Jardine Sage's Blog: Animation and Design

CITV's Pixel-Art 8 bit Ident Screenshots

2011-03-30T07:08:00.000-07:00

whilst at CITV, being as heavily into video games as i am, i was asked to come up with 10 pixel-art ident storyboards. out of those 10 we wittled it down to 5, and they were super fun to make. Here are some screenshots of them, should be uploading the idents soon (the sound work thats been done for them is totally awesome).
(do let me know if anyone see's them going out on the channel!)

Mr Popopo.
This one is a short Gameboy (and Super Gameboy) inspired, also inspired by Kirby, and his ability to turn into things he eats.

Princess and the Egg - This one is more 16-bit Mega drive/Genesis and SNES inspired, also referencing Zelda.
Finish Him! - (or Pirate Boss as it has been redubbed) Is an awesome little ident, probably my fav. inspired by beat 'em ups, a little robot overcomes a large angry pirate.

C-Type - Inspired by top down 2d shooters, This little epic has a ship battling through a spaceship, to escape into the stars.

Cetris - at 3 seconds long its the shortest, but i really like the look. again more 16 bit than 8 bit.

Actual Idents to follow. :)

Robot Fun forever.

2010-12-17T04:42:00.000-08:00

i have never had so much fun animating, as i have when i did this.

whilst working on some idents, i decided to have a bit of fun with the artwork. brilliant fun.

hipster chick

2010-11-29T09:12:00.000-08:00

i loooovvvvveeee wacom

Some lil illustrations

2010-11-23T10:28:00.000-08:00

i quite enjoyed making these, mainly an expreiment with some of the tools in illustrator , set against some colouring from photoshop.

Continue? Illustration part 2 (edit:and Final Picture!)

2010-09-14T09:50:00.000-07:00

edit: heres the new version, with all the colours and fancy gradients in place. wanted to post them side by side so you can see the alterations.

and heres the old version...

This took a long time to build in illustrator... and now i can't export it into Photoshop easily! oh well. tomorrows task, break down the picture and rebuild in Photoshop for effects funtimes..

gonna work on the colours as well tomorrow, get them looking spiffing :)

(Edit- Original workings included) New Illustration... or more a prequel to it.

2010-09-09T01:09:00.000-07:00

(edit: i thought people would like to see the first iteration of the illustration, so you can see my working. Above is the version drawn directly into photoshop with a tablet, and below is that old fangled way of putting pens, or rather permenant markers, to paper. you can see where all the ideas were developing in the lower one, which then were taken forward into the upper one)

This took a very long time to map out yesterday. after drawing it 4-5 times, its still just the rough version! looking forward to taking it into illustrator and giving it some lovely textured paths. :D

Kumo Project Showreel, in its finality!

2010-09-05T07:02:00.000-07:00

HOORAY! a showreel with a little ident at the beginning does make all the difference. the only thing I would say about it is that its too quick, and i wish the showreel was closer to 1.30/ 2 minutes, to put in some more of our lovely work. but never mind hey!

I think I am done with showreels for the rest of the year.. unless I make something super cool that needs to be added. but i wouldn't know what to bump! decisions decisions...

A little bit of Motion Graphics.

2010-08-21T13:24:00.000-07:00

Today (well mainly yesterday-) I went on the hunt for a good tutorial to give me some good first knowledge of the tools in cinema4D. Mark form Quay Animations Studios pointed me to GreyscaleGorilla's blog, which is actually excellent, which has some great tutorials which gave me a good handle on some of the simple motion graphics stuff that can be done.

ill say it, it was alot easier than maya. i love maya and all ive learnt from it, but for motion graphics solutions, cinema 4d HAS IT GOING ON. great stuff.

Have a wee look below.

Ive also built a 3D version of the Kumo Logo, which i think im gonna have fun with in the coming days. C4D for the Animation on this, AE for the Post-Pro and Premiere for the Sound.

Motion Graphics Logo from Jardine Sage on Vimeo.

(EDIT: FINISHED DESKS!) New Office, and with it, Customised Desks..

2010-08-11T10:53:00.000-07:00

EDIT: NEW PICS!The new Kumo wall. we have a wall. check that out. gotta cloud on it and everything.

My Finished Desk... i love it so.
Can everyone spot the sonic 1 references?

Bit of Mario there....
The Buddha, whose become somewhat of a mascot for us.
P diddy... in a coat made out of dead cats... that sing ill be missing you when he presses a button... and they have jewels in their mouths.

END OF EDIT!

We have finally moved into the shed! from here on we're doing our business from our very own office space, great fun.

