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.

Reflective Practise #1 - The course so far

Reflective Practise #1

Course in GeneralSo far, the course has been alright, I still need to readjust into doing things like life drawing and 3D, as I got really used to doing character design/game design during my FMP's and the summer holidays. (Which is a reason I'm looking forward to the Pathway/Confirmatory stage.)
One gripe I have with the course so far is the lack of information we was given about projects or trips.
Me and Mille missed a trip since we was never given a letter and didn't know when the bus left, and another instance was when I was told off for not doing something I was never told to do. (We had to bring an object to draw, but I wasn't told this until a few minutes into the lesson.)
It's been better now as the last trip had a letter given quite early and we're told more frequently what to bring to classes now.

2D - Exquisite Corpse Story

The charcoal Piece and the Painting.

I enjoyed the first portion of the project, in which we created a storyboard/comic based on our story.
I created a story based on the rabbit, unicorn and bear characters from the story and fleshed them out to full characters.
The story I made was based around a rabbit called Hopper, who after having his field destroyed by an atomic burp, runs into an ungraceful unicorn named Karlos.



Hopper discovers the Unicorn is there because he's bullied, so Hooper decided to train Karlos in the ways of 'the Cute', and in the end, Karlos is transformed into a beautiful unicorn.As a side gag, when Hopper returns to his field later on, he finds it torn up by Barry the Bear who's looking for his beetroot.
I created three comic pages, two fully coloured and one with block colours.
The project went downhill, in my opinion, when we was made to deconstruct the story into an abstract piece.
It was alright to begin with as I was going to create a charcoal 'movie poster' of the main characters, which I felt was deconstructing the story but reforming it into a piece that made sense and would be something I'd really enjoy doing.
I was told to scrap the picture I had started, destroy it and restart it using paint and rethinking my composition.
This didn't work at all, due to my inadequate skill with painting and my already fixed mindset on the charcoal picture I had started. (Or just hard-headed ignorance, you choose.)
I still gave it a shot, but the painting I made was a mess of dull colours and messy lines, and looked more like a toddler painted it than a Foundation level student.
This was made worse since I was told that I wasn't allowed to directly use the characters, but had to reform them as abstract shapes.
My final composition was a continuation of the charcoal picture I did, and in the end, I thought it was a much stronger piece than the painting one I attempted, and outsider opinion from other learners agreed that my charcoal picture was stronger and more eye-catching than the 'abstract' painting piece.
We're still having to create a reconstructed composition soon using this deconstructed piece, so I'll update when we do that.

Textiles - In Stitches - Stitching Stitch in StitchesFor the 'In Stitches' project, I've had an idea to do a tongue-twister idea.
I thought about doing something of the Disney character Stitch, while he's laughing (In stitches) and also made of stitches.
This means the pieces name is "Stitching Stitch in Stitches".
I am still thinking how I'm going to do this, but I'm going to start with some rough sketches on paper and maybe free-machine the final piece.




The redesign of Trixie I did recently, I've experimented with softer smooth shading instead of block shading.
I also vastly improved the anatomy on her body, as the anatomy of the old design was really off. (Seriously, her legs looked crooked.)

Personal Projects - Super Sketch Quest
NOTE: This isn't a College project, but since its a project I'm very enthusiastic about and a project that will help me develop on my character design, I felt like I should mention it.While at home, I've been working on a reworked version of my FMP project, Super Sketch Quest.
This isn't a college project now, but a personal one that I've had interest in doing since I finished my FMP.
Doing the first version of Sketch Quest gave me immense knowledge into game design, and taught em skills in both digital art and character design.
I've decided that game design is my chosen career path, and illustration/character design is my professional area, so seeing how we're moving into the pathway stage and starting to do more stuff that we want, it'd be a better time than any to crack open this project and start it.
The main reason I've started this project now is to practise my digital skills, as I'm aiming to develop from a simple block colour shading into a near seamless smooth shading style, something I've already experimented with to some degree with previous personal projects, but now, the characters I'm doing this new found shading style on are the headliners for my first game project.
I am also redesigning and rethinking parts of the game, Sketch and Trixie (The main heroes) have had new redesigns which improve on their uniqueness, structure and colouring, and some of the enemies are being scrapped or redesigned.
When I finish college, I'm going to fully enter development of the game, creating artwork, game engines, sound effects, level design, and so on, and hopefully have the game finished in a reasonable time slot.


Everything - A Rake's Progress*Coming Soon*