Brad's Inspirational Spotlight and Study: Wes Anderson's "Isle of Dogs"

I've been a big fan of Wes Anderson's work for a long time now, and I was elated to hear his next film would be another stop motion piece. Wes being a director who clearly goes out of his way to have his sets and cinematography comply with his iconic style and aesthetic,  I'm guessing that after Fantastic Mr Fox that he realized he could not only control the set of his film's in stop motion, but the entire world. So now instead of making the interior of a room or a train look symmetrical, he could make everything on screen visually perfect for him, as seen in Fantastic Mr Fox, thus giving really bringing his style alive.

One of many great shots from Fantastic Mr Fox (2009) showing an entire symmetrical landscape.

I'm also excited to see this film adopt a Dystopian, and not too distant Japanese future setting (although visually the design of the universe seems to be old mixed with new, reminiscent of the Fallout games series) which is a world and culture I always find interesting to see western portrayals of. And also I just love dogs a lot, so to see all these great characters in these dogs is just fantastic!

Clay Sculpting Work Shop - Jotaro Kujo (from JoJo's Bizzare Adventure)

This term we took part in a clay sculpting work shop that was lead by Alan, I was unsure what to think about this as I had no prior experience when it came to this kind of art, but I was hoping that due to my interest in Mudbox and Zbrush that some of what I learned/enjoyed would carry over.

Over the next four weeks I would attempt to sculpt the head of Jotaro Kujo, protagonist of Hirohiko Araki's 80s cult classic manga, "JoJo's Bizzare Adventure: Stardust Crusaders"

The reason I chose this character was due to Araki's famous style at the time, which features very broad characters, with sharp and square features. I thought that it would be interesting how well I could convey this look in 3D physically while keeping it looking as real as possible, also part of this characters design that makes him so iconic is his hair, which blends into his hat making it look like they are connected, I was keen to see how well I could capture this.

Overall I was very happy with how this workshop went, I learnt a lot and I hope to make more in the future. I also feel like the lessons Alan taught me will really carry over into my future designs in Mudbox and Zbrush.

Reference

For reference I used the character sheet from the 2014 animated adaption of the Manga.

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4 (Final)

Brad's Inspirational Spotlight and Study: Gorillaz Extraordinary 360 Music Video!

Features 2D Animation in a 3D Environment, really interesting to watch the original with the fixed camera (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qJp6xlKEug&t=312s) and then rewatch it when you can move the camera around.

As people who have an idea how to do this I think this is a really interesting industry inside look, you can work out how they did specific scenes and effects by just having a free camera!

Brad's Inspirational Spotlight and Study: Blizzard Part 2 (Follow up)

I found a recording of the conference from Blizzcon that goes over the production process of the shorts, a really interesting watch for anyone on the course!

(even features using video reference at 21:40 seconds which is currently what we're covering in Maya classes.)



And I also found a panel from the Zbrush Summit conference that for the first 15 minutes features one of the head animators from the shorts who goes over some of the specifics in more detail,

Brad's Inspirational Spotlight and Study: Blizzard's Overwatch, Zbrush Models and Short Films.

I recently saw a blog post by Blizzard HQ about the release of rendered models from their last game Overwatch, and as a big fan of the game I was excited to see.

I like Overwatch not only due to its fun and competitive multiplayer, but its style. The art style that Bilzzard chose is a both stylised and highly appealing, blending highly detailed models with a more simple style.

As someone who has recently discovered Mudbox and Zbrush and is interested in perusing and increasing my skills more in this type of design I found this post very Insightful and Inspiring. 

So here our some of my favourite examples they had to show, but the full post can be found here:

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?205044-Overwatch-Characters-Art-Dump&p=1199605

And here our some of these models in action.

Outside the game they are even able to make shore films to show the games Universe and Narrative, in a BlizzCon interview the film animators gave they mentioned that the models they use for the Films need to be different than the ingame models, due to one not transitioning well enough to the other. Changes included more realistic hair and more detailed textures. I will need to look into the differences between game models and film models more often.

Here is one of my favourite shorts "Dragons" featuring the characters Hanzo and Genji whom can be found in the images above in their game form.

And finally here is a short Making Of film they published.

What If Metropolis, Inspirational Production Designer

WES PRES.pdf by BradKompany

Artists Who's Who

Artists Who's Who by BradKompany