Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Story character....

This is Moeli... he is an 35 year old socially awkward man who still has a lot of his childhood left in him.  He spends most of his days hinden inside his trusty blanket (which he sometimes turns into a tent) and with his usual trusty companions Ball and Bear.  Moeli however, slowy finds his way out... I mean outside and out there.



my story is basically about a team of hunters who venture into an energy forest in search of valuable energy they can harvest and sell back home.

In the 23rd century, the contrast between poor and rich has become drastic, 70% of the population being the rich and middle class, while the 30% is the low class. The Government becomes in control of the world and decides to imprison the lower class and use them for entertainment purposes. They put them in a battle royal, where the stronger team survives. Each team is owned by a wealthy the person, the more money the more people. The owners give them new technological weapon based on a magnetic force and can only be used in practice and fighting zones.
One of the wealthy owners are against this system, so he decides to help his members survive by giving them information to help benefit them in battle. The team leader and his crew fight to get to the top and collect parts to better their weapons. Once one of the fighters figured out a way to unlock the weapons outside of fighting zones, they train to get stronger and attempt to escape this corrupt system.

Cubone Boy


My story is about a boy who was placed in an orphanage as a small child. He stayed in the orphanage for many years, wondering why he was there and why no one wanted him. One day there was a horrible accident at a nuclear power plant only 3 miles away from the orphanage. When it happened, no one bothered evacuating the orphanage, and as a result, all of the children there became sick with radiation poisoning. Most of the children were able to make it to fallout camps and hospitals, but many of them did not make it very long. A few of the children, however, started to act strangely. They started regaining their strength, and the signs of radiation poisoning seemed to reverse. The radiation had started to alter their genes and their chemistry in a way that was making them, not only survive, but surpass their former human abilities. Many of them gained powers or psychic abilities, and our protagonist was no exception. He gained a type of telekinesis and the ability to emit a gas from any part of his body that would, when looking through it, act like an x-ray. With his new-found powers he decided to go out and find his parents who had abandoned him and left him with so much hurt. His parents were very young and living in a trailer. When asked why they abandoned him his mother responded that they just didn't have the resources to raise him, and giving him up for something better was the hardest thing for her to do. This was not enough for our protagonist, as he proceeded to kill both his mother and his father. The mother fought back and gave him the scars on his chest. After killing them he kept the mother's skull as a trophy. He fashioned a covering for his face with it. From that moment on, he was known as the Cubone Boy (named after the pokemon :D). He did everything he could to find more radiation in the hopes that it would make him more powerful, and every time he did the radiation would take more of a toll on his cranial functions, slowly turning him into an insane super villain. The End.

Sandstorm in Incredible Land!

The year is 2106, and things are quite different from how they once were. A shifting climate has caused widespread drought and searing heat across the American landscape, frying everything in its path and turning 85% of the country into an inhospitable wasteland. Now, it’s up to America’s trusty Transcontinental Relocation Service to safely move businessmen and travelers from one end of the country to the other.


With most of the country a desert and independent vehicular transportation barred, the American way of life has changed drastically, including the elimination of perhaps the most important thing of all - the teenage cross-country road trip.


Which is how Wildemere Peters, a weary old man who took the job of ATRS driver as a youth to fulfill his own dream of seeing the desert, ended up in his tiny, rusted hover transport with two good-for-nothing hipsters. While they’re excited to be finally seeing the wild American desert for themselves, Peters couldn’t be more unhappy with his present company and silently rues the day he ever thought this was a good career move. But things suddenly take a turn for the worst when, without warning, a violent Sandstorm quickly approaches over the horizon. Hours away from the nearest safety hub, Peters and his passengers are helpless to outrun the storm as the furiously blowing sand consumes the vehicle, tossing it far off track and tumbling it about before depositing it, half buried, in the middle of nowhere.


