Posing Practice

After sharing the Olympic sketches I did with some fellow artists, I received valuable feedback about pushing the poses. 

At first, I tried to keep the pose and find ways to accentuate the gesture through cartooning. These were okay, but the problem was the readability of the pose.

To address that, I started from scratch. Here, I am exploring pose options for someone with a bow. I've completely thrown out the old pose and the story with it. If you follow the numbers, you can see my train of thought. Enjoy!

Going for the Gold

Although I've been seeing a lot of traffic about the Olympics like the U.S.A. girl's gymnastic's team, which was amazing, the Olympics often has many powerful stories that don't make it onto prime time television. One of those was archery. Even though it may not have been as spectacular or quick-paced as some of the other sports, it was the quiet moments of tension that made the archery finals so interesting. 

You are shown close-ups of the athletes going through a range of emotions shot after shot as they fight against the other team, the elements and their own nerves. I learned that I don't really watch the Olympics to see how many golds our country can win. What makes the Olympics captivating is the courage and conviction that people manage to pull out when under pressure. I saw this most clearly in Ki Bo-bae's performance during the women's team archery final between South Korea and China.

I was sketching as I watched the final. At one point, I saw Ki Bo-bae go up to take a shot. However, this time, I saw her hit by a wave of pressure as she loaded her bow. She pensively looked at the target, thinking of the shot ahead. Then, she exhaled a sigh of stress and and readied her bow. As it passed in front of her face, I saw the most amazing thing happen. Any pressure, fear, doubt or insecurity wiped from her complexion and there was a serene confidence that could only be born out of years of experience. She let loose her arrow, and the rest is history.

Unknown to me, this was the last shot of the tournament. She was literally shooting for the gold medal, not only for herself but her teammates and her country. Wow. 

Vow

One of the last projects I worked on while at SCAD was Vow, a short animation directed by Bridget Underwood. I helped with visual development and was a supervising layout artist on the film. It was a huge honor to work with such talented and delightful people, and I am very happy with how the film turned out.

We were elated and humbled when Vow won many awards at the 2012 SCAD Animation Graduation Show, including Achievement in Character Animation, Achievement in Original Storytelling, Most Entertaining Film, and The Collaboration Prize. To many on the crew, the best reward was viewing it on the big screen next to so many great animations, and being surrounded by our friends and collaborators made it that much sweeter. Seeing months of work and memories flickering on the screen was a culminating experience, especially since it was the finale to our college days.

With that said, grab your popcorn and enjoy the show!



Vow from Bridget Underwood on Vimeo.

The Secret Number

Check out the final version of Colin Levy's award-winning short, The Secret Number, which is finally online. I had the opportunity to do concept art and previsualization in the film's early days. It was a great experience to collaborate with so many talented film students!

You can find more information about the film here.

Gustaff Design Finalized

After many revisions and drafts, Gustaff's character design has finally come together into something I am comfortable with. In small ways, he will change here and there, but I can now move on to the secondary characters in the story. I would say he is about 95% finished at this point, and drawing him in action with other characters will fully round him out. The following images show the last part of his development.

Finally getting the acting I wanted out of his cartooned form, 

I decided to get a few more details in there.

Adding back in that touch of realism put the

 character exactly where I wanted him.

Old man shoes...check!

I decided to do a portrait of Gustaff to finalize his design

and insure that I knew his forms well. Also, it was just plain fun. 

It feels good to have Gustaff looking exactly how I want him to. I learned so much just by spending the time to really work on him. Now, I can move on to the other elements of the story. Things to look forward to are the completed sculpture and new character designs. Also, I will begin exploring the props and environments in greater detail. Check back soon!