CITV's Pixel-Art 8 bit Ident Screenshots

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.

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

i loooovvvvveeee wacom

Some lil illustrations

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!)

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.

(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!

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.

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..

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

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

3D Emmanuel Sequence

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.