Here's us on the first day, weve got walls around our space which is pretty handy. so FRAN had the idea to paint our desks and decorate them in our own style of sketches. i used to do these type of odd collages loads in school, so its been pretty bloody fun so far :D

The tester was this draw, which has loads of characters Ive made over the years fused into it, as well as one disneyfied character.
Today my favourite doodle i did was of Abra the pokemon. Ive gotta squeeze in somewhere the 'abra used teleport... abra vanished'. I spent ages thinking which of the original 151 was my favourite (enough that i had to stare at it on my desk forever) and I came to the conclusion it was Abra, Kedabra and Alakazam. so its become the esteemed pokemon of my desk (the other two were better pokemon, just more irritating to draw... abra made sense).
This is the desk by the end of the day
On this side, as a direct result of running out of characters to do (and not wanting to resort to horseman), its devolved into small homages to my favourite games, as well as other little interesting things. Theres Link holding up the triforce, Pacman, some ghosts and a cherry, space invaders and asteroids. and at the top, 8 bit mario (whose turned out the best i believe.)
Over here is where im developing tomorrow, ive put my new wild bill hickock design on, A fallout esq design i did for Rich a while back, abra and even the red trainer from pokemon red. Tomorrow i am banning myself from anymore videogame references, so i need some new ideas!

any suggestions?

Updated Showreel

2010-08-09T16:31:00.000-07:00

Heres an Updated Showreel, with alot more 3d involved in it :D

3D Emmanuel Sequence

2010-08-04T12:06:00.000-07:00

3D Emmanuel Maya Sequence from Jardine Sage on Vimeo.

my bad for not posting this already! heres a short animated sequence i did testing out the rig of emmanuel. used mental ray for nice lighting effects.. pretty happy with it. :)

Motion Study

2010-06-01T12:54:00.000-07:00

Just finished another project, so im gonna be posting some of the wares of said project soon. ive been sorting out a piece of 3d specifically for showreel purposes of emmanuel creeping about, using the model ive already built. to do it all properly, ive created a storyboard, motion study of the movement (or main keyframes, which ever way you want to look at it) and animatic. not gonna bother posting that though.

along with this ive also finally had some ideas im happy with to put into a new short, so might have some artwork revolving around that up in the future... :)

Ol' Rocket Boots

2010-05-03T15:08:00.000-07:00

its simon again, ive been using a graphics tablet to do somet traditional animation, in my breaks ive been fiddling with this far more elaborate illustration of simon. not totally happy with the lighting, but dont have anymore time to waste on him! onto other tibbits...

Afro wearing gentleman.

2010-04-28T13:22:00.000-07:00

as ive had a day of waiting on various cogs to turn i thought i would touch up on my modelling skills. without any reference (which was bad of me) i made this bloke up. wasnt really sure where he was going, but eventually got to a point where the chap looked like he needed an afro... so i gave him one. about 3 hours modelling, and relatively pleased :)heres a quick look at its topology.

another picture.

2010-04-25T08:26:00.000-07:00

here is another illustration, not quite as good as the one below, more of a muck around in photoshop and the graphics tablet. its a samurai, i took reference from http://characterdesign.blogspot.com/ which had a coupla neat pictures done by Rad Sechris.

here is a picture.

2010-04-24T14:44:00.000-07:00

Havent posted any new content for a while mainly due to several projects im working on, and not being able to post the wares of my labour. as a result alot of my own ideas are falling by the wayside, but im planning to correct this, firstly by doing some fresh character design, just for the fun of it.

Above here is a picture, of a mad, slightly serious scientist. was dead chuffed with the design and really got me working in illustrator alot more than i ever have previously (finally stopping using the photoshop polygonal lasso tool...)

he doesnt have a name. simon. simon is his name. yes, that'll do.

hopefully post another new illustration soon.

Travelling Skinned Mole

2010-03-26T16:01:00.000-07:00

OOO its nice to post something that isnt the RAM chip. not that i dont like it, but ive come to realise its taking up alot of space on this blog.

last week my friend hayley contacted me about a travelling moleskin diary, where artists were invited to add their own little interpretations to the theme "Food for Thought". so i wrote a story (a true story) of the time myself and my friend aaron happened upon stephen hawkin leaving pizza hut with a pizza box on his lap.

it looked alot like this:-

find out more about the Moleskin, about taking part and what-not, gubbins etc at
http://www.thompson.typepad.com/

and thank you hayley and Thompson Brand Partners for an opportunity to draw some nonsense (although totally based on a true story.)

paint weight tests

2010-03-24T17:15:00.000-07:00

been a relatively slow evening as i have been mainly just doing some weight-painting. but theres fun you can have with that, i.e bending the character into fun and silly poses

Ram Client Character Board

2010-03-20T13:17:00.000-07:00

original design by ROBERT PAGE @ TUBBYPHUNK.COM

http://www.virtualopera.co.uk/ Random Acess Memory | The Virtual Opera

Had a bit of spare time so put this together, however not complete, as he's still missing his nose! quite a funky client board methought....

