Discworld Art

I've been so busy lately, but sometimes I get ideas that I just have get onto paper, so I stayed up late drawing these out.
I love Terry Pratchett's Discworld series of novels, as they have such colourful characters. It's an exciting challenge to try to get them on paper:

Vlad and Lacrimosa De Magpyr (vampires) from Carpe Jugulum.

Agnes/Perdita and Christine from Maskerade.

Real Vampires Backgrounds

Out of the backgrounds that I made for Real Vampires,  here are a few of my favourites that don't take elements from the original Nosferatu:

The alleyway and street corner where Nina's vampire hangs out:

The "spooky castle" where Claudia's vampire resides:

The graveyard: for the film, I used two different versions of this background - the one you see here, and another version that showed the graveyard from the opposite point of view (such as when Nosferatu jumps out from behind the tombstone).

The trees featured in each were taken from photographs I took one very foggy morning. I was on a different bus route to usual - I had hopped on what I dubbed a 'mystery bus', and got off at the morgue (because that's where my usual bus stop is, and the weird old building was easy to spot in the fog), and took some pictures of the old walls around it. I usually walk to the park to get my next bus, and I saw an opportunity to get some nice shots of Stephen's Green park in black & white - the bare trees and the thick fog over the lake created a kind of eerie beauty. It was like the set of a horror film, and what luck, because I had just started making my own!
I called it Kate's adventure in the fog, because I'm a bit excitable like that.

To Start as I Mean to Go On

My first blog post - where to start?

Since this is going to be primarily an art/animation blog, I think I'll start by posting a link to my latest short film, Real Vampires:



This was my third year personal project in IADT, and took roughly 12 weeks to complete. The characters were animated in Flash using the brush tool (no lines), with different sections of the character on different layers, in a similar fashion to ye olde cel animation.
The backgrounds were made in photoshop, using a mix of painting, my own photography, warping stock images, and layering textures. Many of the backgrounds incorporated elements from the scenery in Nosferatu (1922) ~ which is now, of course, in the public domain (which is why the titular character - also known as Count Orlok/Orlock - can appear in my film).
Everything was then composited using After Effects, one of my favourite programs - AE just gets me, ya know?

I'll be posting some of my favourite sketches and background designs here for viewing by the curious/foolish among you.

Fun Fact:
(Well, I think it's fun) 

The voices were provided by three of my friends and classmates ~ the older girls were voiced by Niall and Lee, who are in fact not women at all. Jess, who provides the voice of Claudia, was the only female cast member.
A big thank you to all three for some great performances!