Like any good artist, I have a teetering heap of squillions of sketchbooks, filled with doodles, concepts, character designs, typography experiments and other assorted scribbles from my many varied projects. Rather than having this stuff hide away where nobody can see them, I felt obliged to start collecting them here as a further elaboration of my design and illustration skills (and besides, who doesn't like looking at concept art?) This time around, the focus is on my comic strip Cosmos, which - as shown in my other Behance folios - has also expanded out into motion graphics and 3D modelling. I've grouped together material from my general character visualisation, as well as a whole lot of concept stuff from the Cosmos Monster Movie Survival Guide and the 3D models I crafted of Tony Corvell and Mr. Roboto - and if I find any more Cosmos stuff hiding around, I'll add it in here as well!
1) Hailing from my 'B-Group' Cosmos cast is Timmy Masters, a type-one Cosmosian and one of the youngest members of the crew (eight years old and in Primary school). For aqua-green soccer balls with feet, I can certainly squeeze a lot of animation and dynamism out of the type-ones; through the liberal use of squash-n-stretch, facial expressions, action poses and the fact that (somehow) their feet also serve as hands. Creating a walk cycle was also an interesting challenge, given that they don't actually have any legs - but given how mobile Type-ones 'Fands' are (capable of sliding all the way up to the tops of their heads, or even 'detatching' when they need to hold something like an open book), this turned out be a very instructive process......
2) An illustrated 'logistics page' for The Cosmos Monster Movie Survival Guide, showing a proposed sequence of events for the short film, as well as sketches of what some of the scenes could look like. By the looks of things, t that stage, the Harryhausen-style Rhedosaurus in the final scene was shown as a generic monster-thing (fourth picture down, left page); and I had several other ideas that never made it into the final product (such as the 'periodic table of story elements' on the right page).
3) My original storyboards for the Monster Movie Survival Guide - comparing these to the final film, it's interesting to see what changed between point a and point b; even though the overall story structure is the same. The action is not divided up into a set of four 'chapters', for example, and the Ax-as-Pac-Man and car-breaking-down scenes are shorter and less elaborate than they ended up; as is the entire sequence with the blueprints, monster death cliches and 'Cue the gratuitous explosion!' Elaborating the scenes, of course, allowed me to add more gags, have more characters - such as Professor Pod, who ties the above sequence together nicely in presenting the info in a lecture hall, while the other characters (having reunited over the previous scenes) look on.
4) Model sheet and character description for Myra Cunningham, a later addition to the Cosmos cast - first appearing in 'Adventures in Staitonery', Myra is friends with Gene's girlfriend Jenny and Cosmosian robot Zoe; who work at the office supply store Stationery World.
5) Development pages for the 3D model of Tony Corvell (he of tony's Comic Utopia fame) I created during my time at Yoobee Design School. This splurge of design brainstorming was critical for the project, since I had to figure out what Tony looked like from all angles, how his particular anatomy would have to be translated into three dimensions once in Maya; and any tweaks that might have been needed to add to the design to make it WORK in 3D. Ultimately, though, aside from a few minor fiddles to his clothing - and those disc-things on the sides of his head, the 3D Tony ended up very close to the 2D one.....
7) Development and concept pages for Tony's trusty side-kick in 3D land, Mr. Roboto;
based, obviously, on wind-up tin robots from Japan.....
based, obviously, on wind-up tin robots from Japan.....
