As a late conclusion to my series of works from last term, here’s a teaser poster of my thesis project: A 2d animation short.

Starting this new term, I’ll be busy working on this. I’m very nervous ‘cos I want it to look good, scared ‘cos I’ll be working on my own, excited ‘cos I’m a masochist but very thankful ‘cos I get to do what I want to do as a final project.

I’ll be recording the blood and sweat of production on my sketchblog. There’s already a piece of character study there. Go on now. Giddiyap.

My prompt for the design is that the government back in a futuristic 1950’s distributed these virtual info booths to warn people about a possible zombie plague. The government and media using fear and subliminal messages  to control the masses but the blood splatter on the screen could tell a different irony.

The project is in .exe format but due to size and some copyrighted music and videos, I can’t simply distribute it. I can share some screenshots though.

Needle’s skirt is based on an actual skirt I own (thrift stores are awesome). She originally had stitches on her joints but that would suggest a scary background story – Something I don’t want for her. Instead, I put the stitches on her clothes so it would look like she made her own clothes.

Hard to see with the shading but Pin Cushion’s vest has safety pins instead of buttons. He’s Needle’s younger brother. He was created first though while his sister was created last month. His design went through a lot of changes over the years: From tall junkie with a mohawk, to a midget in a straight jacket, to his current design – a more approachable juvenile delinquent – now that the story has a more defined setting.

Jackalope

Another Toybox character. I thought NekoTed needed a companion as a hybrid animal based toy. As part jackrabbit and part deer (Jackalopes aren’t necessarily half antelopes; as long as they have antlers), he’s a meek but family-oriented guy.

These drawings are a couple of weeks apart. Pins and Needle” being the most recent, I tried a different approach to choosing a color palette with that. Need to get used to it and update my previous Toybox profiles with that.

Commissioned by a friend for Tomokii.
They’re Tomokii’s characters.

A gift for my friend Rini.
Her character Thought.

My first Toybox character. He was named Nekoteddy back when he was an abstract character I doodled a lot. I thought I’d have to change that considering the settings of his story. His toy form had since been redesigned as well from this.

At some point, I got tired of seeing it when all I had left was to finish the deer and to texture the columns. My family wanted something a little less weird from me so I thought I should finish this.

The size ratio is meant to be printed in 3 letter-sized prints… Or a really long paper.

Here’s the sketch stage I fished out from my sketch blog:

Rough sketch just to get an idea of for the composition.

Initial sketch along with a gradiated background as a plan for color harmonies.