When everyone comes to, they stumble out of the vehicle only to find that they’re no longer any where near the road. To their horror, they’re nowhere near anything. With only emergency rations to keep them sustained, they dig out the transport to find that it still barely functions. Knowing that they’ll need it to stay sheltered from the blistering heat and radiation, they climb back in and putter slowly around the barren wasteland in search of the road. After endless hours of searching and with supplies dwindling, they begin to feel that something about this desert is very wrong, and - in their increasingly delirious states - begin to suspect that they're somehow on an entirely different planet. But could that wicked surprise sandstorm really have transported them to another world, or are those shimmering gold spires in the distance all in their heads?

---


Summary! (Because I’m still working out plot details. And yeah, plot holes galore). But it’s basically like a supernatural road trip story. I want to have a bunch of stuff happen out there in the desert but I’m not sure what kinds of, if any, other characters I want to include. I’m planning on having the ending very open, so as not to reveal whether or not they were actually hallucinating the whole time. They do end up getting rescued though. When Peters’ vehicle doesn’t arrive at its destination, the agency tracks his transport and finds all three of them passed out inside of it, buried in sand.


Also, I’m not sure if the car counts as a character or an environment, I just really wanted to draw it!

longing to be left alone



Once upon a a time there was an old man who was a master of alchemy. The old man was very wise, and realized that his purpose in life was fufilled and there was no more he could do for his small tribe in the Himalaya mountains, The old man was very generous, and provided them with all the crops and cattle they needed for the rest of their lives only using some soil and his magical alchemy. The village loved him very much and praised him for his wisdom and knowledge, but the old man grew weak and just wanted to be left alone to die. One night, with just a walking stick the old man set out on his journey to wander the mountains in peace for the rest of his days. The villagers always tried to follow him, but could not scale the mountain tops like he could. He yelled and cursed at them as they followed, hoping they would turn back. But it was no use, the villagers followed, falling off the jagged cliffs to their death. The old man decided he had no choice but to scare them away with his alchemy so that nobody else would die.
He picked the limbs and body parts of the villagers off mountain tops and molted them together with slabs of fallen ice, bringing it to life with the last bit of magic that he had left. His plan worked, the moster scared the villagers all the way back to their little town. The old man was finally in peace. Since that day the monster follows the old man everywhere he goes to make sure that nobody will bother him again, even in the afterlife.

Story Character




A long time ago there lived a horse that was the kindest and gentlest of all the Indian ponies. She was the only horse that would allow the little ones to near her, while the other horses were easily spooked and quick to run away. She was very important to the tribe because she taught all the children how to ride and take care of the horses. She worked very hard for the tribe and she had become old and tired. To reward her hard work the Shaman transformed her into a beautiful young girl. She was happy to be young again but she could not understand the ways of the humans, there was so much to learn! She soon wandered off into the forest, confused and missing her old body. In the forest she would sometimes find young boys and girls who had also wandered off just like her. The girl had then made it her job to lead the children back to the tribe so that no child would be lost. The tribe was once again grateful towards her so the shaman decided to reward her once again. He made her into a spirit that would guard the tribe for all eternity. When she became the spirit, she kept her human form but had all the strength and speed of a horse and a beautiful long tail. She was once again happy and with her new powers she kept everyone safe. She taught all the horses to be gentle like she had been and everyone in the tribe loved their new guardian.

Final

Uh, okay so. I only have a somewhat general outline for the story.

Basically there's this fairly isolated village/town in the far north. The people are indigenous to the region, and developed a somewhat industrialized society, but they retain a fairly isolationist policy.
Then eventually, foreign settlers begin to move in closer and closer. The natives begin to become more weary of their presence, but otherwise indifferent as long as they're left alone.
But of course why would they be left alone, that would be boring.
Territory wars ensue.
Those are fun, right?
Here I did the village as it would have been at the very beginning before we were left with war-torn ruins or whatnot or whatever happens.
I wish I had been able to explore the actual people a bit more, like how they would look. Hopefully the environment is at least somewhat indicative. I imagine them to be fairly traditional people with comparatively limited technology. But maybe that's a project for another time.

Time Travel and Ghosts

 
     

is from the future. Or rather, a future. Unable to accept the path her life followed and the events that resulted from her choices, she haunts her past self, shaping her choices and influencing her decisions in the hope of creating a future that she can accept. 

