The Boy and the Beast

Whoa, haven't posted here for a while! S.T.A.G will hopefully be taking on a project next year, so expect lots more posts in the new year!

This is a poster for my final film next year. The Boy and the Beast. I'll be posting more details in the next few weeks.

The silhouette of the beast isn't the final shape of the character, I'm still in the design process of it. The Boy is almost finished in design, there might be a few tweaks that I might make, but here he is so far.

-Matt

ARTMONKEYMG

http://artmonkeymg.blogspot.com/

.: Weird Is Wonderful :.

Firebird

Did this a while back. Probably not going to use it but it's very pretty so I thought I'd post it here.

Dirin Animation test

Hey guys, I had the urge to do some animating after packing most my stuff up for my move tomorrow and came up with this little thing.

I will clean this up after I've moved and colour it.

Saying this I will be moving tomorrow so I wont be able to post for a while until I have my internet up and working again.

See you all soon!

-Matt

Rumpelstiltskin

Hey guys!

I finally know which myth/legend/tale I'm going to be looking at for the Individual Short module; the Brothers Grimm fairytale of Rumpelstiltskin.  I've explained this in a bit more detail on my blog page, but just thought I'd share with you a little glimpse of what I've been up to.

I've been playing around with different fonts an styles of text for the main title - with thanks to Matt for his help! - and one of my favs so far is this one I created myself.  I spelt out the name using thread, and photographed it...

...before turning it into this.

xxx

Colour Tests!

This weekend I have managed to get some colour tests done for my main character in The Owl of the Woods!

This was my first try, at the time I was doing it I felt that it wasn't feeling right but decided to finish it anyway. 

I really felt this style clicking with me while doing it, having your two main tone colours as the lines as well made things go alot faster to. I most likely at the moment stay with this style for the character colour. I also decided that he won't wear gloves which stops your attention going straight for this hands.

I tried my hand at drawing a background, it's not great but hoping to get better soon with the help of the very talented Jacqui Davis over the summer.

-Matt

New Sketch Book Pages!

New pages from my Sketch book! Final design of character down at last! The one with the spear near the bottom of the post!

Really enjoying this project! Can start on more character designs soon!

-Matt

Stuck for ideas

Hey guys!

Was wondering if you could help me and give me your opinions on some ideas I've had about my final film.

I havent settled on anything definite yet; I always seem to have this struggle with myself in terms of coming up with ideas for any animation I work on, probably due to lack of confidence.  However, I have touched on a few ideas I've had floating around in my head, and here are a couple, but as I said, they're only vague, more like starting points.

The first one is this.  here's a character design I came up with just in my spare time, which I was quite pleased with.  I looked at it and thought, 'There's some appeal here, I'd love to work with this character.'

This lead me to the idea of light and dark sides to a person, and the folklore of doppelgangers, as this looks like a dark version of a previous caharcter of mine:

I was thinking my final film could be based on a story about a character like this who is battling between the two opposing sides of herself, or two separate characters who are complete oppsoites to one another.

OR...

Should I try to keep it simpler and do something a bit more...for want of a better word, cartoony, i.e. soemthing more along the lines of India's 'Squid in Love' or Sarah's 'Cub', with characters more like these:

Tell me if these ideas are irrelevant or rubbish!  But I just wanted to ask you all for some advice and seek opinions from fellow animators :D

Let me know what you think xxx

Owl of the Woods Sketch Book

I've started my sketch book for my Owl of the Woods final year project, it's coming along nicely! Here's some snaps of it! =D

-Matt

Dirin Colour

What you guys think?

-Matt

Owl of the Woods

A little promo for my final film next year! I'm revisiting an old idea from last year! I got some doodles of the new designs as well which I will be inking and colouring this week, if any of you guys got any colour scheme ideas, feel free to have a go at colouring them in =P 

The face on this one was a failure so re did his face below!

Princess Koi

Bandits

Hope you all like the new designs! 

-Matt

New logo!

Hey guys thought I'd post up a new logo as I thought the old one I made was awful! Made it look more animation-ish I hope, but I also had an idea about the guild.

