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ANIMATION MENTOR Tribe Character Designs | Stan

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I thought I'd post some of the character development work I did when designing Animation Mentor's TRIBE Characters. It was a very interesting and challenging process to design characters that were unspecific yet exciting and appealing at the same time. In this case I decided to post some of the work I did to come up with Stan... the "Big Guy". Fun character :)






Inspiration walks into a bar...

Portrait of the Real Santa

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Timelapse video of a 1 hour sketch of Santa... a.k.a. Saint Nicholas... a.k.a. Langabor... a.k.a. Odin...
Music: "Carol of the bells" by August Burns Red.

Texting...

DESIGNING THE TRIBE CHARACTERS | STEWART

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The goal behind designing Stewart, was to create a worthy updated version of Stewie (those familiar with Animation Mentor will know which rig that is). With the creation of the rest of TRIBE characters, I was able to allow myself to give Stewart more appeal and definition, while keeping him unspecific enough so as not to limit the AM students.

Despite my determination to design Stewart as a new and exciting character, the influence of the good old Stewie design was apparent during the beginning stages of the creative process. In fact, as you can see in these beginning stages, we were still calling our new character "Stewie".



Stewart was one of the first characters I started designing, and so, in addition to working on it's shape, I also started thinking about a common look or theme for this characters: Gymnasts, Test Dummies... However, it was the warpaint versions on the image bellow that would eventually inspire the TRIBE theme.



Then came a big shift. Despite a later start, Stan and Stella came together fairly quickly and they set the tone and design language for what Stewart should look like. So we scrapped all the previous work on Stewart (only salvaging the Tribe and war paint ideas) and I got to work to give Stan and Stella a young male counterpart.

And wala! After a lot of fine tuning and iterations, we got to the final Stewart design. :)

The Stewart rig is actually free for download at Animation Mentor. Check it out!

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Warrior portrait

Throw back Creature post


Carlos Baena short film: La Noria

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Concept Art by Dice Tsutsumi  



Give some love to upcoming short film La Noria's Facebook Page, still in the making and being directed by my good friend (I'm so happy to be able to say that) the awesome Carlos Baena! You haven't seen a CG animated short film like this before, I tell you. Check out some stills bellow!

I was SO VERY LUCKY to meet Carlos through this short film something like 3 years ago, and we have been working together on and off ever since. I had the privilege of designing all of the characters for the short film, after some early character sketches had already been done by the likes of Sergio Pablos and José Manuel Fernández Oli (yeah, no pressure), but everyone was very encouraging and made me feel at home. I can't wait to show you it when it's finished! Above all, it's been an amazingly enriching experience for me working with such a talented team. Oh, and yeah, that's a Dice Tsutsumi painting at the top of the page. told you, crazy team.

If you want to be in the know about this short film, go ahead and like the page! Thank you for sticking around over here too  Your support is golden.









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ANIMATION MENTOR | TRIBE CHARACTERS | BIRDBALL

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Haven't posted in a while, I know. I've been busy with Paramount and also designing Animation Mentors upcoming rigs! Which reminded me I have a bunch of design work from the TRIBE characters that I still haven't shared with you. So here goes some of that: Bellow is the final Birball design and how it came to be :)


At the beginning we weren't sure what type of character we were gonna end up with... the basic idea I was given to work from was "a ball with legs". It still needed to be exciting, though.

Once we decided that a long legged bird was going to be on of the "ball with legs" characters (along with the Squirrels and Monsterball), I just had fun with different shapes until we found what the one. 

Eventually we settled on the design above. This being the final model sheet I passed on to the modeler. The best thing about having designed these characters is then seeing them come alive at the hands of countless students... each with their own unique take. Here's a sweet cycle animation I found by Mexican Animation Mentor student Adela Covarrubias... Love it! And Thank you for stopping by!!For more stuff like this, you can follow DEISIGN on Facebook | Twitter | Blogger | Vimeo | Youtube





ANIMATION MENTOR | TRIBE CHARACTERS | SLOAN

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Some more work I did wen creating the TRIBES for Animation Mentor. Here's Sloan's final modeled design and texture mock up. Bellow is some of the work that went into Sloan's creation, before we got to the final design.


Firstly we wanted to determine, what type/size of dog Sloan was going to be. I had already designed Stella by then, so I used her to figure out the size relationship of Sloan with the rest of the TRIBE.


Once we settled for a rough size and type of dog, the time came to solidify the design. Eventually getting to really fine details and variations. 

