Color Theory - Project 3

The third assignment for my Color Theory class was to pick a celebrity and create an analogous split complementary painting that tells their story with color.  Easy, I know.  After failed attempts at the likes of Megan Fox, Natalie Portman, and even Sarah Chalke, I finally came back to reality and chose Steven Spielberg.  I found a fantastic picture of him in that famous director pose where they use their hands to frame a shot.

Then, I had to render that image, simplifying the shapes and assigning values that create form.  Additionally, I had to think about the story I wanted to tell with my illustration.  I also had to find another picture of Steven where I could actually see his left hand (since the right part of this image is blocked) and had to try to blend it into the scene.

You'll notice I also placed extra emphasis on the eyes to make sure that the focal point is clear.  He sees the composition of his shot through his hands with his eyes.  This was actually drawn roughly on paper first, then values were cleaned up and assigned in Photoshop, which made it much easier to play around with the values and colors of each shape.

Speaking of the colors of each shape, I decided to go with the Red Analogous Split Complementary color scheme, using the complementary Green around the eyes and splashed around the "Golden Rectangle" that his hands create.  Cool colors for the hair and background, oranges for the face, and reds for the hands.

You can then see how all that work was for not, as my horrid painting abilities killed all my weeks of preparation (okay, so I can honestly say that it looks a bit better in reality than this scan shows, but it's still not so great).  Gouache painting is not as fun as you may think...especially when you also have Layout Design and Preproduction work to get done, too.  I think I'll be rather pleased when this semester is over...

Fuzzy Fury Rescue Friends: Back in Action

Now that I've finalized the content of my three thesis stories, I can start to focus on them one-by-one.  First up: Fuzzy Fury Rescue Friends.  This is my 3-D animated feature-length story, and I'm focusing on the climactic twist when we discover that the Unicorn was not actually kidnapped by the Dodo Bird, but was, in fact, constructing an elaborate plan to get the Dodo out of the picture so he could open up the portal to the Land of Imagination!!!  Whoa!  Below are some sketches of me continuing to figure out the character anatomy and then some presentation storyboards I did of an earlier story moment for this dramatic sequence.

[*all boards done traditionally with pencil on paper]

Shuttle Shorts

Good news everyone!  My hiatus from Blog posting has not been without good reason: I've had to nail down my three story ideas for my Thesis Project.  And that "good news" that I mentioned earlier?  It's that I've finally nailed them down. :^)  The next step is to really start fleshing things out, and I came to a realization that I haven't actually boarded anything in over a year!  Yikes!  So, I've decided to brush the dust off my Mad Skillz with some short little sequences based on things I find funny and/or have overheard on various Academy of Art Shuttle trips.  Shuttle Shorts, they shall be called.  Hopefully this will help sharpen my neglected story senses, because this first one is pretty rough...

*RUMBLE.*

Sorry.  I'm trying not to throw myself all over you.

I'm going to pretend that's because you find me irresistible and not because of the laws of physics.