Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Two person dialogue assignment

Otherwise known as fun times with Youtube.

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Protagonist Man's re-design

I ran my design pack roughs by John Delaney, excellent use of my time in layout design class, and received the following criticism on the original design of Protag. Basically the character was caught between two styles, naturalism (the upper torso and arms) and stylisation (the legs and neck), and if I want to make the design stronger I had to choose one direction to go in. So...


Here's what he used to look like...



And here's the re-design...

Expression sheets

For Herr Doktor:
And Moanica Le Stab:


Monday, March 12, 2007

Protagonist Man and Sidekick Boy the 3rd in Adventure City (New Jersey)!

A.K.A. Model Pack Update.
Okay, so I've pretty much settled on my designs and have the final roughs. I haven't cropped the negative space from some of the images because I hope that will help reinforce the scale--which will bemore clearly conveyed once I actually put them together on a size comparison chart, but anyhoo...




First it was Captain Justice, then it was Justice Man, now it's Protagonist Man; kinda matches his sidekick's name, Sidekick Boy the 3rd. Dunno ifthis name will stick as well, but it works for the moment.





Used car salesman by day, the (unwanted) costumed defender of Brick City (New Jersey) by night. He's The Maxx, The Tick, Captain America, Captain Marvel, Captain Britain, ect, ect all bunched up into one uber generic superhero-type-guy. So he's super strong, indestructable, got heat vision, can fly, ect, is as dumb as a post and probably is a borderline nutcase with delusions of grandeur.

His strength and nigh invulnerability are only surpassed over-weening sense of justice, patriotism and complete and utter stupidity. He generally causes more problems than he solves, and is completely oblivious to the fact. There's currently multiple multi-million dollar lawsuits against Protagonist Man for destruction of public and private property, but since no one knows his secret identity,no one knows whom to serve the subpoena to.

One benifit to his secret identity is that Protagonist man has a healthy supply of crime fighting vehicles on his used car lot. Any of the lemons which currently occupy it can by quickly modified with some spray paint and magnetic peripherals to turn it into the Justice-mobile (which I have yet to draw)!




Sidekick Boy the 3rd. He's living the dream of every little boy who has ever cracked open a comic book. He's the sidekick to a superhero. He doesn't have to go to school, he gets to stay up late, watch tv, eat whatever he wants whenever he wants, and punch people in the face. All in all it's pretty cool, except for the fact that he misses his parents, and his home which he hasn't seen in months. Protagonist Man and his never ending war for truthiness and justice don't allow for either.

Sidekick Boy the 3rd doesn't like the fact that Protagonist Man won't mention what happened to the first two Sidekick Boys. What's even more disquieting is how Avenger sometimes looks at him when Protagonist Man isn't looking.






Avenger, he acts as Protagonist Man's canine crime fighting companion as well as a mobile security system for his used car lot when he isn't fighting and making sure Sidekick Boy the 3rd never leaves the carlot during the day.

Avenger is fiercly protective of his master, one might say jealous even. He may have had something to do with the disappearances of the first two Sidekick Boys, and soon possibly a third if the right circumstances arise.

Protagonist Man hasn't suspected a thing given how the first two Sidekick Boys seemingly fell in action, but this new one seems kind of cagey. Avenger will have to bide his time.


Moanica Le Stab. The top female assassin in all of New Jersey and chief goon/underling to the nefarious Herr Doktor. She's a master in all forms of armed and unarmed combat. She's cold, calculating, ruthless, and quite possibly secretly/begrudginly in love with Protagonist Man, the only man in all of New Jersey who has proven to be her equal.

I don't know if her name is too complicated compared to the rest of the cast, but I like it. It's got an Octopussy (Bond), Robins Spits/Swallows (Austin Powers), and Molotov Cocktease (Venture Bros) cheese kind of vibe to it.











Herr Doktor. Lord of the Undertow in 7/8ths of New Jersey.

Born on the German border in Switzerland, he grew up as a child clocksmith prodigy. Reknowned throughout all of Switzerland, until one day he had a horrible accident with a spring loaded cuckoo which left him both horribly disfigured and deathly afraid of Swiss clocks.

Even with hundreds of dollars of reconstructive surgery the young Herr Doktor was a horror to gaze upon. His parents couldn't bare the shame of his failure and visage, so they sent him off to boarding school in America.
Herr Doktor grew bitter and twisted in his exile, he turned his meticulous mind towards the criminal arts. He hopes to one day conquer all of New Jersey and New Yorks criminal underworld so that he may have the resources to strike out and crush what used to be his homeland. The only thing standing between Herr Doktor and his revenge are Protagonist Man and whatever bit of fodder he has for a sidekick this week.

Sunday, March 11, 2007

Hey look it's Evilis


So, blogging and stuff...

One of the things that has held me back from actually creating a blog for the longest time would have to be just coming up with a name for the bloody thing. One that wasn't taken and one that didn't sound too stupid. I've at least succeeded in in coming up with something that wasn't taken.

Right now we've got a scholarship contest going on at school with one of the local animation studios and I'm trying to put together my final model pack for my character design class so I can use it as part of the portfolio submission. I've gotten the rough designs of all my characters done and could move on to the pose, expression and rotation sheets but I'm not entirely happy with the designs as is.

I've gone back to Ben Caldwell's Action Cartooning for inspiration yet again--his style is similar to Bruce Timm's without looking too much like Bruce Timm stuff, so it's a nice bridge from my typical comic book stuff to making designs that lend themselves extremely well to animation.

I'm trying to create a completely ludicrous superhero vibe, I don't have a title for the premise yet, but I've got the characters...


Still a work in progress, but hey I've got like a week left...oh shit.