Story



This is Ephy (ef-ee), an average student at, MAMA (Maryland Advanced Magic Academy), a college for wizards-in-training. She and her classmates fight all sorts of magic monsters you've probably never heard of, learn to brew their own potions Pabst Blue Ribbon, and dedicate their life to making life a little less mainstream through the use of magic.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Final Concept - Original Story


I'll be posting my story soon. I just didn't want to forget to post the image :o

Druid Hill


Okay so basically, Druid Hill is a creature who lives in the lake in Druid Hill Park. He REALLY likes friends, but since he is gross with an abrasive personality, no one wants to go near him. He spends his time lurking around the park trying to make friends with all of the park goers and failing miserably at it. He carries a spell book that allows him to rearrange walkways and buildings so that people are eternally lost in the park and have to stay there to be his friends forever, eventually being brainwashed into not wanting to leave. He steals lollipops from children to give to unsuspecting people, trying to make friends, but the lollipops are half eaten already and soggy with lake water, causing people to be grossed out.
One day, two girls end up in the park, trying to go to the Maryland Zoo. Since Druid Hill likes collecting friends, he ends up trying to brainwash them. After getting lost several times, the girls resort to asking people for directions but to their horror, they find that all the people in the park are brainwashed and have no other motive than to make them stay there forever. They are frantically running around the park, but are pointed in the wrong direction over and over and over again. Finally after realizing that the girls weren't going to be brainwashed any time soon, Druid Hill decides to leap out from hiding and confront them. Druid tries to befriend the girls by shoving lollipops at them but they refuse to take any from him, causing him to become more and more frustrated and humiliated. After deciding that confrontation isn't going to make the girls want to be his friends, he throws down a huge cloud of pollen, blinding the girls with allergies and giving him the chance to scramble up a tree, back in hiding. The two girls eventually find the entrance to the zoo, but Druid leaps down from the trees and blocks their path, telling them that he wasn't going to let them get away from him without being friends. After some thought, the girls decide to pretend to be his friends. They defeat him with a hug, and while he is still fooled, they sneak into the zoo, and then back through the park which is much easier to navigate now that Druid isn't casting spells to try and get them lost. He eventually notices that they have been missing for quite some time and then realizes that they were running towards the park exit, trying to escape. He chases after them, using his magic to lift sidewalks and knock down tree branches to block their path. The girls keep on running regardless, and they just barely make it out of the park without being caught and dragged back in. Druid Hill stops at the gate, sad, and unable to leave the park because otherwise the magic would wear off and all of his "friends" would wake up and return to their homes. He turns around and goes back to swim around the lake, waiting for his next victim.

This story was inspired by the trip I took to Druid Hill Park with my friend. We were lost for hours, and no one knew how to get to the zoo, so we wandered around and ended up every place but the right place. The signs in that park are awful and always point down the middle of a fork in the road.

Original Story



That dapper young man in the above image is named Lucas. He's 7 years old and had gone through life without a care in the world. That is, until the portal under his bed was opened, revealing a whole other world, an underground world, of monsters. Not only did Lucas have no idea that these monsters existed, but the monsters had no idea that Lucas existed.
When the monsters' portal to Lucas' bedroom opened, they were confused, this world was so bright, so colorful and so scary. One night while Lucas was laying in bed, he heard a strange sound coming from underneath him. Body still planted to the mattress, he lifted the bedskirt, and lowered his head to see what had made that noise. Cries and screams rang out, not just from Lucas, but from the monsters as well. It's hard to say who was more terrified. Neither of them had seen such weird looking creatures before. Lucas lept from his bed to the bean bag chair across the room, then through the door that led to the hallway, just in case any of the monsters had climbed out of their world and where planning to eat him. He sprinted to his parents' room and dove under their covers. When his parents went to go investigate these "monsters", all they found was the left shoe that belonged to his pair of red sneakers, and his favorite teddy bear, Winston. Lucas couldn't believe it. Where did the monsters go? Where they even there in the first place? Of course they were! He saw them with his very own eyes!
He knew he had to get to the bottom of this.
Will Lucas befriend the monsters and create a universe where monsters and humans can coexist? Or will Lucas find a way to defeat these monsters and close the portal forever? Are the monsters even real, or is he letting his imagination get the best of him?
I honestly have no idea either, I haven't gotten there yet.

