CRToonMike Posted October 1, 2006 Posted October 1, 2006 Hi all! This thread will, hopefully, document the development of my series that I've been working on for years and years. I've been drawing these grape characters most of my life and I had a storyline that I tried on many occasions to draw/model and animate. As hard as I tried, nothing really "clicked" with me. Until two weeks ago. I was sketching a grape character and suddenly had a Breakthrough moment when I adjusted the porportions of the generic grape person and had a drawing that clicked with me. And then I had a rush of inspiration of the world that these characters live in and its history.It was as if all these ideas were just under the surface and waiting for the breakthrough character sketch to come forth. It's often said that when designing a character, the artist should know the character's history and personality. When that happens the character becomes real. That's just what happened to me with this latest incarnations of this world and its characters. Attatched to this post is a character line-up where some of the major players are shown in context with each other. I'll be developing the individual character sheets in the days to come. I'm working on concept design and the storyboards/script for the first installment and will post progress as it happens. In this thread I'll be sharing the visual development and modeling/rigging/animation of this series. I welcome any and all suggestions, comments and especially criticism. I hope that by maintaining this thread, it'll give me motivation to make consistent progress with this project. One last thing, the character Nophia does have hair. I just haven't decided on a style yet. This drawing (and other 2-D drawings/sketches) was created Manga Studio 3.0 from E-frontier ( the peeps who bring us Poser). This is a comic creation software that I've found to be not only easy to use, but works excellently for character design and concept art. thanks for reading and don't hesitate to comment, Mike Quote
case Posted October 1, 2006 Posted October 1, 2006 neat love the detail i cant wait till there are modeles in a:m keep us posted-CONNOR CASE Quote
Duke Posted October 1, 2006 Posted October 1, 2006 Hi Mike Nice looking characters, my favorite is Rowash Connix, of the lineup, he's the one that stands out for me. I think you can do much with him. as for Mondo Mongo,, mmm he kinda looks like the odd one out. not sure what it is,, possibly his head or his eyes, all the others have expressive eyes. anyway thats just my thinking. other than that I think they would look great in 3D. will keep checking your progress, should develop nicely. good luck with the project. Leo Quote
Admin Rodney Posted October 1, 2006 Admin Posted October 1, 2006 Mike, Nice character drawings. While I assume you have animation in mind your comic book talent is definitely showing through. Looking forward to seeing more of Crazy Water and your WIP evolution. Quote
trajcedrv Posted October 5, 2006 Posted October 5, 2006 cool characters! please keep us posted! Quote
Nunsofamerica Posted October 6, 2006 Posted October 6, 2006 love the character designs. keep it up! Quote
CRToonMike Posted October 8, 2006 Author Posted October 8, 2006 Been way too busy, have to get a table of contents out for the book I'm writing and some school projects. But... I'll be getting one of them there Mac Pro towers on Monday (3Ghz, ATI 9100xt whatever card, 1Tb of HD space, yadda yadda). So I think that next weekend will be a time of a bit of work. Thanks for the comments everyone! Quote
Dhar Posted October 8, 2006 Posted October 8, 2006 1tb??? We're in tb now?? This industry just never ceases to amaze me? Congratulations Quote
CRToonMike Posted October 20, 2006 Author Posted October 20, 2006 Yeah, Dhar, one Terrabyte. Back in the day 40 mb hard drive and 4Mb Ram was awesome. Times change. Anyway, been using A:M 13 universal binary on my new Intel Macintosh and it screams. Very stable. Neat version. So I've been modeling and getting back into the A:M flow of things. First off, the joints set-up tute by 3D Artz is worth every penny I paid for it. The best part about the tute is that the entire use of a mesh is concidered. It's helped me be a better modeler in A:M and (hopefully) make things nice when I rig the characters. Here's a set of 5 screen captures of the Nophia Character. Just the basic body and eye (looks too goulish w/o the peeper, y'know) for 1/2 of the figure (will cfa when I'm happy with the mesh). If anyone wants to, tear apart the mesh. I intend these characters to be animated, so critique with that in mind. If the mesh is too messed up, go ahead and tell me, I want to be a good modeler with A:M and if re-doing makes me better, so be it. The screen captures are a bit large, but that's so the details can be captured. If there's any thing else I can post (like close ups of areas) let me know, I'll have it up asap. Thanks everyone, for taking the time to look at this. m!ke Quote
Tralfaz Posted October 20, 2006 Posted October 20, 2006 Here I go dating myself... The first computers I used at work were RAIR black boxes that were imported into Canada from England. They cost $15K a pop and came with a 5 MByte Winchester hard drive and 128 KByte RAM. However, you could only use 64K at a time and had to bank switch between the two 64K segments. Color monitors consisted of green and black (hee hee). Then we moved to IBM PCs with a blazing fast 4.77 MHz processor, a whole 512KByte RAM and an endless 10 MByte hard drive. Came with two 5.25" floppy drives as well!! Anyway, back to the topic on hand... Things are look really good Mike. Looks like you are being faithful to your drawings. Keep up the great work. Al Quote
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