A while ago, I started to build a prototype for a G33X tabletop game. One of my favorite parts of starting any project is coming up with potential stories and creatures that the gang'll encounter along the way. This little guy that Chase and Connor run into here is one of the many monsters that appear in that project.
I think it's kinda cute, what do you think?
2020-04-01 18:00:11 +0000 UTC View Post
It's hard not to lay back and enjoy a nice, quiet afternoon every once and a while. I must confess: I've had this comic finished for far too long before finally posting it. I'm having fun experimenting a bit with art styles and comic formats, though!
Hey! it's been a while since I've made any comic strips (like, two years!) but I'm back to it! This guy is one of my favorite characters right now, and I've been wanting to make something with him for a while now. This isn't the last we've seen of Grift the Greedy Crow!
2020-03-26 06:17:37 +0000 UTC View Post
I was looking through some stuff from ages and ages ago, and happened across an Ichthyosaur(it's a prehistoric marine reptile) Fakemon and thought "Why's it gotta be a Pokémon?"
After that simple "Hey" moment, I proceeded to trim away a bunch of the unnecessary bits and bobs and got a pretty sleek little cartoon creature out of it!
Might be fun to make a cartoon with dinosaurs and such in it.
2020-01-21 22:33:01 +0000 UTC View Post
Even though it's only been a week and a half, it feels like I've been working on this forever!
Sprite fights have always been kind of an interesting novelty to me, and I remember wanting to make them when I was younger. Now that dream has finally been realized, and I feel like I have some more ideas for fights brewing!
I don't think this is the last we'll see of Chase's rivalry with Santa... He was pretty quick to run out to fight him, too! I wonder what's up with that?...
Anyway, Happy Holidays! I hope everyone is able to spend quality time with family and friends as we wrap up 2019!
2019-12-22 11:58:29 +0000 UTC View Post
Retroman is one of my favorite characters to dabble with designs for lately. He appeals to that nostalgia factor, he's got that stoic superhero vibe, what more could you want?
The more I get around to drawing him, the more I want to see him move around and fight villains! I want to make a short animation featuring him sometime soon! buuuut I guess cool concept art will have to do for now...
A short comic strip or one-off story could be fun, too
There he is, the protector of Render City himself: Retroman!
This--as of yet, unfinished--piece of concept art is the most recent design update for a long-standing character of mine. He's an armored super hero with a flair for the old-school and a fondness for archaic arcades.
What adventures await our hero?
2019-12-01 15:58:34 +0000 UTC View Post
I've been thinking about how I've been staging scenes lately and how I tend to favor medium-to-closeup shots over wider ones. While closeups are nice for showing facial expressions, I want to improve on full-body character acting a bit more.
I think beefing up my backgrounds will help free the camera up immensely! Part of why I've been hesitant to attempt certain shots or action sequences has been because I don't really have the neighborhood properly fleshed out yet! Luckily, these sketches are encouraging steps towards fleshing out the neighborhood and bringing it to life!
Maybe we'll see more of the neighbors in upcoming cartoons?
Believe it or not, this short animation was started over a year ago! It was originally going to be a trailer for a game jam I ran during September/October 2018, but it didn't really catch on and I tossed the animation onto the ol' back-burner... until now!
These Micro cartoons are pretty fun to work on, and I hope that I can continue to produce them!
I wanted to make something short and simple as a way to get back into producing animation without putting too much stress and over-planning into it... Thus, G33X Micro was born!
While all of the pixel art animation was put together in an afternoon or so, I think timing the sound effects properly took the most time.
Another fun fact: The background music is actually a concept song for another G33X project! Maybe we'll see more from it someday...
2019-10-17 11:01:11 +0000 UTC View Post
If you follow me on Twitter (@G33X) or Instagram (@G33X_animation) then you've probably seen a bunch of pixel art from me recently. There's definitely more where that came from!
Whenever I make pixel art, I feel like I'm going back to my roots in some way. I think everyone has a bit of a nostalgic feeling towards pixel graphics; even if you didn't grow up with the oldies, pixel art has certainly made a lasting impact.
I know it's been some time since my last update, but that doesn't mean I've been slacking off! I've got a handful of projects in the works that I can't wait to share with you, so stay tuned!
I was working on cleaning up and finalizing some animation for a G33X
project, so I figured: why not share a little bit of the process?
Rough animation/Animatic
Here's the initial animatic version of the shot. The wavy effects were done in the video editor I used to put the whole animatic together.
Clean-up and Tie-downs
After a bit of cleanup and inks, we have a little something like this:
"Ink n' Paint" and Compositing:
Then we take the tie-downs and clean them up further, then slap on some color and maybe a few shading effects. The camera motion is also added in, helping increase the impact of the character's movement.
After that, we toss the finalized animation frames into our video editor for the background effects and a little bit of post-processing and color correction.
ADDED BONUS:
While I was messing around with some color correction, I got the image below as a result which I think is really neat looking in its own way.
I'm super psyched to see this shot alongside others in the final video! hopefully I'll be able to finish more of them soon!
2018-08-18 21:33:59 +0000 UTC View Post
I've been getting back into digital painting and drawing scenery. There are a bunch of details that I could (and probably should) toss into the background, but I'm enjoying how this is turning out so far!
