Pages and pages and pages....

I've made so many lists to try and organise this "art of" book I'm at a point where I have to make lists about how many lists I have just to stay organised! I'm slowly getting buried in page designs and potential ideas to include, I may need to invest in a life jacket...

But anyway!

Here's some progress on some of the pages I've definitely settled on the designs for, starting with the cover!

Slowly getting things done

This final project is definitely pushing me to my limits and beyond, but I'm still enjoying the experience thoroughly!

Considering I have to put my project in to an 'art of' book of my work I've been working on what exactly my book's going to look like. Page layouts are still a work in progress, but I have the front and back cover idea drawn out already anyway.

The Freakshow Family

For this project I could do whatever I wanted as long as it led to the conclusion of having a fleshed out idea that could be suggested to a company as a new TV series, film or game, so I decided to go with an idea I came up with a while ago of a TV show that would revolve around a group of "freaks" in a sideshow of a circus who were one big happy family. I really like the idea of a group of people who are all equally treated badly coming together to care for each other when no one else will, so that's where this idea came from!

 I also wanted to incorporate a moral in to this story, so I focused on the fact that the "freaks" look monstrous on the outside but are loving, caring beings on the inside, while the ringmaster (who would be considered more "human-looking") would be a monster on the inside.

As always I started off with researching intensely in to the subject of sideshows and circuses so I could understand exactly how they worked back when they were still popular.

The Midnight Beast are very naughty men

Now this was a fun project for sure! I really really loved this one because I got to take people from a live action TV show and design them in a way so they could be transformed in to animatable characters. I went with the E4 show The Midnight Beast (which stars one of my favourite bands, of the same name, as the main characters) and I designed the members of the band as cartoon characters!

Of course before I could begin designing I had to do a lot of research to get myself started (aka I watched every episode twice all over again, which is definitely research of course...)

In situ

This was the fourth and final weekly challenge that I had to do, and just like the others I really did enjoy doing this work because it opened my eyes to new things I would never have thought to try on my own!

For this project we had to take the character we designed from last weeks' challenge (my peacock, in my case) and draw them in to a photo we also took ourselves.

I went to Cardiff indoor market for my photos, knowing I'd be able to take a lot of varied shots that I could experiment with. 

I started off at a cafe and sketched in my peacock there:

Getting creative with antiques

The third weekly challenge was simply to go to Cardiff museum and take photos of many different items that looked interesting to me and then turn those items in to characters somehow. Again, this challenge pushed my limits and made me think outside the box, and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience!

These are some of the first sketches I did from the museum, most being Roman artifacts.

Walk, walk fashion baby!

I've always loved a challenge, and when I was told my next project would be a series of 4 special weekly projects I actually got pretty excited. These sorts of things are designed to push your abilities and force you out of your comfort zone, and I really enjoy exploring new things this way!

So, what was the first week about? Fashion!
I was told to look at outfits (and not the models wearing them, if there were any) and create characters based on the clothes themselves.
I'd definitely never done anything like this before, but I went right to work sketching out a lot of different ideas based on many different outfits I found randomly online and in magazines.

Kids Know Best

This was a strange one, but definitely a fun project overall! For this project I had to take a drawing that was drawn by a child from St Gladys school in Bargoed and recreate the character so they could be animateable. 

I worked with Leon Matthews' drawing, which was interesting to say the least!

“Apparently, during the ‘80s, nobody really dressed like Madonna except for Madonna.”

Well, this project was certainly a wild ride! I had to pick a specific era and create characters based on that certain time, so I went with the 80s because honestly, who doesn't love the neon outfits, giant hair and leg warmers?

Cockatiels and Miniature Schnauzers, oh my!

This project was a fun one, especially considering how much I love animals (and drawing them). I had to design 2 characters that would interact, one being a bird and the other a four legged animal of my choice, and since I have both a pet cockatiel and a dog I decided to make them in to animatable characters!

I started with the bird character, who is based on my own cockatiel Jessie (who is a lovely model to work with, by the way).

First character design project!

This was the project that started it all for me, cementing the fact that I definitely prefer designing characters and their environments to actually animating them. The character I ended up with means a lot to me now, and I really hope to use her again in the future sometime for another project!

As with any project, I had to start somewhere, so I started off with very rough shapes until I saw some amongst the mess that really caught my eye.