Post Your Initial concepts Here

Christopher Vaughan

If you have them, post your initial concept work here and we can share them during class on Sat. 

Really looking forward to meeting all of you!

Chris

Troy Picou

Tom Stewart

Still working on it :-) Will definitely change a bit by Saturday. Love the concept of Troy's BTW.

Troy Picou

Hey Tom I've been itching to do a rhino head. Looking forward to watching it progress.

James Wright

Shit.... Tom is doing a rhino too? Crud. Doing this for work actually, so the company gets to choose the character and last details. Nothing like a crash course in the real world, eh?

Here are my initial clay sketches. I just signed up for the class and don't have everything yet.

Which leads me to ask; if I'm not able to make a class (I'm in Tokyo and the class is from 1am to 5am and I'll be in the next room to my 4 sleeping daughters...) will I be able to catch it online afterward? All my work on this will be done in the office (got the company to even pay for it!!) but obviously the office won't be open that late at night... not sure how much I'll be able to actively play along or how much that will effect everything. Getting supplies here in Tokyo isn't easy either; some things they just don't have (certain thinners, etc) because of chem restrictions. I'll make do, but may have an embarrassing amount of questions during class...

Troy Picou

This is a color concept. He is an old story teller.

Ted Haines

These are all looking fantastic guys!!

Tom Stewart

Hey James,
LOL what are the chances? Oh well. My character isn't for anything (not work or a client) so I could change it to a dragon or something- not to hard. However, I don't see the harm in both doing the same animal-my concept seems fairly "bigger boned" LOL okay Fatter. His legs are going to be pretty small too. I came up with the Rhino because it incorporated some of the concepts of the TRex Ted did in his videos.

Anyway, I'll keep the concept. If you or Ted think I should change I can- it'll just set me back a bit because I would have to do a quick re-sculpt of the head and neck portion. But I'm willing to do it.

I also forgot to mention I plan to puppeteer the Rhino's mouth and leave one arm without my arm in it. Anyway, here were the concepts I worked on. The first is the sketch- sorry for the crudeness- I forgot my WACOM and had to do it using a crappy mouse LOL The second is the maquette overlapped my image just so I can see the scale and figure out if the sculpture I'm working with and taking patterns from will work.

See you all tomorrow.

Michael Ringer

My concept is a Pacific Rim-Godzilla vs Megalon inspired kaiju thing, With arm extensions and vision through the neck. It is just a rough sculpt but I imagine doing lots of small spines, horns scales etc all over the thing. See everyone in the morning.

Ted Haines

I see that Tom and James are doing similarish creatures and may be second guessing if they should go forward with their original design. YES, by all means. go with what you came up with. Both concepts are based on the same animal but each take very different approaches. I'm looking forward to working with you ALL tomorrow!!!

Gretchen Smith

After wrestling with a few concepts, I think I settled on this one. Clay sketch to follow. I'm thinking like a big, hulking shaggy monster-under-the-bed. Perfect for halloween, maybe a lot of skin textures for the chest, arms and legs, definitely want to keep the neck very shaggy or have one of those fat-paunchy-hanging-skin deals. IDK why its so neat looking when they shake. Not finished sketches, just wanted to get some shapes down.

tory fink

Rough concept sketch.

Troy Picou

Great class, nice to meet everyone.

James Wright

Great class, lots to learn. Loads of fantastic ideas from everyone; its very inspiring.

James Wright

only patterned one side, so the other side I textured a bit. The office is having a hard time deciding if they want the eye forward (like a real rhino — whose eye is right under his shorter horn) or back, which is cuter (?) and more human like, thereby making it easier to relate to (so they say).

Placing the eye is really so far into next week that I'm not worrying over it now, but the office is. Any thoughts?

Wolf Reicherter

We always went for more anthropormorphic and "cute" when it came to Characters so the audience can relate to the character better. It the eyes are too far from where a human would expect them to be in another humans face then it becomes eery and sometimes frightning. In light of your likeable bungling character I´d go for more humanish.

Wolf Reicherter

here´s mine. I am about to work it over and trying to squeeze in the time to make a lil maquette for patterning.

Wolf Reicherter

and here it is

Peter Bond

Wolf, this is what I would use to make extended arms/ fingers move. Look at the ears on this mech. Under the bar where the ears attach is a loop connecting both ears that you pull on to make them wave.

Peter Bond

Dang these won't attach

 

Christopher Vaughan

load them to imgur and share the link if you are having problems with the file size

Peter Bond

Here we go.

Peter Bond

This might be better clarity

Troy Picou

Hey bond bond that looks sweet. Any video of the mechs moving?

Peter Bond

It's actually, Bond, Peter Bond

 

Just uploaded this of the naked mech head

 

http://youtu.be/ubUbRR_sZug 

 

 

James Wright

Thanks Wolf, I was thinking the same thing. Just not sure if they want it cute (typical Japanese) or realistic — I might move the eyes right in between the two designs...

In other news...
Having trouble getting foam at a reasonable price. The biggest sheet of foam I can get here seems to be 1m x 2m ... on the other hand, it looks like Troy is dealing...

Troy Picou

You can do it James, the force is strong with you! LOL

James Wright

with just a wave of my hand...

Tom Stewart

Hey people,

I there anyway we can video chat throughout the week? I was going to suggest Skype but not certain you can conference video chat. It would be nice to chat while I'm building or have input from others if I hit a snag or provide input if someone asks. 

I'm at Eastern Standard time and have been pulling almost all nighters -it gets lonely fabricating all night with no one to chat with LOL

I think the long nights are getting to me as my wife appeared in my workshop at 2am last night because she said she could hear me singing...I was singing that old SADE 80's song "Smooth Operator" but instead of saying "Smooth Operator" I substituted with "Foam Fabricator" LOL my wife said I need to get some friends so here I am asking if anyone wants to chat as we build LOL Let me know.

Troy Picou

Hey Tom do have facetime? (Mac products) I would be your friend.lol

Tom Stewart

Sure- we can pick a time or just call me when your bored LOL