Sans, the Cheeky Monster

Another commission, and progress on this was recorded with even more granularity. This one was commissioned by Skulldog, a fellow artist from my own home state of New Hampshire.

First an initial sketch based on the reference material provided by Skulldog.

This character is named Sans and he's a kind of bird gator dog like monster.

 

Keys established describing the general motion.

Both these steps were done in Clip Studio Paint

Switching to TVPaint, The keys are translated over.

Some keys dropped or redrawn to better clarify the motion and focus.

Sans is going to laugh, so a "z" is drawn where I'll be jagging the motion.

Some laughter added.

More frames added and the laughter motion solidified. Face on the second key pose made crazier and goofier at the same time to better describe the character's personality.

Wing motion reworked to clarify silhouette and motion. Wing drop added to draw the eye down towards bottom third and add focus on face.

Tail added in and details start emerging. Back feet drawn in.

More details, feathers, puff more obvious.

And it's done! Now with shadows, pupils, and even more feathers.

I'm pleased with how this came out. I've felt my weakness in animation was "breathing", making the character react to moments with the way it drew in breath. So this animation challenged that weakness and had me experiment with more ways to suggest rapid breath (laughter in this case) and using breath as an anticipation tool.

Building a Sea Dragon

I was comissioned to animate a sea dragon (based on the sea horse relative) and this being one of my first swimming animations, I was fairly excited to get to it. Anybody familiar with my work would know I love monsters and dragons especially, so this was something else that got me eager to start.

Initial pass on 6s to get that motion roughed out.

Most of this was completed while at a panel of drunken experts explaining their field at a convention. Including one animator!

Now on 3s (where it will stay).

Tightening up the motion and nailing down the details a bit more.

Inbetweens in. Cleaned up enough I could follow what was happening and move on to inks.

Body first. Face was a winner from the start,

but the back end needed some tightening. 

Wing added, more frills.

Body motion smoothed out to be less choppy.

Considered whether to keep it at this level of complexity, or go further.

Went further :D

MORE details! More frills. 

Finished image.

More detail. Shadow applied to better follow motion of limbs. Some hatching even!

And a snappy second pair of wings.

Pretty please how this came out.

The mix of seal and snake motion was a challenge to nail but so satisfying to watch.

Giant Dragon Birds

done in TVPaint and After Effects

In my spare time, I've been engaging in a group art game called "Dracostryx" run by a friend of mine. It functions a little like Dungeons and Dragons, but to progress through the game you make illustrations rather than roll dice. You receive a character called a dracostryx with unique markings you design yourself and then create a rider for them. Kind of like How to Train Your Dragon, but with giant toothy birds instead of Toothless.

Here's a few of my favorite illustrations from the group.

done in TVPaint and Photoshop

Training a Bad Bird

Eagle Chase

Miscellaneous

Concepts

Concept for rider

Another rider concept

Imagining motion, poses, angles

Clay: Dinosaur Beat Em Up (Animatic and Designs)

Nickelodeon was shopping around for pitches while I was working at Six Point Harness and I figured it was a good excuse to get my pitch cherry popped. Having done work on several pitches for people before this, I wanted to pitch something of my own.

"Clay" features a little raptor training for a dinosaur fighting tournament. The idea was my own, the script was by Clint Pereira and Ashton Wagner, and the designs and boards/animatic are by me as well. The scratch voices are all three of us (none of us are trying out for voice acting, but we did our damndest to sell the emotion at least)

Rough designs for the characters

Blackblood Alliance: Boards, Environments, and Lighting Design

Blackblood Alliance:  Preview

Between 2014 and early 2015, my friend Kay Fedewa and I worked on a collaborative comic called "Blackblood Alliance", a reboot of an earlier comic of the same name. This preview tested our workflow.

Scripting, character rendering and designs were done by Kay.

The environments, lighting design, contributions to character design, and boarding were done by me.

Blackblood Alliance:  Redux

Additionally, after completing these preview pages, we did another pass to further refine our workflow. This page is a reworking of a scene from our earlier comic.

Boarding and environment design with character design contributions by myself.

Scripting by Kay Fedewa.

Additional lighting notes contributed by Jennadelle.

Patreon Wallpapers

And below are just some fun wallpapers we did for our patrons on Patreon. I was responsible for composition, environment design, lighting, effects, and inkwork.

Umbagog: Ambush

8 Page Preview

The zombie apocalypse...in North Country New Hampshire

This comic was completed in Summer of 2014 as an 8 page preview to the final product (to be released Late Summer 2015). It served as a test of my skills at the time: to determine how long it would take me to complete a page so I could decide a solid upload schedule; and--critically--to prevent psyching out over launching such a major project.