I Scream

I drew this guy for a friend of mine, since he gestated in her mind. He also happens to be the next character in the series of creepy re-imaginings of child entertainers. Hardly a series at the moment...considering how long it's been since I've posted the last one. Although I like the idea of having a couple of different series going on, just so I have some things to continually go back to. Anyway. Enough blabbering. Meet the I-Scream Man:

I'm not sure what else to say about him...I think the image says it all. There are two or three other characters I have in mind for this series. But if anyone happens to be enjoying these guys, and has ideas for more, feel free to suggest some. Maybe it'll put pressure on me to post more often...

Best,

  Evan

Backlog of Sketches

I've done a lot of scanning today so I can post a bunch of sketches I haven't yet had the chance to.

This first group is a bunch of images I sketched while in Washington D.C. last fall. Most of them were sketched at the National Museum of Natural History:

Coyote (Canis latrans)...

 Asian Elephant (Elephas maximus) from the National Zoo...

Grizzly Bear (Ursus arctos horribilis)...

African Bush Elephant (Loxodonta africana)...

Hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius)

Bull Moose (Alces alces), and a quick Restoration of Dimetrodon grandis

Candid people sketching at a local D.C. Cafe...

And here are some misc. sketches I've also come across.

Life figure drawing from a long time ago:

Continued creature concepts from an independent passion project...

Dragon-like creature thing...

Cycloptic creature...

Vulture...

Frog...

Old-Man Blocky...

Hand Study...

Last summer I drew this because I randomly remembered the book, The Whingdingdilly, which I loved as a child. It inspired me to draw all sorts of strange chimeras when I was young...

My dog, Teddy, in his famous "Walrus" pose. He does this so much that we've started using walrus as a verb...

Furry Rhino-Monkey Creature. Don't ask...because I don't have an explanation. 

Experimenting with drawing different styles of "cartoony" people...

 More critters...a crocodylian and some sort of giant worm-thing...

Skeletal creature...not based on any specific animal...

Yet another creature design...

 Aliens of sorts...

A Lamenting Pig...

-Evan B.

Stock Rig Part 3

The Stock Rig I've been working on in my free time is "complete!" I got the motivation I needed this past weekend, and finished a full face/full body rig in much less time than I ever have before.

It required 30 blendshapes for the face and has IK/FK switching on all the limbs. Pretty basic stuff really...

I want to continually update this rig with more features as I go. I already know I'm going to add in a great deal of Squash and Stretch controls that I didn't get the chance to do just yet. If anyone has any suggestions for cool features they'd like to see, let me know.



I've also done some animation tests to see how it holds up. I want to keep doing short lip-sync/acting exercises like this regularly to help improve my animation skills.



And feel free to guess where the audio clip comes from.

-Evan

Stock Rig Part 2

It's been a while since I posted anything, but that doesn't mean I haven't been up to anything. Most of my time recently has been spent travelling (for the Holidays), sending out job applications, and undergoing some independent study to help improve my understanding of higher-level mathematics, as well as programming (related to the job search).

Last post I mentioned the stock rig I've started to push my cartoony character rigging skills, as well as to have a custom rig to do acting exercises with. Overall, it's been incredibly nice to work on a cartoon again, as I'm still sort of recovering from the Thoracosaurus. Below you can see the full model of the stock rig. I decided to give him polygonal hair, to match an early sketch I did before I started building the guy. The hair is on a separate layer though, so different hairstyles can be swapped in and out as desired. This character doesn't have a name yet, so feel free to make suggestions if you wish.



I also have about an entire book and a half of sketches I still need to post, but the logistics of where my computer is compared to my scanner has been preventing me from doing it. Lots of cool things to come when I finally get them posted, though...everything from creatures and cartoon characters, to candid sketches of people as well as animals. Hopefully one of these days I can bring myself to post them.

Stock Rig

In the midst of waiting to hear back from my advisor regarding my thesis document, and while searching for employment, I've decided to stay busy.  I don't want to get rusty, and want to keep pushing my abilities. Lately I've really been in the mood to do some animation acting work. I was tempted to pull out one of the many stock rigs floating around the internet, but was reluctant to do so. I've become jaded of seeing the same rigs in countless work online, so I decided to also push my rigging chops and build a stock rig of my own.

The idea is to have a simple character that I can use to practice animation. With this exercise, I also want to push my modeling and rigging techniques to the extreme, by adding a lot of functionality (especially extreme squash and stretch abilities).

