Pre-Production: Young Barnabas Expression Sheets

Hello Everyone,

First of all I would like to say MERRY CHRISTMAS!! Yes it is the early hours of Christmas Eve (essentially making it Christmas Day). I thought I would post this little update while I get other little bits and pieces ready. I still have one set of expression sheets to complete but hopefully they should be up tomorrow at some point. Following those I have skeleton turnarounds which should hopefully lead to me posting the turnarounds for our final models. Last but not least I will post up the models current progress. You will have to forgive the delay... I have been trying to get the work done... Posting every day can take a toll on time.

I have also made a couple of additional videos which I have not had time to get up and running (this is another reason why I'm a little delayed). I am of course prioritizing the 3D models above all. I have one modelled totally the other 3 I'm hoping to begin and finish by next week. This leaves this week to get any and all final 2D conceptual work complete. Of course I have the rest of today off as well as boxing day. That being said I will probably fit in time to get the expression sheets finished. I'm hoping to be back in the modelling game by Sunday.

Anyway this post is based on the expressions from the adolescent "Young Barnabas".

The expressions above are where I started, I actually took a little time to align all of these models to be somewhat related to each other. Following Benjamin and Barnabas's expressions I didn't like how incorrect some of them are. It also bugged me how some of them didn't look necessarily like the same character. I corrected this for Young Barnabas but I probably should have spent more of this time on the main 2 characters expressions. Alas I cant use much more time on this 2D work, I have more models to make and we are graded on the CG aspect not pre-production.

Of these expressions I probably like the "Feeling Ill" expression, it does however feel a little more like eating something boring. I didn't know how to relate that into a single word expression though so I went with "Ill" ha-ha. Drawing the expressions can be harrowing but I think I have found a full proof way to create a likeness between the faces. I keep the front profile picture on hand at all times and use it to align the features with it. Of course little things adjust and I'm sure there are details I'm missing but I found the expressions more fun.

There is actually a funny little story concerning the "Concentration" face. "Young Barnabas" is a painter - a fellow creative like myself and my Business partner Ross. One thing I have noticed that we do when we are painting or drawing anything. We stick our tongues out of the side of our mouths. I could not resist putting this face on one of Young Barnabas's expressions. After all when Barnabas is younger he is more creative until he is told not to be. It takes the meeting of his wife to snap him out of this creative repression. I also get to indulge my EMO EYES! 

I concluded these expressions with a "Happy Happy" mainly for Sammy and Chrissie. The one thing I was trying to explain to them when talking about Benjamin's turnaround expression was that his eyes were not natural. For example when we are happy (saying cheese for a photograph - whatever) we smile but we don't widen our eyes or if we do it looks strained. The initial Benjamin facial turnarounds and the one I modelled had widely open eyes. It's not a natural expression and closing eyes slightly to make it natural does not make them EMO! - it makes them natural... This is why in my view the Young Barnabas Happy Happy works more then Benjamin's.

One of the very last things I knocked up was a little video showing my process for creating a characters expression sheet. Everything begins in pencil on paper, I don't do much roughing in Photoshop... I do tend to get precious early so its nice to be able to keep things to sketches. Afterwards everything goes into Photoshop for inking, sometimes I change it up with Manga Studio as that also has some nice inking options. Of course Photoshop's line tool also has some very nice advantages... Its like dipping vertices in ink and choosing when to throw them onto paper... quite cool.

Well I think that concludes this post, I am actually still waiting for the video to upload so I probably won't be posting this until tomorrow morning. I thought I would get it ready so I can get cracking on other bits and pieces as soon as possible. It's like I said at the moment I am looking to get all of my final 2D stuff posted. Of course they are all in different stages of completion so I am hoping to eradicate that as soon as possible. You will be pleased to hear I have built one model, the others as I stated will be developed next week in time for our deadline on the 6-9th of Jan...Keep your eyes peeled!

Anyway Merry Christmas all!

Over & Out,
xXStItChXx