Tippy time!

Hand drawn picture of Tippy having a sleep, pencil on paper.

Playing with Photoshop, I turned Tippy into a laser-eyed, man-eating cat.

Pokemon Origins - Eng Sub

The complete collection!
Each "episode" has a different director from within the same company, giving each episode a slightly different feel. Really good, too! Shame it wasn't made into a full series in this style.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbAo8P0lQu0

Animation Books To Watch Out For In 2014

http://www.cartoonbrew.com/books/animation-books-to-watch-for-in-2014-93347.html

Some awesome art books coming out in the new year, from The Lost Notebook: Herman Schultheis & The Secrets Of Walt Disney's Movie Magic to Genius, Animated from Alex Toth.

Lonely This Christmas - The CMANIM Short

It's been quite a while since I've used Flash, so I thought Christmas was the perfect time to get back to it!
An original idea, Lonely This Christmas chronicles the Yuletide season for an elderly gentleman, alone at Christmas.

Animated in Flash, then converted from .swf to .mov in After Effects in order to be uploaded to Youtube.

LEVEL 5 CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT AND ANIMATION - Storyboarding

I used these Storyboards to create my final animation.

The final image shows a mapping of the scene from a pulled out view.

LEVEL 5 CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT AND ANIMATION - CREATING LANEGAN

Lanegan took a few different forms before finalising the design.
(These images are taken from earlier posts on this blog)

The first form was this Lizard creature. I didn't feel like it fit in with the setting of the prison, so I scrapped this idea.

Thinking of Charles Manson, but demon-like, I created this character that I had been calling Man-Tis, based from his Mantis like blades and the tattoo on his arm. He was wearing his Prison jumpsuit, but didn't look demon enough.

Whilst researching prison uniforms better and capitol punishment, I came across a game for the PS2 called The Suffering, which featured creatures that were nearly identical to what I had designed.

For the demon look, I turned to The Evil Dead to look at the Deadites. The top left is from Army Of Darkness and the bottom right is from the original Evil Dead.

Remembering Ghostbusters 2's Scoleri Brothers (from the Courthouse scene), there were two ghosts that appear in Electric Chairs. Tony Scoleri is the skinny, lanky ghost who I researched further. I found some interesting notes from the development of this character.

Tony Scoleri went through three stages of development. The first stage involved using a full-sized puppet with an articulated head. Mark Wilson built the prototype and video tests were promising but Dennis Muren believed the rotoscope load required would hamper the production schedule. Tony was redesigned to be portrayed by Jim Fye. Tony's head was attached to a skullcap positioned in front of and on top of Fye's head. The collarbone was lowered to elongate the neck and add to the emaciated torso design. Oversized shoes, extra lengths of cloth strips, droopy pants, and finger extensions were added to complete the skeletal look.

Changing the blades of my character became a main thing, as I didn't want to be creating something nearly identical to what was in The Suffering. Marvel Zombies features this panel where Wolverine's adamantium bones break free. Reversing the joint where the blade is attached (from the wrist instead of the elbow) would work well.

I drew out the way the blades would attach here.

 Using the demon faces inspired by Evil Dead, I drew this happy fellow up! Given that he was executed by Electric Chair, I would give him a hood or mask, which would have been used.

This image was to show various features of the character, where the blades break from (the scar tissue), tattoos and various hoods/heads.

 Close ups of the heads.

To add colour, I placed the images into Photoshop.

A 3/4 view of Lanegan. He is extending one of his blades.

Front and side

Lanegan is charging forward, revealig one of his blades as he strikes.

Colour versions of previous images. The final image shows some muscle tone which the creature has

LEVEL 5 CONCEPT DESIGN AND ANIMATION - MERCHANDISE

Promotional give away items. I used Cafepress (a website where you can make custom items which you can buy, and even set up an online store) to create the majority of these.

Hip Flask

T-Shirt

 - I made this mug in 3Ds Max using UVW maps to add the logo. The inner colour I set to match the main colour scheme of the logo.

CMANIM mousemat

 CMANIM glass

 Being a fan of Ice Hockey, I created my own Jersey

CMANIM promo pen (I made this one in Photoshop)

CMANIM Pocket Notebook

LEVEL 5 CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT AND ANIMATION - LOGO DESIGN

I created a Logo Design for myself. CMANIM - Chris McEwan Animation.

Following tutorials I made logos. I wanted them to look digital/futuristic so I started by looking at TRON. Tron Legacy tutorials helped me learn how to use some effects in Photoshop.

Using a different font, I made this one.

Pattern effects I made in Photoshop came into play with this image. Altering the Outer Glow settings to reduce the splash effect, I made the bottom image.

A shortened version, CMA is ideal for forums and Facebook advertising, and it's in keeping with the larger version for recognition.

LEVEL 5 CONCEPT DESIGN AND ANIMATION - LANEGAN LIVES - ADVERTISING

I created a creature that was a demon which was resurrected in a disused Prison. It was summoned by a group of Documentary makers filming about Capitol Punishment in the US.

Early concepts of the DVD cover or Web Advertising and teasers were of an abandoned warehouse with Graffiti on the walls. 

Lanegan Lives was originally something I used for a Tabletop game I play called Necromunda. A character my brother had was called Lanegan and he was killed. The story the game created for him was so awesome, I wanted to have it effect the world of the game, having it appear in my campaign games was a way to do that. Lanegan Lives was just a great name for my film idea, too.

Final concepts were inspired by wallpapers from the website, http://wallpaperswide.com/scary_corridor-wallpapers.html

I often get Backgrounds for my computer from this website and use the images on there as inspiration for my own work.

The Original.

Adding the picture to Photoshop, I altered the colours to give it a red hue.

Altering the levels to give the image an even darker look to make it more scary looking.

When getting to grips with the Levels, I took it too far, but thought that it would be worth keeping a hold of.

I used the images to create a Launch Party Invite and a Web Banner (I used vertical web banner, as I find websites I use, www.newgrounds.com is a great example, use vertical banners to great effect and can be coded to follow the page scroll, allowing maximum advertising.

Level 5 Computer Animation and Special Effects - 3D Modelling cont.

FINAL RENDERS

A view to the rear of the room.

Underneath the side counter.

 The sink with a couple of dishes waiting to be cleaned.

 The toaster and kettle plugged in.

 The door to the Outhouse with the net curtain.

 The Oven (note, the oven was left to be dirty for this project. Once the photos were taken, the oven was cleaned).  The cat's bed with scratching posts.

 Sugar pot on the side counter.

 A view from the back of the room.

 The outside of the room with the images for behind the doors and windows. I added a beaded look to a couple of the images to give the patterned glass look that the doors in my kitchen have.

 Another view of the outer shell.

A rotation look at the taps

 A rotation look at the dirty oven

 A rotation look at the cat's bed.

List of assets from the project:

Cat Bed

Cat bowls

Sugar pot

Toaster

Kettle

Mugs

Plates

Taps/Sink

Oven

Side Counter (the unusual counter the toaster is on)