I am also pushing my limits by trying to make this character as close to my cartoony drawing style as possible. I'll periodically update my progress on here, and if I deem the final result worthy enough, I'll even make the rig available for free download.

So far I've built the head, and have been undergoing RnD on more efficient ways to set up the functionality of the dorsal-ventrally elongated eyes that are commonly found in my characters.

-Evan B.

Shovel Man

Concepts for a stereotypical fictitious murderer, Shovel Man. This is a character me and my brother barely made up in order to scare our cousins... I posted a really rough sketch a couple posts back from when we first made him up, but I felt compelled to flush him out a bit more...

Sketches from Maine

So I'm back from my week long family reunion/anniversary party in Maine. I got a lot of quality time with my Mom, brothers, as well as various cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents. Everything went perfectly. One highlight was getting to see a bald eagle fly right past the house on lake Maranacook where we were staying. This was a first for me, and I was very excited about it. Also got tons of fresh seafood which is always a plus...anyway enough reminiscing about last week, here are the sketches I did while up there. I didn't really take the time to do any candid life sketching, but I enjoyed these little beasties I concocted:

This first guy, i started drawing some sort of dinosaur, then decided to make it more interesting by adding in human features in it....I then kept that for my theme and created this human-dino hybrid creature. It's a little eerie to look at, but it was fun to do.

Next we have this little guy. I have no idea what he is...I just thought he was cute :)

Next we have this canid. I really liked the pose I put him in, and thought the expression was too good to not add something for him to be reacting to.

Now we have a graphic approach to a barn owl (Tyto alba). I started with the outlined shape on the left side, and tried to finish the form without disrupting the simplicity of the outline. I tried to contain as much of the character as I could inside that shape.

And finally, I got bored while waiting for my dinner at the Chick-A-Dee restaurant in Turner, Maine with some couple dozens of family members.  I drew this creature trying to keep the idea in mind that I wanted to create a monster that didn't resemble any living animal. It's really tough to do, and it's something I'm always trying to practice here and there. I particularly liked the idea of having suction-cup like legs, and a pair that sprout from the tail.

Misc. Sketches

So I have some various sketches to post before I forget. The first couple are people I sketched in Maine when visiting family.

Here, on the left we have a man playing with his cell phone while waiting for someone in Freeport. The right is a character my brother and I created to scare our cousins, named Shovelman. They got too scared before we even had the chance to give him a backstory....drat. Well he posed very nicely for this sketch, anyway.

Next we have one of those cousins, sitting at a fire pit. What I learned from this? Apparently when I draw people outside at night with only the light of the fire to aid me, they end up looking older than they are. 

Now we have some fun little critters that I sketched while waiting for things to process. First, there's an alligator (Alligator mississippiensis), then we have a three-toed sloth (Bradypus variegatus), and then a koala (Phascolarctos cinereus). Notice how freakishly strange koala's front paws are....you can't make that stuff up!

I'm going back to Maine for all of next week, and there should be plenty of down time for sketching! I even bought a new sketchbook for the occasion. I know I'm excited.

Sketchbook Backlog

So I'm just about finished with my current sketchbook, and there are a lot of misc. things in there. This sketchbook spans the time from last fall until now. so here's a bunch of random things:

So where to start? There's another concept for my evolution animation idea, as well as some dino sketches, including an extremely inaccurate/unrealistic Edmontosaurus. We also have a pig demon riding a babirusa for some reason. Then a sweet imaginary bird-like thing, a stylized turtle, and mechanical Frigatebird (Fregata magnificens mechanicaliensis).

Here are a couple more strange critters. 

Here we have a crocodile, some sort of strange Parasaurolophus-humanoid alien thing, and a giant angry rodent.

This here is the result of misc. people-watching excursions around the city this year. When I'm waiting for a train or if I'm early to an event of some sort, I'll usually take the time to practice drawing and get ideas from the people around me. All of these are sketches of random people, or are characters inspired by real people that I spotted. They are all from various places in Philadelphia.

Here we have an exaggerated, cartoony amphibian of some sort, along with a creature, combining influences from sauropods and fish.

Yet another creature concept

A sketch test for the header banner of this blog.

A strange alien thing that I drew the night I decided to start blogging. I haven't spent so much time on a single still image in a while, so this was refreshing. There are lots of different influences in this. I didn't give this guy any sort of back-story or name yet. This is just the result of me sitting down and letting my mind wander.

...and here's a quick sketch of the skull of a Mountain Gorilla (Gorilla beringei). That's all for now, Now that this collection of images is up I can continue to just post things as I draw them, opposed to posting mass collections of stuff every couple months.