Interactive book?

On this link you will find an interactive version of a piece of my book. This is how I would like the whole book to be finished.

http://www.flipsnack.com/F899BB5C5A8/fuml49np

Here are a few screenshots as well, to show the look and feel of the interactive book and its features.

Back cover designs and Final Design

These are experimentations for the back cover of my art book.

In the end, I went for this image:

As I felt with the sketch on the front cover it shows development. It is also quite a striking image, drawing the reader to the blurb.

Final Concept Art book Cover, and Page examples.

I chose this image as my final book cover as I felt it really displayed my style and was just enough on the page. After finishing this, I started on my pages. As a design note, I decided to do my book landscape in the end, as I felt it would be a lot more striking for someone viewing it on a pc, as it will fill their screen. I will still have the option to have it printed as well. 

Surprisingly, I managed to get 40 pages done in one day! Here is a few pages as an example, and why I designed them this way.

The foreword sets the scene of the book, and will be made up of the Idea, Art style and Story. 

The large watercolours are accompanied by their original concept sketch to show development. 

Full pages of sketches really help to set the scene.

A page full of development sketches is used to show the amount of development that went into each area of design.

Wide landscape images are used to help fill the page, and make it eye catching.

Opening pages for each section of the book has information on the pages to follow, as well as key design notes.

A typical development page of characters, filling the page with sketches in the order of their position in the development cycle.

Pages such as this show the work that went into designing costumes, which are accompanied by key design notes. 

A character sheet page, showing different character emotions.

Each page will need checking on the University computers to see if they look ok, and there are no obvious lines around images. 

Art book Cover ideas

To start off, I began some little sketches of Ideas for my Art book cover. 

 I then went onto my computer and threw together a few Ideas.

New Drawings

A final study sheet of Ivy, featuring poses and expressions.

 A size comparison drawing of Ivy and Roscoe, with a height chart.

A nice watercolour of Ivy and Roscoe.

A final character sheet for Conrad, also showing his toy form.

Environment Work

I needed to work on my environments a lot more, so I threw together some rough sketches, and then used colouring pencil to give them life.

After this, I started experimenting with locations and characters in terms of sizing and also thought about the animals that would be found in these locations.

My first ever animation...

So, using individual sketches I put together a small animation of Ivy laughing, and here it is.

Its very short but I am really happy with it and I am going to continue to create short animations as I really enjoyed it. Below is the sequence of drawings which were put together to make the animation.

Showreel Ideas - Animation

For my Showreel, I wanted to create something unique and inspiring, so I looked to my main influence, Disney, for Ideas. This is when I though using animation to bring my characters to life would make my showreel really stand out. However, I didn't want a finished look for my animations, I want a rough sketched look. The video below shows a good idea of using a flipbook style to build up the image.

The video below is a brilliant example of of how I would like my animation to look. Just using traditional sketches put together in a sequence to create movement. 

To start myself off, I have used the video above and freeze framed each image in the opening of the video. I will then use this to put together my own short animation to get a feel for how to change each image to make it flow.

Research for Showreel

I have been thinking a lot about my showreel of late, and decided to look into some concept art showreels on youtube. These were a few I found very inspiring.

First Video (Unable to embed)

This showreel was created by a previous student of NUA, and I chose to look at it as I love the use of effects. Although it is a little slow, the use of unique effects make it stand out and the choice of music is also very good.

Another showreel by a past NUA student, I really love the use of animation in this video as it adds depth to his images and gives life to a still piece of art.

I really like the use of animation and progress images used in this video.

Another showreel which uses animation well.

New Character Sheets

After deciding to put together a concept art book instead of a Manga, I decided to focus on character sheets, and completely redrew all of my old ones!!

Before

 After

I am also doing the same for the other characters. Here is Conrad's character sheets.

Before

After