a collection of my creative exploits
art of brent morris
I haven’t posted in a while because most of everything I’ve been doing is NDA’d. So spent a short time last night and tonight quickly sketching and coloring some of my work mates so I could make them smile and have a little something to put here. Stephen Silver
This is some of the concept work for an upcoming (not yet announced) project we’re doing at work. I really like the little kids’ design and wanted to share
I purchased my first Cintiq this week and I wanted to try it out the day it arrived. Here is my progress so far. I would’ve waited until I finished the background but I was so excited about the way it was turning out I had to share sooner.
Sorry for the lack of posts. Work has been busy; a blessing I know. I’ve produced a lot of really cool work, but I can’t show it off quite yet. To tide everyone over here’s a picture I made of all the people at work for their Christmas present this past year.
I have some more film related stuff coming this weekend too, so stay tuned!
After listening to some feedback and gathering my thoughts I took another crack at the story and overall design of this project. I feel like these steps create a more cohesive feel for this piece. While I feel that this is very much an organic process; always growing and changing I think that I’m at a point now that I can start moving onto the asset modeling.
If you want to see my original post on what the film is all about and my thoughts process behind making it you can find that here.
Here’s my current storyboards and character designs.
Update: I’ve done some proper storyboards and touch up the character designs. You can find the newer stuff here.
I’ve decided to make a short film in my spare time. So with a lot of determination and some help from friends I’m going to complete this film. I have a long road ahead, but I’ve been steadily making progress. Now that I’m into the 3D modeling I’ll start posting about the production process. The first place I started of course was with an idea I felt was worth sharing.
I wanted the film to tell a simple story through a complex use of color. I feel that a story and viewers’ moods can be enhanced by a smart use of color. This is no stunning revelation. People have been doing this in art and media for decades upon decades. The thing is I feel a lot of time that people don’t consider color enough.
Color is a great thing. Difference is a great thing. Variety is a great thing. This film is a little about color telling a story, but it’s a lot about how the act of something different coming into your world is a great thing. I feel adding new experiences and people into your life will make it better place. If people take anything away from this film I hope they take away this concept and don’t shun differences that enter their world but embrace them with passion.
For the look of the film I want it to be highly designed. Having a final product that looks like a modern day UPA cartoon. I feel like with the story I’m trying to tell and the way I want to tell it the modern art UPA style is the perfect fit. The reason I want to do this in 3D is to help create some richer character animation than would be in a traditional UPA cartoon. UPA was known for making more stylized animation, but I feel like having full rich character animation is needed because the characters drive the story and I want that push forward to be a strong bold statement. Below is a synopsis of the plot, some rough character designs, as well as my color script.
The world that the main character lives in is bland and monotone. As an artist this frustrates him, because he can’t produce beautiful vibrant art. In a fit of determination he leaves his studio to head to the park for inspiration. He initial observation leads him to more disgust over the bland and mundane; that is until he sees someone or something that really pops out of the blandness.
This little guy ended up with the name Sir Toppin Hat after my wife saw me sketching him and said that should be his name. When I was making him I was just focused on recreating the rabbit from Alice in Wonderland as a human. Lately I’ve been playing around with scale and proportion when sketching out characters. With this sketch I continued to push my proportions in the design to see how far I can go with the balance of large and small features.
Here’s a drawing of a character that I’ve affectionately named Clarence. He started as a warmup sketch and ended up as something that makes me smile.
This was a warm up sketch I did today and I thought the end results were quite nice.
I was watching a video with a character named Francis and thought to myself “Wow! This guy is so animated I have to make him a cartoon.” This was the result of that endeavor. I thought I’d include various stages from the original sketch to the final piece to help show the process.
a collection of my creative exploits 