My Mickey Mouse Degree

Sonic Unleashed FMV

Matt — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 19:38:31 +0000

You may or may not have seen

It’s a trailer for the latest Sonic game, and while the game may not turn out to be much good (we’ll see I guess), that FMV is flipping ace. I really love the animation on Robotnik, it’s very cartoony and theatrical acting. Check out the anticipation on this, it’s awesome -

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Beyond Good & Evil 2!

Matt — Wed, 28 May 2008 21:12:06 +0000

Man I love Beyond Good & Evil. I love it excessively and indecently in largely populated public places. Guess what? Finally we have confirmation of a sequel in the form of this rather fancy trailer!

Isn’t that nice? I hope everything’s not all realistic though like that, I was down with the old art style, but hell, I’m sure I’ll be getting arrested for indecent exposure again because of this game sometime soon regardless. Can’t wait.

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Karl on IGN!

Matt — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 17:06:29 +0000

Hey all,

I’ve not been wallowing in self pity or anything since my last post, I took a day off and then I started a new little animation using Bugs Bunny after watching some Looney Tunes stuff frame by frame.
Up to now I’ve really been aiming for Disney “realism” and smoothness in my work, but after looking at the WB shorts properly I’ve decided to have a bash at more snappy, energetic animation, hence me doing this Bugs thing.

It’s pretty much done, I’ve just got a couple of overlap frames to do on his ears and about three more keys, so it should be up by tomorrow, it ain’t much, but I like it.

As for the post title, my good friend Karl just got a two page interview up on IGN about Team 17’s new game - Worms: A Space Oddity, that he’s working on.

That pretty much makes him famous, which automatically makes me famous. Almost.

Check it out - here.
More tomorrow, hopefully.

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Hanna-Barbera Amongst Other Things.

Matt — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 18:48:26 +0000

Bleh, been in a bit of a slump recently, I dunno what it is, I think I’m getting impatient with the rate of my skill development as I tend to every so often. Still struggling with anything bordering on realism as usual, and I’m not happy with the poses I’m putting out in my cartoon sketches.

I’ll get over it soon enough.

So today I’ve been looking at some cartoons that I haven’t really checked out since I was a kid. Generally speaking since starting my degree I’ve pretty much ignored most television animation that I grew up with, assuming it all would be disappointingly cheap and nasty looking if I saw them now, but today I had the sudden urge to take a look at Alvin and the Chipmunks (the 1980’s series) on YouTube and was pleasantly surprised by the opening titles.

It wasn’t superb, certainly, but it was compared to a lot of the stuff that was about in the 80s, and it leant much more towards Disney than it did the limited stylings of Hanna-Barbera.

As often happens when I get suitably impressed by an animation, I’m now on the lookout for a DVD of the show, but it looks like I’m going to have to delve into Region 1 because I can’t seem to find an R2 release.

Anyways,

here’s the intro that set me off.

Moving on to Hanna-Barbera, I really, really like their character designs and drawing style. I remember in my first year I was not on board with their studio output at all, despite loving their shows as a kid (and by studio output, I mean their TV work, MGM’s Tom & Jerry shorts are my favourite cartoons, ever).

The limited animation put me off, and honestly I don’t really find much of their stuff that funny as an adult, and I hated it when they put laugh tracks in their shows. Good Lord I hate laugh tracks.

But having said all this, dammit they have some appealing looking characters. Yogi Bear is such a wonderful, confidently drawn character, yet I don’t think I even liked that show as a kid. I think I’m going to give the Hanna-Barbera studio another chance as of today and try and pick up a few of their old shows, just to make sure I haven’t dismissed one of the giants of TV animation for no good reason.

After all that, here’s some selected output from the last couple of days.

Alvin Sketch

From today’s Chipmunk realisation.

Street Scene

I wanted to see what I came out with without using any construction lines (how I used to draw).

Yogi

The one on the left is copied, so don’t give me credit for the nice pose. The one on the right is all mine.

And this final sketch is part of some concept sketches for what should become my final year project at university, I’m putting it up here in good faith, so please don’t rob me blind, as it were.

Final Year Project

That’s all for today, come back soon.

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Just a Quick One.

Matt — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 19:53:41 +0000

I cleaned up and coloured that Raz pic today, but I’m not too pleased with it. I still need a lot more practice with digital painting, but hell, you may as well see it.

RazCol.jpg

I dunno, I prefer the original sketch by a mile. This is a bit naff. Plus I somehow forgot his backpack and didn’t correct the horrible eye mistake. Ah well, live and learn and other cliches.

In other news I finished BioShock today. It was blimmin’ amazing. I felt the ending was a bit abrupt though, didn’t really give me chance to muse over the climax as I tend to do when I’ve just been told a good story, so it kinda deflated the whole thing. Still, never before has a game told a story so well without any cutscenes whatsoever (ignoring the beginning and end), Half-Life 2 has been officially dethroned. Though only just, mostly because of G-Man’s voice. That is one fine voice he has, and I don’t even swing that way.

I also did a bunch of drawings today, but I can’t really be damned to photograph them now so I’ll post ‘em up tomorrow, just for you. Have a pleasant evening.

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A Quick Bit about BioShock.

Matt — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 14:19:45 +0000

Man, I’ve been playing BioShock a lot recently, mostly because it has the best story ever, in the world, and I want to kiss it.

If you have an Xbox 360, or a fancy PC, you really should check it out, it continues to amaze me every time I fire it up and consequently wet myself with fear and joy simultaneously.

But enough about BioShock for now, I’ve finally attempted to get my head around Burne Hogarth’s Dynamic Anatomy (a book, not his actual anatomy, which may or may not have been dynamic). I’m kind of starting to grasp it, but I’m not reading all the words because they scare me. Actual muscles names may indeed be useful, but they’re a bit daunting for me, so I just draw the pictures and read the distances between each body part. Ah well.
Anyways, here’s the best of today’s produce (there were many others that sucked royally) -

Ears and Necks

Eyes and Nose 2

Eyes and Nose 1

Ugly Looking Blokes

And one more from BioShock, just for kicks. I forgot the canister things on his back, but I’ll add them on when I clean it up.

Big Daddy

Speaking of cleaning up, I’ll hopefully have chance to stick that Raz picture up from yesterday with inks and colours at some point this week, I quite liked that one. And possibly the Clown picture too.

Well, that’s me done for now.

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