Summer Holidays: Sketching out Ideas

There was a solid brake from blog posting, but on the other hand I was busy trying to capture at least some of the ideas I got during my summer holidays, campings and trips . There's clearly a variety of ideas, but after drawing them out of my head I see wich one's still intrigue me and I'd still like to get back to them.


After getting back to Lithuania I met a lot of friends , with those from art school we desided to make a little summer practise like we used to. So this is the panorama from a mound we saw and were drawing.

At the same "summer practice" an element of a ship suggested what is in this drawing.

I discovered othat one of my favourite themes could be ballet. This is not a first time an idea in topic comes.

The idea of a nun-train was inspired while I worked at a UCAS faire. There were plenty of prospective students who we had to advice about the perspectives of studying at UCA. I just couldn't believe of the variety of caracters I saw there :D a group of pupils were ..particularly inspirational :D . But this drawing still.. lacks of the feel and proportions I imagine. But if it were to be developed further , I guess that would be fixed.

Another idea of giant monster formed out of mountain of trees came during a bycicle trip to sanctuary park here in my home country. The sketch captures quite clearly the creature I imagine, but sadly not the mood and environment.

I think this is just a simple abstract, stile practise. Looks more like it served as a meditation :D

The few composition ideas for the birds outter environment.. much development needed clearly :D

This is one of my favourites. The image came just before falling to sleep. But now it looks that it might have been just a flashback of one of my favourite Hayao Miyazaki's films My Neighbour Totoro (Dir. Hayao Miyazaki; 1998). Or maybe not.. Because I visualized a very interesting "Anatomy" of the creature ( for example mouth actually being joint to the .. fur and the skin of the creature).

Next two weeks I'm back at Rocehster to work at summer school. God knows what kind of ideas I'll get after working with 15-16 year olds :D

The Aim and Idea for the Environment

I think with this project I'm more confident to experiment and just see what happens, so what I imagine for environment is very simmilar to one of my previous works I did - a mixed technique true media work I named it pixie (And perhaps you can see her there) but in fact the work is more like abstract environmet - something what I'm looking for .

This is the general feel I think I'll be reaching for, but these next couple of days I'll experiment and see what happens .

Bird's Design Sheet: Front, Back, Side

This is the most resolved design of the bird in his primar stage ( befor becomeing a lantern) Full resolution of how a 3d model would look. Now I'd feel confident modeling it.

Dorje Turnaround

This is the turnaround of Dorje - an object that has a symbolic meaning in Tibetian religion.

As I mentioned previously, this was my first commision. A simple little project, but hey, it's money... :D A good practice as well.

Picking Little Experiences - first "true" Commision

A week ago I got lucky and was asked to prepare a little project - a turnaround of an object.

The turnaround is for a an MA final project presentation . Not a tricky task, I thought at first. And perhaps it isn't at all. But it turned to be a little chalange only just because I thought it's gonna be easy-peasy :D But problems as allways occured from unexpected places.
This object is Dorje. Dorje means "Diamond" and it is a tibetian ritual object . It symbolizes method and activeness and is a representation of male aspects.
This is how it actually looks like:

It supposedly is made out of brass or copper and looks old as well as isn't ideally simetrical. Also there are plenty variations in the level of detail. But in my case the task is to capture the esence - idea, proportions, material etc.

The first attemps were ... good examples of developmental stage :D Not to satisfactory.. at all..


But today I spent around 4-5 hours concentrating only on texturing and lighting . Also thanks to Alan's advice I got rid of the little problem , black dots on the model.
Ater palying around with settings it all started falling to place. Also the lighting here, I found, is hugely important. I think if it looks even a tyniest bit as a metal object, 30 procent of that is because of the suitable lighting, light colours and intensities. So this is what I have so far :


To me .. it feels like a cold and heavy metal... At least it doesn't look like plastic , like befor...

And here are some wireframes as asked :)

A simple little project indeed, but very good for keeping fresh and developing the set of skills we gained this year. I even have a tight dedline :D (this Wednesday)
I'll post the turnaround video when it's rendered and done.

The Bird

After..now two weeks of visualizing and roughly a week of drawing today I got to first time see how actually the bird is looking. I have to admit, this is perhaps the first design that really has a lot of likeness to what was in my head. Some changes , of course, will take place.

Also there's still the side and the back view left to be drawn. But this was the hardest bit.

So as you may notice, the bird looks like a ship and is made out of ship details. But that was, as I mentioned, my intentions. After figuring out the proportions ( where I researched the variety of birds), how its going to be constructed (to get a good idea of that I researched bird's anatomy, contemporary architecture and the "what's out there", in particular - Howls Moving Castle ( Dir. Hayao Miyazaki, 2004)) what left was building a ''puzzle'' . The bird looks like he is clayed together from various bits of ships and in general, from leftovers ( I think I should make the bird asymmetrical to make the idea he is made from leftovers even better pronounced..).

