Mythical Circus- The Chimera and the Manticore

Early designs of two ancient Greek mythological beasts I had in mind for the mythical circus. The chimera and the manticore are two famous legendary creatures that have had many visual portrayals, but this is my interpretation.

 Chimera is a beast known to have three heads all from different animals. A lion, a goat and a snake. Though if I ever wanted to animate this creature, I'd rather have it with just one head. So I created a hybrid between the three animals. I think it looks a bit like a Chinese dragon, being a long serpent with horns and a lion's mane.

 The manticore is a lion beast with bat wings and a scorpion tail. I felt the wings may of made it look a bit ridiculous, so I put a type of fin going down its spine. This manticore is part of a kind of lion taming act in the mythical circus.

The Mythical Circus

So I've had this idea for a while now and have done quite a bit of sketchbook doodles from it, but I now want to create some production work for it as if it was being made into an animated film. It's a flying circus made up of mythical beings and creatures. Wouldn't surprise me if there have been stories similar to this concept, but I've got my own vision of this circus.

 The circus flies around the world in a flying ship structure. This is the first sketch I've done of it, but I may re-design this concept later on.

 An idea for a circus act is to have air acrobatics performed by harpies. Harpies are mythical creatures which are half women and half bird, so it fits in well with air acrobatics, as they would be natural aerodynamic.  

When doing rough sketches of the harpies I realized how much life drawings lessons really improved my ability to draw human figures.

 In the history of circus acts and freak shows, bearded women were a popular attraction. For this circus a bearded gorgon seems more interesting. Gorgons are women with hair made of snakes and the ability to turn people to stone with a single stare.

New Character- Cloud the Leopard

This is another character I've been sketching out recently, a clouded leopard called Cloud. (Name may not be very imaginative.)

 Once again this was a good chance for using Photoshop and getting more used to digital artwork as oppose to traditional sketch book work. Not that I don't enjoy traditional drawing and painting, it's just working on Photoshop allows me to create finished work that are uploaded on line clearly.  

 When drawing facial expressions I had a mirror on my desk and pulled the faces I was sketching to reference from. By doing this I could add small details to certain parts of the face to convey different emotions.

 Cloud was based more on a domesticated house cat rather than a wild big cat found in the wild. She's not suppose to have a savage personality, so I didn't look at wild animals for reference. Another reason for basing her on a domesticated pet was because when I first drew sketches of Cloud, she resembled characters from 'The Lion King,' and so she didn't look very original.

 Finally I experimented with this character in Adobe Flash. It's been a while since using this software and took a while getting use to hand drawn animation, but I manage to make this very rough sequence.

Photoshop Self Portrait

Practising in Photoshop by drawing a self portrait. Earlier in the year there was a Photoshop lesson in self portraits, but I lost most of the drawings I did in the session, and the only portrait I had I wasn't happy with. So here's a better one which I spent more time on.

Dylan- Character Development

Been doing a bit of concept artwork for my tapir character, and creating a story that could be made into an animation. Still I'm going to focus on modelling and rigging Dylan, with some small animations to go with him, and maybe work on the production of a short animation but not make the film itself similar to the 'script to screen' project from first year.

Dylan's home

Figure Drawings

 Thanks to the tombola of dreams, I was very fortunate to win two human anatomy figurers. I find them very useful as they show the various muscles under the skin of the human body.

I did some pencil sketches then experimented with pen and ink wash, and finally sketched them from life in Photoshop.

Just invested in a new graphics tablet and wanted to put it through it's paces. Very happy with how it works and I'm really enjoying Photoshop work.

Maya Tutorials- Tail and Eye Rig

Testing out a the eye rig in animation

Animal Studies- Dog

A few quick sketches I've drawn of my dog. I wanted to understand the movements a four legged animal makes as they walk, run or pounce. Drawing my dog from life really helped me to think carefully about the weight distribution on each limb, and consider which way the body leans as the animal moves into a new position. I'll be doing more animal studies over summer, as I hope it will help me with traditional animation.

Boris the Dog