A Rakes Progress - Costume Design

Nicola, Tom and Sarah.

The designs are based on the game design characters I designed, but with obvious changes to make the outfits look wearable.
Tom Rakewell wears a tacky but expensive green suit that makes you want to gauge your eyes out, Sarah Young wears an elegant blue dress that emits sophistication and Nicola Shadow wears a skintight latex dress that has the look of smokey liquid.

Experimentation - #1

In response to the group critique we had on Monday, I've tried a few other styles besides my own cartoon game style.
I've tried to do less cartoony drawings and explored costume design and other illustrations based on other styles I like. (Costume design to be posted soon.)
I did two illustrations in different art styles, and both of them were drawn straight from my mind. (Although in future I'm going to use reference imagery to help me draw a more accurate representation.)

A random character, sorta using my memory of the 'Borderlands' artstyle.
I'm quite proud of this too, even if it's not the most refined.

The Penguin from Batman, based on his more realistic designs in the Arkham games.

I'm going to continue exploring different ways of drawing my characters.
I'm not abandoning my cartoony art style, but I'm definitely giving it a break for now and may return to it later after experimenting more.

Reflective Practise - 26th November

- Course so Far -
The course has improved immensely over the past few weeks, mainly since we begun the pathway stage.
I'm allowed to go more towards my illustration/concept art route and use my own mediums like pencil and digital, which in turn has helped to improve my artwork. (I'm pretty stubborn when forced to use mediums I dislike.)
The projects have improved too, with the current 'A Rakes Progress' project being extremley fun and engaging, and the fact we're working on it in pretty much every session makes it more fun.



A life drawing of Jen I did on my laptop using my graphics tablet.

 

- A Rakes Progress - We're well into the Rakes Progress, and I've been bustling with ideas that I still need to jot down, but I've had no shortage of ideas, that's for sure.
I'm sticking with the video game world theme, with a few additional tweaks here and there.
I've explored a little more than I usually would by painting a picture of one of the main characters, Nicola Shadow, but instead of using the design I've done before, I did a more sinister, shady character that Tom Rakewell could see in his demented state.
I'm still sticking with the design I did before, but this version could be the one Tom sees in madness.

The more twisted and sinister Nicola Shadow that Tom sees in Madness.

Personal - T-Shirt Design

I've started designing T-Shirts for the website Redbubble, a site where you can upload your designs and people can buy them, with the artist getting most of the profit per shirt.
I've only just begun, but I have one design so far:

My first T-Shirt design, based on the Mass Effect games.

I'm thinking this could be good work experience and a way to earn some money from my design work.
If you want to see the shirt on the Redbubble site, the link is below:
http://www.redbubble.com/people/djallen/works/11152569-quarian-at-heart-paragon

Pathway Research: Artist: Charles Zembillas Revisited

I'm revisiting an artist who I posted about before, Charles Zembillas.
Before, I didn't touch on why his art impacts me and why I find his art to be good, so I'm gonna touch on that in this post and make my research a tad more interesting.


I discovered after posting the first time that Charles also worked on the Spyro the Dragon series, another game I played during my childhood and one that impacts my artwork and game design to this day.

Charles Zembillas was the head concept artist on the Crash Bandicoot series, creating the first every concept of Crash, dubbing him 'Willy the Wombat', and to this day, Charles continues to draw Crash as a staple of his work, despite him not working for Naughty Dog or the Crash series anymore.
He now owns an animation and character design university in California.


Charles development work on Dr. N.Tropy from Crash 3, you can see the design evolve into the final look.
N.Tropy is also a favorite character of mine, mainly because he's suave and British.

I really like the way Charles draws his characters, from the get-go his characters have personality and are chock full of imagination.

His trademark style seems to be large expressive eyes, exaggerated proportions and cartoon anatomy, something I can really relate to.
His art style reminds me of my own, probably because I grew up around his work, even if I didn't know it.

Development of the Coco Bandicoot character.
I really like her design from the get go.

Growing up playing Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon and watching video game related show's he worked on as a character designer (Such as Sonic SatAM and The Super Mario bros show.) have really left a big impact, and I drop nods to Charles's character designs to this day in my own work.
I also want to start doing more rough designs like he does for my characters instead of going straight to the final design.

A page where Charles show's off every piece of concept art he did for Spyro the Dragon (50+ images) is here: http://www.theanimationacademy.com/spyromenu.htm

Personal - Character Design: Tora Ti-Gear

Coloured in and named the character I drew yesterday.
I named her Tora Ti-Gear, Tora being a Japanese name meaning 'Tiger' and Ti-Gear being a play on her Steampunk theme/attire.
She would be suited for a platformer/adventure game and would use her spanner to solve puzzles and unlock doors, along with using it to defeat enemies. etc
The character isn't for any project I'm currently working on, but was just an idea I had in my head that I need to get on 'paper'.

