CriticalOddness » schoolwork

SKYWHALER

Bigham — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 23:45:19 +0000

Well, here’s the explanation for me being MIA the past month and a half. This is the final split between 3 classes and was done with the aid of several Bioware employees offering crits. The proposal was for a game that would allow you to fly around in giant zeppelins and hunt `Skywhales` for their magical blubber, specifically a moby dick esque one that has recently killed your father. This would eventually lead to your facing off against the REAL villain who’s an insane Greenpeace nut who’s been manipulating the whales to become more aggressive. Enjoy.

The main character, with his uber functional outfit ready for skywhale boarding.

The Greenpeace villain Charlotte, who`s become infected with the genetic modification material that the Crabmen (yes from the previous project) used to modify the worlds` jellyfish creatures. So she`s slowly becoming a jellyfish-human hybrid while totally losing her mind.

This is Charlotte fully mutated into her final monster form and one of the crab man militia.

The jellyfish that fly around, land on ships and stomp on dudes in order to ingest them.

A Skywhale with ship size comparison. This was the last thing I did for the project character wise – rushed this out the door in 2 days. Really had to push these guys hard and fast in order to make them interesting and make them not `too` whalish. So they ended up being a bizzare combination of whales, dinosaur head bones, porcupines, elephants, sloths and traditional Japanese dragons combined with colors reminiscent to tropical creatures like poisonous frogs.

And the environments… For the interiors i wanted to do banal areas in which the main character could talk to the crew to increase moral and learn about back stories and possible locations to travel to or explore ingame. The interiors are of the engine room and the ‘Helium Ballast room’.

With the exteriors I thought it would be interesting to show an overview of the blimp as its docking with one of the sky-cities and then some cool perspective for a dramatic whale sitting as a crew member repairs one of the Zeppelin’s engines. I actually forgot to save the final version of the last one there so I’ll be reuploading this one later.

Kids book covers

Bigham — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 18:39:58 +0000

Here’s the two kid’s book covers- both have turner out quite good so I’ll post the two of them. For the two of these i decided to choose similar books to mimic in the layout and design. For the Lobster Dragon, since it is naturally a parody of Harry Potter i thought it would be appropriate to model the book after that series. As for the Oedipus book, Mike Mignola served as a major influence and i tried to work with alot of allusions to insinuate what would happen to the guy in the book.
These were actually put together as full book jackets though I’ll only post the covers since they were the only areas that were illustrated. Enjoy.

Oidipus Interior Illustration

Bigham — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 21:39:17 +0000

Here’s an interior illustration for the Oidipus story line – credit also goes to Cristy for the typography and Andy for the writting – thanks again guys.

and the rest?

Bigham — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 16:46:39 +0000

There were actually 5 illustrations as part of the last project involving the crab people. Three out of five turned out nice. Here are the last two good ones. For the first, we have the massive monolithic government area/market where i got to experiment with laying down a perspective grid courtesy of illustrator. Turned out to have its own set of problems but was interesting to attempt. The next one i had the lowest expectations for from the initial sketch but ended up turning into one of my favorites. It depicts the crab people riding inside their Jelly fish ‘vehicles’ harvesting their food source of ocean kelp, which hovers slightly above the surface of the water.

Crustacean city docks

Bigham — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 04:02:52 +0000

Thus begins the portfolio piece marathon. Here’s the dock area for the crab people who ride inside the jellyfish. This is all going to tie into the overarching universe of the Skywhales which is being tied into several projects at school.

Children’s Book finals

Bigham — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 23:24:38 +0000

Here’s all the character designs for the two children’s books. First we have roughs for Simon Boy Wizard in the cave of the Lobster Dragon along with the final renderings. This includes the previously two mentioned characters with touch ups and the fearless Beaver-Woman sidekick, Judith (Who’s actual name is unpronounceable beaver language). Next there’s the two designs Oedipus and the Sphinx. Tried to do something different with the sphinx by making it more lion-like and having a tattoo/colored hair of wings as opposed to actual wings on her back.

More children’s Book stuff

Bigham — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 08:01:51 +0000

Not much to say here – just some character designs for Simon Boy Wizard and the cave of the lobster dragon – I’ll have to see if I have time to do up a character study of his anthropomorphic-she-beaver-side kick… Otherwise – there’s still two more on the way regardless.

I’m quite proud of this guy – He went through lots of revisions then was inked digitally and colored in 2 hours. Kind of a record.

Here’s the final revision of Simon Boy Wizard.

Historial Character Redesign / Children’s book stuff

Bigham — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 04:14:22 +0000

Here’s the rest of that assignment – with the Wendigo/Fantasy-Creature-Hunter-for-hire by the HBC John Rae. As far as a game concept goes, i thought id make it interesting in that he would sport a flintlock-shotgun with a side-attachment flintlock incendiary grenade launcher. Now that’s a gun.
Its surprisingly tough to make a guy with mutton chops look bad ass and not look like he’s just a heavily armed drunk stumbling out of a bar. His process was a bit tough as i was working less with a silhouette in the final and had to find a balance between making him appeal to a modern audience while retaining a look reminiscent to his era. Some ranged from him becoming ‘too’ cool to looking ‘too’ old fashioned and I found a nice even ground between the two in the end. Tried to focus on cleaning up line quality for the pencil ones so things communicate easier.

Process work.

John Rae – Front Side Back view.

John Franklin – Front Side Back view.

