Felix and his Bastard Children

Just a quick post. This is a small section taken from my Thesis on the subject about the evolution of character design.
This image details the influence Felix the Cat has had overtthe years on other character designs. I wasnt able to find much reference to this online so am unsure if this is my own subjective opinion. I understand that there may be a thousand other characters that could fit into this chart but these are the most prominent designs that stuck in my mind. Bart Simpson and Pikachu  may be a bit of a push but i feel they are justified. I wont go too much into detail but i think the picture pretty much says it all.

Dreams

I’m not one to usually pay heed to dream like imagery but I have a had a very intense recurring dream now for the past few years now that I felt a strong need to draw it down as soon as I woke... from an afternoon nap no less.

The location of the dream is always somewhere different but is always a place that feels familiar to me, a home, work place and even local shopping centre on occasion. Within this familiar place there is hidden somewhere a door at the back. As I approach the door I am filled with an overwhelming sense of dread and become heavy with fear. Usually I attempt to open this door but am always repelled with a sickeningly feeling of vulnerability and am just too terrified to go any further.

On this occasion I actually built up the courage to fight my fear and go inside the door.  I entered the doorway and found myself on a spiral staircase. The stairs led to an oval room, which was quite dark and musty. A spiraled metal black fence shortly lead to a chair in the middle and the surrounding walls were just shelves containing books.

As I walked around the room I noticed on one of the shelves a crow, old and gaunt looking. The crow’s gaze followed me around the room and squawked at me....

It was at this point that I awoke and had a feeling that I needed to get something done. I’m not the kind of person who gets to involved with meanings and interpretations of dreams but I’ve had this one recur now and do feel like there’s something behind it and decided to draw it down whilst the feeling remained inside me.

Forgive the crudity of the drawings as i was still very sleepy when i did these, it was more the feeling i was still trying to capture. Maybe with a little more referencing I can create something cool from these.

Explorers guide to dangers in the park

Title page to my illustration project

30 second experimental animation

This project was to complete an animation within a 30 second time constraint. It had to be exoerimental in a technique not I am not familiar with.. and no music or no central character. i eventually came to the idea of an animated pop up book.. of sorts...

Lip Syncing

Lip Sync exercise.. sound byte taking from Keith Apicarys' Talkimg Classics

Bad Taste pt 2

The first is a take on the Stella Artois posters that were knocking about last year or so... I wanted to illustrate the "Wife Beater" reputation the drink has... as it is quite vile stuff.

The second is pretty self explanatory.. you can figure it out for yourself



So these are the last two images from my Bad Taste project.

Bad Taste

New uni year, new project. This one is on "Bad Taste" Completely subjective as taste can only be valued on an individual perspective. Thought long and hard over the start of this project and came to the conclusion that it was faaaaar to easy to go down the offensive or shock value route. I decided to go for the"cheesy" and tacky "instead"

My first two ideas are pretty much finished.

The first is my take on a poster for soem sort of cheesy sci-fi B movie poster. "OctoSheep" just kept propping in my brain so I went with that.

My Second Idea was to do a poster for a seedy strip club and I decided to create one in the style of Toulouse Lautrecs' Moulin Rouge posters.

Graphic Novel Idea

So whilst I havnt ironed out the full details yet I decided to go with a story that has parralels with "Pinocchio"
Instead dof a wooden puppet trying to become a real boy, My main character is going to be a 30 year old man trying to understand what it is to be a "real man"... journey to expect who he is and where he's going blah blah... the twist is that he is now followed round by an imaginary friend he had when he was a kid, a sort of Jiminy Cricket consciences type character... except that he's not a grashopper but a cigar smoking killer whale.

In place of Gepetto there is his 30 year old female "best friend" maybe a room mate.. I want their relationship to be quite platonic and have no romantic involvement whatsoever, i think this is rarely played out upon in a lot of media and it reflects quiet a few of the friendships with girls i have today.

anyways.. enough waffling.. heres some initial character designs.. not overly finished yet.. but getting there.. let me know what you think.

Red Riding Hood Animation

So this was what my first year boiled down too. I may be over critical with my work but im not too happy with it overall. I could have spent my time more wisely on the actual animation rather then making pretty looking backgrounds... still i got a first... woohoo!

Backgrounds pt 2

last of the troublesome backgrounds... i still have nightmares of me sitting up all night drinking energy drinks!

Backgrounds

These are the backgrounds used in my last animation project. I swear if i ever have to draw another tree again.....

Red Riding Hood

My new animation project is based on folk stories. I've decided to create a take on The Brothers Grimm story Little Red Cap... or Little Red Riding Hood for those who aren't in the know. Its a basic story i know but i like the iconography of Red's hood and cap. Im also twisting the characters roles a bit. the wolf is the innocent whilst Red is the deceiver. Not very original i know but should look cool when i'm done.
Here's the character concepts...

Canned Animation Idea

So at the start of the year I had an idea for my new animation project. Was going to be a short animation in the vein of old cartoons i watched as a kid ,ie Ninja Turtles and Thundercats. My Idea involved Rabbits in space... or something.. only got as far as the initial character designs... may pick it up again when i have more time.

Illustration Exhibition

So my class had a mini exhibition in our uni. My final comic pages were chosen to be a central piece. Enlarged and painted on a white wall.
Here's scans of the acetate images and photos of the process.

Sketchbook Scans

Ok ok so i know i've not posted on here for a while but its been a busy start to the year. here's a few new sketchbook scans to tide you over....

Stuff

Character Design

This project is on character design. We had to interview five of our classmates whilst sketching them. The idea is that you get enough background information in order to create a comic character out of them... and give them super powers.

Comic Book n ting

I'm working on a comic with a friend of mine. We have a vague idea on the plot so its all still work in progress. These are just a couple of initial character ideas.

Flip Book

This was my first animation task at uni. The breif was very basic, start and end in a dot... You can see where i went from there.

Flip book from Jimmy Cliftlands on Vimeo.

Walk Cycle

This is my first walk cycle excersise. Its a bit patchy and could do with a bit more inbetweening but is pretty good for my first attempt.

Walk Cycle from Jimmy Cliftlands on Vimeo.