Tora Ti-Gear

I'm actually wanting to do a 3D model this character when I've finished College and mess about with it, maybe even make a demo game based around her. The original drawing was done in Colors! 3D for the Nintendo 3DS, additional line art (Mainly legs and tail) done in Photoshop, and the colouring and shading was done in Photoshop too.

Art Dump - Artwork from the past few Months

 




Different Skin concepts for Sketch in Super Sketch Quest.

Sketch Comparison




A redesign of the villain on my games project, Pore Krinde.




Pore Krinde WIP




Random character design




A page from our Exquisite Corpse Story




Random Crocodile Character Concept




Members of Omicron, a personal project I started.



"Big Bad Wolf"



A villain for Omicron, Putrefacient

A Rakes Progress - Nicola Shadow

Nicola Shadow - The Corrupter

One of the characters in my adaptation of A Rakes Progress is loosely based on the Nick Shadow character from the play variation of A Rakes progress.
In my adaptation, Nicola Shadow is a mysterious and deadly computer virus who manipulates Tom into leaving his game and being a Rake amongst the video game town of Hubville, but unbeknown to Tom, Nicola Shadow always follows him and aids his downfall, taking form of his tophat for most of the story and later disguising herself as Babaturk, the old Hag that Tom marries.
In the end, Nicola Shadow infects Tom and reduces him to a stuttering glitching lunatic, and with that, Nicola fades out of the game world and leaves Tom a broken mess.

The idea behind making her a female instead of a male stemmed from the running theme of most of Tom's downfalls involving a female of some sorts, spanning from Sarah Young, the Old Hag and the Prostitutes Tom hires.
I instead decided to interpret this as a single entity who was both seductive and manipulative.

The three main characters of my adaptation of A Rakes Progress.
All three characters are involved in each others lives in some way.

Personal - 3D Modelling Test: Baron Dante Animation

I've recently began dabbling in 3D models and animation again, and I've created a short test animation.
The character is Baron Dante, a character from the PS1 game Croc: Legend of the Gobbos.
The new model was made entirely by me and is the newest of several Baron Dante models I've done.
The animation was done in Blender, taking three hours to render.

A Rakes Progress - Rakeman Jr



I've carried on with my idea of having A Rakes Progress taking place inside a video game, and I've got the basic plot and structure down, along with designs for both Tom and Sarah.
The basic plot I have now is that Tom has inherited his dads fame and fortune with the release of Rakeman Jr, a successor to the recently discontinued Rakeman.
The game consists of Rakeman Jr, fighting leaves with a rake and saving Sarah from an evil tree called 'The Big Oak'.
Tom isn't fond of the idea of spending his life raking leaves for peoples amusement, and the fact he's already rich from his inheritance made him question why he should continue being the hero, and during a day of gaming, a new character appears, calling herself Shadow, she tells Tom that wallowing in the game isn't worth it, and that a world of self-indulgence lies beyond the game walls, so Tom leaves the hero role and heads into a nearby video game town with his new found riches, ready to flaunt and spend.
He does it all, buy tacky clothing, throw money at poorer video game characters, intimidate other game heroes in drunken brawls, have some 'fun' at video game whore houses and so forth.
Eventually, the game is threatened with shutdown, and whilst Sarah and the Big Oak has been promised salvation into the next game in the series, Tom was facing termination, and when the bug finders try to strip him of his status, Sarah uses her accumulated riches to pay them off for a few days, but it's too late, Tom is losing his hero status and slowly, his mind.
In an act of disparity, Tom comes to an agreement with an old hag named Babaturk, who's a villain of another video game, Piccolo-Zappdee. (A fake game, Babaturk is actually Shadow in disguise.)
In return for a cut of the riches, Tom would defeat the hag and reclaim his hero status.
This plan would've never worked, Tom was only a hero for defeating the Big Oak, but some of the people were suckers, and paid into Tom's scheme, but not at the rate of his old  role.
His downfall came when he refused to pay Babaturk her share, so she confronts Tom at a gambling house, saying if he wins a simple game of cards, she'll leave the Rakeman alone, but if she wins, she'll strip Tom of his money and reduce him to a glitchy mess.
The game is rigged, and Tom undoubtedly loses.
To further torture him, the hag transforms into Shadow, and surrounds Tom with pleading NPCs, all wanting him to help them, but under the pressure, Tom's code breaks and he becomes nothing more than a broken glitch in the code.
The bug handlers apprehend him, and put him in a 'Madhouse' for failed game heroes and glitches.
Sarah approaches the madhouse, still not giving up on Tom, but the bug handlers warn her that contact with him would break her code too, so teary-eyed, Sarah bids farewell to the broken Tom and goes, leaving a broken Tom glitching and shouting.
Years later, Sarah is in a new game called Rakeman 3, with a new Rakeman as the hero who loves his job, but as Sarah monologues about the moral of the story, her visions pans to the Great Oak, who now has a new partner in crime.
A dememnted, unrecognisable Tom Rakewell stands above the tree, cackling and completley insane and repurposed for villainy.