(edit) heres the complete version!

Rock Opera RAM stick.

2010-03-19T11:57:00.000-07:00

http://www.virtualopera.co.uk/ Random Acess Memory | The Virtual Opera

original design by ROBERT PAGE @ TUBBYPHUNK.COM

Early modelling.

Here is come of my working over the past few days, i finished off modelling the RAM chip, and then went about setting up a UV in the time honoured tradition of planar and cyndrical mapping. reletively painless, no issues as far as i can tell! i had a wee play around with some toon shaders, settled on a slight gradient on a toon shader, to allow for a more gradual change in tone.

Toon Shader with no adjustments. theres a wee charm about them.with a slight gradient however, it gives a really nice effect, which doesnt stumble into just being another shader.
Testing out the face.
This is a Blinn Shader, which is giving it alot of shine. also im not very happy about the texture/colours. need to match the source more.
This is more like it! Toon shaded, and more subtle texture.
(with fancy lighting) So Far... gonna do a quick test of animating the texture today, mebbes throw up a quick video of that. also gonna do the manips for the skeleton and bind it, mebbes a wee animation test of him bouncing about.

Newcastle Science Festival, The Makers Faire and Kumo

2010-03-14T12:56:00.000-07:00

This weekend we have been hosting a stall at the Newcastle Science Festivals Maker Faire! its been a great few days, where we've worked with people of all ages to create over 120 pixilation animations. We got everyone doing it, kids adults, mums, dads, even the staff got involved (right when we were about to pack up.. they snuck in 5 more!)

totally great experience, looking forward to uploaded the animations and letting people check out what we've been doing.

heres the ground floor of the maker faire, from the balcony our table was at.

wow, look at team kumo with enthusiasm and fun and stuff! kris and fran doing some camera work.
here we all are looking super fun on the last day, 3 laptops, 1 HD TV, 3 seperate showreels playing and one camera on a tripod.

our tech. i was tech guy. things kept breaking and messing up, and in flew tech guy to clean up la mess.

everyone loves pixilation! the Science Fest staff have a turn, and seem to like the results!

also throughout the weekend we've seen the animation we created for the Science Festival being projected all around the Life Centre, so had to take the oppertunity to film our film, in some sort of paradoxical way. urm. yeah.

in a short while ill throw in an animation of a few of some of the tester pixilations we did, as a taster of what we've been upto.

Mr Cowboy is found

2010-03-07T05:47:00.000-08:00

Looking through some old files i found one of my old models, mr cowboy! he really never got a proper name. gonna have a bash at him, and do some animation with him, mebbes some emotion and walkcycles etc. for now, above this picture he is laying down a phat beat for his homeys. south central style.

Kumo Ident Test

2010-03-04T01:40:00.000-08:00

What we have here be a test i dun made through tha powa o' computors.

its a test for our upocoming showreel of the ending sequence. please let me know what you think!

Test of Cowboy Saloon

2010-03-02T06:12:00.000-08:00

Test version of the concept art for the cowboy saloon. built out of textures of wood, warping and lasso tool. had to start work on something else so ive put it to one side. any comments are welcome :)

Science Festival Ident and Xmas Card

2010-02-27T09:09:00.000-08:00

Heres the finished version of the Science Festival Ident, which we all worked on. was good fun to produce, and learned a few nice techniques along the way!

Before this was finished, we also did a quick xmas card for digital city, which was a bit of fun playing around with some different software.

Institute of Digital Innovation Xmas Card from Mark Hill on Vimeo.

Music Video Test

2010-02-27T06:08:00.000-08:00

ive been working on this music video with J6 films for the past couple of months, slowly but surely i think we're reaching a destination! its been an interesting learning experience, experimenting with nodes which animate to sound amplitude (as you can see on the surface of the Tetrahedron). Next week we hopfully will be going full on getting the maya files done and getting them rendered. looking forward to being able to work on the character animation showreel though, should be wicked supa fun.

Rough Storyboards

2010-02-27T05:28:00.000-08:00

A rough storyboard i did the other week for Stuart from Orange Panda, for a pitch to a client. the plot is about a bachelllorette party gone mad, where the police are being called in, and the news is covering it from different angles. sorry for the lack of annotation!

Collection of 2d works.