Once the "shape" of the design was locked, I got to explore some different looks and texture choices. Always within the brand's look code as "the TRIBE" and also within Animation Mentor as a whole.


Then I was lucky enough to be able to bring exquisite modeler Ander Liza into the project. Him an I worked very closely to achieve Sloan's final model (Bellow). It seems like it should be a piece of cake, right? Wrong! Often the most subtle models are the hardest to pull off. This was like designing a car and finding those "perfect shapes". If you're into car design, you know what I'm talking about (more so than me... I just like car design ;)

 But work was not over for me just yet. In order to regain Sloan's design's look, I did some texture paintovers on the plain model, to visualize how it should look when finely rendered. You can see some with/without paintover images bellow.



This was a super fun character to create; but once again, the most rewarding moments come after the character is released, when it comes to life in the hands of the Animation Mentor students. Bellow is an awesome use of Sloan in an animation by Hernan Giraldo. Just magical.


Dog chasing laser from Hernan Giraldo on Vimeo.

And to you, thanks for stopping by!! Feel free to shot me any questions bellow or over on Facebook!

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Bilbao and its pride are "out of this world".

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EUS | Ba nioen ba nik Bilbotarren harrokeria "beste mundu batekoa" zela... Jupiter Ascending filmearen hirugarren trailerra ikusten, leku horietako batzuk nunbait ikusita neuzkala iruditu zait... zuei?

ESP | Ya decía yo que la gallería Bilbaina era "de otro planeta"... Viendo el tercer trailer de Jupiter Ascending, me ha dado la sensación de haber visto algunos de esos lugares antes... y a vosotros?

ENG | So watching the 3rd trailer for Jupiter Ascending I got this feeling about having seen some of those alien/futuristic locations before... I guess people from Bilbao are aliens after all, as well as Frank Gehry and Santiago Calatrava! If know these references, you'll have fun watching this.


And here's the trailer. Enjoy!




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XABIROI Magazine Cover | Fall 2014

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My latest cover for Xabiroi Magazine is out! I went for something different this time... You might not like it too much... and that's cool... But I just had to do it. Bellow are some detail shots too ;)





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Animation Mentor CREW Characters | Creating Aia

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Hey, hey! At last, the first of the new characters I'm designing for Animation Mentor has been officially announced! Her name is Aia and she's a member of the CREW, the new batch of advanced characters that comes as a follow up and an evolution to The TRIBE characters I had previously designed. This means I get to show what went into the process of creating her...

Meet AIA.
She's the Pilot of The Crew and an all around badass. This was the premise I had in mind for Aia... someone who was confident, adventurous, filled with positive energy... as well as captivating and appealing as a result. I wanted that appeal to come from within and build the design around that driven personality, of an unrestrained and comfortable-with-herself person. Okay, okay! So I might have romanticized her personality a bit... So what. I strongly believe that as a character designer, whether you're designing a likable character or a villain, you have to invest yourself emotionally with it, if it's going to result in a genuine and memorable character. Plus, I draw whatever I please, so beat it... Here she is and this is how she came to be! Enjoy!


REFERENCE
Once my proposal for the concept of the Crew got picked up (which I unfortunately can't show you images of, since it includes the other characters that will be coming out in the future) and we decided to start further developing the lead female character... I went looking for reference. In this particular case, I can't say it was a very tedious process  ♥v♥

This last model is Devon Jade and I feel obliged to give her special credit, as I was greatly inspired by photographs of her more than any other's. The striking white hair was a big part of it I'm sure, as this was a trait that I wanted to have in this character, even before I came across this particular model. 

SKETCHING & EXPLORATION
Simultaneously, I was doing quick sketches and explorations to try to find the character. These type of sketches are also useful to receive feedback from the client and get a better idea of what they might like. Ever since I started collaborating with Animation Mentor, I've been working closely with the great Bobby Beck (CEO & co-Founder of Animation Mentor) and in this particular case, him and the team over at AM fell for #7 bellow. So, the sketches continued developing in that direction.

Fun fact... #2 was inspired by this rad looking cute girl I briefly came across at a bar in San Sebastian. I would have so loved to go with a hairstyle like that.You never know where inspiration will strike... sometimes it just "walks into a bar". 