Having figured out the design of the character I can go and find what his environment is like.
Next week, my last one here in Rochester :) , I'll try and create the concept drawings of the environment and the world of animation in general.

Bird's and Bird-Lantern's proportions and structure guidelines.

After listening Alan's comment I decided to tweak few things. He suggested to first research birds anatomy and all the 'hidden' bones they have because that consequently might affect the design work. And it doesn't matter if its a cartoon character.

In my case the bird is somebody's made model/sculpture, so I imagined it's moves restricted ( penguin-like walking for instance), On the other hand if it were for animating it later , I'd still need to express his thoughts and feelings somehow. I thought the tool for that could be his head and eyes and his wings, which , I read somewhere, should be considered as additional pare of eyes :D ("Hands are like extra pare of eyes in animation "). So instead using the blocks for wings, like I planed, I went for more real-like construction of bird's wings.

Also changed the proportions so both bird and bird-lantern would look slightly better

Developing Bird's Design: The Architecture of the Bird

This is the first step in developing the design of the character, that is figuring out the proportions and finding the structure which would then serve as guidlines in the actual process of design since the bird will be constructed of various bits of other models (ships, tools etc.) . So to make sence in the design I first started thinking about the "anatomy" of the bird.
Also the bird will transform into a lantern, so I bared that in mind when designing. For instance, I was planing to make the wings short, but they didn't suited the bird-lantern so I went for longer wings.

I took the advice I heard quite a few times this year and quickly done some shape tests. So far it looks like the shape is simbolic, simply readable and in this case suitable .(In animation the bird would be a bit clumsy and in a way inconfident, but still childishly energetic, cute and outgoing).

Now It comes to figuring out the detailes, as in this case it's all about the details since the bird is going to be one large 3d puzle.

Idea's Development and the Aim

SO far it looks like I'm aiming for something similar to what producers of Howl's moving castle (Dir. Hayao Miyazaki, 2004) made.

It is interesting how the idea reached this point. It's like a story here.

Last week (as well as tree upcoming weekends) I was working with robots Sparky and Atom, as one of the operators ( I was the robot's arm :D ) in the Fuse festival, which is now taking place in Medway towns. I noticed that seeing these robots day to day also influenced the idea of summer project..

Also one of my friends went to Sunrise Celebration festival here in UK and uploaded gorgeous pictures from there. One which inspired me was with the lanterns. I thought - that's it! that's what I needed! Before that my bird was only running towards the lake from the garage, but now it is reaching the water and then reaching the sky. This is like one of those moments we were tought about in Storytelling unit - of course the bird is actually a lantern and flys up instead of just floating! . That was an Eurica moment. Eventhough I'm definetly not thinking about summer project, all seems to fall nicely into places. :) Atleast that's how it feels.

It looks like the personal experience really is playing a part in creative solutions . Now over this week I'm hoping to draw as much as I can and come up with more substantial designs .

Research: Principles of Architecture, Ships and models, Extraordinary Chickens

The first idea after listening the music was, it's going to be an emerging structure. Soon after that I started researching architecture and this was what directed idea's development. it is also a good reference of what the construction of the bird could be.

But as the idea was developing and becoming what I wrote about, I started researching ships . So far I think they are going to serve as bricks for my bird, as well as shape and from solutions. There should be lots of elements of ship in the design works.

Also to refresh my eye and just to brake the stereotypical visualisation of birds I'm looking at the extraordinary breeds of chicken. But just to clear things out, the bird structure is not going to be a chicken (even some of those chickens I saw don't looks like chickens at all..). But I needed to see the variety of shapes and feels brought by the shapes ( why some chickens look cute while others, to my mind, perfectly embody pure evil :D :D )

Few other Little things are important to my concept. such as the Sky lantern.

Initial Responce and Ideas

After listening the music many times an idea came. The music suggested everything to me: colour palette, shapes, proportions, then environment, character and finally the story.

The place. It seems it's going to be a model-making class-garage where such things as ship, plane and other smart models are made. The garage is near a lake . The space itself is very open but in the same time definite, surrounded by woods.

The character. It is a bird-like model, made from all the 'leftover' from other models. So its a bit of everything together - you can see parts of ship, parts of plane, other objects , all different but working very nice together in dis mish-mash model , the bird ( A bird also just 'came' while listening to the music. At first I didn't understand and asked my self - Why bird?? , but now listening to the music, there's really a specific ..bit of tune, that really sounds and reminds a bird)

The idea.


The idea is the forgotten model one evening becomes alive and his goal is to reach the water and finally, the sky, or in other words, forfill his purpose and become what he is meant to be.

the idea is , he is a sky lantern and not only a mere mish-mash from the leftovers of other models. He just needs to open himself, light a fire inside and fly up , this is not a metaphor also :D he really opens as a paper lantern, lights a fire to gather warm gasses and because of that starts flying up.









After working out the idea and the story I was confident to start researching the concepts which will be used to create world, character design.