My final project for Joe Olsen's class this past semester

Christmas in L.A.

So about a month ago, I got the awesome opportunity to work on the music video for The Killers' new Christmas single "Christmas in L.A." Mostly doing character design and a little rotoscoping alongside the students in BYU Animation.

Today, the video came out on youtube

Before I say anything else - This video was made to promote the Killers' song. ALL of the proceeds from that song (literally 100% of the money) goes to R.E.D.'s AIDS relief. The video was shot on a miniscule budget, the artists worked for free, and the celebrity aspects of it were all done for charity. That being said, please consider buying this song.

Now you're probably wondering - hey Kendall, what parts did you do? Here is some of the work I put into it:

Early on, I got an email from the director Kelly Loosli asking for some designs of Owen Wilson in the style of Robert Valley - all of the animation was going to attempt to imitate him

Although my designs for Owen didn't get used, I started off doing mostly character designs for the video. Brandon Flowers acquired the rights to use Warren Zevon's image in the video and asked us to include him in it, so while other artists worked on background characters, I designed Zevon. 

These were my first two passes at Warren, each one getting warped a bit to try and play around with Valley's style. We ended up going with the top one and you can see the full-body version of it in the music video (at 3:46 Owen Wilson is in an audition line and to the far right is Zevon). 

I did a few more shots of Zevon - one of him that was used in the church scene (at 2:34 you can see him blurred on a pew behind Owen) - and one that was supposed to be animated of him playing guitar on the street but due to time restrictions did not appear in the video.

 

They had me do two versions of Zevon on the guitar - one in Valley's style and one more realistic. While the animation was meant to be heavily stylized, Flowers wanted Zevon to look more life-like. 

A few more characters I was asked to fix design problems on were the woman with the sunglasses (at 2:54)

the family in the Christmas photo (at 3:09)

and the drunk guy in the Santa hat (at 4:00)

Obviously for the video they cut out alot of the details I drew to make things easier to animate.

I also took on designing the Killers as background characters in the video. The images were never used, but it was alot of fun and they look really good. Brandon Flowers is even wearing his favorite jacket.

One other thing I contributed was to the video's rotoscoping (tracing animation over live footage). At about 2:16 Owen is double-taking in his car when he sees himself walking around the city. I did the initial rough rotoscoping of the close-ups of his face in that sequence. Some of the work I did was used, cleaned up, and colored, but alot of it was thrown away or replaced. In the end, I learned that I hate animating and am content to stick to concept design.

Scarecrow Head Sculpt

Making a really creepy scarecrow character for a class. And yeah, school's here again, so that means posts are gonna be erratic *sad face*

Punk Robot Finished

Here's how she turned out!

Designs for PWNED Punk Robot character

They needed some other characters for the video game in PWNED, so essentially I took this old project:

And started to recreate it:

Final product - next post!

Caliber

This was my finished concept for Caliber. They ended up using some of my ideas in the final design

More Abbys

Caliber Heads

Here are some more designs for the PWNED film - this the video game character that the nerd uses: Caliber, a laser/gun-toting wildman (or at least my take on it, he is). I was trying to think up of interesting ways to incorporate lasers and explosives into different parts of his design, hence some canons in weird places and the finger gun.

Abby's clothes designs

and hair concepts

I never do Cute

 These are concept sketches I did earlier on for Abby. You might notice that they are alot cuter than anything else I've done on this blog.

Super Zero

 This was my other other other final project this semester - to create a story; design a hero, love interest, sidekick, and villain; and have 2 concept sketches for the environments. It's called

Synopsis:

Nonstopolis is a bustling city of skyscrapers, international trade, and a hotspot for rising talent. Phil Zipperman (or “Zero” to his friends) just spent his last couple of bucks on a plane ticket out of his parents’ home in Stumpville, Iowa to try and make it as a stand-up comedian in the big city. Zero soon gets a day job as a bank clerk and at night he tries out his act at the city clubs. Eventually, he meets a cute photojournalist named Stacey who works for the city newspaper and they start dating.

Life seems good, except that Nonstopolis turns out to be frequented by supernatural disasters and acts of super-villain terrorism, particularly from a group known as the Renegade United Masters of Peril and their leader “Dr. Mandroid”. Defending Nonstopolis from these threats is a costumed hero known as Captain Omega who always manages to triumph over the forces of evil, often at the expense of further destruction to the city, but always to the delight and relief of its citizens.

Zero soon finds himself caught in the constant crossfire between Captain Omega and every occurring disaster in the city. Every catastrophe seems to happen right wherever Zero goes. To make things more aggravating, Zero discovers his girlfriend is the one who shines the “Omega Beacon” in the sky – the token signal that calls Captain Omega whenever there is danger. When Zero finally gets the chance to talk to Omega, he learns that the hero is ignorant of any aspects of normalcy – he has no secret identity, no social skills, and no life outside of being a superhero.

Between juggling his job, his dreams, his girlfriend, their physical safety, and teaching a superhero the facts of life, Zero responds to his new life with a cynical outlook on how the population has managed to survive, how villains always end up losing, and how the existence of a comic book-esque metropolis is so self-contradictory and unrealistic.

Horned King

The HK is a badA warlord from the Prydain books. This is the fourth and final character I designed for my final project.

Here are all the characters together in height ratio:

***Also, I made a page for my Caricature side-business on Fixr:
Caricature Artist

Fflewddur

Fflewddur Fflam, a king-turned-bard with a magic lute. The third character I did from the Prydain books for my final.

Gurgi

Here's Gurgi again, redone to look less weird, but still weird. Also from the Prydain books and second of 4 characters I had to do color designs for one of my finals

Eilonwy

From the Prydain books. First of 4 characters I had to do color designs for one of my finals

Turnaround

A sorceress-princess character I did for a class. Here are some facial expression studies of her as well: