Foot Print

This foot print took an entire day to conceive, plan, and execute. I'm happy with it though. It went from just a board that I thought I might like to see, to an extremely important shot that holds significant story meaning. The things we do leave foot prints.

3d Popup Book

I worked around 30 hours in roughly a week to complete these for Shannon Gilley, my grad school collaboration partner. These are going in an animated popup book that teaches green energy. I borrowed a color palette from my favorite colorist that I know: apandastudio.blogspot.com

Diggind up Trouble

My next color/design study for Snow Day.

Entering the Woods

Here is another color/design study for Snow Day.

I've been doing so much technical shape construction of my characters that I needed to step aside and go back to design. These are color and design studies for 2 of the scenes in Snow Day. It feels good to go back to the fun stuff.

Snow Day Desktop

I made this as a desktop for my computer, and also to keep myself inspired by the winter season and its patterns and colors. I find that I want to use this for backgrounds of other things, and I keep misplacing the file so I'm posting it here so I always have it.

Johnny3d??? Its got a nice ring to it :) These are pose tests of my brand new rigged 3d pre-pro maquette. Thanks Shannon for the awesome new toy I get to play with!!!

Modeling Progress

Here is the modeling progress by Shannon Gilley.

Modeling Instructions

This is a modeling instruction guide for the digital maquette that is going to be made of my character. My buddy Shannon (Maya expert) is helping out building a poseable 3d maquette for me to use in my pre-vis. Thanks Shannon!!!

I had made a turn sheet of Johnny for my Snow Day project but he turned out a little different than I had been drawing him so far. The new version I had drawn his proportions to be a little more 'general', and therefore a bit less interesting. Also since he was generally more 'squat' he looked a younger than I wanted him to look. I used some Andrew Loomis reference from fineart.sk to help solve my proportion problems. The drawing on the left here shows the new, revised version, in comparison to the incorrect version on the right. With a little reconstruction he's back to looking unique and interesting and the appropriate age.

Danger's Head Turn Around and Pose

Finding Something in the Snow

This is the most recent version for the 'finding something in the snow shot'.

Danger

This is my Border Collie, Danger. These are a few expression tests from my short film that I'm working on.

Dry erase board quick sketches.

Finding Something

This is a work in progress pic of my boy and dog. Thanks to apandastudio for the rock'n dog design, they look pretty good together.

PieEyed PieBill

Pie Eyed Pie Bill from Jon Dege on Vimeo.

Daily Doodles 9/10/2012

Here are a few DailyDoodles in my sketchbook that I've shared on instagram.

3x4

These are very small color pencil drawings. They are 3x4".

Birdy McBird

This guy gets laughs. Enjoy.

Birdy McBird from Jon Dege on Vimeo.

Pinky and Brain Pencil Test

This pencil test was made for TraditionalAnimation2 at AAU.

Pinky and Brain from Jon Dege on Vimeo.

Classic Drawings

These are the kinds of drawings I liked to do as studies when I was a little younger. These are all color pencil.

These are studies of sculptures by my favorite sculptor Bernini.

This was from imagination... I had quite the imagination. (Its got some Photoshop Tweaks)

Western Jon

I've been doing this little bounce as an After Effects demo for a while now and thought its time to share him on my blog.

Western Jon Cycle from Jon Dege on Vimeo.

Sketchbook Thumbnail

Hopefully this sketchbook thumbnail becomes something amazing. I can always hope.

An Expression

I painted this a little while ago, don't ask me what it is or what it means, it is simply and artistic expression :)

Silhouette Test from Jon Dege on Vimeo.

This is a silhouette and painting study that I made in Photoshop. My goal is to find a streamlined painting process for animation that can have a similar look to my illustrations. These are tests for now that will hopefully become useful for my grad school thesis project.

This is the level of finish that I'd like for the face, the body is a little less finished.

Frame Painting

I'm testing out some painterly styles for 2d animation. I'm excited about how this is going and can't wait to show off a couple pencil tests I've been sitting on for a while!

These are just teaser silhouettes for now ;)

This is the final illustration from my Drawing From Imagination course at AAU. Its the story of a school teacher who is on a field trip with students, the bus crashes, she comes to at midnight when the clock strikes 12 and realizes that all her students have become UNDEAD.

My first thought was to use elements of this sketch from almost 10 years ago:

I ended up scrapping 99% of it but ended up with a similar pose and expression. I'm happy to see that I've grown in the last ten years! Digging out the old drawings feels really good sometimes.

I found these old drawings while looking through files today (Drawings from 2003). I love going through the old stuff and remembering the kind of subject I was into at the time.

I liked making weird machines and scientists:

And weird creatures and monsters:

I'd love to go back and fix these up. If I were to critique myself from 10 years ago I would say work on 3 things.

1: Line quality- Thick outline, thin inside lines. Thicker lines on things coming forward.
2: Complexity doesn't equal quality.
3: Character and expression- Audiences engage acting and emotion.

On the bright side, looking back I feel I have definitely improved my knowledge and skills since then, its good to know I am growing as an artist.

This was a quick exercise in primitive shapes in the body.

Sometimes a snow plow will simply not get the job done... That's when you need to call in the big guns. This is an in progress illustration of a possible 'Snowplow Tank', that I may or may not use in my Snow Ball story.

Girl Power!

 
This is the lit arcade shot. The next step is to add all of the awesome people that I've been drawing for the scene, however this project is over for grad class so I might not be able to get back to it right away.
 

Girls play video games too... Nuff said. I realized I don't have many girls in my body of work so I wanted to make a project with a girl hero. In this image, a little Mander is kicking the butt at the arcade. This is work in progress for this week, I will add more characters, and lighting next week.

Snow Mound

This is a study for my Drawing from Imagination Course that I am in. I'm using my characters that I've been working on for a while now. In this story, my pup and I have an interesting day in the snow. In this particular image, they are arriving at the fort. I've added local value as well as shadows in this version:

Just for fun, below is the perspective shadow construction and the original line drawing.

Astro (Color)

I took the original red/orange color from the concept sketch and worked with some blues. I liked using a brown instead of black for some pieces. I'm amazed at how the impact of the shapes changed when filled in.