The Spice Of Life

Some of my favourite bits when it comes to a project like this is the warmups, palette tests and design process. 

This was done as a quick doodle just to speed things up and work straight from the lasso tool and nothing more. Quick, but sloppy. I'm definitely gonna come back to the approach in a later painting though!

I was having a really off-week on the stream, and after doing some colour tests based on a doodle in my sketchbook, I decided to play more with the creatures that would inhabit that scene. Turned out to be a whole lot of fun.

This was to set the scene for a short comic sequence that's in the book, and was partially me pulling away from my usual compositions. FINALLY got some rain out that I'm happy with, and can control it easily. Really happy with it for even that alone! 

Streaming Done!

Was streaming earlier at  www.livestream.com/charco - hopefully it'll become a regular event from here on out.

I had a blast, and thanks to everyone who stopped by and spread the word.

Here's where I'm at on this, definitely closer but a long ways off being happy with it. Had a LOT of fun designing the lizard creatures, will definitely do this back-and-forth creature vs landscape design thing again. Yeah, this is fun. I'm actually really looking forward to the polishing pass.

Some quick things I've learned on this
-Name your layers. FROM THE START
-Grouping objects/layers is your friend.
-Starting off with a greyscale render is fine but it loses oomph when you try and convert it to colour. Still trying to work around it. Doing a colour thumb on another layer before you render your greys definitely helps.
-I need to play around constructively with channels some more. I have ideas that SHOULD be simple that I can't quite do without just painting it out straight.
-Preparation is ALWAYS worth it.

Backgrounds Reel

Background Reel from Ciaran Lucas on Vimeo.


So I did up a backgrounds reel, which was suprisingly fun/challenging. I'd really done a lot more with my branding since the last time I did a reel, so I wanted to make sure it matched. Been studying after effects animation in games like Infamous for different approaches, as well as DVD menus, and I think some of it has shown up. For now, I'm happy :)