Creating Custom Brushes in Photoshop

Here I was experimenting creating different brushes on Photoshop. I scanned in textures of ice and snowflakes and various other materials to see what effect they gave and how I could use them in my backgrounds. 

I began by opening up a picture in Photoshop; a picture of ice found online, shown here:

I then began erasing around the edges so that the brush wouldn’t resemble a square

 I then went to Edit > Define Brush settings

 And named my new brush appropriately.

This was the final result.

I did this with lots of other images and really liked the effect it gave.

 Here is what some of the brushes look like collaged together:

First Promotional Poster

Here is the first promotional poster for 'Iceman Omm' 

Background Development

Here I scanned in some pages from my sketchbook where I have some rough paintings of the various landscapes mentioned in my story.





Inside the Ice Cave

The Arctic Camp


and


The mountainous background.





I then imported them into Photoshop and edited them.

I added in the character and put in a little more detail.

Here I merged three pictures together to create a landscape.

Although I do like the painted quality and that's what I hope to replicate in my final piece, it's still not quite how I envisioned it to look so I will be developing it further.

Character Facial Expressions

Here are some facial expressions for each of the characters using ink in the simplified form mentioned previous. I liked the fact Cal when he smiles you can see his two front teeth are missing and when Omm is angry his eyebrows transform into a mono-brow.

Cal

Omm

Father

Simplifying the Character Design

As I mentioned in an earlier post I needed to make my original character designs more simpler so they could be translated into animation.
With this I decided to look at looking at simple shapes to create the characters and to give them simple facial details.

Here is a very quick and simple design of the three characters mentioned clockwise from the top left; Omm, Cal and Father. I like this, especially the design of the father, however, it's a little boring and lacks anything special in my opinion and is maybe too simple.

Here I tried using a different medium; ink calligraphy pen. I really like the brush quality this gives especially in the faces of Omm and Father. I am a little skeptical again at the simplicity and how it will work when it comes to animating it. 

This was using an altered brush on Photoshop to try and get the quality of a hand drawn image. I quite like this, especially the design of Omm, I like the contrast of the shapes of their faces; oval, circle and rectangle. 

Digital Concept Designs

Here are some concept designs of the exterior arctic digitally created in Photoshop.

Here is a concept of the Environmentalist camp where Cal and his father take camp. This is where Cal will leave from when he goes exploring.

This is where the blizzard is starting to set in as Cal is wondering out on his own.

This is the entrance to the ice cave where Cal discovers the frozen body of Omm.

Influences/Inspirations for Omm

I really like the work of Gianluigi Toccafondo. He uses painting over rotoscoped techniques. He created the indent for 'Scott Free Productions' as seen in the still below.

http://www.acmefilmworks.com/director/1/13/toccafondo.html

Another artist whose animation style I really liked was Leonie Savvides title sequence for the television series, 'Top of the Lake'. 

http://leoniesavvides.com/2013/04/29/1583/

She used paint to create her animation.

I recently viewed a short film that has a very similar aesthetic to how I want my animation to look. The short film is called, 'Requiem for Romance' and centers around to characters having a lovers quarrel. Find the animation in the link below

http://vimeo.com/35699279

I really like this aesthetic with the watercolour background and the ink drawn characters. I think this kind of style will suit my story.