The Kittypillar & The Animators (Draft)

I just thought I would quickly share this draft doodle with all of you animation folks and fellow HSAD students out there! Some of the other animators (who are also going into the 3rd year) and I, have been discussing amongst each other lately how we are gonna decorate our animation room for next year / the “End of Year Show”. We definitely want to display more artwork and project work on the walls of our room, to make it feel less “officey” and into more of a creative environment. So, any character sheets / storyboards / sketches and other preliminary work will be appearing throughout the course of the year.

The suggestion was made to do little portraits of each other in each animators respective styles to put up – especially with the End of Year Show in mind. This will be a good indicator of our professional / casual friendships, as well as being something which may make the course a bit more inviting to any prospective students.

Below, is a draft for the portrait which I will hopefully be creating to put up on display. It shows the main character from my Final Major Project, as well as the other students in my year: Alex and Callum. This was doodled up in my F.M.P sketch and production book, which I will also be putting on display for public viewing during the End of Year Show. I’m gonna do a few variations of this, until I come up with one that will later become the final piece.

Good ol’ Letraset ProMarkers! You certainly get the job done!

FROM LEFT TO RIGHT:
KITTYPILLAR, ME, ALEX & CALLUM.

Outlining Kittyworm

To go with the previous post on my production blog (which you can read HERE), I decided to film myself doing a bit of line work. I really enjoy making these little speed-drawing videos. I can watch other examples on YouTube for hours on end! To be fair, that is where I have learned many valuable drawing and colouring techniques from.

Using a 0.1 nib pigment ink fineliner really helps to give a nice effect on the fur, as well as giving you the option to fill in some varied line thicknesses too. Using single thickness lines for the fur gives a much lighter effect than the much harder lines used on the ears and antennae.

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• Video was edited using Premiere Pro.
• Actual drawing time was around 2 or 3 minutes.
• Outlined using a 0.1 nib pigment ink fineliner.
• Soundtrack downloaded from: http://www.freeplaymusic.com/

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“The Kittypillar Tree” – Line Art

I decided to start some intensive work on a concept art piece for the Kittypillar earlier this week. Wanting it to be a potential childrens book concept as well as my Final Major Project animation, this would help me in both realms. For one thing, it will help me work out colour schemes and particular details in art direction. For another thing, it will also help me to understand the sort of “vibe” I want to portray in the animation once I start on the nitty-gritty of the production stages.

I like to use visual reference whenever deemed necessary, especially when trying to portray accurate colour schemes and backgrounds (let it be known, I am really not that fantastic at backgrounds). Wanting to do a piece of art depicting the Kittypillar in one of its natural habitats, I had a quick look on Google for a suitable image of a tree branch.

The one below was my image of choice, because of the unusual look of the wood, and the vibrant colour of the leaves and background. I added one or two more twig-sized branches for visual interest, as well as several different shaped leaves. This was so that the Kittypillars had more of the environment in the drawing to interact with.

SOURCE: http://www.layoutsparks.com/pictures/branch-0

A mechanical pencil was used to sketch out all the features of this piece. I used a 0.5 nib pigment ink fine-liner to ink all of the line work. I used single strokes of the pen in order to create the fur effect on the Kittypillars, which I think worked out quite nicely. I did the same on the leaves in the foreground and background. With the line thickness on the tree, I decided to go over the exact line variation made with the pencil. This is a technique I’ve used countless times in the past on single pieces, comics, and competition pieces.

I’ve shown the Kittypillars in this image to be doing various different things / displaying different behaviors so you can see a wide range of the spectrum. On this piece in particular, you can see: Sleepy, Hungry, Sad, In love, Happy, Silly, Angry.

The next stage will obviously be making a start on the colouring of the critters. I’m wanting to be a bit diverse with that – showing both unusual colours such as pastel and vibrant ones, as well as natural coats which you would find on any breed of house cat / member of the cat species. Also, I will have to find a way of easily depicting a noticeable difference between male and female Kittypillars. I will look for feedback on this and include any responses in the next update.

“The Kittypillar Tree” © 2013 AbbieSTABBY

Kittypillar Sketchbook – Page #02

Having invested in a nice quality, hard-bound sketchbook for the upcoming academic year, it was time to get cracking and start making some concept art!

As well as this sort of being an expressions / moods sheet, it was also an exercise in how I may want the end product to look. Rather than dead on black lines, it would be nice to have it in a soft-looking, pencil-coloured style.

Purely for visual interest and sheer quirkiness, I will have the Kittypillars sleeping upside down in a tree / bush / flowerpot. This was a piece of inspiration found when I was watching the National Geographic channel a few evenings ago, and there was a small documentary on various breeds of bats.

Angry Kittypillars are supposed to puff their fur out when angry / defending themselves, so I’ll do a few more test drawings of that. The one below doesn’t quite do it for me in that respect!

My favorite one is the happy Kittypillar, with no shadow of a doubt. It perfectly embodies what I think of when I create these little critters and talk about them. He looks so happy and carefree!

Of course I had to do the mandatory little black and white patched Kittypillar, based on my cat Norman. He is the “main” Kittypillar after all, which will feature in my Final Major Project animation.

Creating a Kittypillar

This is the first of what I hope will end up being several video tutorials on how to draw / colour / craft  the Kittypillar. These will be a fun thing for peers and a younger audience to watch and have a go at. I may even have to upload some attempts from other people when I have collected a few together, haha!

• Video was very quickly edited using Premiere Pro.
• Actual drawing time was around 20 minutes, give or take!
• Coloured using Letraset ProMarkers.
• Soundtrack downloaded from: http://www.freeplaymusic.com/

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