Pin Up Posers

I overdosed on spies yesterday so spent some time doing other drawings, trying to get some movement into my poses. The realy bad ones aren't getting shown ever but I have some I do like. It made me want to revisit life drawing and play around with form, but there don't seem to be enough hours in the day anymore.

Space Spies

I don't know why they're in Space, probably something important and secret.

Also there was a swimmer to save the day.

Skiings

I wanted to get all of the poses for the titles sorted today, which almost happened. I have two more sets to clean up all nice before they're all ready to go, but for now skiiers.

Soon, space travellers!

Line Art

No colours I'm afraid, but here's a few of the in-situ type poses from my title sequence.

Roma

Gaaagh! This took too long. I wanted to get a few more done tonight but I'm going to get some characters posed and ready to go instead.

Is yellow a good colour for Italy? It's the colour of pasta...

Patriotic Shmatriotic

This is a quick layout test for one of my backgrounds, it's one of the less complicated ones so I thought I'd give it a go. The shot in the title sequece will pull back to reveal the characters posing in front of the statue, with new york in the background, maybe some jest flying overhead. This will also have the title over the top of it so I can fill up all the empty space.

Tomorrow will be spent finalising most of the others so hopefully I'll have more to show by then.

Spy Guy

This is my current design for the ever-so-suave leader of the group of spies in my title sequence.
I finished the animatic today, it works so well with the Charlie's Angles theme but I'm going to find something better soon.

There's a few things I want to change on the animatic, I'm trying to up the scope of the intro, I think it could still be a bit more over the top, but I probably wouldn't post it here anyway. I'm hoping to make progress on the backgrounds for the titles tomorrow, they're planned out and ready to go, I'll just need a solid day of drawing.

A 60's Seductress

This is a second design for one of the female agents, I've been looking back at some of the Bond girls over the years and Ursula Andress in Dr. No is always going to the archetype, but the way I imagine the title sequence there will be a lot of outfits and locations so I'm sure I can sneak a reference in there somewhere.

I've started some sketches for the suave gentleman spy which I should find their way here soon. Mad Men's Don Draper is quite likely to be a big influence for his look, but he won't just wear suits, he'll have some nifty sweaters too.

Sultry Spies

After a week of testing out my abilities within After Effects I'll be spending the next fortnight creating a title sequence for a fictitious television show, or two.

The first of my ideas is a 60's spy show involving an older, and extremely suave gentleman spy and his two deadly female agents, travelling the globe in persuit of dastardly wicked types.

I've been looking at the early Bond films, Charlie's Angels and some of old spy series like I Spy with Bill Cosby and noticed how that era never realy had a young male as the hero, everyone was nearer to middle aged. Roger Moore was 45 when he took on the role of Bond, and was there until he was 58!

Below is an initial design of the first female agent, and my attempt to be stylish.

Slo Mo Jump

Slo Mo Jump from Darren Findlay on Vimeo.

So After Effects is a go. Most of this week is going to be spent watching a bajillion tutorials to try and get to grips with it all, but I had to try my hand at some slo mo, because it makes everything feel a little bit more epic. It's made up of old drawings, but I'm thinking it might be nice to get away from these characters for a while and have some fun with non bendy people.

Big Bad Boss Expressions

I think I'm happier with these expressions than I am with Bubblegum Girl's, I tried to push the rotation of the head a bit more to get used to drawing him from interesting angles.

I made the same mistake of starting quite rushed and slowly loosened up and put a bit more with each expression, so the last few took way longer than they should. I'm pleased with this as a way of exploring the limitations of the character, as he will mainly be in Rage mode during the film. It's fun seeing him Despondent, and I'm sure I'll incorpotarate the Disgusted expression into the film when he starts melting.

Hollow/Blank wins the day though.

Bubblegum Expressions

Wowser, this took a lot longer than I thought.

Fitting Bubblegum Girl into the 25 Essential Expressions template from DeviantArt was my goal for today, and I'm pretty happy with most of them, some feel rushed looking back , and some are overworked, but I have a much better sense of the character so all's well.

I like Flirty, Tired and Despondent (even though I had to Google it).

I tried to play around with hairstyles while I was going to keep it interesting, and I'm still not sure which ones I'll take forward. Bubblegum Girl will start the film with her hair down, then tie it up before her first fight, because a furiosly whipping ponytail isn't gonna be my main priority when it come to the animation.

I'll get the Big Bad Boss' Expressions going soon.

Bendy Trees

I've been planning the few big backgrounds from the film today. These will work as the establishing shots of each new area and eachj needs to have its own distinguishing style.
The first is the opening shot of the park where Bubblegum Girl runs into some troublesome henchmen. The park itslef will be very heavily influenced by Japanese parks where you can often not tell that they lie in the centre of huge citites, and they have bendy foliage.



This second piece is the first shot of Bubblegum Girl as she hides out in the grimey back street of the city. I'm not so subtly putting a major plot point into this background, so hopefully it reads.

Lady In Red

To quote my brother when I showed him some of my drawings yesterday:

"She's fit."

So, yeah...

I hadn't drawn any Bubblegum Girl in a while so spent some time doodling her, it's annoying because I can't get her finalised, she's in every scene in the film and will be on screen all the gosh darn time so needs to look good, be animatable, bendable, the whole shabang.

I've got something a bit different in mind that I'm playing around with for the style. If it works, or if I get some designy bits I like, they'll find their way here soon.

The Shadowy Figure

Here's some more coloured doodles of the Big Bad Boss.
I need to play around with his clothing soon, he deserves a wickidly despicable outfit.

Fire Escape

I've had a pretty hecticly awesome weekend and hadn't even thought about internet or drawing until today, which was a nice break but I'm now thinking I need to play catch up for a few days. I spend a good chunk of this evening drawing though, I hadn't drawn Bubblegum Girl for quite a while so spent some time getting back into my old bendy ways. Problem is I still draw a different person everytime, I got the Big Bad Boss finalised realy quickly,and tried a few different approaches today but didn't get anything final.

Unfortunatly I dont have a scanner here so I wont be posting any of my lovely bendy drawings until later in the week, but that does'nt mean i cant make my way through my back log of doodles. I've got some coloured that im going to put up later, but for now here's one of the shots from my film penned out all nice that I did last week.

I was hoping to colour it, but I may try a few colour schemes tomorrow instead.

DIY Facelift

I'm very much intending to get this into the film, because when it's animated Bubblegum Girl can let go!

The Melty Man!

Some more colour testing. It's quite difficult to determine the actual colours, I've seen it on three different screens and its a new scheme everytime!