And here's the sketch that the painting is built directly from. I just might have to start building a 3D model of this guy to fix some of the perspective errors and have something to work from while adding additional details, bells, and whistles!
Here's a little, rough animatic that I've been sitting on for a while. I've been swept up with a bunch of life stuff lately, but I'm looking to pick up working on storyboards, animatics, and comics again!
They grow up so fast! Looks like Michael’s an empty-nester now!
2018-04-27 21:33:00 +0000 UTC View Post
Don't you just hate when the flowers choose the strangest places to grow? I bet Connor does!
2018-04-26 21:33:01 +0000 UTC View Post
Chase has just about had it with the racket outside! Will Michael finally cave in and return the eggs to their rightful place?
2018-04-22 21:33:00 +0000 UTC View Post
When the weather is nice out, you would think it'd be a great time to go outside for some fresh air, right? Not when there are a ton of birds swarming around your house!
2018-04-21 21:33:00 +0000 UTC View Post
Looks like somebody stirred up some trouble! Too bad Connor has the misfortune of getting caught in the crossfire!
I was gonna do something else with the background in the first panel, but I was fussing over it too long, and I was already past my personal deadline, maybe next time!
2018-04-20 21:33:59 +0000 UTC View Post
You know how they say "the early bird gets the worm!" Apparently, Michael didn't get the memo this year! Easter may be long-gone, but there are still eggs to be found!
I wanted to get this strip out by Monday this week, so we're a bit (or very) behind schedule! I hope you look forward to tuning in for the rest of this little G33X story!
2018-04-19 00:57:37 +0000 UTC View Post
He's mad! He's belligerent! He's Melee the Badger! Connor's gonna need more than a shield to stand up against this baddie!
We've got some big stuff in the works! Here's a quick look at some of the stuff we've been working on this month as we've been shifting gears!
Happy April Fools Day, everyone! There'll probably be a real update video coming out sometime soon! We still need to iron out a few things before then, but stay tuned!
2018-04-01 21:34:00 +0000 UTC View Post
Here's a quick look at the rough sketches behind the comic posted earlier this week! Since it was a pretty simple one, it didn't take long at all to put together.
You may be wondering why there are both red and blue sketch lines on these panels; That's because I wanted to make sure that Michael here was on-model before going to ink and paint him up! A lot of my roughs (or often spelled as "ruffs" in animation) can be very vague and scribbly, which contributes to the appeal of seeing them end up as full drawings, at least for me!
2018-03-31 21:33:00 +0000 UTC View Post
It's just a normal day in the Rockies! Spring has a snowy surprise in store for Michael!
On Sunday, the day started out really mild and sunny, but it quickly dropped in temp. and started dumping snow! And here I thought that Spring was gearing up for warmer weather!
2018-03-28 21:34:00 +0000 UTC View Post
Heya folks! Here's a tiny little teaser for a lil' somethin' somethin' we want to work on in the future! I know it isn't much, but I think it has a cool, mysterious and ominous vibe to it!
Spring has officially started and you know what that means? Chase receives a little reminder.
2018-03-24 21:33:59 +0000 UTC View Post
February is finally over! It got a little chilly near the end of it, but hopefully things start to heat up as we move forward in March!
We've got a whole bunch of other goodies in store, maybe we'll take a closer look at the design process for these fellas sometime soon! And who knows? maybe they're not even in their final designs!
2018-03-03 22:33:01 +0000 UTC View Post
February is just about over! Let's take a quick look at some of the stuff we've scanned over the past week or so!
Animals are infinitely fascinating to me, so there's no doubt that I'd like to include them in cartoons. I wanted to explore some styling for how Baboons might look in those cartoons.
Here we have a little creature feature for you folks at home! This particularly prickly individual is one of the several bosses that our G33ky heroes may come across in their many adventures.
Believe it or not, he's hardly a couple days old! Boy, they sure do grow up fast! Let's take a look at some of the stages of this enigmatic echidna's design development!
Initially, he was bound to be a malicious and menacing mole, but a certain amount of--as we say in the biz--"oomph" was missing.
After letting the idea sit for a while, we see an attempt to combine a badger with a mole and echidna(left), but there wasn't a real solid direction to the design. Luckily, after simplifying it to "monstrous echidna" we were rolling in the right direction!
This is where we slap on a flashy coat of paint and explore a small selection of poses as the design starts to take form. The big nose was reminiscent of the mythical Tengu, so the white beard and red body are there to reflect that spark of inspiration.
After the initial sketches, we move over to traditional techniques and sketch our pokey pal out on paper. On paper, I can get a more natural feel of how the character is going to be fleshed out; Funny how it works that way sometimes!
After the paper sketches are finished and in the inbox, they're ready to be scanned and inked on the computer. Even though the linework in the paper scan could be colored and be fine as-is, I like to clean up and redraw areas that may be a bit wobbly.
And after a bit of paint, we got ourselves a pretty nifty ne'er-do-well on our hands!
I hope you enjoyed this little glimpse into some of the ways characters develop and evolve during the design process! Let's get cracking and see if we can get this fearsome foe to move around and join in the fight sometime soon!
2018-02-14 21:01:00 +0000 UTC View Post