Mike Sponged WIP

After the lesson at Sapir college today, I decided to join my students for their sponge sculpting lesson. I chose to sculpt a sketch of Mike from my “Skinners” storyboard. Never tried sculpting in sponge before... The softness is a real challenge - it’s quite hard to be accurate. Here’s the result after half an hour for preparation, and about 3 hours of sculpting. Will post more pics as the work continues.

Dysfunctional dam - environment prep

I'm not so good at set design, but here's my rough attempt  at two POVs in the room.  This is a beaver's home, so the way to get in and out is by diving through a hole in the floor. I gave the hole a door, and placed some towels by the entrance.  I'm going to have mama beaver wash dished, and I thought it would be cute if the "sink" is just another hole in the floor. The junk food is needed for the script, and I knoe the stove is a bit strange - but what the hey, I missed a big round shape and pushed in a stove. Sue me.

Dysfunctional Dam - prep designs

For my next storyboard assignment....

The script I chose is about a domestic fight in an inter-species family. Mom is a beaver, dad is a raccoon. I wanted them to look like one of those couples who are so busy in day-to-day survival, that they can't see the big picture anymore. They forgot what's really important, and so they get more and more beaten, bitter and fat by the day. 

A few older versions:

His or Hen's - preperation sketches

I forgot to mention that the "His or Hen's" story was developed by me and my girlfriend together. Couldn't have done it without her.

I'm not much of a color person, somehow I get bored by very detailed color work. I threw in some colors just as an indication, but I wish I had the patience to really make a painting out of this. I can see a lot of opportunity for interesting lighting here. 

Springboard: a storyboarding software

A long time ago I promised to tell y'all about Springboard, a small but powerful storyboarding software I'm using. I love this software, and here is why.

• Basic drawing tools: the drawing tools are good enough for getting the point across, but they're too simple for beautifully executed artwork. This makes it easier for me to stay focused on storytelling.
• Zoom: you can zoom in and out. It's great to be able to take a step back and "watch the film", then go in again and draw. These screenshots show my 'story pass' for "catch!".

• Export/Import: When I was happy with my story pass, I did a 'drawing pass' - exported the panels, re-drew them in a different program, and imported them back in. You can even do this automatically, using an "external editing" feature.
• Presentation: Once the stuff is ready, Springboard offers an amazing variety of presentation outputs - you can pretty much arrange the panels into every storyboard format known to man. You can export them to HTML, as I've done in my previous post. The presentation can include text (there's a text box for each panel), timing (you can time it inside Springboard, play it, and even export it as AVI), headers, footers, filename, date - you name it.
  
• It's CHEAP!

The program does have some flaws, especially concerning stability. However, (a) I'm using an old version, so they might have fixed some bugs, and (b) the problems are absolutely minor compared to the software's amazing advantages.

Check it out! The trial version is fully operational except for printing (at least, that's the way it was when I first tried it).

Looking for style

More design pondering for the children book I'm illustrating.

Art and process: William Whitaker

Behold the art of William Whitaker. Very romantic stuff, very classic, beautifully executed. As a bonus - it's not very often that you see a non-digital artist taking the time to show his process. This guy does. Look under demonstration.