Watercolour Concept Art

Since my rediscovery of using watercolour, now with the ability to paint without permanently crinkling the paper, I have taken the technique to some new concept art for Acorns. Using some new A3 watercolour paper, I sketched out some new and old character poses on one sheet and character expressions on a second sheet and did some pastel watercolour washes over it.

I'll be using the expressions sheet as reference for some of my character performance later on. They were largely inspired by character sketches by Hayao Miyazaki in art books for Kiki's Delivery Service and Ponyo and Oliver Jeffers gorgeous watercolour imagery in his children's books.

The Art Of Kiki's Delivery Service

Oliver Jeffer's Lost and Found

I love the storybook quality to using watercolour with pencil sketches in this way and would love to do this for an entire illustrated book of my film... if I only had the time! I've really enjoyed using watercolour and may introduce it further in my film for backgrounds or at the very least using the bright, pastel-like colour palette for my digital clean-up and colouring.

More to come in the new year! :)

Christmas Watercolours

For Christmas I've done my friends and family some watercolour cards, it's been very fun and enjoyable to experiment with watercolour which I haven't used in years. I've posted these to show my development in using this technique as I plan to extend this into my production art, inspired by watercolour art by Hayao Miyazaki.

These were for my friends: classmates and housemates...

From left to right:

Jessica's Mollie and Babbit http://arabbitcalledbabbit.blogspot.com/

Robert's Alex and Knitted Dragon http://knitteddragon.blogspot.com/

Claire's Stag http://clairespiller.blogspot.com/

Paul's Direwolf 'Snow' (Game of Thrones)

Zara's Roberta and Emileena http://thezukineework.weebly.com/

Bryony's Pond Creature http://utopiaofthepond.blogspot.com/

Victoria's Ballerina http://dancingshoesfinalyearfilm.blogspot.com/

Dale's 'Zommer' (Moshi Monsters)

These were for family:

From left to right:

Alex's Link and Zelda (Nintendo's Skyward Sword)

Grandparent's Giraffes

Eleanor's Babbits, Ebony and Eddie

Emily's Cloud (Square-Enix's Kingdom Hearts)

Dan's 'Wookie the Chew' James Hance homage http://www.jameshance.com/

Sarah's dragon-esque My Little Pony

Uncle and Aunt's African Lion

Mum's old dachshund, Pippi

More watercolours to come soon! Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! :)

Concept Art and Pre-Visualisation

I wanted to try some watercolour to compare colours for the seasons for the Oak tree, with reference to Oliver Jeffers and My Neighbour Totoro and Ponyo for colours.

I particularly like how the colouring for winter has turned out and plan to do more of these over the Christmas break.

And here is a pre-visualisation test using rough pencil lines and digital colouring. I dropped in a sketch of Amber and the Spirit as well to see if they fit with the background style... I think it works quite well!