AnimationLineTest: Morphy

Micro-Demon morphs out of a ball and back in

LineTest:Sneaker

Cutthroat sneaking

Thermopylae

Frolic! After "Sin City" comes the next fim version of a Frank Miller's graphic novel.
In 2007, director Zack Snyder is going to bring "300" onto the screen.
"Sin City" has left me with an impression of being groundbreaking, translating a comic-book into
a film with enormous precision in every single frame, capturing that original atmosphere of the story and the typical setting.
I claim "300" to be one of my most beloved comic or graphic-novel artworks, ever since I held that first-chapter booklet in my hands, and visiting the official production blog gave me a very positive impression; this capturing of atmosphere might be again succesfull with this piece.

I remembered this drawing I did during a journey once, firsthand after I read the complete "300" the first time.




















For more Info on that subject, type or copy-paste:

http://300themovie.warnerbros.com/index.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/300_%28comics%29

Wings & Scales

Under this wing folllows a selection of creature designs I did within the past two years for various film- or tv-productions with their different requirements.
Dragon-study for scales and wing-buildup

With creature-concepts or -design I think less about personality or chracter-traits as for character design.
Attitude seems still an essential thing to show in any type of creature, but with more weight on the physics;
As with dragons, one's most popular references are lizards, who by nature don't emanate much personage. However there is some sort of character associated with each animal-reference that can help creating somewhat unique; as maybe lions and other feline creatures or e.g. a wolf as in Ghibli's "Spirited Away".
















The approach depends on wether there is realsim to be achived or maybe rather some fairy- tale-like setting to be met. In the movie "Reign of Fire" the dragons' design was enormously realistic, just real-life and very convincing, as they looked, moved or spit fire, everything had a natural reference like bats or spitting cobras . I find this kind of work very interesting, in a pop-sientific fashion maybe; on the other hand there is a lot of liberty to enjoy in a fantasic setting where it is about creating atmosphere with more generous restrictions believability.












Fairy dragon

Lindworms are technically no dragons and also those turned out to develop into a more humerous direction than was thought at the beginning. Influences and references were the famous velociraptor, the moray eel and the catfish, chicken, "Tremors", even pollywogs and at some point the red nosed reindeer .

Building Character I

What I love most about character design is that feel of liberty while working as much as the intuitive approach t attached with it. Not to mention the process of drawing and drawing and drawing your way to it.***************************************************************









The versatile character, Digital Acting Project 05

























Doodling with a scheme; letting the pen find
the expression that inspire the character's personality
and suggest styles.
Digital Acting, 05


















Contrary to the elephants that were simply to be cuties, at least the mini-supers had some
kind of attitude inherited from their cliché ; even tough it is only trying to look defiant in some various ways

Experimenting with various styles at the beginning is likely to inspire some character-personality and therefor storytelling by suggesting attitudes trough the drawings.













"The cow should be crazy." "What kind of crazy?" "..I don't know, make it crazy!" (...)














some random faces, random expressions
















Ten random characters

Placing it into it's environment to see how the characer blends in with it.
There where lots of racoons drawn in the evolutionary process of "Aroughcun"
Final animal at the tail-end.
































































'Aroughcun' - stretching the body allowed him to appear more mature; yet the crucial part was getting the eyes right. A great source of inspiration is Ghibli's "Pom Poko" for anyone ever to draw a racoon.
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Olycampus, roman bartender; development in further detail based on and around one simple basic idea. The bodybuild was decided on early, subsequently put in context with differing faces and in characteristical poses.













'Shogun Fox, watching the enemy', eyes and posture emphasise the spirit within.

Meier Müller Schulz & Schmitt

Jan Maroske earns his money as a digital compositor,
but ever since I knew him he was an ambitious as passionate screen-writer.

A little while ago he had sent me the first version of the script for his short-film
and we exchanged some ideas about it. Since I was involved into this early phase of development
I found it rather easy to support the pre-production with an illustration representing a central scene with almost all the characters in frame.

Production-Painting for the short "Meier Müller Schulz und Schmitt" , 1/4 of 2006

By now and some script-versions later, Jan does already have several actors interested into this project and is trying to raise film-founding. It's a bit of a heck with that founding right now, as a lot of film-makers I know had to experience.
I really hope for this piece to be shot in 2007 as announced on the official website where you also can also download the script (drehbuch):

Meier Müller Schulz & Schmitt

Working a little on this project was sure fun, first because I really think that this short would be equipped with a quite original sense of humor in a short-genre that would perfectly harmonize with the talents of a good friend.
I could rellay imagine this to work out and that's good.

Second to that I dwelcomed the change to define characters not for animation but for life-action film, virtualy characters that would be not build in 3D or even drawn but being represented by real actors. So in a way it's like pre-casting. It is alway desireable to work as close wtih a director/ writer and into a script to vitalize the own ideas.
By now I await the further progression; next for me would be to render the storyboard. "Cont'd"


















Character-exploring/ defining scribbles for Meier Müller