More Maquettes!

Right-ee-ho! Good day to you all. It's late and I'm typing fast. It's been a bank holiday weekend and I've been working hard. There's been a possibility that's arisen recently that I may be able to collaborate with a wonderfully talented costume maker on this film now...

While I was looking to do everything on this by myself, costume is the only field in which I am left completely adrift. I couldn't tell a cross stitch from a cable stitch (or other such haberdashery terms).

And so, this brought to mind the fact that I absolutely need to nail down the design of these guys. Obviously with each sculpt I do, I find new angles, new lines and the design gets shaved and poked closer and closer to a final design but basically that's what the maquette above is built to do.

The pic above shows you the original colour of the baked clay sculpt on the left and the quick digital paint over I gave her to illustrate her colour scheme, on the right. I apologise for the poor lighting which has washed out her features in the front view.

I needed a sculpt to illustrate the shapes and lines I was after for Clara's clothing, and I think I'm happy with what I've hit upon. It's a design taken from my idea of what victorian clothing would look like on her. It has no real basis in a real world time period but suites the character and places her nicely as 'other-worldly.'

There's so much work left to do before I can move on, including a full body sculpt of 'Sebastian', which currently terrifies me. He's much more complicated and it's gonna be alot of work to recapture my initial sculpt. However, I relish the challenge.

Just another quick one this time. Hopefully I'll remember to take some more progress pics while I'm working on 'Sebastian' so you have a little more to look at.

Thanks for stopping by.


Josh.

The Usual Suspects.

Here's to the evolution of a project! So, a little pause... I've been super busy of late in my life outside of The Haunts, and have had a stall in the funding of the project (which is my own money :)), which has slowed down the initial momentum of the project.

Unfortunately there's now no way I can make this in time for the Virgin Media Shorts deadline, which I was hoping to hit. However the film is still alive as ever!

This week I've been working on more design issues. As you can see above, I'm working on size comparison between characters and other such goodness.
And also the film now has a Facebook page!!
So come join the party over there! We'd love to see ya!

I'll have a lengthier post on model sheets and the work I've been doing up by the end of the week!

And soon my friends, very soon, there will be puppets afoot!

I can't frickin' wait! I'm trying to slow myself down a little and make sure I've done my ground work before diving in to the fun of making puppets, but they're on their way!!


Thanks for dropping by,


Josh.

Costume changes!!

Just a quick one today, written from my iPhone cos I'm working on the go! I'm a hip young artist after all, there's no standing still aloud! Having said that, it's time for a sit down :)

I just wanted to post some of my more recent pre prod art work, some of you will have already seen most of it. 

Basically, Sebastian has had a costume change! 

The thinking behind this is that while, the gardener type attire that I had originally envisioned was perfectly good and executed a wonderful little joke about a gardening fork for a walking stick, the character that went along with that didn't quite fit with the rest of the film. That is the major thing I'm learning about character design that may help anyone else in the same process; 

the characters do not live by themselves. You're not just designing a character but an ensemble and a whole film. 

So I've started playing around with different attires and attitudes and body shapes whilst maintaining the essential features of the characters face. Take a look!

This was a quick sketch of an idea that I then worked into a quick colour revision, using pen, pastels and a craft paper sketchbook! :)

I've been drawing a lot this week, trying to figure out the personalities of Sebastian and Clara on paper.

Also this week I've been experimenting with armature design in practise, building simple armatures to test out design ideas and to figure out what is essential in my puppets.

Things are chugging along nicely here at haunts HQ!

Thanks for looking guys.

Josh