Thumbnailing open thread

Here are my first few thumbnails on the script for an officer and an alien.
I felt that the beginning could be developed by focusing of the quarreling of the two charactes as they run, which is a good comedy within a tense chase setup.
Anyway, I'm sure it  will chage in the further steps but this is the way I put it down so far.

And here's the second instalment. I've done two different versions for the moment in the story when the blinding light blast from the flying saucer hits our heroes. I first drew it as a simple view from below, with the camera almost at ground level so we see the characters in great perspective distorsion and flooded with light, so also high contrast. I wasn't too sure about that though and so I came up with this other idea where we experience the light beam three times, one for Flit, one for Major Strick and lastly for a general view looking at the flying saucer from above and the characters down below. Each experience framed in a vertical strip framed in a black background screen.

Third and fourth thumbnail of this page are version 1 of the light blast

Version 2 of the light blast

I had lots of fun doing this little scene with Zork today.

And here's today's thumbnails, starting where I left yesterday, only flipping the last sketch the other way round for continuity with what follows, I now spotted that now that I cahnged that I should also change the direction Zork throws the rope ladder towards in the sketches before (on top of another mountain of stuff to improve throughout).

The final batch of this first pass. Next, revision of the thumbnails.

Sketching #1

Here we go, I'm practicing with the characters for the Storyboard course now. I'll add sketches as I do them here today. The first two Major Strick.

Here's another sketch with both characters, Major Strick and Flit, this scene is inspired by the script we have to storyboard although this specific action is not part of the story so this doesn't count towards the thumbnailing stage that we must now start at once.

 

And here's the second page sketched, as I finished it I thought I should invert the second and the third frame actually. And I'll also add a page before the first, so this will evntually be the third page.

Update: as I said I inverted the third and fourth frame creating a very nice cut to the two bigger boys that had run away so that when the "camera" returns on the small child the Scarecrow has now jumped there and it's facing him from up close.

The first page of the scarecrow story sketched.

I had a lot of work in the past few days so crawling pace on this so far. I have a good idea where the story's going though, and I broke the back of the jobs I am doing now so should proceed more speedily from now on.

Sketches & doodles

A very long day of work today. From 9:30 am to half past midnight in front of the Cintiq earning my keep and thinking at when I'll be able to just draw for fun, which happended to be after half past twelve when I finally finished to do what I had to do. Such is the freedom of freelancing life. Anyway, this week I want to draw a short comix story and here I post this character I thought about some weeks ago and that this week finally will be developed. It's the Scarecrow.

He lives in a corn field doing exactly what his name says, but as you can see, he's a strange creature, with long limbs, long hands and... feathers. I did a couple more sketches of him now,

Hopefully now during my sleep I'll figure out what his story could be. I have in mind a gang of kids fascinated by the creature, teasing him, conflicting... The rural settings made me think of a gang of kids like these, the Bumblebees:

And that's all I have of this story for now. Totally unrelated I also did this other sketch.

I now go too sleep, tomorrow is another day of work, but should be a bit lighter than today, I should be able to got into the story of the scarecrow for a few hours.

New blog. With a purpose. I'm now starting a storyboarding course and here's whereI'll upload all I'll draw in the next few weeks. Starting with this recent sketch of three old girls having a coffee.