Process Process

Sometimes, as an "artist" in some niche, you lose touch. You kind of forget what the rest of the world sees when they look at what you're doing. It's like being in a fishbowl, in the dark, in the museum of Modern Art, listening to Bjork.

These simple sketches are just progress work for a character. For a lot of animation groups, the steps leading up to a finalized design are, well, important. These "action shots" of Kenzie help explore her range and her physicality. If there's anybody out there that likes to nitpick acting, go ahead and do it.

The Development of Trojan, the Horse.

(Scroll down to see Trojan's complete sculpture).

I met a man from Pixar today. He seemed relatively unaware that he was in league with the rockstars of the animation industry; he demanded neither groupies or difficult to obtain street drugs. I was at least prepared to block off the area with a velvet rope - purple, I thought - but it turned out he was pleasant, genuine and very eager to check out others' artwork.

He said to me, among other things such as "hello" and, "Mel, wasn't it?" that they like to see all the sketches leading up to a finished product. The earliest sketches of Trojan are lost in the annals of some sketchbook somewhere, but these begin with the silhouettes. You can see how crappy he nearly looked. Whoo.

From there I worked up some lineart, some action shots to develop personality, and some variations of tack. (This horse is so big a rider has to sit on his crown). Check it out, if you dig this thing.

Silhouettes give me a starting point to pick a good shape. You have to get the cruddy ones out first.

Some tack ideas... Blogspot seems hell-bent on showing these out of order.

The personality is probably the crux of the whole thing. You should really click on this one.

Compared to the average horse (and unicorn,) Trojan is a huge beast. He's a mutant. Really.

A more final workup of his gear.

Scroll down to see Trojan completed.