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.

Written by Sean Bigham No comments

Decided to go about the arduous process of updating the look of my portfolio page tonight. So a more refined feel, my email is actually listed now, a bunch of old stuff has been removed and the Baron piece added. Small changes will be getting made here and there but this should be just about permanent now. Get ready for the influx.

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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.

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Gord and I shot this a million years ago. I wasn’t going to put it online until I had more material to follow it up with. But realistically, I’m lazy. I may never make anything ever again. Might as well put it out there. New Years and all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3-vodQFF9Q

Written by Andrew LeBlanc 2 comments

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.

Written by Sean Bigham 1 comment

Tis be the end of the semester, so here’s a ‘chunk’ of that wendigo /forest spirit comic i was working on for the past few weeks. It was enjoyable - though i think i’ll go back in and redo it differently with more limited colors, or none at all. We’ll see - time depending. Plus this is only eight pages of about seventeen.

On another note, we’re disabling commenting since we’re being hit so hard by the creepy porn spammers.

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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.

Written by Sean Bigham 1 comment

Current Count: 7,561

I would really like to make the 10,000 mark by bedtime tonight. I think this is a reasonable goal. With any luck, I’ll be able to nail another 1,000 before lunch, and then I’ve got until sleep overtakes me to do another 1,500.

I’m happier with the story now. I like it more. I may even love it, actually.

It’s still terrible. But I’m beginning to feel like the mother of an ugly, ill-behaved hoodlum. Sometimes, the best part about something is that it came from somewhere inside of you. And sometimes, that’s enough.

Written by Andrew LeBlanc No comments

I’m a bit stuck. Stuck has a different meaning here. When I’m stuck on a story written any other month, I can be stuck for weeks, stuck forever. I have written 1,500 words this morning. I stopped writing at 12:08pm. I have been stuck for approximately 16 minutes. The pace is so frantic, and the bar is so low, that stuck and taking a break are interchangeable. I will likely be unstuck sometime after lunch. If nothing appropriate to what has come before comes to mind by then, I will sic some terrible happening unto our heroes, not previously set up, no need for explanation.

Diablo Ex Machina.

Current Word Count: 5,565

Which means that I’ve crossed the 10% threshold. 10% of the 50,000 goal mark, at any rate. It doesn’t look like I’ve gotten 10% of my story down yet. My magnificently bad story. As though Uwe Boll were directing literature.

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Count: 3029

Ideally, I’d like to be at about 5,000 words by bed time tonight.

This is among the worst prose I have ever written in my adult life. I’m pretty sure the story has been done a dozen times, and in one month time, I’m going to end up with a 50,000 word shit.

Usually, I go back, edit and re-edit as I write. This may be a bad habit. I have a very very difficult time writing stories above a length of, say, 2,000 words. They collapse under the weight of me editing and re-editing. I hate making major changes to the story, ever, because I’ve already spent so much time getting it juuuuuust right. Sometimes, it turns out, when you get to a certain point, major changes to the beginning are necessary in order to make the right ending work. This is the way things work.

Layman’s description of the difference between extroverts and introverts is this: introverts think to speak; extroverts speak to think.

I think maybe the same general duality exists with writing. Some writers outline vigorously, prepare, plan, research: they think the write. Other writers simply start writing, it seems like the ideas they’re using come from the beating heart of the universe itself, and only stop to think when they *really* have to. They write to think

I think my problem is that in editor mode, I’m follow the introvert paradigm. In writer mode, I just try to let space time channel its magic through my autonomous fingers. Editor mode tends to be more powerful than writer mode, but can’t itself produce much text — all of my large stories are savagely victimized in the conflict.

If anything, what NaNoWriMo is doing, is allowing me to let my editor brain sit this one out, and wait as my writer brain churns out a mountain of clunky mess.

I can only hope that at the end of this, when editor brain gets full reign, writer brain has left it something to work with.

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