GrrrrrRRRRYYYYYEAAAAAAARGH!

Happy week 4 everyone, have a hunter.


Drawn with a 2B pencil, inked with a rollerball and brush pen, coloured with watercolour pencils.
I'm trying some more dynamic poses at the moment and this has turned out quite a bit better than I'd hoped.
Changed the red levels to give the colours a bit of a boost, but they still seem a bit murky and areas like the left hand don't stand out as well as I needed them to. Also the silhouette isn't too strong as the hand crosses over his right leg.

I want to turn this into a full colour piece with background at some point so I'm going to keep working into it with the pencils. Hopefully continuing to build up the colour in the shaded areas will give it a lot more vibrancy and depth when I wash over it.
As usual, if anyone has any critiques or tips I'm all ears (or eyes in this case).

Also, I apologise for any mistakes in the design. I didn't have any references to hand when I'd passed the initial sketching stage!

Hunter and Left 4 Dead © Valve

DeviantArt link.

Project 52 challenge - Weeks 1, 2 and 3

My first entry is actually a three-in-one since I started the challenge a couple of weeks into January. For those who are members of DeviantArt, I'll also be including the DA gallery links.

First up are two characters from my comic Soulsnatchers.


DA Link

A brief introduction:
Eric Killian has been searching for clues to the whereabouts of his brother, who disappeared mysteriously four years ago.
During his search, he gets caught up in the "Soulsnatchers" [pending name change] organisation, a sort-of black market branch of hell that specialises in trading human souls for what they most desire (without their consent naturally).

Eric, the main character, is the dude to the left. I've not posted him to DA before but he's changed quite significantly since I first designed him. He was originally supposed to be a dishevelled cop, but I didn't like the way it was working out so I made him a (slightly scruffy) university student. Bright but his curiosity often gets the better of him.

Some of you may have seen Alusius before if you know me from DeviantArt. He's the head of his team of soulsnatchers and before Eric joins, is unique in the fact that he used to be (and possibly still is) human. The first outfit is him in his uniform (worn so as not to draw too much attention to themselves on the surface) and the second is his casual outfit, much more comfortable since it's less restrictive to what lies beneath his bandages.
I've also given him a slight design change, giving him a high coat collar, different boots and baggier trousers.
Here are some of the original drawings I did of him for comparison:
Alusius original design 1
Alusius orginal design 2

The comic style itself is getting a makeover too. Less loose with more varied line weights.
A couple of pages from the original comic:
Page 1
Page 2
I'm hoping to post up more SS stuff in the near future, more characters and also environments which will also have an overhaul from the previous version.

These were both sketched in pencil then inked with a Copic brush marker. Rather missed it, it's been a long time since I've done non-digital inking!
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Next is just a quick digital drawing of Eric suiting up for his first day on the job:
DA Link

I'm thinking I should have made the line weight difference between Alusius and Eric greater to help distinguish between their jackets (or perhaps made the colour shades slightly different?). Also, does this inking style still work for the refined character designs?
Any ideas at this stage are more than welcome.

Critiques are more than welcome of course! : )

- Ryuuza

Project 52 challenge - the drawing edition!

DeviantArt is currently hosting a photography contest called the Project 52 photography challenge, in which users submit one photo per week to their gallery (on the theme of "progression") throughout 2010.
I thought this was a really neat idea, not just as a contest, but as a challenge to one's self.
So what I'm going to get myself to do is a similar thing with my drawing. At least one piece (not job related) a week throughout 2010 which will be posted both to here and to my DA gallery.
I'm going to use this challenge as a way to boost my drawing skills and confidence as well as a means of getting my comic story "Soulsnatchers" off the ground.
It'd also be very cool if anyone else wants to take up the challenge themselves! : D

I do realise I haven't used this blog in an extremely long time as I hadn't really felt like I had much to contribute, so this is going to be its long awaited revival.