SOLIDIFYING THE DESIGN
Once we settled on a design for Aia, I proceeded to create a detailed rendering of it, to server as solid reference for modelling and texturing down the road. I'd like to thank my friend Jose Manuel Fernandez Oli (also known as Olijosman), who currently kicks major ass at Blue Sky, for sitting down with me and sharing his wisdom back when he visited last summer... I'm still nowhere near his genius, but he's definitely been a big influence in the way that I try to approach this type of renderings. And if you know his work, you can probably tell "I was trying to do an Oli" ;)

MODELING & PAINTOVERS
Once the color render of the design was given the "final" stamp, we started working on the modeling of Aia. In order to give art direction on the modeling progress, I did some paint overs over initial sculpts by our modeler, before moving to poly-modeling. Working with stylized human characters is specially difficult, as everyone's eye is naturally trained and highly critical when looking at these types of designs. Appeal is a tricky thing. 

After numerous iterations and by the end, minuscule adjustments, we eventually came to Aia's final model, which was then ready to go into Rigging and Texturing. As you can see bellow, we put great attention to detail in all areas... subtlety is complex.  



EXPRESSION SHEET & RIGGING
At this point the process diverted into two simultaneous streams: Rigging and Texturing. For the former, I created an expression sheet for Aia with a collection of notes and objectives that I thought we really needed to nail. Luckily for us, we had the amazing Ozgur Aydogdu in charge of rigging, and well, as he usually does, he knocked it out of the park. As a former character animator myself, when I first got my hands on the rig and was able to play with it... it amazed me how intuitive and easy was to get very rich and appealing expressions very quickly. I still want to create some poses and renders of my own... perhaps even an animation? 

TEXTURING
Pretty much simultaneously, I was working with Animation Mentors shader artist Rachel Ito, to develop Aia's look. Closely referencing my color rendered sketch of Aia, I was in charge of painting the color/diffuse maps that would then be applied by Rachel along with her shaders. Here are some viewport snapshots, just displayng the basic color maps with no lighting or shaders yet. 
















ALTERNATE HAIRSTYLE DEISGN
At some point during the rigging process, once we started seeing some animation tests by the amazing Lluis Llobera, we came to the realization that even though the standard hair was working and looking great, it was perhaps too big of a leap forward for beginner animators coming from the TRIBE characters. So, while we definitely wanted to keep Aia's standard hair, we determined it'd be wise to add an optional alternate hairstyle that would be shorter, with fewer controllers, and thus easier to animate. It was time to go looking for reference again and start sketching and exploring.










While I would have gladly gone for something more rad, it was decided that we went with the pixie cut, which turned out very well in the end. At first I designed it as one single bulk of geometry, but we felt it was a little boring... so I developed an alternate design with separate strands of hair, which is the one we ended up going with, and is now the optional alternate hairstyle for Aia. You can compare the two versions bellow:










And this basically brings us to now! There's an animation test coming up soon that I can't share with you just yet, but I'll update this post with it when it's out. If you have any questions about the design and creation process of Aia (that I might be able to answer), feel free to ask in the comments bellow!













PS:
Oh! I guess there's room here for a small p.s... So you might be wondering about the name Aia. I was offered the privilege of naming the character I had become quite attached to, after working on her for so long; so I named her Aia, after a mountain in my hometown of Oiartzun (Basque Country), called the Stone of Aia. It's a very peculiar landmark, and a very important one for me. Whenever I come back from my travels and see it pop up in the horizon, that's when I know I'm home. So yeah, if you are a die hard Animation Mentor fan, and feel like doing some creative pilgrimage, gimme a shout when you visit this part of the world, and I'll be happy to take you for a hike to the top of The Stone of Aia ;)

Original photograph by Seamus 1372

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#Inktober 2014 | "Faun"


Character Design Project Walkthrough | Client: ELKAR Publishing

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Hi there! So it seems I can now share with you this Character Design project I did almost a year ago. Bellow you'll find a narration of what I was presented with and what the process of creating these characters was like. I hope you find it insightful!

So last winter, a publishing company from the Basque Country called ELKAR asked me to design the lead characters for a series of illustrated books, which could potentially turn into an animated project as well*. I was in Canada at the time, but being Basque myself, they tickled my motherland-pride (heh) and got me interested (and somewhat homesick) right away. However, I made sure to leave emotions aside, and negotiate a solid deal, for the work that I was going to have to do. After some wrestling, my bid was accepted and we were on our way!

