Voxgroovy interview

http://www.voxgroovy.is/archives/12866

Interview about me and my work in illustartion and concept art on Voxgroovy. They asked me what about Czech republic and the industry - I am still quite pessimistic - sorry guys

Future city visualization designed and directed by kids!

I've been invited like artist with painter Markéta Kolářová by Creative partnership program to make a project with children from local elementary school. The subject was concept art - model making and animation of the ideal future city.

We have visited game history exhibition with class and brainstorm the ideas about design and story. Markéta was the main person in the process working with kids several months and helping them to fulfill their collective vision. And the result is fenomenal model of the place! Every building has a specific function and name.

After the model was done, kids directed me to create the virtual presentation of it in animation. The both pieces were presented on exhibition with families and guests.

It was a huge success!

We loved to teach the children whole process from concept design to realization. And we're giving big thanks to teachers, coordinators and Creative partnership!

 partnership!

Next parallax figure - gunman

I am keeping testing parallax method for simple animation. The most tricky are characters. In this test I've used many techniques 2d/3d, photos and painting... Effect is done in Maya but you can achieve similar result in many other apps. Next time I'll try to be in 3d space early to prepare shapes before final illustartion, because fitting geometry into existing picture is pretty tricky. Cheers!

Dancer - parallax experiment

animation experiment

Animation experiment

CHARACTER DESIGN DEVELOPMENT 09

The final

Here is the final of my little serie about water type alien creature. I putted all the stuff together and made this final loop. I hope you like it. Thanks for your support and notes. Cheers! :D 

http://javoraj.tumblr.com/

#characterdesign #conceptart #design #illustration #drawing #whales #alien #mermaid

CHARACTER DESIGN DEVELOPMENT 08

Transfer into 3d

Here is the little timelapse from working on the Mermaid. You can see how I am trying different colors, textures and details. I am also focusing on lighting, atmosphere, water "dust" particles, and skin  translucence. Everything has to give deeply dark, underwater feeling.

 ... To be conutied ... 

CHARACTER DESIGN DEVELOPMENT

Little experimentation with digital clay. 

... To be conutied ... 

CHARACTER DESIGN DEVELOPMENT 07

Chosen sketch

I've chosen the sketch for the mermaid character. It's gonna be this type of creature. The sketch is more schematic and simple, just depicting the feel of the figure and silhouette. But it's enough for me to start detailed 3d version.

                                                             ... To be conutied ...  

CHARACTER DESIGN DEVELOPMENT 06

Workflow test

In this update I am proofing the 2d/3d workflow for myself. I love experimentation, but it demands a lot of testing without guaranteed success. So I've decided to make small bust from the sketch before to explore my ideas. I am usign mostly Maya and it's sculpting tools + Photoshop. It supposed to be a sculpt, with clay look, but finally I added subtle tint to enhance the gill and special eye to add more character to the creature. Result is not bad, for design purposes process was faster than I expected.
I hope I'll do some tutorial for the technique itself later. Whole thing is rendered in Redshift.

... To be conutied ...  

http://javoraj.tumblr.com/

#characterdesign #conceptart #design #illustration #drawing #whales #alien #mermaid

CHARACTER DESIGN DEVELOPMENT 05

Pose sketching

Here you can see how I am utilizing some stuff from exploration before and trying to capture the creature with simple gesture sketches. I am watching references of girls, mostly under water, to get idea about some nice figure pose. And in the same time I am projecting all the water body elements into their figures. Many of them won't be selected and I delete them. But they are not useless, the bad sketches can help me to distinguish the good ones.

... To be conutied ... 

CHARACTER DESIGN DEVELOPMENT 04

 Limbs evolution test

Beluga test was interesting. During this work I decided to do something similar but with human limbs. These are very important feature of developing character. Ps is very versatile and you can deform the source in various ways to clarify your ideas. I used picture of female anatomical model from www.anatomytools.com. They have perfect models. I even own the male version. So the goal was to literally flaten the leg and make the foot bones spread to create something like a flipper. During the process, I discovered, I really like to introduce skin membrane like a part of the body. It's not typical for marine mammals, but it looks cool.

... To be continued ...   

#character design #conceptart #design #illustration #drawing #whales #alien #mermaid

CHARACTER DESIGN DEVELOPMENT 03

Human to beluga

If I am doing human like underwater creature, the first appearing idea is, of course, mermaid. So I've decided to explore little bit this direction as well. Mermaids were mythical, but people mostly pointing on Belugas, or sea cows  like a source of these stories. Belugas are beautiful! Their silhouettes and some body parts trully resembles humans underwater. I was curious how difficult would be to transform human figure into this white whale. I made it on Ps by typical photo editing/painting techniques to explore transformation process which could help me with my idea searching.

... To be continued ...

#character design #conceptart #design #illustration #drawing #whales #alien #mermaid

CHARACTER DESIGN DEVELOPMENT 02

CHARACTER DESIGN DEVELOPMENT 02

 *** research discoveries ***

During the research I've found many interesting ideas. One of the most fascinating is the story of whales in our ocean. As some of you know they were actually terrestrial animals with 4 limbs, as you can see in this picture where I collected many examples of transformation. That could help me with the design.
 Our symbol of evolution is coming from the water to the ground but these creatures made the opossite step and came back to the water to became the biggest organisms in our known history. That's a progress right! :D
So even if I don't plan to make whale type character, this "opposite" evolutional approach would be very strong and symbolic feature for my "alien". It's gonna be something like human-mammal which took different direction and that's why it's alien. But in the way like a mirror reflection of our selves.

... To be continued ... 

#character design #conceptart #design #illustration #drawing #whales #alien   

CHARACTER DESIGN DEVELOPMENT 01

CHARACTER DESIGN DEVELOPMENT 01

 *** research discoveries ***

I've decided to make something again.
This time I will focus on underwater/alien-girl type character. I am starting with research - watching some animal documentaries, collecting reference pictures and making these wild scribbles. I need to fill my mind with usefull information and transfer it into lines and shapes of ideas about the character.

...To be continued...

Gathered Compilation

Recently I've done batch of time lapse videos. I was wondering it would be nice to make little compilation for tracking my progress and sharing the creative process with others. So here is it - Enjoy the video! :)

Check the works on Tumblr > http://javoraj.tumblr.com/

Waterfall study

The Sisters

New Zeppelin design for my friend's IP - Enjoy the final and the process! :)

Figure studies

Study, study, study - now, I have to improve my figure skills - I've never really focused on it - so I have to study hard... I hope my enthusiasm won't disappear soon - check the time lapse! :)