[Art] Big Boss

Above is a picture I drew in my free time. It is a digital drawing of the character Big Boss from the Metal Gear game series. This series has always been special to me as it's the first game I completed on my own and the back story spanning across the games is quite possibly the deepest of anything I've ever played. I drew this entirely using Flash as a way to test out the Wacom Cintiq I got with my university budget. The picture took about 7-8 hours to complete and I really learned a lot about tone and shading. I based the drawing from an iconic pose in Metal Gear Solid 3 and 4, in which Big Boss salutes his old mentor's grave. I also started work on another character from the series, Olga Gurlukovich, in the same style.

[Animation] Russian Dancing Men

Above is a video I created for Mr Weebl. This is the first in a series, based on an older music video on his channel, Russian Dancing Men. It was a lot of fun to work on this video as I was a huge fan of the original video, and Weebls-Stuff in general. In fact it's one of his videos that made me have an interest in web animation in the first place. This video was interesting due to the limited colour pallette, and it also helped me speed up my animation process. What would have taken me several months in the past can now be done in less than one, and I'm happy with that. I've had to make the animation for these simpler than my usual works, but I find that whatever is most effective given the brief is the best way to approach things now. The videos on his channel are weekly, so efficiency is of top priority.I also created a video for him in around a week, which was for Valentines. The video can be found below:

[Animation] Rave on the ISS

I created this music video for Mashed, a YouTube channel created by Channel 4. This one was a lot of fun because I was able to bring back the art style I used for Vampire Pixel, a bright, colourful and sharp style which I felt was nice and punchy for this bright and bouncy song. The video went so well that Oliver and I were asked to make a full series for the channel, which I'll be working on once I graduate.

[Research] UFO designs

Above is a series of images I used when designing the aliens and UFO for my animation. I looked into sighting photos, examples of other ships from the games Metroid and Destroy All Humans, as well as the paranormal photos from the intro sequence of Gravity Falls.

[Pre-Production] Visual Research - Backgrounds

GRAVITY FALLS
Both my original farm based idea and the bunker based idea take an amount of inspiration from the Disney cartoon, Gravity Falls. The show follows two twins on summer vacation in a town filled with paranormal activity and mystery. One of my main influences from this show is the background style, taking full advantage of the mise-en-scene, colour, and easter eggs to create a truly mysterious and wonderful atmosphere.

The pictures above have very strong key colours, which is an important part of my animation as I'll be using the lights in the lab to create a strong atmosphere that communicates the mood to the viewer.

COURAGE THE COWARDLY DOG

The background art style for the original farm idea was somewhat inspired by Courage the Cowardly Dog. Using a crooked architecture in the middle of nowhere helped create an atmosphere that reflects the sociophobic protagonist, Hermit.