Munchkin Land!

Munchkins.
Nuff said.

Eeew... Girls...

Not much inspiration behind Dorothy I must confess. I did a similar google scoop of Dorothy images left right and centre, like I did for the scarecrow... Just a great mass of pigtails, brown hair, the same damn dress over and over again and stupid smiles.
In the end I just did a quick sketchy pose and modified it here in there in the vain hope of getting a good idea. Well I got some silhouette shapes I like, especially fiddling with her hair.

Crow Frightener

I picked up on some of the bits I liked in the scarecrow thumbnails I did earlier, and pieced together another thumbnail based on a few of those thrown together. I did some sketching and re-sketching and wound out with this quick idea. Sort of getting towards what I like in a scarecrow.

While we're talking ideas, I was inspired by Abe from Oddworld's Abe's Odyssey. Kinda kooky and clumsy. Not made of hay, but he gave the sort of impression I liked. I also drew some influence from a quick google search of "Scarecrow". See images below...

Stylish

A superb film that I just realised in the middle of this lecture would fit our Wizard of Oz idea very well. A little dash of cartoony with a good measure of relative realism. Cell shading may need to be revised, and most likely a different colour scheme, but that will be discussed in good time.

Here's some screenshots from Codehunters. Nice style.


Movie link here.

Of Emeralds

In a desperate attempt to throw some more ideas out on the web to make way for more stuff.
I think I know what I was thinking about when I re-watched that ninja jumping movie the other day.

Some Emerald city colour splashes. Still super-rough, one more so than the other.

The first one with the fancy rainbow and floating rocks took roughly 2.5 hours-ish.
The second took the better part of 5 minutes, 2 of which were spent scanning.

Flashy

Just a ninja.
Felt like doing some animation one day last year. So I scribbled in flash. I mocked up a quick cheap background in 5 hair-raising minutes of photoshop, and voila!

Maybe not relevant, but it's involved somehow in my thought process, and I feel like posting it up.

In a blinding flash of light...

Another short post.

A handful of coloured bits and pieces. A scarecrow picture that's done it's job for 2 assignment tasks, and a few quick rough goes at a lion.

Sil- Sil- Sil- Silhouettes- ettes- ettes...

Sung to the tune of "Duke of Earl".

So I read a few things in a few places about the importance of silhouettes in good character design. A particular crew that I look to for some of these helpful little tidbits are the folk at Valve...
Like their TF2 Blog!

So here's some silhouettes.


Dorothy

Scarecrow
Tin Man
Lion

Wizidz

Grouping up with Andrew and Tom makes up my pre-production assignment group thing. We make stuff for a book based on a Grimm fairy tale, or in our case: The Wizard of Oz.

So here's some Scarecrow and Tin Man ideas. And a lion.
All un-doctored, fresh from the sketchbook. New scanner too!

And so it begins

So here's the thing.

I'm Thomas, otherwise known as Bombi for the sake of being confused with the plague of "Toms" throughout the world. I'm studying animation at the Queensland College of Art (sounds more prestigious than "Griffith"), and I've made it to my second year.

It. Is. Fantastic.
Since high school, it feels like I've just been on a huge year-and-a-half holiday. I enjoy it EVEN MORE than playing in the sand pit when I was about knee high.

So there's a number of subjects this year that require us to post regular updates and stuff on a blog. This is that blog. Simple enough I guess.

First cab off the rank is a concept art exercise for pre-production. We had to draw in B&W tones to a theme someone else chose for us. I got "The Moon". I can't say I'm overly proud of any of these, but I must force myself to post them anyway.

Enjoy.