The draft that was presented to me, along with two short stories (which I really enjoyed, btw) described a pair of twins as the protagonists, with their mystical grandmother and a very wise black cat; who would take the young readers on different adventures throughout Basque History. So right off the bat, there were a couple of key design considerations I would have to keep in mind:
  • *The fact that the illustrated project could potentially evolve into an animated series, meant the designs would need to function in both mediums; as well as providing model and expression sheets. 
  • The lengthy historic timeline implied that either the characters would need to have multiple different costume designs, or a neutral attire that could fit in different time periods. The client chose the latter.
So the first thing I did was to visualize in my mind what I imagined the characters to be like as I read the stories. That gave me a "feel" for the characters to help me inform my design choices further down the process. Then I gathered some reference along the lines of what I was envisioning (See bellow) to get the client's thoughts on it and see if we were on the same page. 

CREDIT: Some of the images above belong to the great Marie Thorhauge, others are the work of the always amazing Headless Studio, and the rest are old sketches of mine from different projects. 

Once I reconciled my vision with what the client was looking for, I started sketching out different potential line ups... with slightly different looks/styles. You can see those bellow:


Option A had more of an old-timey feel and was more geared for a traditionally animated project eventually. Option B was a bit more solid and stylized, and would be more CG or ToonBoom friendly. Option B was favored by the client; they loved the Grandma, but some notes were given about all three other characters that needed to be addressed in another iteration (Bellow). 

I pitched this one as the potential final line up, and luckily they loved it! Something to note, design-wise, is that there was an underlying mystical touch to these characters in the writing, which I wanted to make sure translated onto the design. For instance, Grandma (Andere) has a duck-like right foot that she discreetly conceals with her clothing: In the story, she's a half "rivermaid", a common creature in Basque mythology. The clothing I chose for her is inspired in a traditional attire, which used to be worn by women in coastal towns in the Basque Country, and is still worn today during traditional festivities. 

The other characters weren't inherently mythical, but I felt like I wanted to infuse their designs with a bit of that same feel. Specially that of the girl (Lur), as she was described as the more adventurous and closer to her Grandma. I pushed her feline features to resemble how gnomes and elfs are often depicted in Basque mythology. The cat (Baltaxar) was described as being darkly colored or black, but I chose to push that feature by making him pitch black, to the point where his inner features are lost into a silhouette. I made the boy, Amets, the most neutral of all, as he was described as the more cautious and somewhat fearful of all characters; and so he would feel a bit out of tune with the feel and pace of the other more confident characters, even from a design point of view. 

Since the designs were accepted, I went on to developing some model and expression sheets for each of the characters:

Baltaxar, the cat, was an interesting character to work on. Building on the idea of him always being seen as a black silhouette with eyes and nose... I pitched the client the idea that he could perhaps move as a shadow over very few frames (thinking about animation here), leaving a stylized trail, and even disappear when entering dark places, with only his eyes, nose and whiskers being visible. A bit of a "Cheshire Cat" effect, if you will. The client was on board this idea as soon as the model sheet above was presented to them. As you can see on the model sheet, as Art Direction note to any artists coming into the project down the road, I recommended for the structure and limbs of the cat to be sketched, even if they were eventually going to be lost within the blackness of the silhouette, as this would help the overall shape make sense and read better. 

At this point, I was able to create a color version of the character line up, for which developed color charts for different times of day. You can see a couple of those bellow, including a step by step chart I made describing the process I followed to achieve that look. 



The indications on this last image, as the rest of the project, are written in Basque, for the rest of the artists coming into it in the future. Just in case anyone reading this might be interested in knowing what the steps were, I'm translating them bellow:
  • Clean up.
  • Base color. Line art in Overlay mode.
  • Local colors (solid) in Normal mode, on a clipping mask or with transparency blocked. 
  • Darks and "stains" on Overlay mode, also on a clipping mask.
  • Lights and Rim Light on overlay mode, also on a clipping mask.
  • For the "Through-the-trees highlights" effect, create some white marks with an irregular brush on Overlay mode. Duplicate that layer, apply and delete the mask so transparency is no longer restricted, and then apply a Gaussian Blur effect to that layer, in order to achieve that luminous look. 
And that's it! I hope you enjoyed the post and hopefully found it insightful in some way! Thanks for stopping by and feel free to ask anything or comment! Cheers!

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New studio website www.DEISIGNSTUDIO.com is here!

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ENG | Finally our new studio website is up! This is a purely professional/service studio website specifically designed to present/attract clients with our latest and best work. Designing the site and having it developed by the great people at Ixi Studio has been an exciting adventure. We tried to make as simple and sexy as possible and always making sure that the art is king. One of the most exciting ideas we came up with, along with the client testimonials that accompany each image, was to arrange the home page gallery without categories. Instead, we created a slider that allows the user to navigate all of the images along a spectrum of mood & tone, from cute to creepy, so that each client can find the exact vibe they're looking for. Hope you guys dig it! New images coming soon!

