This ended up taking much longer than I thought it would. My painting style is very slow, and it took forever to get the lips right. It's already set to wallpaper size if anyone's interested.
My main inspiration was the photography of Lewis Hine, but I was kind of going for a Shohei Otomo look. I initially wanted the rendering to be much simpler. but my skills aren't quite there yet to be able to reduce it down so much and retain the realism I wanted.
Lineart was done in Sketchbook Pro and Painted in PS
About a month ago I had the pleasure of working with one of my favourite bands, 'Johnny Hollow'. They needed some Flash animation for their IndieGoGo crowd sourcing campaign.
It was a huge buzz working with them and one of the most fun projects I've worked on. The video is up online now. My work starts about 30 seconds in, and is spread out through the video.
I've been getting more in to illustration the last couple of months. It's a nice break from the usual pace, and I'm enjoying getting at least something up on to the site.
In the last month or so, I've been working on one of the funnest freelance projects I've done. I was able to work with one of my favorite bands to create some animation for their crowd sourcing campaign, and I'm pretty proud with how it turned out. Can't say much else about it until the video is released some time this month. I won't be able to submit it to the portal, but I'll be sure to whack it in a news post :)
I'm kicking myself for not painting this in a higher resolution. As is the case when I start working on something that I think is going to be some crappy little thumbnail, I end up going a bit overboard.
I wanna do a Mario parody at some point in the future. yeah yeah, we've all seen gritty realistic Mario stuff, I've got a good idea though and think I can do something new with it. I'm too swamped with freelance work to even start in the next couple of months, but I'm hoping this will be my next project. The idea was burning a hole in me, so I had to draw something for it.
It's been a long time since I've created anything that isn't for a larger scale project. I wanted to get something done that I could knock out in a couple of hours and just chill out to, so I did a painting.
The response to Batman Hates Bronies has been awesome! The long hours we put into it really paid off. It's our first video that's gone truly viral since Tarboy.
Getting more movies out over the next 6 months is our first priority, but we're still completing freelance projects as they come. Hania and I have got a few original movies in the pipeline too. We were thinking of doing a kind of 'show' based off some of her more light hearted songs. We want to aim more towards the tone of Roller Coaster Junkie; just something simple and fun. I've designed a character rig based off her, with a really simple design and some easy shapes. I've had a lot of fun bending it around and it's refreshing getting back to simplicity after my last few projects.
I finally managed to get our new short 'Pregnetheus' up on NG, Check it out!
Typically I like to get my work out on NG and my Youtube channel simultaneously, but I had a couple of issues converting to .mp4 so it's up here a few days late. We're already working on a new short which we are hoping to get out at the end of July.
Aside from that, I have an Official Facebook Fan Page now. There's already a couple of fan pages for Tarboy, but they aren't controlled by me, so updates aren't guaranteed. If you want to keep up to date with all of my current and future project, just Like the page.
Someone is going to ask about Tarboy II. It's still coming, I'm just going to do some smaller stuff in the mean time, for the sake of sanity and also getting more youtube subscribers before I release it.
We just submitted our 'sort of valentines day themed' movie 'Short and Sweet' . Check it out!
We didn't finish Tarboy 2 by the end of last year as we had planned. Things are still moving with it, just very slowly. Every time some freelance work pops up, we have to place it on the backburner. I'll try to get some new production art up on the blog some time soon. Thanks to everyone who's waiting patiently.
In other news. Hania and I were approved for our 5 year US Visa's last week, so we're looking forward to meeting many of you on Pico Day :)
It's been a pretty draining couple of weeks. We only got to our 20th animation on the day before we completely burnt out and couldn't go on any longer. Over the next few days I was determined to finish off the remaining 4, but it was so draining even trying to completely a minimal amount of animation. I'm noly just recovering from a pain in the upp shoulder that I developed over the day from using the mouse for such a long period.
Doing this project was a reminder how much I need to start getting out a few smaller projects in between my larger films. Getting one film out per year lets me really focus on quality, but it's not exactly sustainable in the long run unless I'm continuously growing my fan base by periodically releasing content.
I've separated out some of the videos from 24in24 and made them into their own submissions on youtube. One video contains only the episodes from Toast and Cloud, and another is just Gross Nyan Cat. They aren't really substantial enough for my to post them as individual submissions on Newgrounds I don't think. It'll be interesting to see if it's beneficial in the end.
Tarboy 2 is still coming along, it's just been on hold for the last couple of weeks while we get all of this 24in24 stuff sorted.
