Rugby World Cup

All Together Now

Next weekend, the Rugby World Cup begins. The first match is on Friday, however the first in which I have any national stakes takes place on Sunday: USA vs Ireland. Being a dual citizen, I sort of have my pick of loyalties in this case. Being someone with hopefully a sense of morality, I must throw my full support behind the underdog, in this case the USA Eagles. A confident performance this year could give the US Rugby team the visibility it needs to grow the sport in the US (as much as I do enjoy American Football, there is room for the NFL and a healthy Rugby culture in a country as big as America.)

I'm particularly looking forward to seeing how the extremely talented USA winger Takudzwa Ngwenya fares.

This rather fanciful image is, if you haven't yet guessed, a bit of a take on the famous photograph of the flag raising at Iwo Jima, with a beam of sunlight standing in for the flagpole. While I'm waving the flag, I may as well appropriate such things in the process, right?

I seem to have an unhealthy obsession with flooding an image with ridiculous backlighting, don't I? I'll have to start playing around with other ideas soon. I think it was that I found in animation it was quite a nice way to pump a bit of thick atmosphere into an image, and create almost a live-action sensation of light.

A bit of Leinster Rugby Socialist Realism

Looking to pass to someone...
... Anyone?
...
... Anyone??

This weekend I've got tickets to see Leinster Rugby face Toulouse in the Heineken Cup semi-final in Dublin. To mark the occasion, a quick spot o' Socialist-Realism inspired Leinster propaganda. This time it's Leinster's immensely talented Isa Nacewa in an image constructed using the ol' stalwart technique of Divine Proportions. The one thing I'm perhaps not thrilled with is that with all my enthusiasm for lighting (I tried to keep the color scheme to Leinster's colors of blue, white, and gold) I think the detail of the translucent roof structure gets a bit lost in it.

Land of Winter concept art, and Improving my Posting Habits

I seem to only update this blog annually. That is probably a mistake. I will try to be more diligent about posting new material as I make it. These days have been split between endeavoring to find a job, script-writing, and creating concept art for the script I'm writing.

The current plan is to turn the script into a graphic novel, or a similar format, upon its completion. When working alone, as I am, animation is such a labor-intensive process that it rarely makes sense for the sorts of projects I have cooking up. My main interests tend to lie in narrative. Ideally I like to convey that narrative visually, but I also immensely enjoy dialogue, and occasional forays into conceits that cannot be expressed without a bit of dialogue. I have nothing but absolute respect for the John Lasseters of this world who can convey sophisticated emotional experiences, often in very brief runtimes.

It's a skill I need to improve, it certainly isn't easy. Like the quote that's usually attributed to Blaise Pascal goes, "I apologize for writing such a long letter, I did not have time to write a short one."

Anyhow, with all that said, I may as well explain the images at the top of this post. They're from the script I'm working on, as I attempt to establish a tone and aesthetic. The former is approaching the intended look of the bulk of the piece, with the middle approaching the intended look of a recurring sequence of traumatic flashbacks for the protagonist. The last one is the intended aesthetic for the third act clash, borrowing liberally from the climax of Seven Samurai, if I'm going to borrow, I may as well borrow from the best. These were all done in Corel Painter XI. Usually I work from a sketchbook, scan the drawing, then paint, but in these cases I decided to try my hand working digitally from scratch. For all you lose in immediacy using a tablet instead of paper, you gain a lot in flexibility after the sketch is done.

And finally, just because Ireland sensationally clobbered England in the closing round of the Rugby Six Nations, a quickie little sketch from the week before that turned out to be somewhat prophetic.

Ireland finally coming into form in the 6 Nations Rugby, as imagined a week earlier