Aqua

For one reason or another, I haven't been able to think straight all week. Ever since I came back from Dublin Comic Con, I've had SO MANY ideas and thoughts, that everything in my head kinda burred together. That, and a very hectic work-life-freelance week, means I haven't been able to draw much more than a doodle. So, inspired by the fact I got my helix pierced a few weeks ago, here's a sorta-self-portrait with a bit of an Atlantis Twang. :)

The Chicken Song | Update 01

I am incredibly excited about this project, and really couldn't wait to share it! Recently, I was approached by Ruth Butler to animate a music video for a song she had written. I'm about two weeks into this ten week project, and I'm happy to say that things are going very well. Ruth has a brilliant sense of humour and a clever way with words, which all poured into this quirky, entertaining little tale about a chicken and a golden egg.

Because the song is such a fun story, because Ruth wanted the lyrics to appear on screen, and because I needed to animate to a high standard quickly, I thought styling it like a comic book would be the best route to take. So saying, I'm looking forward to seeing the final result, and because I've designed everything according to both US Comic Book Dimensions, and HDTV, the story will look good in print as well as on screen when it's finished.

This is just one page in this little story, but there's a lot more to come that I'm very much looking forward to showing you!

PS: If you think that you, or someone you know, would have a good voice to sing a song like this, get in touch at allie22 (at) gmail.com! :)

The Little Black Book - Character Sketches

Click to enlarge it! 

A few weeks ago, I bought a little black sketchbook. I don't know what I intended to do with it originally, but it quickly became a little book of characters. They're generally quick sketches; usually around five or ten minutes, depending, and they're a lot of fun! Here's a collection of twenty-five of them. Some of them are completely original, some of them are characters I created for other projects, and some of them are inspired by or adapted from books or films or TV shows or art that I've come across.

Some of these characters have backstories, and a lot of them are calling out for colour, so you might see a few of them crop up again soon. I've got a lot of other fun projects in the works too, which I can't wait to share!

Layout Design | Atlantis

Atlantis again! This will probably be the last post I'll share about this project, for a while at least. The legend of Atlantis is one of my absolute favourite myths, though, so I'd love to revisit it at some point again. But for now, I'm going to leave you with a finished layout design for it. Click the image above to enlarge. 

Click through to see the a simple breakdown of the process.

Animation | Side Step

I have less than a week of classes left in this semester! It's been a tough one, no doubt about it. I've still enjoyed (almost) everything we've learnt, but it feels great to start wrapping everything up. Plus, I've got a whole lot of stuff planned to keep me busy in the summer, and I can't wait to get into all that; it kinda feels like a Friday, heading into a two/three month weekend. :)

Anyway, this is the latest animation I've been working on, and I've been really looking forward to sharing it! We were asked to use our own character (She's somewhat simplified, but does she look familiar?), plan it out, and eventually add colour and a background. Click through to see what I produced, from humble beginnings to the last stand.

Ps: If you stick around, you'll see this again soon! I've got a progression reel in the pipeline!

WIP | Atlantis | Character and Environment Design

Recently in college, we were tasked with pulling together a design package for a story based on "My Irish Myth." We were given the choice of working on a story that we're creating in groups (more on this later) or a new story of our own choice. I decided to go with a new story; The Lost City of Atlantis. It's not a "traditional" Irish myth, certainly, but there are some people who believe the city of Atlantis sank off the coast of the Emerald Isle, it's one of the best known myths globally, and it's one of my personal favourite legends, so I thought it suited the theme. At this stage, it's very much still a work in progress, but I'm having a bit of fun with it, and because it's St Patrick's Day, I wanted to write about something at least vaguely influenced by my culture. And so, today, I want to introduce to you the first character I've designed for the The Lost City of Atlantis (but with an Irish twang). 

This character is called Síofra (she-o-fra), which means elf or sprite. I'm still fleshing out the real spirit of her character, but at the moment at least, she's a mischievous Atlantean who likes to explore the world around her. 

And this is the first background layout I've drawn up; Síofra's house. Located in a cliff-edge environment, but with a distinct Irish style, the house sits on it's own tiny island and is reached only by a wood and rope bridge. 

Finally, I just want to say, Lá Fhéile Phádraig! Hope everyone's having a good St Patrick's Day! :)

Flash Game | The Getaway

BIG post today! I spent a solid chunk of last semester working on this interactive programming assignment. Weeks and weeks of drawing, animating, and coding, all working together to create a short and sweet little game called "The Getaway." Click HERE to play the game yourself!

"The Getaway" is a single-level flash platform game, which I made with my friend Kirsty. What I'm showing you today is the game bible, which basically shows you every element of design that became a part of the game; including character designs, environment layouts, user interfaces and start/finish screens. I also wrote a short(ish) backstory to give the game a bit of meaning, and added a few of the early sketches. Be sure to click on the images below to make 'em bigger, and click HERE to play the game yourself! :D

Don't Starve - Wednesday

Have any of you played the PC game, Don't Starve, by Klei Entertainment? If you haven't, you should! One of my assignments in college this term was to create a new character to be placed within an existing universe, and while some of my friends picked things like Adventure Time and Valiant Hearts, I picked Don't Starve. And I am so glad that I did!

So the first step in the process was research, research, research. I studied the game itself, paying attention to the the line weight, the colours, the shapes, and everything in between. I made some interesting discoveries that I might not otherwise have picked up on; almost every character in the game wears red, for example, and the males only have pupils, while the females only have whites in their eyes. The playable characters, as a set, are incredibly unified, right down to their names: almost all of them start with the letter W.

I also researched different types of characters that I might like to design; and eventually settled on a Horologist, whom I named Wednesday*. Then I was able to sketch out some ideas (throwing away most of them!) and eventually figured out how I wanted my character to look. Below, you can see how I drastically I changed the character from the original sketch into the final lineart.

The next step was colouring, which was a LOT of fun! We were taught a technique of colouring that I had never used before, which allowed for easy changes later on. It worked out quite well, I think! I experimented with different hues and things, but nevertheless I stayed true to the game's styling, and went with a predominantly red colour scheme, with a lot of black scribble detail.

The final part of the assignment was to place the character in different lighting situations, which was my favourite part, by far! We were given five different themes: 01) Mid-day sun 02) Dark rainy day 03) Moonlight 04) Sunrise 05) Haunted House. We weren't asked to design the backgrounds, per se, but I got a little carried away with them... 

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the end results. What do you think? Does my character fit in with Don't Starve? Do you have a favourite lighting condition?

*In honour of Wednesday Addams, whom I love, and think would fit in with the game perfectly! I also watched The Addams Family recently and remembered how much I loved it all over again. 

Tamara Glenn

Introducing Tamara Glenn! I drew this a few weeks ago, but spent so long fussing about with colours that I hated the sight of it. I'm still not 100% sure about the colour choices that I went with, but I wanted to share her character anyway. I'm still figuring out her backstory too, but eventually I'll put together proper character sheets for all of these. :)

Construction Worker A

I only realized when I came back to college (hurray!) that I forgot to post a few character designs I drew over the summer. This is one of them; A Construction Worker with a shovel. :)

Like the other character designs I've done, I started with a digital sketch and then went over that with a sketchy line-art style. 

Mishmash

Here's a whole bunch of doodle-pips and playin' around sketches and animations from August, which was a bit of a rollercoaster for me. There's some fanart (Animaniacs, Skottie Young's Oz characters, Up etc) some warm-up sketches, and a handful of distraction drawings/animations (you know the type - the things you do when you want to just take your mind off things). Hope all of you lovely people had a great August, and are as excited as I am to be saying hello to September. :)