Queen of the undead

Had a busy weekend doing non pirate monkey stuff unfortunately but i thought i would post some more sketch work. Here are a couple of attempts at designing Tiamat, Queen of the undead. I came across the name when i initially thought up the concept of the astral seas as opposed to the astral planes, where all the dead pirates exist. I thought it was so obvious that someone must have come up with it before, and they had, but just not how i expected.

Heres what I found:

1. Chaos Of The Sea (Mummu Tiamat)

Within the Fathomless depths of Astral Chaos
a Sea churns like the madness of Her Dreams.
She is the Chaos Serpent, the Chaos that dwells in the Sea.
She is of primordial essence, and her essence is transcended through me.

Spawned from Her are the restless ones;
ancient ones; mighty ones; and the Chaos of the Sea. S
he knows, sees and controls all, and through Her so shall we.
Venom is her Blood and unsparing are her fangs -
Her essence transcends all planes.

KA-SHUR-RA MULKI MUMMU KI-TA GIR-TAB
SA DUG MU MUD SISKUR MAH USUMGAL AB-ZU
MU ASHTA ZA EZEZU AM LU-GUB-BA NI-ME-GAR
KA-GUR PETA BABKAMA LARUBA ANAKU INA ABSU.
IA SARRATUM TIAMATU SAL-LUGAL INA MAB GUZA
IA BEL KINGU DUMU-LUGAL INA EKEMU KU KUG!

Chaos has risen unto her immortal throne.
TIAMAT, thou art infinite, as the depths below the seas.

Awesome celestial body, born under Scorpio,
accept my blood offering mighty Dragon of the primeval source.
My heart is yours. Furious but Dwelling in silence.
Keeper of the gate, open the gate so that I may enter here -
the gate unto cosmic truth - the gate unto the Abyss.

Hail Goddess TIAMAT, Queen of the exalted throne.
Hail Lord KINGU, Prince of the Powers of Darkness.

Haha... love it. It's by a band called crimson moon. I'm going to have to listen to some of their music cos their lyrics rock... in a devil worshipping way of course. Anyways, aye, theres some good stuff in there... the idea that this great big sea serpent is queen of the undead... love it.. and she uses "restless ones" to do her bidding... magic! Her name sounds a little bit 'dungeons and dragons' but I can live with it... so the fun part is trying to design her. I don't think i've nailed her yet as she doesn't look queen of the undeady enough yet... heres my first pass anyway.

Solomon at war

i've not been able to visit him yet but over in germany Solomon is appearing in Pictoplasmas characters at war exhibition.

I was blown away when i first saw these pictures as I recognise so many of those characters and their designers that i feel humbled to be in their presence. It's also made me more determined than ever to finish this animation so that i can start to earn my place amongst such great company.

I also noticed a couple of other pirate monkeys in there as well... i just hope to fuck they're not ghosts pirate monkeys or i might as well give up this project right now.

'Reference'

I was trawling for images a while back and i stumbled across this illustration by Dan Krall. Goddamn it's beautiful. When I close my eyes and try to picture my animation i keep coming back to this. The palette is incredible.. really haunting...and I love the way the wee man in the boat is so callously tossing his neighbour overboard... creepy stuff... so i'm gonna have to rip it off.

quick stuff

here are a couple of attempts at trying to breathe a bit of life into the wee bugger. I'm going to have to watch his shape though as he's not exactly staying consistent yet... I'm gonna have to focus on that... I'll do a model sheet for him this week if i get a chance. Ooh, here's some crackers that i might have to 'referance'. If you know of any more then let me know, cheers.

first pass storyboards

ready for action

here he is kicking some piratey ass. I bought a great book by ben cauldwell about illustrating action and fantasy characters... you should get it. cheap to buy, expensive to miss... if you know what i mean. anyway.. i've been trying to absorb as much of it as possible and the image above absorbed a fair bit.

and some more...

These were the sketches that nailed him for me... mostly because i thought he was quite a simple shape and would be easier to animate than a hairier, skinnier type of monkey. He reads pretty well in siloutte as well which is always good.
hmmm... I like the one where he's smoking a tab... i might have to try and get some smoking going on in this cartoon. The kids'll love it.

Sketchbook stuff

I've brought my sketchbooks into work today so I've gone scanner crazy... here are some monkey concepts i did a while ago.

Kitted oot

I've been pontificating for months about how I was going to actually create this animation if I ever got round to it.
3D?
Nope, tried it at college and i just didn't have the patience for it... especially when your armatures are made from gaffa tape and old coathangers... put it this way.. if i had been animating a fight between Muhammad Ali and Micheal J Fox it would have been the most gutwrenchingly realistic showdown in celluloid history... but i wasn't.
Flash?
It seems like every animation produced these days uses flash and they're all starting to look the same. Most people use Flash as a substitute for cut out animation...chopping up their vectors so they can swing an arm or a leg... BUT WHY NOT USE REAL CUT OUTS YOU LAZY BASTARDS? I want my animation to look different because even if it turns out shit... at least it'll be different shit.
Cut outs?
haha...naa... I'm too lazy.
Computer?
Tried it, hated it. I've spent years in college and games companies trying to get to grips with symbollox, 3d studio max and softimage to no avail. It's like trying to animate with a microwave as someone much funnier than me once said to someone who wasn't me either.
Seriously, once they design the software to be used by a dumb artist like me and not a technician i'll give it another pop... but until then... NOT A CHANCE IN HELL.
2D?
Hmmmn... I've got fond memories of huddling up over my light box at art school, killing my eyes and encouraging early arthritis. I remember the thrill of carrying an armfull of line tests over to the rostrum and I remember the fear that I had just wasted 6 hours animating a walk cycle that would make joey deacon wince. I ended up doing 2D for all of my final year films and i enjoyed every frustrating 24 frames per second of it.

