Of course, I myself have been a 3D dilettante ever since the acquisition of my Amiga 1000. It seems like yesterday when I would sit patiently for 30 some odd hours for my little 8Mhz 68000 to churn out a frame of animation. Good times, good times.
So over the years I've dabbled and tweaked and played with quite a bit of software, and I always keep getting drawn back to the question of style. I've always had a soft spot for traditional 2D artwork, and I still haven't seen a single frame of 3D that can convey the subtle expressiveness that Chuck Jones and his unit at Warner Brothers cranked out on a monthly basis.
As it happens, I submitted a script to Fox a few years ago when they had an open call for new animation projects. As it turns out, they went through quite a bit of labor and discovered this bright (sic) fellow named Seth MacFarlane (really sic). And as luck would have it, he already had a show on Fox, so it seemed fitting to just give him another. Though a bust in the in the competition, I've become quite attached to the little story that I churned out in two weeks.
Of course, what's keep me from making my own little movie, sticking it on YouTube, and becoming famous overnight? I mean, other than the fact that YouTube pretty much sucks away time like its great grandfather, the television. A more obvious reason is style. I've played with anime, primitive shapes, traditional CGI, even Japanese stick puppet theatre. None really struck me as a style that was going to work.
Until last winter.
After getting fired up by Scott McCloud's latest book (see previous post), I've done a lot of research and now, at last, I think I have an illustration style that fits the story.
So, here is the culmination of quite a bit of time laboring away to create some reasonable hacks to bring a 2D look into a 3D animation work flow. The first workable model for Candee Jones, a.k.a. Superchick.
More later.
Kelvin
All artwork and images copyright 2007 Kelvin Hickman
2 comments:
Nice work!
Is this still Animation Master?
.trey
Yep. I seem to have a pathologic connection to that program. No idea why, maybe I just like the underdogs in the software biz: Amiga, BeOS, Expression, etc. Perhaps therapy is in order.
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