A thin Wisp of Smoke

Since my last post things have really been moving in terms of ideas for this next Henry the Horse story. Here are some ideas that I have been working on. I'm especially pleased with the front cover for the story.

I'm going to continue working on ideas. Eric is so far really pleased with my progress. We are planning release of this story in October.

Henry the Horse: A New Adventure Begins

Since Henry the Horse being published as an ebook via Amazon, it has since been placed on a print on demand site lulu.com! :-)

Since my last post, Eric has written another Henry the Horse adventure which is going to be in a longer novel format. This is very exciting, as there is a lot more scope for me to create illustrations for it. It will also be suitable for a larger audience. I have started creating idea's for new character's Shadow the sheep dog, and a new Horse character called smokey. Here are a couple of rough idea's.

Henry the Horse: Published! :D

As of tomorrow Henry the Horse will be available to download via Amazon. I'm so excited to see what feedback Henry will recieve. I'm also hoping that there will be other Henry the Horse adventures to work on soon :-) - I have some other personal projects that I'm in the process of developing, as well as working on my honours project story of the victim, and turning that into a book. I would also love for this to be interactive at some point in the future, but will need to research into this in more depth. To anyone that will be reading this, I really hope you will go on Amazon and get your self a copy of Henry the Horse; A brave horse with a big heart.

Poster Advertisement: Henry the Horse

This is the poster for Henry the Horse. It's simple, but I think it's effective.

Final Illustrations for Henry the Horse

All images have now been scaled to the proper size for upload to Amazon and there have been some updates. These are all the final illustrations for Henry the Horse. Look out for the book on Amazon soon. It is a lovley story, and I hope people will think that my illustrations help to capture the story.

Henry the Horse: Illustrations 8, 9 & 10

This is the illustrations for verses 8,9 & 10 for Henry the Horse.

Verse: 8 - A look at the cottage which is on fire

Verse 9: Henry trying to get out of the barn - The black smoke bringing tears to his eyes

Verse 10: Henry Galloping over the fence to go and get help for Farmer Jones and his Family.

Henry the Horse: Illustration 6 & 7

These are the illustrations for verses 6 & 7. I'm very pleased with how the illustrations are progressing. I care very much about the story, and I'm trying to capture the emotions Henry would be feeling.

Verse 6: Henry noticing a light under the stable door:

Verse 7: Henry looking at the cottage on fire:

Henry the Horse: Illustration 5

This is the illustration for verse 5 - Eric wanted the hay to look as realistic as possible. I  found this quite a challenge as I wanted to make sure that the overall style of the book is consistent. I think this picture now has the right balance of realistic and cartoon styles.

Verse 5 - Henry having a rest in his barn

Henry the Horse: Illustration's so far

The Henry the Horse project is going well. There will be 17 pics in the story altogether, and I also need to come up with a front cover. These are the 4 Illustration's I have so far. The author Eric Pullin is very pleased with how the pics are progressing, and of the way Henry looks.

Verse 1: Henry having a rest

Verse 2: Henry doing his daily delivery of milk

Verse 3: Henry thinking about his younger days

Verse 4: Henry in his barn after a long day's work - he wishes he could be a racehorse again

Henry the Horse

I'm really excited to be working on a project illustrating a childern's book called Henry the Horse. I started this project back in 2008, and created a series of 17 illustrations calaborating with author Eric Pullin. It's a story which has remained in my heart, and I'm very pleased to be updating some of the existing illustrations, and were hoping to try and get the book published for the Kindle at some point in the future.

Before this can happen there is a lot of things that need to be improved on. Eric and I had a long conversation today on the things that need to be fixed, and I'm really excited to get stuck into this while looking for work.

I'll be posting updates on this project soon. For now, I'll let you have a taste of a few of the existing illustrations. The colour of the Henry will be getting changed to black with some grey highlights.


Original Image for Verse 1 - Some tweaks to make in terms of taking the tail away and changing the colour on Henry

Original Image for verse 7 - Just the colour to change here

2011 - 2012 Showreel

This is an updated version of my showreel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Oe-FEhNVwU&feature=youtube_gdata

I've been painting in my spare time, exploring colour and texture. It's nice to create something new thinking about traditional methods. I'm finding that it is helping me to improve my digital work.

Honours Project re-visited

Here is the link to my final animation of the Victim which I created for my honours project.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5azsBWhHnc

I plan to update this with better lighting and to work on the narration again. I have been wanting to do this for a while, but have been trying to think on ideas to improve it. I still think it would be nice to make a version which people could relate to without the narration.

Here is some of the advertising material I have for this project and a reminder of my showcase which I put so many hours into while working on the dissertation. It will also be getting a re - vamp. I think it is effective the way it is, but there is some tweaks I could make.

Link to the STV News feature on the 2011 showcase. (Skip to 9.10)

http://video.stv.tv/bc/stv-news-at-six-tayside-20110520/

Logo Idea 2 - AX Design

This is the final outcomes for the AX Design logo. I like the shapes and I think the colours work well together better in the first version. AX Design is a fictional company, I just want to continue creating different logo designs for the use of my portfolio. I really think it's something I would like to work on more.

Logo

This is my first attempt at a logo design in a long time with help from an Illustrator tutorial. Really pleased with the result and was really fun to make. I'm going to continue making more in my spare time while not working on other projects. Logo design is another area of interest to me. I think it's important to have a distinguished symbol within any company logo so that people will remember you.

Valcor - Concept 4 - Final developments

This is the new rough sketches for Valcor - My animatic is almost ready, just some more tweaks to make before posting it on here. I am just about half way there with my rough storyboard sequences for the first two scenes just to make sure the story is flowing the way I want.

I have started the build for the main environments including the tree of souls.

I've also been using online tutorials to try and get to grips with Illustrator and In-Design to keep up my typography and graphic design skills.

Concept 3 - Valcor: Lost Souls Project

Here I'm going for the gothic gargoyle look for Valcor, but I'm still not sure about the style here... I'm still deciding whether Lost Souls should be realistic or cartoon in style. Still, I enjoyed experimenting with this. I'm still working on an animatic which runs through the opening scene. The movment looks ok, but will need to make it 24 frames per second rather than the 16 I was originaly going to have, to make the movement more fluent.

I'm still running through cloth tutorials for Maya.

Dealine to decide on Main character 14th April.

Valcor Concept - face

Concept for Valcor, face:

This is just a quick experiment, but there is something I like about it... just not sure on the style.

New Concept Art - Lost Souls Project Update

Over the last few weeks I've still been thinking about various styles. I'm still exploring line, colour and composition. Here is a new concept idea for the main character. I've also been working on a character model for the main character "valcor" I have some rough sketch work which I still need to scan and post. I'm undecided on the textures and I think he looks very plastic and robotic even though I was happy with it to begin with. So I'm going back to the drawingboard and this is one of my ideas focusing on a close up shot of the eyes.



Please feel free to comment on the work... I'm always looking for feedback. In other news, I've been working on a new website which is nearly there, just some of my best work to add. All in all, it's been a busy few weeks.