Since it seems were all doing our own final film, I thought i'd change the studio part to guild, also it fits better since were all still helping each other out.

With this being a guild I thought we could get more people into it from uni, but as long as there all about the animation, so not like Animation bites, so if we ever do a group thing it will be about animation instead of playing games an such, as we could get alot out of it and find good people to work with, which brings me to my next idea / point to this post:

I really think even tho we are doing our own stuff, we should still do a joint short which we can do through out the year when we find the time I'm thinking about 10 -30 seconds long, 2 characters max, I had an idea about a Zombie trying to catch a turtle which I can post some stuff up on if your all on board :P I know were all going to be busy, but I think we would benefit from working together, as it's more experience and be more stuff for our show reel, plus as it's hard to get into the business after uni we could work on projects together and try get some work as a team as it might help us to start with and could be alot of fun.

Also here's the original logo I made before making the new banner =P

Hope you guys like my idea!

-Matt

Story Ideas

I want to pursue an idea to animate myself but I did come up with my own folk tale if anyone wants to use it.


The Fire Bird


A huntsman is riding through a forest in the winter. The landscape is tall black trees in snowy ground. He catches sight of a vibrant red bird flying through the trees and sets off after it. He stops near a clearing and approaches slowly, drawing his bow. He focuses on The Fire Bird and is about to shoot when a wolf pounces on him. The wolf is huge, black, grizzled and with great sharp teeth. It bites his arm and throws him off the horse. The wolf continues to chew on the struggling huntsman’s arm as his horse rears from behind the wolf. It stomps down but the wolf and huntsman roll out of the way. The wolf turns on the horse and scares it off. They are alone now and the wolf turns on him. The huntsman thinks of drawing a blade on the wolf but stops. He surrenders, kneeling in the snow, waiting for the wolf to take his life. The wolf approaches, horrid and snarling. It opens its jaws, and snaps them shut, an inch from his face. The wolf retreats and sits. The Fire Bird appears through the mist and walks over to the huntsman. It studies him then plucks a feather from its tail. The huntsman takes it with his injured arm and is healed as the feather touches his fingertips. His dagger is still in his left hand and he thinks of striking the bird. He looks at the wolf, and remembers the mercy it showed him. He sheathes his dagger, bows to The Fire Bird, and takes his prize.


A magic feather of The Fire Bird.


This story isn't totally made up. It's inspired by Russian folktales and contains elements from many of them. The Fire Bird is usually portrayed as a magical or highly prized bird that narrowly escapes capture, leaving only a feather. The feather is so beautiful that a king or someone wants to have the whole bird. Men are then set off on a quest to hunt the fire bird with the first two failing after meeting a wolf and lying to it. The third man obeys the wolf and usually ends up doing some sort of quest which ends up with him gaining wealth or a wife or both. So that's where the ideas come from, the bird being a prized animal, the wolf acting as a guardian/test.

A Blind Man Catches a Bird.....Again

Hi guys, a while back I posted a pic and a link to an African folk tale, for those who forgot here's the link again. Been doing more work on the project since and have come up with an updated character design for the blind man and his companion as well as a rough storyboard. The story is simple and rather short and subtle rather than filled with action, the moral at the end especially makes me smile. Thought I'd put it here to see what you guys think.

The Three Bears

I've been thinking lately about ideas for our third year film and I think I've hit on something that we could all get our teeth into. Retelling The Three Bears. Now, before I outline the plot here's a link to a mood board I've made for the project to give an idea of how I think it should look; Click Here

Premise:

I’d like to reinvent the story of The Three Bears, returning to the original depiction of a horrible old woman instead of a greedy little girl. I’ve thought of names for the bears but I’m not sure how to tread the line of anthropomorphism. I’m not keen on the quaint depictions of their house but I’d still quite like it to be humanised. If we could work in a human head mounted about a fireplace that’d be awesome.