My Design for Tom 'Rakeman Jr' Rakewell.
I've based him on the character of King Candy from Wreck-It Ralph.



                      My design for Sarah Young.   I've based her on the character of Princess Peach from the Super Mario franchise.



Coloured versions oof the two characters.
I designed Sarah's dress to be graceful and elegent, whereas Tom's is supposed to be an eyesore and pretty tacky.

Research - Artist: Disney Artist - King Candy Animation Test

 

This animation test is of the character 'King Candy' from Wreck-It Ralph, before the 3D animation as created.
The artist drew a couple of seconds of traditional hand drawn animation, as both a guidline for the 3D animators to follow and seeing if the film would work in a 2D sense. (Which, IMO it did, but to replicate a video game world would be much easier in 3D.)
The animationis really well drawn, and with a few adjustments, it could be the level of animation Disney is renowned for.


Pathway Research - Artist: Charles Zembillas

Charles Zembillas used to be the head concept artist at Naughty Dog, and was responsible for pretty much all the Crash Bandicoot concept art.

Being that I grew up playing Crash Bandicoot, and my pathway being Illustration/Concept Art in Video Games, I'm really intrigued by these pieces and its fun to see what the characters looked like before they were modeled into the limitations of the PS1.
Here's a few of his works.

A turnaround of Crash Bandicoot

A Sketchy concept for Crash's sister, Coco.

A refined concept for Coco. 

A bunch of early rough Dr Cortex designs.

A refined concept for Dr N Tropy.

A refined concept of Tiny Tiger.

Reflective Practise #2 - A Rake!

Course in General
The course has gotten better over the past week, we got a letter for then London Trip two weeks before we went, which is a vast improvement over the previous trip.
The projects have improved too since we entered the Pathway stage, we are now heading into the direction we want to and begin able to use our own skills instead of being forced to use a medium we dislike. 
I've accepted the use of other materials more now.


2D/3D - A Rakes ProgressWe have begun a new project based on the eight 'Rake's Progress' Paintings.
We have to adapt the paintings into either a Graphic Novel or a Newspaper Article.
I believe we are allowed to use any medium we wish and adapt the story into our own version.
We aren't allowed to directly use the characters or the exact scenes, but we can adapt them into a new variation.
So far, I've had a few ideas that I've jotted down, one with the characters being robots and conveying a message of "Even if you upgrade your appearance, you're still the same underneath."
One idea I've had that I really like is that Rake's Progress is an old school video game, and that the Rake is the son of a well-known video game hero who is suddenly discontinued by the company that makes him, and in turn, he 'dies'.
The son, who could be called Rakeman Jr or something along those lines, would inherit his dads game and fame, but when he becomes the hero, he spends less time doing what he needed to do in his game and instead spend the time buying expensive graphics and NPCs.
Half way through, the coders of the game, undercover as a sort of Bailiff, apprehends the hero and threatens to remove his hero status from the game and reduce him to nothing but broken code, until the sidekick of the original Rakeman comes in and stops them, but the Rakeman has had the status removed already and his code was breaking down quickly.
Rakeman than attempts to regain his heroism by forcing a crossover with a villain from another game, an old hag. In return for some profit, Rakeman would 'fakely' defeat the hag and be seen as a hero.
This unravels when Rakeman gets in a bet with another character, a Highwayman from an RPG, who says if he loses the bet, Rakeman will forever have his hero status stripper, and he would become a glitching mess within hours.
Rakeman loses, causing him to spiral into madness, he is surrounded by NPC's begging him to help with their problems, but since he's not a hero anymore, Rakeman cracks under the pressure and becomes nothing more than a stuttering glitch.
The story ends with Rakeman in a broken code vault with several other glitches, the sidekick from the original game stays at his side, even though her being there would put her code at risk due to the other glitches.

This idea is inspired by the movie 'Wreck-It Ralph', mainly in the way that when the games offline, the characters have a life 'after work', which could be portrayed through the Rakemans hi jinx and downfall, causing his game to turn upside down.
This idea would also fit well with my pathway, as I want to do Illustration in Video Games as a career path, so doing the character designs for the graphic novel would be fun and also help me develop.

Personal Project - Super Sketch Quest
Since the last update, I've reworked Sketch's design, making him much more anatomically correct (By my art style, anyway), making him look a lot less like a generic Mario clone and also adding some smaller details, such as a backpack and little trims on his coat etc.

I also experimented with different design colours, which could be used for alternate skins in-game.