EDIT: Ooooops...wrong forum? maybe not...given the focus
*shrug* i'll leave it up to the mods to decide
Well, I had been in a movie school for the past 2 years and a half, (not really been doing anything last semester) and I feel like I'm really going nowhere....so I was kind of recopilating my stuff, and I realized there's this emerging style that I havent really sated yet, so I decided to make this topic, try and recopilate that...get a few oppinions on the way too.
First I'll post a sprite...which was the first one I animated seriously. I remember when I made this I was crazy about putting detail everywhere. I was already thinking of sub pixel animation
(mind you, my sprite site at the moment was a megaman board so this WAS pretty detailed for the standard)
But animating this thing made me realize that showing detail by stating a few simple things, and leaving the rest to be guessed is more captivating. Right now, I asociate that with artist David Lloyd who did V for vendetta (damn the idiot who colored that book), Helm suggested in some topic here that some...argentinian guy did the same thing but to better effect...but the feeling I get is that he goes TOO far into detailing things.
There's a particular page in another of Moore's book, not drawn by LLoyd but that I really love, because it evokes a grand scale and still keeps that same minimalistic Lloyd look.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v165/talbot/Prom-7Vendett-ISH.jpg Here's the pic...and here's an attempt at making it monotone,
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v165/talbot/Prom-7Vendett-INK.png which I think looks best.
I kept making mostly just sprites, but shadows kept creeping in, since it's an obvious way to make everything not detailed and have the viewer think about it.
By the time I drew this I knew I wanted a style that would convey depth effectively for both background and sprites. Hopefully cross over outside of pixelart....this interest of mine is probably just as good for vectors as it is for pixelart, except I still cant cope with drawing using vectors.
One of the reasons I have this fascination for using blotches of solid color to create depth, is because I animate by using blotches of solid color. There's an innate desire there to reconcile sketch and finished piece, by concieving a method that is both good for my animation techniques and for illustration.
This guy is for an unfinished project concerning Cuchulain, somewhat of the Odiseus equivalent for Celtic mythos.
Said Celtic hero's main ability is growing really angry and becoming a monster by ways of making horrible contortions inside his body, this supposedly gives him great battle advantage.While the contortions are specifically described in the source material, I thought I'd take them my own interpretation and use the human joints in several weird ways. This file detailes said posibilities.
I post it here because it shows the most effective attempt I've made at this "style" I'm chasing around here.
PS: I have no patience for outlines, I only put them in if I think they're really good for a specifical part of the piece but I avoid them by rule, I kind of see them as cheating. Selout is like an incredibly convoluted version of an outline, so I avoid that quite admanantly...expect when it emerges on it's own in the shading.
Looking trough my stuff I realized that for "hath Sinned" the 72HourCompo of 2005 I worked on with the GameDevGuys was when I came closest to this aesthetic, because I was forced to work fast. At the same time I realized how poor my imagination really was, and how much better I was at drawing human faces than I thought...I expected this to take me much more than it did.
These two I made in anticipation of the compo, I thought I'd probably have to make some backgrounds and I'd better parctice something that could be made fast but worked well. Right now, I think this is the best I've done to make this thing work for backgrounds.
Here's an earlier try that admittedly sucked.
In the end, the theme of the compo turned out to be horror, so I simply made the background of everything dark.
They are gory murder scenes, this one takes place in a bath.
Kitchen
Living room
Couldnt help but touch up the living room murder when I reopened it...
Bedroom.
This is the only background that came out looking actually remarkable.
Then came sabreman, a remake of a game that I didnt even like but I still wanted to be in, because I'd be working with Dr.DerekDoctors and other people who usually finish what they do, unlike me...think of it the only completed product outside comercial stuff I've been a part of was the 72hour compo
Only the sprite is mine, but this gives it the context of the "style"
A few actions for the fellow.
A portrait of Solid Snake...my own interpretation of his MGS1 version, trying to go for a sort of two-face look here....
This is...quite the self decrepating self portrait, based only of course on my state of mind when I drew this.
Started out simply enough.
Kept tweaking it with time
last night, while reminiscing on all of this, gave it a last edit. I think this comes pretty close to what I want to do.
For those that dont recall me, this is the kind of thing anybody who remembers me thinks of when they think of me...
So...yeah, please comment but....try to gear it towards wether there is any style bubbling under here, wether you think that's someting worth thinking about.....I probably will enjoy specifical C&Cs, but dont expect me to really change things, I'm contemplating on something underlying here, something that could be used to make full animations where everything moves much much easier than they currently seem to...uhh me.
This is kind of what I mean, except I dont want it to suck.