Flash, updated (with a little assist from After Effects)

(click to view movie)

I dropped the little run cycle from yesterday into After Effects and built a little set for him to run through, complete w/ fake 3D parallax. Gotta love the Grid and Motion Tile effects! Also, I'm surprised how well Magic Bullet Looks helps tie the whole thing together.

I might start doing some more tests like this over the weekend.

Experimenting...

I Want That Rock! progress...

I'm finally digging in and trying to solidify some designs for characters for I Want That Rock!, an idea that I worked up a long time ago that I want to relaunch as a web series or comic book one day. Perhaps even something that could find it's home on an iPad one day too.

What an exciting opportunity that device offers for comic book artists.

Sometimes Sunday Sketch sessions stretch out into the week ahead...

Getting the hang of the Wacom

More sketches done on the laptop waiting for car repairs to be finished...

Sunday turns to Monday...

...and the only way to get by is to keep on drawing. Having lots of fun with the silhouette studies, not so much fun with the shading attempts. One day I'll have better control of form and lighting.

another Sunday, another set of sketches

Started playing with Sketchbook 2010 on my little Dell Mini 9 after finishing up an actual sketchbook for the first time thanks to the building momentum of SketchSunday Sessions. I'm trying out all kinds of new things, like silhouette studies and, gasp, color! Trying to see how far I can take Sketchbook 2010 after I watched the amazing Creaturebox screencaps that popped up this week. So much awesomeness!

Sketch Sunday Returns

Fresh off of a wonderful wedding, I called up Jeff (@AnimationCosmic) and we started SketchSunday back up in full force. I was a bit rusty, but chose to dive into designing a specific character I've been posting up here for a while. I'm starting to get more comfortable with facial proportions and just now starting to get into some expressions. He needs some more elements to break away from a generic character, and I'd like to get him a little more elastic, but he's getting there.

The other page is just some more heads. And a scary looking Uncle Sam.

Making Up For Lost Time

We missed out on a SketchSunday last week due to a Transformers intervention, so Jeff(@AnimationCosmic on Twitter) and I rocked it twice this holiday weekend. Wolverine made an appearance as well as the innocent bystanders of Starbucks, Panera, Borders, & Barnes&Nobles. Thanks all you unlucky and hopefully unknowing models!

By the way, if you care to know what I thought of Michael Bay's efforts on Transformers 2, you can actually hear them now. That's right, someone was crazy enough to point a mic in my general direction after I saw TF2. Check it out if you dare over at the Sci-Fi Partyline podcast.

SketchSundays!

My good mate Jeff Williams, otherwise known as @AnimationCosmic on Twitter, and I have started hanging out on Sunday mornings to get some breakfast, catch up on the week that was, and get an early start to what otherwise would end up a wasted day. Jeff's a mean sketcher, as well as a kick-ass animator, so he always forces me to raise my game. Or at least crack open the sketchbook for a good try. Here's some of the better ones from today.

Getting closer

Always tweaking this guy aren't I? Maybe at some point I'll actually start writing up his story.

Ghost Rider in progress

Thought Faucet

So the Ghost Rider designs are humming along: working out head shapes, as well as researching reference images of Shibuya at night. I also finally dove into some 3D modeling again with a new update to Silo. There's a little Kinada-on-Bike figure sitting on my desk that is serving as a great reference for 3D sketching up a bike to draw over. We'll see how all this Frankenstein design work goes for me...

Hey, I just clicked thru to this wicked neat intro cinematic for Valve's zombie shooter, Left 4 Dead: incredibly inspired character models and animation along with some great cinematography make this one a post-Halloween treat. I haven't seen this tasty of facial animation for a game since, well, since Valve's last set of cinematics for Team Fortress 2.

It might be time for another game company to start thinking animated features...

ThoughtFaucet

ThoughtFaucet

My old friends from WMS, Bob & Marshall started up a wicked cool new blog called Thought Faucet, and this is the warmup drawing for this month's Ghost Rider Redesign. It's way too early in the game to figure out which way the final drawing will go, but for now I'm feeling Akira-era Japanese street punk. I really need an excuse to draw Kinada's bike...

...as always, I need to work on hands and hair, especially when it consists of fire; I could do well to shake off the Cheeks infatuation with the posing a bit as well. We'll get there.

Frank Danger

It's a toss up as to which comic book project will make it to the finish line: Frank Danger, I Want This Rock!, or a secret third project I haven't talked about with too many people. Here's some more Frank studies: I feel like he's getting a lot closer, especially with the bottom left shot of him looking with wide-eyed shock at two blogposts in one night. :)

Comic Book: Engage!

I'm starting work on the comic for San Diego: I'm still working through what the main character is gonna look like. I hope to have him tied down as much as I can expect to in the next few weeks, and then it's off to buttoning down the script & laying out the pages in thumbnails. It's been so long since I've done this!