Peppy's Pizza!

Hey guys! Long time no post! But seeing as how today is the first day of spring break, I will do a little update of my current project.

The assignment:
Develop an original animated TV show idea, and storyboard a scene that highlights the show’s theme and main character(s).

Best. Assignment. Ever.

We had to develop convincing characters, believable relationships, and of course, an appealing world for all this to happen.  I started to doodle some different characters and see where that took me. I was able to narrow it down to three ideas.

Dust bunnies would be a children's show based off of actual dust..who are bunnies. The day to day would be them trying to escape villains such as Snippet the static cling cat or the vacuum. It would be a buddy buddy comedy, between Cole and Byron and their completely opposite personalities. 

Team Bovine would be a show based off of some characters I did a few semesters back. This show would be a riff on The Dukes of Hazard. But obviously for kids, on "moonshine" only  "mooshine". Hanford and B would get into all kinds of shenanigans and use cheesey catch lines like "You got beef with us?" 

Lastly would be Peppy's Pizza. This would be an adult cartoon, for the audiences of Bob's Burgers or the Adult Swim category.  This show follows Miranda, a girl who works at a kids pizzeria as the mascot. The supporting characters are a bit more developed here. This show would be based off of my experiences (good and bad) from doing the same job at Chuck E Cheeses.

After pitching all three ideas, I decided to go with Peppy's Pizzeria. The feedback I got was there is a lot of authenticity to these characters and story. And I'd sure hope so! Here are some story moments to go along with it:

I think what I like most about this idea, is I wanted the main character, Miranda, to be a strong female, but not super hero strong, but strong in her moral and ethical beliefs. I also wanted her to be chubby. As I am, I'm pretty sure this is the main reason at Chuck E Cheese they had me always be Chuck E when I worked, but there isn't enough of that in any cartoon out there. 

 Dillion is the game room attendant who started working at Peppy's in High School while selling pot. He dropped out of high school to continue his pot business outside of Peppy's. He also has the coin hook up. 

Lex is "dark forces" worshiper who is the niece of the franchise owner so she can't get fired. She openly detests kids, but works there for her friends and easy money. 

Tiffany is the birthday hostess who flirts with all the dads and moms to get bigger tips. She has not problem "going that extra mile" to ensure her families are well taken care of. Meaning, ethics are not in her wheelhouse. 

Currently writing the pilot episode and doing some sketches. Can't wait to update you guys again, stay tuned!

30 minute painting "Cliff House"

Did this little bitty in 30 minutes for the Spit Paint Facebook group. I liked the idea Barron Storey would talk about in class by having something at the bottom and using a taller canvas to put something at top. I didn't exaggerate it as much as I could of, but perhaps next time I will, or I will revisit this guy and work it more.

Virtual Plein Air

Virtual Plein Air is where you look at google street view, find a scene you like and paint it! =D All within the comfort of your desk chair! (me thinks I need a new desk chair tho)

There is a facebook group of people posting their paintings and findings, and I saw someone post this location earlier, and I loved it and wanted to see what I could do so here it is!

https://www.google.dk/maps/@55.684339,12.5903,3a,49y,260.97h,88.68t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sRKu6KWC2EBvF9eXKCZBZNg!2e0?hl=da

Overall I'm pretty happy with it. I like the colors and such. I would like to work on my lighting more so I will be looking for locations with strong lighting next. This was just to get my feet wet in the world of Virtual Plein Air. <3

Final Zipa!!

So I realized I never posted my final Zipa character. This was my first experience with it and I'm pretty happy with it. I developed him pretty early on which I think gave me the upper hand with him.  This was a really big learning experience for me as well.

A New Leaf: A New York Flower Shop

For 117b, our latest assignment was creating a flower shop and it's owner from the 1980's New York. It was definitely challenging to make the city feel like New York. New York has so much character and quirk that you know it when you see it.  So getting that feel was hard.

I really wanted to get funky shapes in and bring a 1990's Nickelodeon feel to it. 

After critiques, my teacher liked these two the best. 

For the next pass, I worked out some colors and some ideations for store fronts. 

Unlike the zipa project where I felt like I got a grasp on my character pretty quick, I struggled with this one.  Ultimately, I chose a character who was an ironic flower shop owner.

The inside of the flower shop was a whole other beast to tackle. Filling the space and making it fit the size of the front were some challenges.

To help with the inside of the flower shop, I built a Maya proxy.

This model helped quite a bit in realizing my space. Here on the bottom I tried to work out some color pallets and lighting.

I was still having trouble with my lighting, so I built the exterior in Maya as well and played around with the physical Sun and Lighting settings. 

Since I had a character who looked like he belonged working in a creepy photo studio rather than a flower shop, I needed to come up with a story for him. So I invented his wife, Edith. They never had any children, and therefore she treated her flower shop as her own child. When she passed, Harold ( my little guy), didn't want to lose the memory of her so he kept the flower shop going. 

So here on top are some story moments from Harold's life.  On the bottom is a first pass for the interior of my shop. The lighting is all over the place and it feels really glum. That needed to be fixed.

The exterior was feeling better, but needed some more details and stronger warms in the lighting. 

Finals: I decided I wanted the interior of the shop to feel sad after Edith's passing. Without her, it was no longer a happy place.

Harold has definitely seen better days, but here he is sporting his late wife's apron and trying to make it through each day.

Adding the warm oranges to this shot really brought it home. I'm happy with this piece tho style wise I miss the lining drawing in it.

Hugs!

Felt inspired by today's lecture in class and came up with this little girl. Took about 20-30 minutes.

El Dorado

We are still working on our character designs. I have chosen the round overweight character to continue with on this assignment. But here are some ideations before I made that decision.

We also have to come up with environments for Lake Guatavita. This is the most challenging part so far. The first ideations I had were way too constructed. Too many structures that would be still be there in present day. 

Then, I went way to far on the other end, and left it too minimalist. 

Then, I threw in color and lighting and came up with this.

I chose to go with a morning type light in the majority of the environments here. For the final pass, I'm choosing the second from the left with some alterations. More to come!