Why so Serious?

Well, it's a rather serious clown now isn't it?

Got the line work for my storyboard done, which extends across a span of, 87 panels

There's a section near the beginning, the part where they make the flower vase dissappear and then the kid bring it back which might be cut for the sake of time constraints, but I hope to keep it in if I can since I feel it helps develop the relations better, and also shows that the kid asking for the wand and attempting the trick himself isn't just random. But boy does he screw it up!

My suggestion for viewing, right click and open each big image in a new window, maximize each window, then close them as you go along. Hope you likes!

There's gonna be a fade out to black at the very end.

So I need add shading/tone to ALL of these (well, if I don't cut panels 2-20) and make a colour version of one panel as well. Luckily making the colour version also takes care of about 15% of the next painting assignment (and layout is directly linked with this as well) so while there's lots to be done, at least I'm working on multiple projects with the same drawings.

Royal Winter 2009

It's that time of year again! We had our Royal Winter Fair trip last Friday, though this year we only needed two pages, one for gestures and one for some longer studies/better drawings, which was a relief compared to last years 6 pages. Also we spent a bit more time there, and because we got there later in the day it wasn't crazy packed like last year.

Anyways, here's what I've put together for Monday:

Last week was pretty crazy, lots of stuff that needed lots of work got done, namely a painting, rough work for storyboarding and a presentation for history class. For history we had to take a modern object and 're-invent' it in some previous era. Along with research on the era chosen we had to come up with some drawings of our new object. I choose to make a video game system in the gothic era, and well, this is how it turned out:

It's the 'Praystation 1300AD'! The giant disc at the back is the game disc, spun by a water wheel. Screen works by opening and closing shutters on millions of red, blue and green stained glass panels. The bishop seems to be playing Assassins Creed...

Yeah, that was a fun idea and my only regret is that I had to start drawing it at about 1am, but it got done and everything went fine so now I am getting my sleep back and everything is peachy. Yay.

For tomorrow I intend to get some animating done on the new walk-run project, maybe I'll finally upload the finished lift-and-toss too (cross fingers). See you then folks!

BEWARE CLOWNS

Consider yourself warned!

So onto the next storyboard project, really there's only 2 this semester it's just divided into beat-board and storyboard segments which forces us to develop our stories at a certain pace, which for the most part is good.

For this one the whole class had to base their story on the conflict "Can't sleep", but other than that the sky's the limit. First class we threw around character and setting ideas that we didn't have to use but was helpful to get us thinking.

So for my story I actually went with one of the characters mentioned, a magician. We needed two characters minimum so I went with a master magician and a kid student magician. First go at making the beat boards I was planning on the master magician being a stuck up sort of teacher, who then has his trick demonstration go horribly wrong (more on that later), but I found it would be simpler to have the master be the student's father, and the student is the one that messes up, then the father saves the day. So here's the first idea:

Lots of fun drawing the maniacal demon rabbit! Don't worry, MORE of that to come! Anyways, first beat he's shoving the rabbit into the hat for the ol' rabbit-out-of-the-hat trick (notice the skull-n-crossbones on the hat, clearly the wrong hat to use!), second beat the beast emerges, last beat kid is back safe at home but severely traumatized. If I had expanded this version the rabbit would go around destroying a town, and either be put back in the hat by the magician or escape into the wilderness, in which case the last beat would not be so safe-n-sound with the fear of the rabbit's return. Whether the rabbit is still loose or not, this kid won't be sleeping for a while. However, as mentioned I found that the relation between the magician and the student was more complicated than necessary. Also, as much as I love the demon-rabbit-spawn-thingy I recieved a much better idea for something else coming out of the hat that (I hope) also uncomplicates things. So here's the second version, and the purpose for the warning in this post's title:

DON'T TRY TO PULL STUFF OUT OF JESTER CAPS! (caps, get it? sorry)

So a few things, last beat is in fact the same piece of paper used for the 1st version, surprisingly little amount of tweaking was needed there! So I've decided the clown will be caught, but of course not before causing a good amount of mayhem. And again, this kid ain't sleeping. I was actually a little worried when I presented the original idea that I couldn't make the 'can't sleep' conflict be the ending like I have, but the teacher didn't seem to mind, I'm assuming because the story at least works. If I had to, simple re-arranging of last beat to first beat and the whole thing reads as a dream sequence, in which case the ending would be with the kid asleep after the 'dream clown' is caught. But I kinda prefer having this as an actual event. Advantages over the 1st version are that, again the motives for the father magician are easier to understand, the jester hat is easier to recognize and easier to undertsand why it would A) do something bad and B) spawn a hell-clown. Also, as I'm sure some of you are experiencing now, clowns can be a lot scarier.

Other ideas include having the father stop the kid from trying the trick and then flash back to when the father made the mistake, but I found it was too tricky to show a flashback is occuring, it would lean towards using dialogue which is a big no-no for this assignment.

And that's enough text for today, working on painting, should be putting up a few things that got handed in soon.