Hope everyone's having a good 2010 so far, all the best!
- Ryuuza

...and we have lip-syncage

Today I totally made a dude look like he's saying things. It felt awesome : )

That was Dargor by the way (the guy in the armour from the last video).
This was my first try with lip synching in Anime Studio and thanks to being able to use switch layers, he took all of five minutes to set up. Just wish it had been this easy in After Effects : <

EDIT:
Here's Tharish as well :D

What is this "outside" you speak of?!

Been feeling a bit out-of-sorts for the last few days. I haven't really had anyone to talk to and I'm seriously missing my friends, most of whom aren't even in Birmingham at the moment. I've never liked long holidays for that reason. It's been quite a struggle to get on with work too, since boredom has almost completely destroyed any enthusiasm I had for it. I just hope things pick up in the next week.
: (

Last test for now, since I'm starting the groundwork for the next part tomorrow. A bit rough around the edges, but I want to get the bulk of the animation work done before I start the fine-tuning (otherwise it'll get to the end of the holiday and I'll be nowhere near close to finishing it). Pacing's a little off and I still want to tweak the movements in the first and last shots, but I'm quite pleased with how it's progressing, which makes a change. I'll be adding the rain later on.

Computers are awesome!

No wait, what's the opposite? Oh yeah, complete bastards.
Seriously, what is it with computers that makes them think "Hey this project's going entirely too well for my liking. What can I do to fuck it up for you?"? For every thing that goes right, there will be at least three that go wrong. In the last week, as well as my laptop dying, I've lost my phone (suddenly decided not to switch on anymore), half a printer and my external HD takes forever to be recognised when I plug it in. Just this evening I wasted about 2 hours trying to get After Effects to reinstall properly after it decided that it wasn't going to open anymore (something to do with duplicated plug-ins even though it was fine yesterday).
And I swear to God, if anyone says it's because I'm using a PC, I will brain them.

Anyway, I finally got it to work (amid numerous four-letter expletives) and spent the rest of the day making this:


A few kinks to smooth out with this one, mainly down to the way the character's hair, cloak and shadow move (gave them a bone structure in Anime Studio rather than doing it frame by frame). All of them require a few more keyframes and could also do with slowing down.
I also want to make the ripples in the lake smaller and if I have some time to spare, get some birds flying overhead.
I quite like the perspective in this one though, which I actually thought would be the most difficult part to get right.

In other news, my Joshua Radin CD came today, which made me happy. Go and check out his site if you like really mellow acoustic stuff. You can stream some clips from the "We Were Here" album in the music section (he's had quite a few songs featured in Scrubs if anyone's a fan).

I'm hoping the next three scenes will be easier to tackle, especially since I'll be dealing with silhouettes. Right now though, it's late, I'm tired and I'd rather not end up falling asleep at 4.00 am again : P

TTFN

Here be dragons!

Okay so I lied, there's only one :P
Had a few setbacks before the holiday (including losing my laptop... again), so this past week I've been up until the small hours of the morning doing as much as I possibly can.
Two more videos, the first is one third of the finalised animatic complete with Mr Lee's marvellous voice and the second is a rough animation of the first scene.



The sound ends rather abruptly, which I'll be fixing when I have the animation finished. Also I want to beef it up to give the final blow more of an impact.
Eventually it'll lead into the scene which was illustrated in the animatic that I posted before (which has also been given an upgrade since then).



For the animation, I want to make the wings curve upwards when they're raised and this is proving rather difficult to achieve in 3D space. So far the only solutions I've found are expensive plug-ins for After Effects, or have an insanely detailed knowledge of how the bone rigging system works in Anime Studio, of which I currently have neither. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd be glad to hear them!
Also, as my good friend Richard pointed out, it might be an idea to have the dragon fly upwards slightly before the dive to give it a more fluid look.

As a parting gift, two "in progress" images of the next part of the animation, which should hopefully be finished by tomorrow evening. I know I said I'd post character designs, but I'm just mean like that ; ) :



And one really silly one that took all of ten minutes. The fluffy cat's mine, the black one sitting outside is her arch nemesis (10 points to the first one to point out the reference) :D


Time for precious sleep ;_ ;