In another class we’re working on some children’s book stories. For one of them I’m teaming up with Andrew to do a proposal for ‘Simon Boy Wizard and the Cave of the Lobster Dragon’. First part of course is to create the characters to which I’m trying a different style for. Here’s something a little similar to stretched out Psychonauts characters. He’s supposed to be a total self absorbed coming of age prick who’s been kicked out of magic school and has set out on the road to prove himself as able to solve problems that confront him not with his utter lack of magic skills but his whit instead. Here’s a little sneak preview

John Franklin – the Wendigo

Bigham — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 05:54:36 +0000

First Assignment of the new year is a redesign of 2 historic characters. We’re given to opportunity to twist history a little bit in order to make the characters apply to a video game setting. Here we have John Franklin, famed arctic explorer who ended up getting stuck in the ice with his crew and forced to resort to cannibalism before dying of starvation regardless. Changing it up a bit, I have Franklin as the only survivor of his crew after he feeds on his companions, transforming him into a powerful Wendigo. Of course, we need a nemesis and that will be John Rae, who originally found Franklin’s remains – this time though, Rae has been tasked with seeking out and destroying the explorer a la Vanhellsing – but less lame. I’ve only got Franklin done at the moment but this will be one of those front, side back deals so stay tunned. I’ll also be posting the process on this one, something I’m going to start doing more often here.

I started off thinking of Franklin in a ragity, torn up captains outfit which slowly evolved into a multi-layered-arctic-homeless-man look. Finding that there was just a little bit too much visual noise, i tried two variations of silhouetted figures which would stand out more clearly on an arctic landscape. I’ve always loved the idea that transformation into the Wendigo was a disfiguring one and that out of desperation the victim would try and conceal it, hence the bandages and handkerchief. Sort of like a bizarre attempt to maintain their humanity even though its obvious the victim has totally lost his mind.

Final colored rendering.

Bigham — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 06:13:58 +0000

Time to get my ‘A’ game on. Last semester to pump out work to a quality that will put all my previous work to shame. I’ll be posting alot more character stuff as the next 4 months go on.

We had to do a WW1 themed blog entry for my character classes blog. This was heavily influenced by the work found in Mignola’s ‘Baltimore’ in which he does lots of spot illustrations. Really quick – done with brushpen and photoshop in about 30 minutes.

Maharaja

Bigham — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 04:36:43 +0000

Time for something a little “weird”. Illustrating a creepy, emaciated Maharaja being attended by children is a first for me. Tried something a little different this time illustrating children (which i never do) and focused alot on lighting effects which wouldn’t be defined by brush pen but by color. It was strangely relaxing to go back to doing lots of detail in a piece – even if it was all digital. I might go back into this one when i get back post surgery, but for now this is the temp final.
This now marks the last project of this semester. See you guys in January – unless we decide to post some hilarious left hand drawings.

Ze Baron

Bigham — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 06:37:21 +0000

Another fun time rushed project – tested a new method to do the shading on this one – worked out pretty good for the first try I think. Anyways it’s supposed to be a dramatic lighting on a character. Themed this one to the tune of sci fi-industrial-WW1. Next upload will be my animation run cycle for Molmar, sometimes Friday maybe.

Falling Man Storyboard tease

Bigham — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 05:59:40 +0000

Here’s a little taste of a long term project I’ve been working on for my storyboarding class. As I started coloring the 18 frames I adjusted the coloring style to more of a cell-shaded animated show look in order to save time and avoid rendering. Unfortunately this was done 8 frames in so i have to go back over the older ones (which were rendered). Seems to be going well so far, I’ll post the whole thing here when its done in another week and a bit. Anyways, here’s a couple scenes shots from the final showdown scene. You can also compare the rendered version with that of the new cell shaded styled one.

Beowulf

Bigham — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 03:45:13 +0000

Second assignment – or rather the first part of it. Illustrate a character from an established narrative. Decided to do a bit of reversal on the old perfect hero tale. Grendel comes in two weeks.

With a capital U

le blanc — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 15:47:08 +0000

I’ve finally finished exams… with any luck, forever. This puts me in a much better position to write, and work on super-secret projects.

I’ve sold two ultra-short stories to Jordan and Camille‘s new no-longer-super-secret project, Every Day Fiction. Starting in September, they’ll be publishing one new 1000 words or less story every day of the week. A good idea, I think. Attention spans are decreasing at an alarming rate, as idle web-browsing time at the office seems to grow with every passing year. Goldfish minded office employees need their quick stimulation, and the big boss men all across the country have started blocking Facebook and YouTube. Reading a new story every day will consume less traffic than email, so the the network guy should never catch on.

After my test yesterday, I went shopping for a Ukulele, but the music store only had those flimsy, Hawaiian tourist models with plastic strings, and I already have one of those. I want a real, honest-to-god instrument, dang it, not some gaudy confection of balsa wood and plastic. I will probably try Ukulele adventuring again on Monday. My need of a Ukulele specifically will be explained in the fullness of time.

Yes. I capitalize Ukulele. Like God.

1984 Comp

Bigham — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 06:47:44 +0000

Semester two of year three has rolled to and end for me, which means more time for my own stuff and more time to make the monies. Here’s one of the 4 pieces i submitted for my final for Figure Illustration class, which was supposed to be a mood study but instead turned into a bunch of landscape studies. I chose to do just environmental shots of Orwell’s classic 1984 and just show my interpretation of a city eternally aglow with the ever-watching eye of the Big Brother.

I’ll be going back into this one soon to clean it up and make it more of a digital painting and more mini-poster sized.