The Fae Elders are desperate to restore the magic of the Sidhe. They think Owain and Eilidh can help … whether they want to or not.
Click through the panels below, or scroll down to view the animatic (no sound).
Storyboard Panels
Animatic (no sound)
I’ve been working on Sidhe (Shee) as a portfolio piece. There’s lots more of the story to tell but I haven’t worked it all out yet!
For anyone who wants to practice editing animatics or work on sound design, or who simply wants to nose around a Storyboard Pro file, I’ve made all my files from Sidhe available for free here.
I’ve been thinking about putting together some notes about how I approach gesture drawing, and some of the things I practice – which I need to practice more of myself. Let me know if that’s something you’d be interested in seeing!
In last week’s All In Gesture class Ralph posed as Freddie Mercury – except it was more than posing, it was performing. A great session and a good challenge! My drawings at the beginning resembled Mirror Universe Spock but I seemed to get the hang of it towards the end …
It’s been great to get back to gesture drawing, and what a session to do it with! Jane’s a wonderful character. I loved exploring some of the situations from Tarzan – and now I know what I’m watching tonight!
After a bit of a break from drawing, this was a good (but difficult) way to start again! I was just starting to figure King Triton out by the time the session ended …
With all there is to do pre-Christmas I’ve fallen a bit behind with All In Gesture. The class inspired by Jacob Marley was a fun way to catch up! Now I’m off to watch The Muppet Christmas Carol …
Last week’s All In Gesture class took me back to high school, where we played lacrosse in PE. We didn’t have any eye protection though. I don’t remember much except being chucked out on the astroturf and told to get on with it.
Next week I’m running a Traditional Animation Workshop in Hawick, so I thought I’d share a little preview from the class.
I’ve always found creating characters to be challenging. Where do I start? And I often find they all end up looking the same. Why is that?
This exercise helps you to think about why you’re drawing what you are.
Variations on a simple smiley face
Draw a simple smiley face. Everything is pretty ordinary: the eyes, nose, and mouth are all evenly spaced and around the same size.
Now, draw a few more circles but don’t yet fill them in. This time instead of drawing the eyes, nose, and mouth all the same size choose one thing to be big, one to be small, and one to be medium. Try drawing a few.
In the examples above you can see how different each face looks as soon as one feature is emphasised.
Pushing the designs further
Once you’re feeling comfortable with the first exercise, try adding more variety. Where on the face are the eyes, nose, mouth? Maybe the eyes are very high on the face, and the mouth is very low. Maybe everything is squashed together, or maybe they’re spread out. Experiment with different styles of eyes and nose and mouth.
Try adding other features, too! Where will the ears sit in relation to the eyes? Will they be close, or far away? How does moving where they are change the character? What does adding hair do?
These same principles can be applied to the rest of the body. Try different shapes, sizes, and combinations of all the above.
If you’ve enjoyed this, consider signing up for my workshop on the 11th of November!
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been working on a short storyboard sequence for my portfolio. It’s still a work in progress, but I’d thought I’d share some of the early planning from it.
Thumbnail storyboard
I don’t often share thumbnail storyboards because they’re usually pretty illegible! I love this part of the process, as this is when I plan out where characters will be and explore how the camera will move across the space.
Character Designs
Before I get started on the final board I aim to have a good idea of what the characters look like. These were a fun bunch to create!
Last Saturday’s All In Gesture class theme was the characters Disgust and Joy from Inside Out. Both express strong emotions, so it was fun to draw and exaggerate the model! I also had a few attempts at drawing the characters.
Here are some sketches from another fantastic All In Gesture session, with Kelly as a Viking! I was definitely influenced by How to Train Your Dragon …
What a great session with model Veronica, nine months pregnant at the time! I enjoyed switching up my Photoshop brushes to try something a little different.
I’ve been working on a mini graphic novel project for a while (you may remember this, this and this) and recently I’ve been doing a lot of research into clothing. It’s set around 1300 but much of it falls into ‘vaguely medieval’. There are very few source materials for clothing in Scotland at that time. The top line of characters are wearing English clothes. The bottom line is my estimation of Scottish wear, strongly influenced by Irish clothing – as it would have been at the time. These are all nice, expensive clothes.
AJAiken 