THUMBNAIL ASSIGNMENT

I did this thumbnail storyboard assignment this past summer while I was in Brazil. I printed out 4 pages, each with 6 of those square boards. The story had to be about two characters interacting with something that falls from the sky. No dialog. It was complicated working with those small square boards. Square compositions are really hard to place characters around and to get a feeling of depth. I hope you can understand my story

JACK, STEAMY & GIANT SIZE COMPARISON

Here are two drawing to compare the sizes of Jack, Steamy and the Giant. I also did a color pass on all of them. Didn’t quite get Steamy right, since he’s mostly bronze metal color (wouldn’t be a problem for an Art Center student). It looks okay on my monitor, but when I brought it to class it look really weird. I hope it’s not my monitor.


The Giant is just twice the size of a normal human. He’s big enough to be scary, but also small enough to have a castle where Jack can walk around without too much trouble. If Jack were to climb on of the Castle’s stairs, it would be around his waist.
I would not want that long limp Giant chasing me with rusty hooks.

SKETCHING AT A BAR

Here’s a sketch that I did while drinking some hefeweizen at a local bar. Not the greatest drawing, but I was happy about it.

As I recall it, the upper left lady was wearing a puffy black sweater and she had very long curly black hair. From far away you could only see her round face surrounded by this big round black shape. She was really enjoying whatever she was eating.
The one in the right was a couple talking. I Guess the guy was very funny since he was always gesticulating with his hands and the girl was always laughing.
The bottom one was of a couple on their mid 30s. The lady was totally going for the bartender and her husband/boyfriend wasn’t happy about it.

INTERACTION OF COLOR

I’m reading a great book called “Interaction of Color” by Josef Albers. Albers was an artist mostly known for his work “Homage to the square”. He studied and taught at Bauhaus in Germany, but moved to the US during World War. He then taught at Yale and there he wrote this book. The book is about how color can deceive our eyes and how colors can affect each other.

In the examples above the two little squares are the same color, but it’s really hard to see them that way. They look different to me. You can find many awesome examples on the web or you can buy the book for $3 on eBay. I’ll never look at colors the same way :)

FINAL GIANTS & SOME OLD JACKS

Here are some final sketches of the Giant. He’s a Victorian gentleman who likes to study and collect art. Even though he looks proper, he’s driven by madness. The Giant wears a Top hat, Victorian white shirt with pointy collars, a properly knotted tie, a double breasted burgundy velvet vest, a dark purple cape, gray suite and oxford shoes. His favorite tool for ripping people’s guts is a rusty hook (normally used to carry meat).


Below are some old Jack drawings that I forgot to post earlier. The fist on the left I was trying some markers and color pencils. Markers are soooo hard to use. I know it look s like he’s holding a flute, but it’s actually a pipe. Jack’s hobby is to build steam engines and toys, as you can see on the right drawing.

SNAIL RIDER FROM NEVER ENDING STORY

I was watching “The Never-ending Story” while doing my homework at the beginning of the semester. I just felt like taking a break to sketch something out of the movie, so I did the snail rider. Later I went over with a graphite pencil. I kind like the drawing, so I added some colors. I took some liberty to change a few things here and there. I gave him a dark bluish green hair to make the red around it more brilliant. Also the shirt is slightly bluish to contrast with the overall red.

I’ve been trying to learn more about color. I was checking the values and contrast to get a nice variation, so I’m adding a B&W version as well.
If there’s something you don’t like, please write me a comment. I’m trying to learn as much as I can and getting some feedback would help me a lot!

OLD GIANT DESIGNS AS A ROBOT

Before I started designing a “Jack the ripper” Giant, I was designing him as a Victorian steam punk giant robot. Here are some drawings before I moved to the human version. I was already playing with some Victorian costumes and ideas, right before I dropped the robot version.


Like I said before, I originally wanted the giant to look like Nemo’s submarine with some ornaments and detailed etchings. His shape is pretty much a triangle torso with some inverted triangular arms. I've also tried the one eye camera cliché.





Here are some exploration drawings and a silhouette thumbnail sheet. I was trying some different shapes and possibilities. My Very first idea was to have a Locomotive head for the Giant. I always thought that Locomotives looked evil. Their front part looks like a mean triangular smile. I also tried to have some balloons lifting his heavy and long metal limps, but it just made him look fragile.




Here’s the final thumbnails and doodles that made me decide to change his design to a human “Jack the Ripper” type of character. I did them while watching Coppola’s version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

FINAL JACK, COLOR AND 2 STEAMYS

Here’s the closest drawing to the final version. I’m not trying to make a model sheet, but at least I kept some ideas in all drawings. Jack is going to wear a drivers cap, a large backpack with mechanical tools, gloves, suspenders that hold both his pants and backpack, a beat up extra large pant, a sleeveless sweater (don’t know the name of those, cardigan???), a white shirt and tie. Like I mention before, he’s barefoot.

I’m still playing with his colors, but I want them to be mostly browns, tans, warm grays and oranges. Jack is all warm colors, while the Giant will be cooler (can’t get more cliché then that). He got a pastel blue shirt because I like that color against brown (chocolate mint) a dirty yellow ochre sweater and a red tie.

Here are some previous sketches that I did. You can see that was playing with his proportions and details. I later noticed that the eye lines in the drawing on the farthest left side it’s not working. On that drawing his eye line feel like a ball behind his face, plus it blends with some lines from the hat.

Here are 2 quick drawings of Jack running from the Giant. I thought it would be nice if Steamy were always puffing steam, which would give away their location.


Here are 2 Steamy doodles that I forgot to post.

HIPSTER VAMPIRE

I did this drawing almost a year ago. I did some thumbnails of a vampire hipster kid (see the pics below). I swear to God that I never heard of Twilight and those teen vampire films back then! That was an idea that I had about night creatures going to a bar. Something like the movie Swingers, but with night creatures and classic horror monsters set in the Los Feliz.
I used a tweed texture on the pea coat and some jeans template to experiment with textures. I tried giving him some unpleasant color mix. Mostly grays and muddy greens.

STEAMY (JACK AND THE BEANSTALK)

I forgot to say that we’re supposed to redesign only 3 characters from the tale. The main character (Jack), the villain (Giant) and a sidekick. I thought about all the other characters and their importance in the story. We have the Mom, the cow, the guy who sells the beans, the fairy, the Giant’s wife, the magical harp and the golden egg goose.
I thought it would be nice to have the sidekick as a prisoner in the Giant’s castle, so that Jack have a reason to help him out of the castle. Since it’s a steam punk setting, I’m going to design the castle as a flying steam machine. But what would generate the steam to keep this massive castle flying? The sidekick!
My sidekick is going to be this steam robot life form called “steamy”. He’s the heart of the castle and a prisoner as well. Jack will befriend him and help him out of the castle, which will anger the Giant as his castle is falling apart.
Steamy could be considered as both the Magical harp and the golden egg goose. It’s the Giant most precious belonging and he’s not going to give it up so easily. Steamy’ situation also helps us sympathize more with Jack and dislike the Giant.
I hope it doesn’t look that much like the fire from “Howl’s moving caslte” :)
Here are some early design explorations.


Since Jack is more boxy and the Giant more triangular, steamy should be basically a circle. He’s like a metal sphere holding his steam energy. His limps are pipes and valves.


The instructor told me to explore some other forms that steamy could move around. Since it’s a robot, it doesn’t need to have legs. So here I’m trying some other pipe limbs and ways that it could move around.