Strip it Down

tore the clunker down and built it anew... Trying to put the story first and make the concepts for for that, instead of the other way around where I found myself constantly painting myself into a corner.

The Synopsis: Survivors in a post-zombie world encounter a strange and possibly psychotic kid claiming to be the human incarnation of the grimm reaper.

Here are some intial designs from previous versions of the story...

Grimm (Old concepts): After thinking about his origins and shaping his personality based on the history I gave him, he turned out to be far different than my first designs where I focused purely on making hims superficially "interesting" looking. Now I've incorporated more of the fact that he's more than a little "off" and has basically been surviving on his own in the midst of a zombie infested city.

Female Protagonist (Jessica, for now): After being just a generic female counterpart to Grimm who's sole purpose was to give Grimm a reason to fight zombies, I also started to develop her a bit more. Making her more pragmatic, disciplined and part of a group that work together, not to kill zombies, but to simply coexist and evade them. Took a cue from the fact that I see people riding 'fixies' all the time out here and tried to work in a system where they use bicycles to covertly travel about the city quickly to forage for necessary goods. Liberties are taken, of course.

Here are some sketches of what I'm leaning toward now.

uh yeah, work in progress.

Grimm

comics maybe?

Draggin' my balls.

apologies for the lame pun.

boldly going...

roughing it out...

put another on the kettle

a series of sci-fi themed whatchamahoozits for a gallery show..

explorer

Hey guys. I'm settled in. Finally have things the way I want it and have more time to spend on art and aspects involved. Here's something I was messing with last night. still rough... 

detail

I'm not what this blog wants, but what this blog needs...

Another Step

Kid missile. plugging... plugging...

MOAR.

chipping away...

She's fast enough for you, Scotts Man.

Sup. WIP of a piece for the Satellite Soda art book. more soon.

it's like being back in highschool

2 minute sketch of napoleon as a hipster samurai with a broken arm. back to verk. mach schnell!

enough already!

argh! I miss my blog and drawing for myself. I also miss talking about what I've learned, however I think much of it would be skirting the NDA borderline. once things are taken care in the next few weeks I promise some art.

lamentations

was in the middle of a board when I got the itch to draw a barbarian. been a while since I've drawn anything for myself. BLAGH back to work.

Finito. Text may be altered.

Brush me.

WORD.

here's A drawing Mr. Puga

brrrrrrttt... there. crapped that out about a month ago. Just don't have time for anything but writing lately. so there. nyeh!

I dig the music.

Yoshinori Kanada tribute made by someone that isn't me.

I'm just gonna quote wikipedia...

Yoshinori Kanada (金田 伊功, Kanada Yoshinori^?, born February 5, 1952 in Nara, Japan) is an influential Japanese animator.

Best known of his popular work in 1984, Birth, one of the first OVAs released in the market. He may not do much character designs, but he is famous of his character animation skills, his characters literally come alive on the screen. His work in Galaxy Express 999 (1979) and Harmegeddon (1983) has been very influential to an entire generation of animators in Japan. These two works also served as partial inspiration for Takashi Murakami's Superflat art movement. During the 80s and 90s, he has worked with the famous director, Hayao Miyazaki closely in several movies from Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind to Princess Mononoke. Also, he is known for breaking down the directorial system in animation allowing individual key animators to exert their own style into a particular work.

Amazing to see how one animator giving power to individual directors on productions led to a multitude of stylistic movements on Japan that are still going strong today and continue to create even more influences. Anime is not one dimensional and shouldn't be counted out simply because there are no "anime historians" around to talk about the GOOD qualities of eastern animation. For the most part the West largely ignores the amazing things they get away with that are simply taboo in animation over here.

Eastern and Western animation are fairly similar in how homogenized they are stylistically. Western has their generic "look" just as the East does. However, we excell at our qualities just as they have certain things that they absolutely kick our asses at. The unfortunate part is that we hog the spotlight despite how stifled I think our industry is, whereas they catch a lot of flack for being "cheap" yet they excercise much more freedom and experimentation in their craft. Chew on that I suppose.