E4 esting entry!

Tom Paxton and myself collaborated on this wee entry for the E4 esting competition. I handled the animation and he mashed up the sounds.

E4 esting from Mark Grossi on Vimeo.

Mark

Layout concept idea

I was met with a considerably less than auspicious start to the day as the washing machine decided to shrink my already tight jeans to the blood flow stopping tightness of bulldog wedging its head in a stair gate. They are now property of Lynne.

On a more fortuitous note, a day of reclusive behaviour allowed me to work on Finlay's ambient occluded (is that even a term?) test room.

Its by no means finished just yet, but it gives an indication of what the room COULD look like when textured in this manner. Of course, we'd have proper light sources, different structures and paraphernalia lying around.

I'll continue this tomorrow and post a new version in good time.

Any feedback, comments, or jeans donations would be appreciated.

Mark

New texture for 'Ticked Off'.

Things have been a bit quiet on the 4th Year project of late. With Kieran, Finlay and myself all helping out on 4th Year Degree films over the last month, our own project (unintentionally) took a back seat.

Returning to it with fresh eyes allowed us to re-write some of the script and re-think and flesh out more character designs, character background and story changes.

With so many alterations and additions, the overall 'style' began to meander once more. This has given myself a chance to yet again try out a different but similar style.

We were wanting to keep the stylisation of Samurai Jack, Giorgio De Cherico and the Lucas Arts games, but really add a Team Fortress style painterly texture. From the offset, we never wanted 'defined' textures to represent out models; instead gravitating more towards an art style than a construction style.

An afternoon of trial, error and coffee lead me to this finished piece. I see it as a combination of all our ideas from back in January. Hopefully this encompasses all the traits we've been looking for but not looking too chirpy or cartoony nor too grim or graphic novelesque. I've also built and UV'd a simple3D table to stick this texture onto. The boy Finnigan and myself will be testing out lighting, etc on the said table this weekend.

Stay tuned.

Mark

Monsters under the bed!!!

I've recently been asked by John Fairfield ( http://shootingflicks.blogspot.com/ )to design a credit sequence for his 2 minute short, 'Monsters under the bed'.

He wanted a selection of monsters to punctuate each section. I've scanned in my preliminary ideas/sketches and a few final versions (along with the backdrop design). Thankfully my drawing skills are akin to that of a crayon toting, pencil scrawling child champion, so I took to this like a homeless seal to a fish supper.

The animation should be finished around next week at some point.

Mark

Sketches

I've been rather lax on sketchbook attention of late, so here are a couple of freshly scanned pages.

Loads of updates involving more sketches, texturing and AE work in the next coming week and a half.

Mark

FX test for Reece

Reece wanted the ape's feet to emit a paint/ink style effect. I'd initially tried using a more slithery ink look, but Reece felt that a more painterly 'splodge' would be more effective.

Here's a test for it. We're going to opt for slower forming paint in the final one.

Mark

Building and Sky textures

So we're coming very close to a style that we all agree upon.

The buildings will be less stylised and more uniform, with the textures for them being either painterly or slightly grimy.

Next step is to apply this style to Finlay's 3D buildings and objects and engage in some lighting and rendering malarkey with Kieran.

The concept piece above is using one of my more recent sketches (hence why it isn't as stylised as the others). I think that the painted white and blue lashings of sky is pretty much bang on to what we all envisioned.

Mark