My Sketch Blog - Stuff by Mark Haldane

Musician

2009-12-18T15:47:00.000Z

Two more Giraffes

2009-12-10T11:48:00.004Z

http://www.olahelland.net/giraffes/

Impact

2009-12-09T03:02:00.005Z

Hello to all my blog buddies! Just stopping in to announce that my dissertation is finally finished and submitted, and none too soon! I can now finally devote some more effort to my film. So, expect more of this in the near future!

(No inbetweens yet.)

Trooper Backgrounds

2009-11-24T05:54:00.006Z

Some background art that I've been doing for Trooper.

Some of the more interesting ones anyway. There's a lot of close ups and alternate angles not worth posting. In fact I've been painting that last one from many different angles and have more to go. Man am I sick of it.

Summer in the City

2009-11-24T02:16:00.007Z

I wish I had the confidence to draw in my sketchbooks more rather than doing all my doodles in MS Paint. I can't wait for them to get a drawing programme on one of those e-books...

Geri

2009-11-22T18:36:00.002Z

A little something for One Million Giraffes. Do check it out and consider constributing!

More Life Drawing

2009-11-19T12:59:00.007Z

Animation

2009-11-17T02:06:00.006Z

Sitting on a couch watching a DVD felt like a waste of time, so I had to do something. Ended up scribbling all the main characters from my year's animated films. All sketched from memory except Arron's and Damian's characters which I had to have a peek at online. I don't want to see any original art now for fear of seeing all the mistakes I've made...

Trooper's Room

2009-10-29T01:11:00.003Z

Nearly finished working on layout and I'm doing some background paintings. Thought I'd share this one with you all.

Trooper Background Test

2009-10-20T13:46:00.004+01:00

This is the first proper background I've taken from layout to colour. Until this point I wasn't entirely sure how the backgrounds would be achieved - particularly when I had a 3D interior scene that needs to look like the rest of the 2D backgrounds. There's also the tricky matter of giving the backgrounds depth and lighting without making them overly detailed or painterly - which takes too much time and contrasts too much with the animation style. I'm happy with the results however. I may go in a tweak a few things, add a little more detail to some of the boxes, but it's more or less done.

Trooper Deep Shot

2009-10-18T16:48:00.003+01:00

This blog is doubling as a production diary for my film at the moment, so expect lots more posts like these in the future.

I've been experimenting on the models (which Rob has built for me) to create the 2D style I want that should hopefully match the backgrounds in my film. This is early days, but it's showing that toon shading, shadows and fog in 3D can produce some promising results...

Everything here is the same shader at the moment but that will change. A lot of the smaller and more distant things (like guard rails and small pipes) will have fewer leves of shading (either solid or with one shadow) to stop them look too complex and 3D. And it needs to be coloured too, obviously.

Cannon Ball Smoke Test 2

2009-10-12T22:58:00.001+01:00

Paul and I have been tweaking the previous test animation and have come up with this. It's looking much better. A lot closer to the concept drawing. Didn't use it as reference mind you so the colour's a bit different.

Concept:

More Poses

2009-10-09T17:01:00.001+01:00

Biro

2009-10-08T00:18:00.005+01:00

A sketch I found in my lecture notes that I rather liked. Some of my other lecture doodles will be uploaded on Spur of the Moment over the next few days.

More Toon Shading Tests

2009-10-04T15:01:00.008+01:00

A few little bits in the models to fix so the lines draw properly and we're nearly done! Just a few textures to be added then we can animate!

Cannon Ball Smoke Test

2009-10-02T15:36:00.002+01:00

Paul and I have been working for ages (or half an hour) on turning my 2D drawing into 3D. The cannon ball is going to be travelling and spinning in slow motion in the shot, so animating the gas/plasma it vents by hand would be tricky. Here's our first CG test...

Here's Paul's particle smoke:

And here's it again after I played with it in After Effects:

It's early days but we're on the way to getting a good 2D-style effect. I've devised a way to make it fade out like the picture, and Paul's working on getting it wavier.

Trooper Animation Test

2009-10-02T15:19:00.004+01:00

My opening shot. If you haven't watched the animatic and don't want any spoilers, maybe give this one a miss ;)

Better quality version available here.

Trooper Updates

2009-10-02T14:35:00.016+01:00

Some updates from the film I'm currently working on. Some stills, concept art, the works.

Rob's been doing the 3D modelling for me based on my designs. I'll update with some better pics soon, these are pretty early.

Turnaround:

Turnaround:

My first experiments with the toon shader on Rob's models:

Taxman

2009-09-30T00:29:00.002+01:00

Character/prop/set design for a friend's animation.

Life Drawing - Sitting

2009-09-24T14:42:00.005+01:00

Trooper Animatic

2009-09-21T20:24:00.000+01:00

The updated animatic for my degree film...

Jenny Everywhere

2009-08-14T02:05:00.004+01:00

My last-minute submission for Jenny Everywhere Day! Would like to have done more but time was against me so I just did a quick sketch and inked it.

After doing this I wouldn't mind doing some more Jenny Everywhere stuff in the future...

El Family

2009-08-01T03:40:00.005+01:00

I got thinking about Elwood and the his siblings and before I knew it I was drawing this. Drawn with a brush pen and grey markers. It's amazing how fast this appeared on the piece of paper in front of me at this time in the morning after a few glasses of wine...

Wouldn't mind turning this into a complete piece in the future. I'm also looking forward to exploring Elwood's two other sisters and his mum in the strip...

Ain't as young as He used to be

2009-07-31T21:18:00.004+01:00

I wasn't the only one who felt today's strip was worth colouring so I went to town on it. I'm quite please with the results!

Spur of the Moment

2009-07-28T22:45:00.004+01:00

New logo for my kinda-comic Spur of the Moment.