Story:

Basically, the old woman is a thief who loves gold. I thought we could introduce this with her being run out of a town, to explain her presence in the woods. The woods should be a intimidating place. Once she is well into the woods she can marvel at what gold she managed to escape with but also feel hungry. She is disturbed by Father and Baby who are out foraging. Baby is retrieving honey from a beehive with Father watching. Lock sees this and instantly wants the honey, to eat and also because of its golden colour. Baby breaks open the hive (like a coconut) and lets the honey drip down to Father who collects it in a container. They retreat into the forest and locks follows.

Mother is gutting and deboning fish then throwing them into a pot on the fire. Father and Baby return and eat their fish supper, the honey left on the windowsill where Lock is peeking. When the bears go to sleep, Lock wakes up and breaks into the bears’ house.

Lock goes in with the intention of just taking the container (I’m thinking maybe a jar) and leaving but can’t resist opening it there and then. She stuffs her face with honey and the smell wakes up the bears. Quite obvious where it’s going but I’m not sure how to tackle the ending. Think is would be great as the credits are rolling that we have a montage of the bears finding Lock’s gold, taking it to a taxidermist and getting her head mounted. =D

All this is up in the air at the moment so story development, different set up, ANYTHING is on the table. Apart from making it twee. Here's a couple of sketches that I did to, will include more later.

The mother bear isn't particularly good but I like father bear and baby bear.

Edit: This animation could start with a stag running through the forest =P

Robin Hood V.2

I found myself really liking the idea of Futuristic Robin Hood so i had another crack at it. I thought I'd post up the process of making it as well for a bit of fun.

I went back to the old lead pencil for this one, instead on using my usual Blue. I made him look more like a warrior this time giving him some extra armour. I have also got rid of the big bow, although I thought it looked cool, I thought it wasn't very practical, so I have given him a small wrist bow that can compact down to be hidden, bit more futuristic =P

I then inked the lines in dark tones of the colours that would be used, as I'm getting out of the habit of inking in black, which does take longer but looks alot better. I added some wear and tare on his armour and clothes, I have also added some templar crests on his shoulder and leg armour, as he was part of the crusades.

Now I add the main colour, I wont be shading him in as I think it works better in the animation (and saves time) to add shade when there is use for it instead of constant tones on the character at all times. I like the block colour scheme =P

This is the final version of Robin Hood with a Tron font title =P I have added the plasma blade and plasma bow line, I have also added some shade on the face, as he is hooded. I have also added alot of wear and tare of the templar crests to show how old the armour is and to show he's seen battle, and finally to help show that he is no longer a templar but kept the armour as it was useful to him.

I hope you guys like the new Robin Hood, he was alot of fun to draw. Coming soon as well will be Little John, and the Sheriff of Nottingham. Over the summer I hope to do some form of little trailer type animation for these characters for a bit of fun.

-Matt

Robin Hood

Just a quick design I came up with yesterday =P

-Matt

Look What I Can Do Coloured

Matt was kind enough to send me his updated Thor psd so I could finish this off. I tweaked Loki to get him to match the latest design I did of him but he's too short here and more realistically proportioned than the latest fella, but could I be bothered re-drawing him? No.

So here they are :)

Ello ello ello

Heya! Thought I'd introduce myself. I'm Lauren, project manager at STAG. I took the liberty of cleaning up the look of the blog and adding a little more information about us and who we are. I haven't got an arts for you guys yet but I hopefully will have soon. I'll also be posting tutorials here on how to make 2D animation fully coloured in Toonboom Animate Pro. This will be the method we'll make our final film in so it should be a useful resource for students at our university and beyond. I'll eventually compile all these into a pack for our second year employees to get an idea of our pipeline. In the mean time, enjoy the work that Jacqui and Matt have been posting =)

Loki Update

An update on Loki's design, tweaked his face to make him more evil and made his hair paler. Yes I am aware he has an insanely long and thin body compared to his head, but I figured he and Matt's stout Thor would make an interesting duo.

Thor Update!

I re-drew Thor and made his design alot more simple, so when it would come to animating him there would be alot less to draw on each frame, so I just got rid of some detail and made his beard alot more manageable. I have also coloured him in! Hope you all enjoy!

- Matt