Wednesday, August 29, 2007

This Way Out

I'm going to open with a thought.

If I was speeding down a two-lane desert highway in a dust caked beat up 1964 Chevy, swerving over cracked asphalt and armadillo carcasses being tailed by a fleet of state troopers, SWAT police, and militant right-wing religious freaks all screaming for my blood- Rocket from the Crypt would have to be the soundtrack.

Something from Group Sounds in particular.

And as a sweat stained police officer takes a megaphone out the window and starts telling me to stop, that I'm completely surrounded and not even headed towards the border- that in fact I'm headed in the opposite direction of the border, and begins to go into the logistics of why criminals usually head FOR the border- I would give the questionable suitcase in the passengers side seat a pat, pound my foot on the accelerator and turn up "This Bad Check Is Gonna Stick".

But none of this would ever happen because I'm pretty sure 1964 Chevy's don't even have tape decks.

Anyways, onto the animation, I'm still working on like 8 things at once, but they're all coming along. Super secret project code named IIUM/KUS is nearing picture lock as we speak. I might throw up a quicktime of some of the colored and gussied up footage if Matt thinks it's ok. In the meantime, here's a color test for the Ben Weasel music video I'm also working on.


I'm still working with the palette, I'm really trying to envoke that watching TV in the dark vibe because that's what she's doing. I don't know if it's blue enough- I don't know something isn't hitting me in the gut the way it should. Anyone have any thoughts?

A lot of the shots in this video involve this girl sitting still and watching events unfold on the television set, so I'm able to throw a shadow on her no problem. I'm hoping that I can keep up a nice shadow for the moving shots in front of the TV set as well.

And on completely stationary front- here's a poster I'm working on for a sweet two day show coming up in October. It's a birthday show/benefit and with a bunch of sweet bands like the Ergs and The Max Levine Ensemble. I still have to color it and add in all the info and what not because, you know, people should know that kinda stuff about shows.



Anyways, to make up for the lack of animation, here's a little pencil test from some animating I'm doing at my job. I just made up this little character and did an 8 drawing run cycle on 4's. It's a bit clunky but it was fun to draw something completely different from what I've been working on.




Stationary Bikes & Robot Rights

4 comments:

Zachary Scheer :: zscheer@gmail.com said...

I forgot all about Rocket from the Crypt. that was always a band whose album I was always going to by but never did.

the color looks great.

R.R. said...

Yes, real pencil on paper feels great.

Unknown said...

with regards to the TV thing, typically in live action film the color of the light coming off the TV is either Daylight balanced, or half way between Tungsten and Daylight. But of course the film is balanced for tungsten without correction so the light looks blue. When the TV is the key source in the room, or if you are doing moonlight in a daytime exterior (which is the same color principle) the uncorrected blue can have a desaturating quality to it, and overwhelm the natural color of the subject, making the skin look a bluish gray like the image you made. So my impression of your color palette is that it looks accurate to my eye. Maybe if the light fell off (faded) a little around the edges, it would focus more attention to her face, and make the center pop more. I'm not sure what else to suggest.

Example 1
Example 2
Example 3
Example 4

These are all from a night time exterior I did where the source was simulating moonlight (most of the time). They're not TV light but I felt they illustrated what I was saying anyway.

Ben said...

You're smart, thanks for making scientific sense of it all. I think these images will help me out.