EUS | Azkenik gure studio web berria hemen da! Honakoa horrialde soilik profesionala/zerbitzuena da, gure lan berri eta ikusgarrienak bezeroei erakusteko eta enkargu berriak erakartzeko. Horrialdea diseinatzea eta Ixi Studio-ko kideekin garatzea abentura bikaina izan da. Ahalik eta web horri simple eta sexyena garatzea geneukan helburu eta beti irudiak nagusi izanik. Berrikuntzarik interesgarrienen artean, sarrera horria bera den galerian kategoriak eduki ordez, barra mugikor bat garatzea izan da, non irudi guztiak ikusi daitezkeen tonu-espektro batean zehar: xamurretik ilunera. Eta nola ez, Euskarazko bertsioa du horrialdeak ;) Gustoko izango duzuelakoan, mila esker!!

ESP | Porfin lanzamos oficialmente nuestra nueva studio web! Esta página, complementaria a www.deisign.com, está planteada como una web púramente profesional y de servicios, diseñada especificametne para mostrar nuestros últimos y mejores trabajos y atraer nuevos clientes. Diseñar y desarrollar esta página con la ayuda de la excelente gente de Ixi Studio ha sido toda una aventura creativa. Nuestro objetivo era crear una página tan sencilla como sexy, donde las imágenes fueran las reinas de la casa (y siempre a pantalla completa, Zas, en toda la boca!). Una de las ideas mas innovadoras que desarrollamos fue el desacernos de las categorías y organizar todo el portafolio a lo largo de un espectro de tono: desde lo más entrañable, a lo más oscuro. Espero que os guste y os divirtais salseando con la página (probadla en tablets y smartphones también... ;)) Gracias por vuestro apollo!!









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Darth Vader Redesign | Brainstrom Challenge #17

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Guess where I got the triple-head-blade shape from... 


DEISIGN is now on Patreon!!!

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EUS) Kaixo Lagunok!! Hemen duzue azkenaldian prestatzen ibili naizen zerbait: Nire Patreon kanpaina berria! Zuetako gehienak hau ze demonio den galdezka egongo zarete noski... ingelesa dakizuenok bideo ikus dezakezue zuzenean... eta besteontzako subtituluak sortu ditut! Bestela ere, hitz gutxitan esan diezazueket, kanpaina honen bitartez eta zuen laguntza txiki baten truke (euro bat baino gutxiago) pertsonaia eta pizti askoz gehiago sortzeko ahalmena edukiko nukeela, eta baita hauek nola egiten ditudan konpartitzeko, bideoetan, bozetoak erakutxiz, PSDak igoz, hitzaldiak edukita... eta baita zuek eskatutako ilustrazioak egiteko ere! Eman bistazo bat eta galderarik eduki ezekor... ez euki lotsarik eta bota!!! Mila esker!!!

ESP) Hola amigotes!! Aquí os comparto algo en lo que he estado preparando meticulosamente desde hace un tiempo: Mi campaña de Patreon!!! "Mi qué!?!?!" os estareís preguntando muchos... Los que sepais inglés podeis veros el video directamente para saber de qué va la historia... y para los que no, he creado subtitulos en español, que podeis activar clicando en la ruedita. De todos modos, os puedo decir que esta campaña funciona como un subscripción a una revista, pero en vez de revistas, os suscribiríais a mis bicharracos, desde tan poco como un dolar por bicharraco o personaje. Esto me posibilitaría hacer muchos más diseños exclusivamente para vosotros y a cambio, poder compartiros mis bocetos, PSDs, truquillos, videos de proceso, tener charlas y talleres e incluso hacer ilustraciones basadas en vuestras ideas!! Si teneis cualquier pregunta, no dudeis en lanzarmela en los comentarios, y seguro os la respondo!! Gracias por vuestro apoyo!!

ENG) Hi there! Here's some news on something I've been preparing for the last little while. I'm really excited to share with you my new Patreon campaign! You can check out the video to find out what it's about, but in just a few words I can tell you that this campaign could make it possible for me to create characters and creatures for YOU, on a regular basis! If you have any questions about the campaign, don't hesitate to ask! Thank you!

DIABLO BLANCO

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Diablo sketch I've done as part of Brainstorm Challenge #10 (Facebook Group).

You can join me for more of these, videos, Sketch Sessions and more at www.patreon.com/DEISIGN
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