Finding Hidden Characters

In my DFA (Drawing for Animators) class we've been spending the last month using different methods in order to create original characters, unique characters. Ultimately, we're supposed to end the project with a design for a character for the Push/Pull assignment, which we will animate in our CA class the rest of the semester.

The first technique that Jon, my DFA teacher, had us do was draw random silhouettes. Just use the tablet and draw them in Adobe Photoshop or Corel Painter, not trying to make any recognizable thing.

After doing that, we had to pick a few of our favorite shapes and do three variations for each using the same silhouette. As you can see from the drawing below, I got some pretty funky-looking things from the same shape.

Then, we pick our two favorite and create a final design. At this point we're allowed to "break" from the silhouette shape if it's needed to make a more appealing character, etc. Here are my final silhouettes:

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The second technique we used were to collect photographs, from online and taking some ourselves, of textures. Just anything where we see a design hidden inside. The first image is just a collage of some of the textures I found, the ones on the right being from online and the ones on the left ones I took with my phone.

Then we had to draw over a few of the textures to see any designs we could

We were supposed to then choose two of the designs we came up with to make into final characters, but I didn't really like anything that I came up with so I did a few more extra ones. I came up with these two designs in the end.












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The final technique we used was to draw doodles, just use the tablet and scribble around.

We basically did the exact same thing as before then, drawing over our doodles.

I only really like my camel so I chose that as one of my two to finalize. The other one I also did extra, like in the textures. Here's what I came up with:

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Here are my finals all put together :)

The last part of this assignment was to pick one of your final character designs for your Push/Pull character. Since we're going to be animating them, it had to be a biped character, which only really left two of my designs to choose from. I ended up picking both of them ;) I used the body shape from my cat-like character, and put some of the design from the little guy in the bottom left corner on him.

Here's my Push/Pull final character! :D

TADA! And it only took a little over a month...

Another School Year

It's been six weeks since the 2010-2011 school year started, and I'm already exhausted. I was lucky enough that this year I'm living in the Bayou Village apartments with my three roommates; Erica, Tarrah, and Kayla. It's been fun living with them, not to mention having a kitchen is AWESOME! I don't have to eat microwavable foods now if I don't want to :D

Here are some photos of my apartment and my room.

Movin-in process

Finished room

Walk Cycle

So our first CA (computer animation) assignment was to do a walk cycle that portrays a personality, and we were given one week to do it. The character's name is Artie, and he was given to us by our teacher to use for the first three assignments. I just went in and gave him a different look by turning him into a mime (I redid the textures and modeled a pie and hat).

It was a bit odd working in Maya again after so many months away, so it took me a bit to get re-accustomed, but I think I managed okay. I'm fairly happy with my walk, but I wish it was more "snappy" instead of being so evenly timed. The hand is a little too fluid too lol

Figure Homework

Here are my pages from my Intermediate Figure class I took last semester. Some of the pages I'll have to make sure I save for my senior portfolio.