Usurper King's Blog

Stop Motion with RUSS-K

Nate River — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 15:36:16 +0000

Last Tuesday we had a Stop Motion animator come in an teach us how to make a model using wire and plastic, and how to work with him infront of the camera. I managed to make him walk and thats about all i could do in the time we had left. But this week he came back and gave us another day to do some work, instead of doing walks and lifts me and 3 other friends decided to make some animation based on a Japanese TV Advert i found the prevous day.

A link to the vimeo version here, since it doesn’t want to embed in the post.

As you can see it worked pretty well, we didn’t have anything sense of timing when making this video. But luckily the animation matched the video when we put it into Final Cut Pro, with some small tweaks and some little effects we managed to make that little master peice.

Life Drawing, again

Nate River — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 07:08:18 +0000

Here is an update on my Life Drawing. Normally i like to work with just my pencil but this week i managed to squeeze some yellow and pink in. But the colours are screwed thanks to photoshop, well it was either correct colours and faint lines, or clear lines and ugly colours. Also this time i have made it so when you click on the image, it links you to a larger image. I think i shall be doing this from now on.

Good old Morris for the… 3rd time? Yeah.. this time i managed to make him look like Mermaid Man from SpongeBob SquarePants. oops. Either way these image came out pretty well i feel.

Sorry for the quality on this image, it would seem that the page is rather dirty. Some blind drawings none the less.

Perspective Perspective…

.. and some more. Pink turned red, but still looks okay.

Hand studies, this was towards the end where my patients with drawing the whole figure was… fading.

“Overwatch, Interest” annex 02

Nate River — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:20:02 +0000

So the second part of my story, well more of a character introduction anyways. She is going to be the first character you meet in the story when i start actually bring together the frames into comic form. Here are details on the character thus far.

Name: Tori Amethyst
Residence: University Halls
Age: 20
DOB: 19/07/2034
Single

The characters i reveal will have names referenced from things i like, their personalities are based on real people i know (my friends and myself). Their looks how ever are completely made up, except for some details may remain from the human reference.

The way this one turned out reminds me of “Ghost in the Shell”. I used some line drawings i made in Illustrator then moved to Photoshop and applied a filter. This is how i want the rest of my images to be.

Okay so more on Tori.. She is the main focus within my story, distracting the main character (not on purpose) from his job. Although she doesn’t know shes being watched by him, she suspects that something is happening in the floating structure (this floating structure wasn’t shown in the first image i did, although it will be shown shortly and explained). She attends a university for graphic design, illustration and photography. The course requires all students live on site at one of the “halls” (accommodation) or nearby. You might not think that the floating island is that big, but its roughly half as big as England (again ill explain the cities background in more detail another time). Shes single, theres no time for boyfriends (or girlfriends) in her life at the moment.

A typical girl at a typical university in a typical situation. On a not so typical floating island/city.

“Overwatch, Near” annex 01

Nate River — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:00:58 +0000

Over the past couple of days i decided to start concepting some images for an old story i conjured up in the summer holidays. Im not really not that good with Illustrator or Photoshop, but i decided to give it a go. The story uses some of the visuals and story details from my Final Major Project about Atlantis. Check it out, its not that good but watching it will definitely help you understand my way of thinking.

Im keeping the images to 500 pixels wide for this blog, and im keeping the maximum size of the images online overall to 800×600 pixels. A link to the bigger image can be found at the end of the post. And yes i am keeping the original files and higher resolution images safe.

As you can see from above, i kept the floating city from my Final Major Project (linked again). I guess im actually adding the aftermath of my “angels” visiting the peaceful city of Atlantis.

My story is based around two characters and the authorities of this floating city. One character being the “Overwatch” who is a mysterious character who .. watches over the floating city. He (its a male) is able to kill people with ease, and isn’t even phased by their deaths. The other character is a women, the average university student. She is the main attention if you want. The authorities sums up everyone else in the city, the press and the police mainly.

Larger image at Deviant Art

So i was presented with this…

Nate River — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:05:01 +0000

… bag which contents was unknown. My friend whom I probably caused much pain to over the recent days gave them to me. Completely unexpected and such a nice surprise. As the typical man who doesn’t know how to respond to these kind of situations (I have never been made to accept anything made/crafted by anyone before) i simply said “thanks”. To be fair i was holding a lightbox and some headphones, but still what a dick..

