Four Main Characters Down, Turnin' Round.

I'm feeling a lot better about my coloring for this one. I think I've found the ratio of hard outline shadows to soft gradated values.

Cesar is sort of the moral compass of the story. I wanted his character design to reflect a certain meekness to him, something he has to push through in order to reason with Blanco.

More Coloring... More Turnarounds....

OK. I think I know what needs to change. I've had this habit of doing crisp, darker values (look at the far right hand). It's just not gelling with the softer values like I want it to. I think I'll tone that part down to just creases and facial details. Otherwise, I can take the softer values and create them as their own separate layer in Flash (still the solid vector shapes), take that into After Effects, blur it and set the layer as a clipping mask for the main color layer.

Coloring Exercises and Turnarounds.

Trying to get better at coloring. Trying to see how much depth I can add to this character design. Not sure how well adding real textures will look animated. Need to try that next.

Lofax Animation Clip from Kyle Stephens on Vimeo.

Here's a better quality version of "Lofax" for you all.

McDonough: A Steampunk Stop Motion Musical

McDonough: A Steampunk Stop Motion Musical from Kyle Stephens on Vimeo.

Aaaaah McDonough's finally up online. Feels good, I tell ya. I want to thank my crew again and again for all the work they put in and all the patience they had with me. You guys are amazing, and I cannot wait to see and work with you again.

My Tribute to Carl Sagan

I've been trying to get more caricatures of famous people going for a while, and I like this style a lot.

Also did a wallpaper version. :D

Character Studies: Becoming "The Last Mariachi"

So basically I'm designing two characters with the same face. The first guy, this dude, suffers from autism and, because of it, is also mute. Living close to the border in the U.S., he only watches mexican programming, including the news and boxing matches. He's one of those creepy regulars you'd see wandering the mall every day and eating at the same mexican restaurant. This is his first character arch at the beginning of the short. Because of the shooting that he gets caught up in, he goes through serious psychological trama and soon snaps, becoming a robotic, spanish speaking vigilante who is only known as Blanco (The Last Mariachi). It's a touchy thing to bring into an action comedy - autism and PTSD - so I'm trying to approach it as thoughtfully and knowledgeably as possible. There are no direct jokes to make about autism or PTSD, it's just how this guy becomes the protagonist of the story. I want the serious parts to still be serious with a real push in sound design and editing towards the psychological aspect of shock, dissociation, and acute stress response. I'm toying with the idea of changing the entire presentation of the animation when he snaps, too, like switching from video to film. After that, though, it's just a bunch of fart jokes.

Not really.

Piddlin'

Just playing around with coloring. Trying to get better. Not sure if I'll use any of this for the final product, but maybe a kickass poster cover with all the characters on it, like those old 80's movie posters. Yeah......YEAH!

Oh yeah, just revamped the blog, too! Whattaya think?

FINALLY got to a good place with the character design for Blanco. This won't be the final coloring, just a preliminary thing to see what he looks like in color.

The Last Mariachi Coloring Style, Part I

I'm liking the way this is turning out so far. I'm using real textures from ImageAfter.com and warping and shading them to give it that 3D depth. I think if I got a couple colorists in the production, we could streamline this process and make something really pop for cheap.