Side project

A commission I was tasked to do on the side just before the Christmas holidays ended was create a logo for a strength and conditioning coach that incorporated his initials, T.B.
He wanted something that resembled a figure running, had to be in white and a light blue to fit to his website and it had to obviously relate to his job so within a few days of receiving the commission I drew up some quick doodles of what he might want. Trying to incorporate the capital 'B' into the logo was a difficult task to overcome as the conjoining of the curves meant a human shape couldn't really be achieved without breaking the 'B' and making it unrecognisable as a letter. So I also tried using a lower case 'b' as the curve in this could form the leg.

Colour was an extremely important aspect of the design also, as it could be used to define the lettering within the form so as can be seen above the white in the designs defined the 'B' and the light blue the 'T'. The only design where I didn't incorporate any white, I was going for a more realistic human form where the darker blue helped to bring out the letters within the body.
The design that was chosen was bottom right as the 'T' and 'b' were distinguishable to a degree and it is clear that it's a human form even though more attention is paid to the lettering in this idea. This design also appealed to me the most as the part of the logo that forms the body and back leg accommodates both the vertical line of the 'T' and 'b', joining the two but can still be identified as two separate letters by the split colours.

 

Logo on the website

 

 

 

 

Blog Update

After the long summer break (and part of the start of the third year whereby getting my head to switch on again felt like trying to start a car with no will to live) I am resuming blog posts!
Before I gear the posts towards third year work and the films I'm working on and animations I'm watching, below is some commissioned work I was given over the summer, which includes painting portraits of pets as well as designing logos for two establishments.

Archie

Muma

Tor

 

 

Now I wasn't just painting commissions for people so as well as this I had been busily painting portraits of horses and ponies at the riding stables I work at so they could be turned into cards and sold as souvenirs.

 

 

And I'm just throwing in my portrait I did of my old rabbit.

 

Smudge

 

 

And then like I mentioned earlier, I was also asked to design a new logo for the stables to use on t-shirts for staff and kids to wear. The client asked for something simple as they didn't want to spend too much money on the embroidery but to just throw ideas their way and see what they thought.

 

I wanted it to have some relation to where the stables was located so close to the sea and because the stables offers beach rides I felt a horse walking amongst the waves would look appealing to the public. The model for the horse even came from one of their own so everything about the logo had some value to the client. The two versions below were turned down however due to budget and the amount of embroidery required for the logo.

Back to square 1 and an idea came from the client about incorporating the name of the stables into the logo like 'Using the legs to form the R.' I said I could try working some ideas out however I did stress that working one letter into the logo may mean losing the letter, turning 'Roylands' into 'Oylands.' However after careful designing and feedback being obtained from family and going back and forth between the client we had a logo which has now been printed on t-shirts and was worn by all members of staff and the children who helped.

 

 

 

This design work then led into me designing a logo for the farrier who visited our stables every week to shoe the horses. The brief was a bit more specific with more focus on the objects in the logo having to look real. In this case he asked for horses and horseshoes with the horse-shoes looking real with the nail holes in the correct places. Originally he asked for a cob type horse for the other part of the logo but because he also shoes race-horses as well as the standard riding horses, he was persuaded into having a more universal horse shape.

I played about with the horse design on a small scale then drew up one logo with several colour variations which I showed him and he accepted the logo on the spot alongside the colour scheme. One very happy customer!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dragon's win- Riding to the beat.

Edited together footage of my sister riding to the beat of the music.

VFX work

Now that I think I'm heading in more of a VFX route I've been learning Nuke and After Effects to get a better idea of how to use the software and create work myself as an added extra for my showreel which I'll have to submit at the beginning of next year.

I started pretty easy in After Effects by stabilising some footage which was originally quite shaky and hard for the eye to focus on. Here is the result.

Just been working to better my editing skills, and being a massive DreamWorks fan I've edited together a video compilation of all their films so far.

Character Emotion

Since doing the Performance workshop on Monday I began to study a character's body language a lot more closely and in doing so I was drawn to Wall-e. I recognised this film in particular as a good way of studying body language because Wall-e doesn't have any dialogue (apart from the occasional Eeevva). All of his emotion is portrayed through his eyes and his body.

Below are the sketches I did whilst watching the film of the various emotions he was depicting.

 

 

Train Background

I forgot to add the steps I took to get the train background so here they are:


Step 1: Pen on paper outline

 

Step 2: Began using Copic pens but soon realised I didn't have all the colours required to colour it so from here on I switched to Photoshop

 

 

 

Step 3: Basic colours added, started with very faint colours to get an idea of colour palette.

 

Step 4: I worked around in the outer edges of the image then gradually worked inwards. So here I darkened up the platforms and added detail to the roof.

 

 

Step 5: Added the remaining detail to the platform on the left, which for this was the shadows.

 

 

Step 6: Railway line and middle of the track detail added

 

Step 7: Right Platform detail added and bridge detailed up.

 

Step 8: Train detail and finishes touches.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

Drawing when I'm bored...

Drawn with felt tip, digitally re-mastered in Photoshop.

                                   Before                                                                                                           After

Before

 

 

 

 

After

 

And some artwork from drawing tablet to photoshop...

 

 



New horse. I think there's improvement in the movement.

Spot of recreational work.

So I don't scare anybody, this isn't my horse. It's a rig already created that I downloaded from creativecrash.com.
I just did the animation part so I could start to understand the way muscles move on a horse. I think it was a good challenge, although it needs work. The motion is too slow and to me, it looks like one of the legs is flicking forwards too fast making the action jerky (front right). First attempt: Not bad.

 

Colin Morgan from Merlin

Muscle structure of a human- fine liner pen.

Practising what I was taught in life drawing to break the human form down into cylinders. Tried it out on someone walking.

 

At the time I was watching Harry Potter and I wanted to try the technique of drawing by not looking at the page, just at the screen. This is a continuous line drawing and just of Harry but everytime the picture changed I would move on and quickly scribble down the next pose without looking. This is the result. In all honesty it's not bad, I can make out that most of the images are of a person and some torso shots actually look like torso's!