Yeah… cakes. Really small cakes, no bigger than the logo on my scanner (which measures about.. 3cm in diameter). I stood there in total aww for about 10 minutes.

Im not sure if there’s a link between the phrase on the cakes “Be Happy” and the movie i had previously lent her, but still it made me smile.

You shouldn’t have… really.. you shouldn’t.

I dont want to eat them, and i know i should. They are far to precious and are currently in a sealed box, ill be damned if any oxygen will even lick these cakes. So how can i resond to this? I have to do something for her atleast. Its only fair right?

Fightstar was AMAZING

Nate River — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:30:04 +0000

So i went to see Fighstar on Hallows’eve. It was crazy good, infact amazing! I was a little disappointed with the support bands (there was 3) that progressively got worse as they came on. First off we had Prego (Charlies brothers band), they played about 4 songs which was okay. Then came “Young Guns” and finally “Saving Aimee”. Oh and i had this black guy who wanted to give me a fake £10 for my spare ticket.. pff.. i showed him whos boss.

I positioned myself right at the front on the right, with some friends and friends friends. The images by the way are not mine, but from the exact place i was at. This was a mistake since i am more of a Alex fan than a Dan fan, but i was quite happy watching him and his bass(es).

Tannhäuser Gate
Colours Bleed To Red
The English Way
City on Fire
Chemical Blood
Mercury Summer
Paint Your Target
Until Then
Amaze Us
We Apologise For Nothing
Grand Unification, Pt. 1
Palahniuk’s Laughter
War Machine
Deathcar (Encore)

Could you not ask for a better setlist?
Yes being the answer, they could easily switch ”Until Then” with “Amethyst” and make me on extremely happy person.

Life Drawing thus far.

Nate River — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:09:18 +0000

Since we have started our Animation course we have had Life Drawing classes every Friday. And last Friday we registered our blogs (this) and now we have to fill it with lots of stuff. Im mainly going to fill my one with stuff that interests me, and my work of course.

Anyways here are some images of pages i chose to scan in. I warn you the images need a little cleaning up, but they shall do for now.

So here we have week 2 into our Life Drawing course, I made the mistake of bringing a A6 sized sketch book to the first week, ill try scan some stuff from that another time. Anyways here we had to bring in objects and use them to model for the class.

Week 3 was supposed to bring us a model, but instead we got this 3rd year student. pff.

Week 4 brings us our model we promised for week 3 which turned out to be an old man, his name was Jeff and he was a cool person really. He was really fun to draw, but after some time i got a little bored, who knew drawing people all day would tire you out so fast. I purposely sat where i wouldn’t get a direct view of his little friend. So here are some of my favourite drawings from that day.

Overall it was fun, i really needed these classes. Apparently we resume them soon.

Smiley Sweets on Flickr

Nate River — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 11:39:28 +0000

These cup cakes are definitely making me hungry. I found them on flickr by smileysweets, it would appear this person or these people are very artistic in the of making the coolest and cutes cup cakes. I dont normally search flickr since i think its rather poo.

Wolf and the Pig Animation on Youtube

Nate River — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 11:35:18 +0000

So i came across this a couple of days back whilst searching the world of YouTube. Those of you that have something better to do in your free time, i envy you muchly.

So this Japanese kid, well i say kid hes probably an adult but he’s definitely Japanese, and i have nothing against the Japanse. Infact i want to live there one day, in Japan. Anyways back on track, this Japanese guy has some amazing animations on his profile, mainly this one. It looks like it done like a normal old stop motion, but a lot of work must of been put into it. Im just thinking of his wallet at the moment though.

It’s definitely going in my inspiration category and im going to bookmark it. Maybe ill try doing one of these myself one day..

Fightstar “A City On Fire” on Youtube

Nate River — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 11:26:30 +0000

A new song by one of my favourite bands… Fightstar,
The songs called “A City on Fire” and luckily its on the set list for tomorrows show in London! Im a little upset they are not going to be playing Amethyst this time, but at least im one of the people that can say they have heard it before. Unfortunately i have a spare ticket and no-one wants to come. Damn it! Im now £17 down.