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.

I have another story up at Every Day Fiction. You can see it here: http://www.everydayfiction.com/dirty-laundry-by-andrew-leblanc/

This is the first thing I’ve sent out into the world that isn’t Science Fictional. My foray into the unfantastic present seems to have turned out alright.

One of my favourite things to do, is take a new picture that Bigham has sent me for constructive criticism, add something to it in PhotoShop, and send it back as a magnificent improvement.

At least it wasn’t lens flares this time.

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.

Sorry for the long hiatus - vacation followed by school complicated things. Anyways I’ve been pretty busy with character stuff. First off theres some things for the fantasy universe Andrew and I were brainstorming. We have the merchant you’ll be dealing with - he was initially supposed to be somewhat of a jolly character though he morphed into something a bit darker - so that may still be changed.

Next up is the ocean woman who “was” going to be the side kick but has since been removed from the plan at the moment. Regardless here she is. We were shooting for an aquatic creature who was mostly humanoid though lacked certain characteristics, such as a solid bone structure and instead would rely on a pressurized wet suit to not only give her structure but keep her body moist at all times and non-frozen. Her relative frailty would be offset by her oceanic-crab/seashell-armor which she would wear. Being able to play off her lack of a bone structure she would in times of extreme danger be able to retract her limbs into a solid and nearly impenetrable shell, much like a turtle.

And now onto some school stuff. First assignment of the was a character creation of three unique characters who were visually tied to the same universe and related in some way. This is from a couple year or so old story that Andrew came up with and we’ve been slowly expanding over time. The universe is one in which genetic modifications are a standard part of life and are heavily governed by a super secret ruling faction. I’ll keep it vague in case we go into more details on this potential story later.


Vincent - The Protagonist


Cleo - An Assassin



The Antagonist - Representative of a larger group

Written by Sean Bigham No comments

I’m not particularly good at this blogging thing. That this blog is meant to be an official blog, with real names attached to it, makes matters worse. I rarely have much to announce, and Ham and I made a pact to never allow this blog to turn into an everything/nothing chronicle of what we ate for breakfast, how we are feeling emotionally, and what song we want people to believe that we were listening to as we were typing our posts. If this were the kind of blog I used to chronicle my misbehaviours, it would be more populous. This is not to say that in my own life, by seconds and minutes, times of rowdy misbehaviour outnumber moments of gentleness and sensitivity; but rather, misbehaviour is considerably more interesting.

This is also not the place for it.

The trick is to write things up here that are both not personally damaging, and not phenomenally boring. I have yet to figure out how to do this frequently.

I had a LiveJournal, some time ago. I’m really glad that my real name wasn’t attached to that one. I was going through a strange grumpy-and-angry-all-the-damned-time period. I also swore unnecessarily in my writing. Constantly. Go through this post, and find a way to add one “fuck” for every occurrence of “the”. It becomes excessive. Not being angry-all-the time hurts productivity and interestingness as well. Lately, I’m barely angry enough to qualify as being angry-some-of-the-time.
I sprained my ankle last week. Having a sprained ankle is like being angry all of the time, I guess, except, instead of being angry, I’m in a modest but manageable amount of pain. There is a lump on the top of my foot, near the ankle, as big as an egg. I keep poking it. Poking it is probably not helping matters, but it’s a lump the size of an egg on my foot and it’s a wildly different colour from my usual pasty whiteness. I have to poke it. All the time. I suppose, lately, I’m not-behaving-in-a-manner-conducive-to-the-healing-of-injuries-all-the-time.

Which is, in its own way, a kind of misbehaviour.

Larger update for you this time. First off, I simply had to do a bunch of large scale editing on the Champagne Woman piece after forgetting that little trick of flipping in order to check for consistency. Anyways, this will be the final adjusted version:

14″ x 10″. Digital.

Next up is another update for that side project Andrew and I are collaborating on - we’ll have to come up with a codename for the project soon enough. This will also begin to morph into the game proposal/development project that I’ll get to work on as an in class assignment starting in January. The next character we’re looking into is Lt. Balanus. Balanus is of a race of ocean dwelling creatures who are somewhat out of their element on dry land as they need to remain hydrated at all times. The extreme cold that Balanus has to deal with while at high altitudes is made bearable thanks to her full body survival wetsuit which keeps her body at a constant temperature. To try and play up on the idea that she owes her heritage to crustaceans she also sports a thick armor overtop of her suit which acts as protection for her environment suit and any other dangers that may arise. She’s also able to use her shell-armor to retract most of her body into, much like a snail. We’ll start with the thumbnails I did over a few days which evolved over constant discussion.




And the final colored version.




Last of all, I found the time to render up a land-jellyfish which I’ve been meaning to do for quite some time. I’m really happy how this one turned out.

Written by Sean Bigham No comments

I finally finished the gallery this… morning. It should be completely functional save for the contact button which I will implement later when i find a way to avoid getting spamed to death. I’ll add a few newer images and make a few layout changes over the next few days to try and smooth things out. Thanks to Steve and Simon who both contributed to this. If you’d like to take a look the sidebar link is now working for it.

Andrew says:
http://movies.aol.com/movie/alvin-and-the-chipmunks/28897/main

Bigham says:
do… do i have to watch it in hd?

Andrew says:
YES!

Bigham says:
god fucking damn son.

Andrew says:
Did you just watch it?

Bigham says:
its loading

Bigham says:
oh christ.

Bigham says:
at least it was a short trailer

Andrew says:
Did you just watch a computer animated squirrel eat another computer animated squirrel’s shit? Seriously. Seriously seriously. Before we even get ordinary CG porno, we’ve got the really wierd animal shit eating stuff.

Bigham says:
fantastic.

Bigham says:
you’ve been waiting to say that haven’t you

I haven’t exactly been working as much as I have been previously, so it’s allowed me to finally pump out a few more character studies. The first is the result of a little motivation project Andrew and I have cooked up for one another where we choose characters and elements of a fantasy universe to define in great detail then I illustrate. The time limit for each character is roughly three days from development to final rendering. Lets start with a short rundown of the universe and a bit of a rational for the characters outfit:

This would be the hero of the story we’re developing for our ‘character-project’. We narrowed it down to him being a new recruit aboard an airship - so this is kind of like a fantasy Moby Dick (though its only a small part of the story we’ll expand it as we go on). Our hero’s a relatively young man, obsessed with the typical cravings for adventure and riches - and what better way to do that than on board a flying ship hunting enormous airborn beasts for their magical organs? Since the airship spends most of its time at high altitudes hunting its prey, his clothing is a scraped together outfit to allow him to operate in the extreme cold and high winds. The ship that he’s working on features an intricate spiderweb of safety wires which allows the crew to navigate the open main deck with relative safety. Each crew member is outfitted with a heavy duty safety harness and a large supply of ropes and belay’s. Expect more of these very soon:

The next one is just a rendered alien scientist concept. He’s pretty physically weak so he has to roam about in his exo-skeleton armor/survival suit. This guy’s been prone to previous ‘incidents’ as seen by his cybernetic arm.