Better still.
 The black is blacker..some textures...and I stole someones face.

The Flaming Nun,... in ink..and in colour...partly.

Much better.

I hope to do some retro letratone style shading on this...soon...

INK 2012 artwork

INK 2012 – Mini Print Exhibition 

Just about to start work on my entries for “INK 2012” – an exhibition of mini prints by the Staff and Students of Staffordshire University’s Arts Media and Design Faculty running from 15 June – 22 June.

I am going to re-work some images of tin toy robots, like the one below (done a few years ago) 

This time I want to prepare the images for the laser cutter so that I can cut some printing blocks. Then, rather than use ink, I am going to use the blocks to emboss the image onto textured paper. 

Steam Dog blueprint

Here is a new aged version of the Steam Dog. Gave it much the same treatment as Engine #8.

This one has extra levels of detail. Gives it a bit of visual impact and depth.

I just used the same silhouette parts, overlapped and with the opacity dropped right down.

Steam Dog development

The steam dog started as part of a module that I was running for the BA (Hons) Stop Motion Animation Award at Staffordshire University. It involved a Steam Punk environment with a girl running away from a steam powered dog.

This is the first sketch of the characters. I really liked the dog; the angle of the legs bones gave them some energy and overall it seemed to have character.

The next sketch had a bit more detail and I was starting to think about how it could actually work and move.

In a way the dog was the continuation of a theme that I keep coming back to. Several years ago I created some robotic dog-like guns on 3DS Max for a personal game concept... 

...and then I revisited the idea on Photoshop using collage of found images.

I always like to play with characters silhouettes before refining them and so I got some loads of skeletal & mechanical reference and started to mess around with gears and pistons.

The next sketches were done on trace to allow me to work on two levels.

The final two sheets were scanned in and combined in Photoshop.

I felt the dog was too heavy at this point and had lost some of its character. I did another quick sketch to make it leaner and meaner.

Next I made a detailed silhouette on Photoshop using a palette of mechanical forms that I had been using for this project. I will go into them more when I talk about the quadruped engines that take the place of cars and trucks in this world. For now, here is the sheet of separate parts. I use a multi-layered version of this to build the machines.

This is the final silhouette. Good shape, deliberately influenced by the dogs at the end of ‘The Boys from Brazil’.

After leaving it for a while came back wanting to see some depth. So I went back to Photoshop, used ‘multiply’ on the silhouette and built up several layers of detail using custom brushes and more mech parts.

The next stage is modelling in Maya.

#13

This Blogg will mostly feature the work I am doing on a short film currently called '# 13'. It is based in a Steampunk style London environment in the late 1800's. The first character design work for this features a steam powered dog. This is how it looks so far as concept art. I am going to go back a few steps and post the designs and rough ideas that got me to this stage.