Sketch Prompts Nov 2012

Here are some rough sketches I did from prompts sent to me via Tumblr, to the draw children of pairs of various pre-existing fictional characters.

I had a lot of fun with these, as I was given a lot of different mixes to try out (you might notice I snuck a familiar face or two into the mix!)
Each character featured here is the result of a different prompt (except the blue-haired characters, who are siblings)

New Digital Paintings

Some new digital paintings, more characters from the Discworld series:

Dynamic duos:

And some villainous character sketches:

Here are some sketches I've been doing in the evenings to wind down - based on old photographs from the Victorian and Edwardian era.
(These are concept sketches of characters from the Discworld novels.)

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.

Commissions: Mini Characters

Recently I've been in a sort of an art-slump - it's not that I have nothing I want to draw, rather too much! I don't know what to do first: there's so many ideas bouncing around my head,  bashing into eachother, it makes it difficult to concentrate for extended periods...

These mini characters were done as special freebies - a different person chose each one- to kick-start my commissions. They helped to give me some focus:

The characters come from a variety of places, from left to right:
- Freddy of Nightmare on Elm Street fame
- The eponymous hero of Disney's Pinocchio
- Madoka from Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica
- Mr. Teatime from the Discworld novel, Hogfather (not the mini-series, where his glass eye is black).
- Riella, an original character created by a friend of mine, Leah Reddington.
- Ahiru (Duck) from Princess Tutu
- Finnbarge the talking boat, from a film by another friend of mine, Joe Loftus.
   Watch it here: To The Edge With Finnbarge


- A few of the characters' series were unfamiliar to me before this, and I had never drawn most of the ones I was familiar with, so it was a very interesting exercise!

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!