Sooo, a traditional 2D ghost pirate monkey animation it's going to be.

I've got a half decent digital video camera and a really good tripod as well so all i needed was, well, absolutely everything else. I didn't even have a blue pencil to my name. So I needed to get kitted out. I found a company online called chromacolour who supply animation materials to the industry 'offering a complete selection of quality products for traditional 2D animation'. Sounded perfect.

So this is what I got:

Advanced Animation Kit with Wooden Lightbox - Kit 7000A
12 Field wooden adjustable animation portable lightbox
12 Field black plexiglas animation disc
12 Field ACME punched field guide
1 Dope sheet pad (50 sheets)
1 Bar Chart Pad
1000 sheets 12 Field (267mm x 330mm) ACME punched professional
grade 60 gsm paper
8 Faber Castell pencils (B and 2B)
4 Berol Pencils ( HB and 2H )
12 Col-erase pencils (3 x blue, 3 x Scarlet red, 3 x Terracotta, 3 x
Canary Yellow )
1 Mars plastic eraser
2 boxes white card slotted reinforcements
1 box white card round reinforcements

Ya wee beauty. It turned up last week. What can i say? The light box is absolutely gorgeous... I just want to rub myself against it... beautiful. Blue pencils? why do drawings come out better when you draw them with a blue pencil? seriously. Is it just me? I even got excited when i saw my dopesheet pad... haha... sad but true. I'll take some pictures of it all this weekend and stick em up here on monday... ooh, and i've also started on my storyboards which i need to scan and put up as well. See, told you i was serious about doing this.

Captain Solomon

I came up with the idea for this wee character when i was on a camping trip in devon with a group of friends. It's a really spooky place is Devon and the weekend we camped was a really misty one.... classic piratey ghost weather if you ask me. Everyone was getting easily freaked out to the point where everyone believed that they could see a giant in the campsite.. a real fucking giant wandering about around the tents... no shit... I was the only one stoned and I was the one being rational, telling them it was a trick of the light and any other garbage that came into my head... aaanyway, as everyone was still crapping themselves about the bfg i thought it would be perfect ghost story time. We all sat up late swapping our freakiest stories until there was only me and mate Mat left conscious. I started making up some shit about how the pirates in the area used to use trained monkeys as saboteurs, sending them ashore to switch off lighthouses and guff like that (you remember i was stoned right?). I think Mat had passed out during this but i didn't notice as I was really into the story. Soo, this one monkey ends up being abandoned by his pirate masters and ends up being strung up by the villagers who are royally pissed off with the wee guy and his piratey ways. But it doesn't end there, oh no (see, even writing about it is getting me all excited), the monkey comes back from the dead and it's hell bent on revenge, not only on the villagers who killed him but also on the pirates who abandoned him.

The revenge of the ghost pirate monkey!! woohoo!!

How good a cartoon would that be?. I want to see that on my telly.

Unfortunately, the only way I'm going to be able to is if I make the bastarding thing.

Bollox.

who's the wee guy at the front?

ermm... well... he's a ghost pirate who happens to be a monkey... actually he's more of a privateer than a pirate but it sounds shite when i tell people

ME "the hero's a ghost privateer monkey!"

THEM " haha...a what? whats a privateer then?"

ME "forget it."

Soo, for clarity's sake, here's a sort of dictionary definition if you can be arsed to read it.

A Privateer was an armed ship under papers to a government or a company to perform specific tasks. The men who sailed on a privateer were also called privateers. The papers were usually referred to as a Marque of Letters. Some times these letters would give the captain rights to act in the behalf of a certain company or government to commit acts of reprisal, escort merchants, or protect coastal areas or property. Often the limits of the Marque were vague, leaving it up to the captain and crew to determine what they could take or attack. Sometimes the privateers ignored the Marque and just did what they bloody well pleased. Most of the time, Privateers were engaged of act of reprisals against other nations, that is engaged in acts of war. A key distinction between a Merchant and Privateer, is the privateer was not paid by the nation or company but paid by taking spoils from ships or properties they attacked or fought off.

Got that? Well, for those that didnae bother reading it, a privateer was a sort of legitimate pirate. He would be 'paid' by a country to attack 'enemy' ships and other pirates. Just like the A-team or Sir Francis Drake. The infamous ghost duck pirate..... haha... whats the bets he's going to make an appearance in a later episode.... if I can ever get round to making the first one that is.

So, I'm gonna call him a pirate but he's more of a pirate for hire who hunts down the bad pirates sort of pirate. Right? Glad thats all clear then.

meet the crew

the skinny

God only knows why I'm doing this blog as I don't have enough time to actually produce any projects never mind sitting down and blogging about them... buuuut... I thought this might help kick my ass into doing some work instead of sitting around thinking about doing it.... waaaaa!! I cannae even write coherently... anyway... aye... this blog should be about the animation I plan on creating about a ghost pirate monkey and the end of the world... shit title mind... as you can see, i might need a little help from you in forming ideas, scrapping ideas, encouraging me or discouraging me, whatever, but feedback is wanted if you've got any to give... and if not you can just sit back and watch in wonder at how shit and unmotivated one person can really be.