No Name!

Currently I'm going to have to label the project as untitled.

Without giving up too many of my ideas, it revolves around a robot that has malfunctioned and as such behaves a little like a child. He seems to be keen on making friends (social networking) and he has taken it upon himself to use the ship he occupies to operate a courier service. He will not be a lone main character as he will be forced to team up with a girl that has been put into his care and protection. At the moment in my head it's seeming more likely that she'll end up being the main character. I've still not decided.

Initially I had named the robot character #5 or Hash. The #5 was a decal on his chest so he took it as being a name badge of sorts and decided that it must be what he is called, he declared his name to be Hash with Five being his surname. While making some notes a few hours ago I've decided to change his name to just 5 and having just a number 5 be present on his chest as a decal.

Go Go Go!!

Well on to the task at hand.

I've had several ideas for comic book plots running around in my head for more than a decade. Some of them I think I originally conceived to be video games during my time dabbling with games design at University a few years back, but that's neither here nor there since none of them ideas blossomed into games.

As I write this I'm already aware of which idea I'm planning on developing.

Since the idea I think mostly about has gotten rather epic to say the least I shouldn't touch that until I'm prepared for a heck of a lot of hard work. That project in particular would be more of a chronicles than a solid project. It has literally gotten to the stage that the story as a whole is broken down into 3 whole individual stories set in different time periods of a fantasy world. I've even thought up a completely stand alone follow up and a spin off that takes the genre of the whole thing in a strange direction.

At one point I toyed with the idea in my head of a sci-fi spin off to the series, set in a distant future of the world with giant robots but I think I dismissed that idea since it was outlandish and I hadn't even put any work into any of the original points yet.

Basically it boils down to it being a trilogy of tales at a base level and I frankly would rather focus on one tale for now.

That's the only fantasy story I have thought up so far, or should I say stories?

The rest of my ideas are mostly sci-fi. I have one idea that is set in a time period and world close to our own that is mostly horror-action but I think I'd prefer something a little more light hearted.

I have one light hearted sci-fi idea in mind.

Now or Never!

I plan on creating a comic book.

I think I always have.

Since I was a small child I would often crudely draw out comic books. I can imagine that many of them didn't make much sense to anyone but me. I was inspired largely by The Beano and the TV shows I used to watch at the time, notably Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, The Real Ghostbusters and He-Man. As I grew older I found myself getting hold of a few Tintin books at the library we would often visit with my primary school and that progressed to Marvel comics such as Spider-Man and even a few manga. Whatever I could get my hands on. My first experience with manga was with Romiko Takahashi's Maison Ikkoku but I managed to get my hands onto quite a few unusual titles.

After quite sometime obsessing over manga, which moved me onto animé as well, I found myself heading back to Spider-Man and Marvel comics in general.

I suppose it's all of these things that have inspired me over the years. I guess one person in particular I should thank would be J. Michael Straczynski since he was involved in several titles that have inspired me.

So that's all my initial inspirations, credit given where credit's due ;D

Desktop Dec 08

Another desktop thread has started over on the polykarbon bbs and this is my contribution.



The image was taken from Jason Chans gallery on his site. I often use Jason Chan artwork as inspirational desktop wallpapers. Surprisingly though I never use his actual wallpapers that he offers up, I opt to choose images with a flat colour at the borders of the page and have it centred on that background. It helps me arrange my icons and any loose files around the image.

This particular image appears on the I Am Legend DVD that one of my housemates has as part of the special features, along with other Jason Chan sequential art work. Check out the comics online over on the Warner Brothers site. Story 2 and 4 are illustrated by Chan and you can probably also find a link to a store there if you want to buy the DVD.

Merry Christmas.

Uni - Drawing 08 - Fashion pt.1

Two images of mannequins from shop windows. I thoroughly enjoyed this drawing project. I'm aware that the proportions are a little off but I think I did really well for 30 minute drawings that were meant to have emphasis on decorative and function details of the garments.

Female Clothing (trendy casual) - Pencil
Male Clothing (formal) - Pencil

More soon.

Uni - Drawing 08 - Perspective pt.1

Part of the drawing module during the 3D Design roundabout.
Kinda uninspired. Perspective bores me when you have to pay this much attention to it.

1 point perspective (w/ placement grids) City Scene - Pencil

2 point perspective (w/ placement grids) Japanese Sewers (maybe Flood Relief?) - Pencil

More soon.

Uni - Lie Of The Land 08 pt.3

Here are two more images from my Lie Of The Land sketchbook. These are sketches of two pieces of land art by Andy Goldsworthy. The first was a study mainly of his use of colour and the idea in general and the second I was focusing mainly on the idea so I didn't feel it necessary to include colour.

Andy Goldsworthy Study: Rowan Leaves With A Hole - Coloured Pencil

Andy Goldsworthy Study: Galerie Lelong - Pencil

More soon.

Uni - Drawing 08 - Buildings pt.1

This is the first post of the drawing module I have made. Each assignment within the module is related to the current roundabout module. This assignment was during the Visual Arts module and was for us to get some experience of drawing in the field and work on mark making and speed I think, we also had to apply some of what we'd learnt from the perspective drawing assignment during the 3D Design module.

Manchester Cathedral Interior - Graphite

Manchester By The Wheel From Next - Graphite

More soon.

Uni - Lie Of The Land 08 pt.2

Deadlines are quickly approaching so I guess I should start showing you guys that I actually do produce some work for university. Sometimes anyway.
This is the second post I've made in relation to the Lie Of The Land project. The last LOTL post consisted of photos and video but this time around I guess I'll show some of the images I've produced for my sketchbook. If you look at the other LOTL post you may notice the photographic reference used for some of the images.
The first image here takes up one whole page on its own and the other four are from another single page.

Red Leaves - Acrylic Paint

Unfinished Wooded Scene - Pencil
Fungus - Pencil
Tree - Pencil

Fallen Tree - Pencil

More to come soon.

Bender At Halloween

It’s been a few weeks since Halloween and a day or 2 longer since I posted last. I’ve been too busy actually doing my university work to show it to you guys but hopefully I’ll change that soon. But the topic of this post is Halloween and not my work so I’ll get on with it.

This year for Halloween, since I’m actually in big enough circles and had enough places to go to have a reason to make an effort, I decided to make a costume. I overconfidently decided to go for Bender from Futurama.

I didn’t spend nearly enough time on it for it to be nearly as impressive as some of the Bender outfits I’ve seen around on the internet but it impressed my friends a lot. It took me about a day and a half to two days (including drying time) to put together. It’s constructed completely from thin card, masking tape and papier-mâché. The paint job was grey matte spray paint and poster paints. Arms and legs consist of a pair of disposable overalls with lines drew around with a fabric pen. I was too short for time, or too lazy to do the hands and feet but that would have probably made the night even more difficult to navigate. I was able to see perfectly from a gap in the bottom of the mouth and my movement wasn’t heavily restricted. The biggest problem of the night was talking to people; no one could hear a word I was saying unless I removed my head.

Drinking wasn’t as a big a problem.

Bender

Bender, Danger Tom and Burglar Glyn

The only thing that could have made Halloween better would have been spending some of it with my little girl. That goes for most days though I guess.

I'm in a sketch exchange with a guy called erq from polykarbonbbs right now so I'll post some of the stuff I produce up after I have a few more images complete. I'd post now but I think it'd be better to see a few at once.