2010-02-27T04:29:00.000-08:00

Noppin... Being an Arse. This is somework on characters from University, Of Noppin.
Character Sheet
Action Sheet
A Boy and a box. Concept work for a short film, about a boy who has a box, that when it opens makes the most beautiful sound in the world.
This was a present for Siobhan. she likes cats.
Diedrock and Stonehands designs, from the Proctor and Gamble animation.

Uv Examples

2010-02-25T08:24:00.000-08:00

Seeing as i seem to keep on blogging pictures today, i thought it might be cool to put some of the behind the scenes work on emmanuel which has been done. YAY FOR UV's! (the unapreciated art)

Teeth and Tongue, unravelled face, and very detailed hands/body. yessir..

Emmanuel and Kumo

2010-02-25T08:04:00.000-08:00

This is the Kumo Business Card above! really happy with how this turned out, the back is also pretty darn cool. below are some wire frame build ups and some renders low poly of emmanuel, complete with skin and Uv'd to the teeth (literally).

iPhone snapped sketches

2010-02-25T06:43:00.000-08:00

ive gone through my sketchbooks and had a wee look at what ive been drawing. this stuff is mainly conecpt and lacks colour, but you might find it interesting.Wobble Cowboy...
Some Character Sketches
Wet Cat
More Characters
Wind Man
Urm...
Going for 1st at the Science Fair
Ol' Granny Death
80's Guy
Football Kid
Tribal Girl
Ciggy Lass

robot concept for life centre project
Mad Scientist for Life Centre
Cute Newton, Life Centre.. again
Cowboy Saloon
Buddha in a blue forest

Double 'Ard Bastard.

A picture

2010-02-25T05:15:00.001-08:00

Here is a sketch of a Saloon, working progress. concept art for lots for showreel.

Sunny Suffolk, Chickens and Film Festivals

2009-08-11T09:06:00.000-07:00

Im now on my third week back at home, after a month or two of sending off 8:15 to festivals and job hunting to no success in sunderland.. and its been a welcome (if not at points slow) break. i've had a bit of luck with getting the film out there, so far im confirming Exposures 2009 and ive been accepted into Cambridge International Film Festival, which includes a sit down and Q and A with the director (?).

Actually have no idea about that, sounds rather odd. beyond telling them the programs i used i have quite alot of trouble putting into words the ideas which went into it. when faced with a tough question, i may start taking my clothes off to distract them away from it. Im not a deep thinker, and i try not to read into things too much. So i guess we'll see really.. if anyone wants to come ill let them know when the dates are announced.

Ive been doing a bit of design work for Kiss FM, working on some logo design in 3D, which has been interesting. Opening up and starting to experiment in Maya again always hurts at first but gets easier as the days pass i feel. the UV work ive been doing on Emmanuel has grinded to a halt because of the Kiss thing, but it had dissolved into me continually listening to Harry Potter audiobooks to get me through it. not that i didnt enjoy it, there was something very soothing about the whole thing, like a stressball or something.

E4 have a stings competition which i plan to enter, and ive just finalised my idea, and started working on the characters/design. the idea is a sort of Godzilla type thing, monster destroys city, people are scared of monster, monster flattened by giant e4. reletively simple, so im building on it with some cool design, make it stand out.

Finally the fellowship... we got it. 6 months, and Kumo becomes a reality. im really looking forward to getting started!

Plenty of chickens at our house. i like chickens. also my parents have expressed interest at getting a horse. Home life has officially become 'the Good Life'...

Why i Should have gone to E3...

2009-06-06T15:27:00.000-07:00

... because i like games alot. maybe i could have beaten a trailer for zelda out nintendo. It was great having a week full of content to watch on gametrailers and joystiq, but now its over i feel empty, like when you open your last xmas present and realise theres none left.

oh well... theres always next year!

Deadline

2009-06-06T14:47:00.000-07:00

I haven't done a blog since i was travelling.. and that one didn't last very long. so three years of BA degree education later, I'm going to have another go. Monday marks the end of the hardest period of work Ive ever done, and putting a lovely big french 'Fin' credit on the end of an animation that was 1 year in the making... well i say one year.. i started putting ideas into the story and designing characters around about this time last year.. feels strange how the time has flown.

now '8.15' is finished i actually donut know what to do with myself. i cant even rub my head against a wall, or sit on the loo and read charlie brooker (the only way to spend time on the loo). A genuine sense of loss of purpose has fallen over me, after months and months of sitting at this same laptop, crippling my hand by scrutinising each of the 8300 frames of the animation (guesstimate)

only menial boring so very mega boring sketchbook odds and sods are left, and then i finish education. forever. goodbye protective blanket known as university, hello unemployment and credit crunch. i guess its time to start planning another animation....well. heres a few images from the last one.