the process continued by using the storyboard to create an animatic in sync with the music provided by STUDIO.

Using the footage from the audition of the chosen dancer (talented Michael Marmolejos), I created a quick edit to identify the dance moves that would  best fit the concept and the flow of the music.

After that, all the magic is done on the computer. Editing, green screen replacement, colour correction, special effects and frame-by-frame animation took a while but it was great to see the final piece on TV in the end. Happy.

Create STUDIO - The Journey

The Pitch

Style frames, Mind maps, Mood boards, Diagrams... 

It's amazing now with the project complete http://vimeo.com/89491324, to look at how it all started. Above are some of the initial frames from the pitch document I created. Combine Dance and Paint? It seemed crazy back then.

The Storyboard

Precious storyboard

Everything took shape with planning. A storyboard helps to plan the shots I had in mind and then those drawings are used to create an animatic synced with the music provided.

The Shoot

Cool location for a video shoot with green screen

This is when everything that was planned comes together. Every detail needs to be recorded and I had to direct the shoot from the weird vision I had in my head.

The Animation

My neat workspace

After that, everything was done on my computer. It was hard work and it took a while to do the edit, animation, effects and colour correction, but the result was worth it in the end.

It was indeed an enriching journey by creating this piece in collaboration with the friendly guys from the STUDIO channel.

Mum and Dad Sketch

I find myself sketching a lot more these days. I don't know if it's because of my animation background, but they are mostly random sketches and doodles, instead of final polished drawings! I'll share some anyway :)

Here is the sketch of my mum and dad. I  miss my parents. It seemed like there is always this standard picture of them that I have in my head since I last saw them, even though they are now older...

Tribute to Moebius

RIP the legend Moebius (1938-2012)... 

*I first saw that scene from  Moebius a long time ago but i never got it out of my head... I had to make it move...

Wondercon 2012

OK, I haven't posted much lately. Well that's because my trip to Los Angeles is keeping me very busy at the moment. As I am in California, it was a great opportunity to attend Wondercon for the first time in my life. To be honest, I was not too sure of what to expect, but in the end I was pleasantly surprised. I attended a lot of the panel talks and some of them were very inspiring and taught me a lot about the process that some of the comic artists go through. 

There was a huge crowd as well, which shows that the comics industry is as strong as ever! 

Best of all, seeing and meeting so many well known professional artists gathered together under one roof is just a unique scene to be at. And of course I had to get some inspirational books from some if my favourite artists and with a little note from them! :)

So inspired to create now...

Jack in da box

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:

Jack in the Box Kinect Hack from Soap Creative on Vimeo.

Making of El Dodo Freedom - Part 2

Recently completed a short animation for the Annecy Festival 2011 competition:

http://www.youtube.com/user/neongsan#p/u/0/4z-TfoWMShg

Here is part 2 of the making of. Part 1 can be found here.

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.

Making of El Dodo Freedom - Part 1

Recently completed a short animation for the Annecy Festival 2011 competition:
http://www.youtube.com/user/neongsan#p/u/0/4z-TfoWMShg

Here is the making of.

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...

Skyro hot from the oven

Captain Skyro and his faithful parrot...made from cookies

Yummy cookies! Great skills from Sionen, Captain Skyro's number 1 fan!
Is it a sign that Skyro2 needs to be "baked"? ;)
picture sourced from Dan's blog

If you haven't played that game before, play it here: http://www.adijans.com/skyro/

The making of the the game was documented here in a previous post: http://blog.neongsan.com/2010/09/captain-skyro.html