Character Design part 5: Steampunk creatures

While looking at some artworks of steampunk I have some interesting images of mechanical creatures with nice background scenery. The creatures have animal like qualities but most of them are based of stories like Pinoccio, Alice in Wonderland and The story of Icarus.

Heres the LINK if anyone is interested or for me to visit if I forgot where the website is.

Character Design part 4: Influence Map

I have made my Influence Map that contains my given theme, which is Mutants and Steampunk. While researching Steampunk I have found some different forms of it, I mostly looked at the type creatures made from it and different type of transport like a jet pack umbrella and wings. For mutants I mainly looked at the ones I know like the X-Men, Futurama mutants, The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and a Dead Space human mutated by an alien. X-men for the powers and the rest for the many variety of mutants for their appearance to how the work or become mutated.

Character Design part 1

On Tuesday the 21st I had my first lession in character design. I was very good, the tutor had an interesting way of getting the class to come up with characters. He first picks a student, then uses some playing cards to repersent the type of character the student had to make. The characters I made was (1) a bat gorilla (which I soon learnt that I actually had to make a fat gorilla), (2) a pirate with rabies and (3) a goth inscet.
I think I have messed up one of my goth insect designs, made him look punkis. Sadly I can't show you my characters because I have missed place character sheet but when I do find it I will show you the characters or maybe have to recreate them from memory.
After that the tutor then gave each of us our character design homework for the remainder of the course. Mine is Steampunk Mutants.
I will explain my idea on the next post but yeah I actually like that cousre can't wait to see what we have to do next.

Character Design part 3: Steampunk Research, Clothes

Few days ago I was researching on what is steampunk, it turns out its a type of fiction were people still relied on the power of steam and using it in different way like cars, air transport and robots. For some reason the clothes carries the nostalgia appearance of the 19th century and each outfits represent the type of job they have or status.
I have found a website that has shows different types of clothes for certain people like an explorer or an engineer but I need permission from the source to use the image so I will be using the LINK to get to the site and its pictures.

I have also found some Steampunk women clothes and they do have an interesting feature, mostly with the type of makeup they wear, the design of he skirts and blazer and how the women hats look alike with some differences.

I'll still be looking at more Steampunks clothes but widen my search to their cities, vehicles and accessories.

Characters Design part 2: Brainstorm

The tutor of the Character Design Lesson Justin Wyatt told the class we have to make three characters a Hero, a Villain and a Sidekick. I think the Sidekick can be either good or evil. And we need to design these characters around the theme that was given to us separately. I have Mutants and Steampunk and I really got into this theme.
When I was given my genre Mutant I instantly had an idea were mutants with powers are treated like gods and the mutants without powers are treated badly. Its a sort of mix between X-men mutants and Futurama mutants, in Futurama their mutants are horribly deformed but they don't have powers while in X-men their mutants have powers so it's obvious they would be treated better than the ones without powers.

My Brainstorm

I am still coming up with a story for my Mutant Steampunk genre.
I had thought of having the weaker mutants raise up against the stronger mutants but of cause they will have trouble. While at the sametime one of the powerful mutants is planing to destroy all the weaker mutants or remove the powers of the stronger mutants so he will be the only one with powers, and the hero has to try to stop his evil plan and try to get both sides to work together instead against each other.
Like I said I am still working on the idea for my story but the main theme is action so I will have to do some research on action cartoons in the 80s by watching them to see how the heroes handle the badguys and their evil plans what level of violence the cartoons are allowed to use and what type of image the Heroes, Villains and Sidekicks have in the cartoons.
I will also have to research the Steampunk side of my story, from scenery and landscape to vechiloe and the type of clothes they wear. I know I don't have to design a scenery but looking at them would help giving me some ideas of the type of condition the characters clothes and themselves would be in.

My Ideas for B3D First Movie

So far I came up with three ideas for our B-movie, the first is about a mutated astronaut, the second was an alien parasite the possess people and uses them to lure in victoms to eat and the last idea is about a space criminal with shapeshifting abiliteis landed on earth and started to feast on the people around it.

First I will explain my idea for my mutated astronaut.
The first act begins with a group of astonaut going into out of space for several years, while that happens the narrator is talking about how brave the astronauts are going to an unknown planet.
Few years later the space shuttle that was carrying the astronaut crash lands on earth and nasa with the military came rushing in to see if all the astronauts are okay. When one of the armymen opend the space shuttle's door he only found one astronaut. The head of nasa asked the astronaut what happend to the others, he responded by biting the army man that found him.
Second act begins with the military keep the surviving astronaut a secret by saying that all the astronauts in the space shuttle are dead. While in reality the surviving astronaut is locked up in confinement while the other people from nasa are examinating him.
While in confinement the astronaut is going through changes, his skin is falling, his nails are longer and his shape looks more skeleton like. Suddenly the astronaut started to dissappear and has superhuman strength, he then escape from his holding cell and started to slaughter everyone, but not before one of the armymen calls for backup at the military. This is then turned into a hunter verses hunter when the military sent in a few of their best teams to go inside the nasa building and hunt for the astronaut, at the sametime the astronaut is picking them off one by one until there is only one army man left inside the building. It is now a stand of between one army man and the mutated astronaut, luck for him the astronaut is covered in blood so the army man can see him. But the astronaut was too powerful so the army man decided to sacrifice himself by lodging a grenade in the mouth of the astronaut in hopes that would kill him.

My second idea is about a meteor crashes on earth. Somebody went up to the meteor and examines it. The meteor opens up and a small alien jump out of it and insert itself inside the human and took contral over him.
The alien uses the human to lure people it secluded place where it can feast on them, and if the human body out lives it's usefulness then the alien jumps into another persons body to lure more victoms but not before eating it's previous body.

My final idea is when a shapeshifting alien from out of space crash lands on earth and started killing people while on the move. At the same a team of police officers from out of space are following the criminal and they also can shapeshift.

Summer Project: Research on Make an Animation Short with Music.

I was having a bit of trouble working on my animation short, thinking how it should begin, what happens in the middle and how should my short end while matching the music. So I decided to look at one of my favorite Fantasia shorts 'Rite of Spring', which is about the evolution of the planet earth starting with small life forms/amoebas and dinosaurs to the dinosaurs extinction and restarting the cycle of the planet.
Besides it's brilliant way of storytelling, since the theme of my short is about hunting, I mainly focus on how the dinosaurs look for food, hunting other dinosaurs and a conflicting moment between two dinosaurs while at the sametime matching the music. I also notice while watching the 'Rite of Spring', how it introduces the scenery when the music plays a calm tone and when the music plays a rapid beat the entire scenery goes through a rapid change.
The entire short as three parts: Genesis, Evolution and Extinction.

Genesis

Genesis is about the creation of earth, how the planet went through changes.

Evolution

Evolution shows the creation of life and how they survive through hunting other creatures or eating plants lives.

Extinction

Extinction shows the dinosaurs living their last days on earth until they all die and the earth goes through another change.

Watching this short really helped out my problem of setting the scene and getting my idea to match the music. But if anyone knows other artistes who do these type of music videos please leave a comment.