Original Story Concept

I was thinking more along the lines of animated movie story line...

Amelia: (her necklace is her dead mother's ring on a cord, very sentimental)
Amelia is a princess fleeing her city.  The "prince charming" of our tale, Gavin, wishes to marry the princess.  Amelia, quite unhappy with this idea, runs away.  While evading the guards in attempts to make her way out of the city walls and into the forest, she runs into (literally) a musician named Oliver.  Oliver is the clingy type and begins following Amelia in her quest to leave the city, unaware that she is the princess.  Amelia is just about ready to ditch Oliver when the guards find her.  In an attempt to befriend her, Oliver distracts the guards, allowing Amelia to get outside the walls and hide amongst the trees.  The two are questing together, not quite getting along but Amelia is thankful for Oliver's help and enjoys the company.  Gavin, angry that his princess has escaped, runs off to find her himself with the help of a magic spell book he stole from a witch, as well as a few henchmen.  Upon discovering the pair, Gavin becomes enraged and attempts to murder Oliver using spells from the book.  In order to save Oliver, Amelia agrees to marry Gavin (this is also when Oliver realizes that Amelia is the princess).  Oliver is to be "disposed of" by Gavin's men to keep him from trying anything heroic.  Oliver manages to escape (unbeknownst to Gavin) and sets out on a quest to find Amelia.  Eventually discovering the pair in a secret tower, Oliver realizes he will need the spell book to save Amelia.  Oliver, clumsy as he is, ends up blowing his cover and Gavin has him chained in the dungeon.  The night before the wedding is to take place, Amelia steals the keys to the dungeon from Gavin and frees Oliver.  Together they steal the spell book and use it to defeat Gavin.  King Peter, Amelia's father, is so grateful to have his daughter home that he will give Oliver whatever gift he wants,  whether it be riches, clothing, etc, etc.  The one thing that Oliver desires is not something that King Peter can give him, for it is Amelia's heart.  She shares her love with him too and they are married and ensue happy ending!

Story could use some work but that's the rough idea of it...

Monday, May 2, 2011

Final Concept

Random clown bruiser

STORY TIME GUYS

It is the year 200z, and the world's ecosystem is collapsing. Deserts spread and eat up the landscape. What is left are hellish wastelands that go on for hundreds of miles.

The vast majority of Earth's population lives in large cities that punctuate the wasteland. There are outposts in the wilderness, but very few civilian settlements survive more than ten years. This is partly due to the extreme conditions.

Mostly it is because of the clowns.

See, there are people who wander off into the Waste, for whatever reason they might have. They either starve and die, or they go mad and are collected by a circus. Circuses are wandering gangs of men and women driven to insanity, who paint their faces and dress like the circus clowns of old times. Many revert to a near primal state, others become ruthlessly cunning. No matter what end of the spectrum a clown might fall into, they are psychotic. The most violent of them eat human flesh and prey on outposts and people who wander too close to the cities' borders. The more contained favor subtler crimes, and many of those are able to reinstate themselves in a city's less favorable elements.

There are people who swear their lives to hunting and bringing these madmen to justice. It is a profession, much like plumbing or garbage collecting, that may not be glamorous but needs to be done. They are clown hunters, people who venture out between cities to clear the Waste of particularly nasty clowns.

END STORY TIME

Anyways that's the world. The story I have in mind is some Romeo and Juliet style crap about the power of overcoming life's difficulties or something bs like that. I was really only interested in the basic concept and fleshing out the world at this point.

The character design is for a typical waste clown, bruiser type. Big, dumb, and stark raving mad.




Friday, April 29, 2011

Final Story


A father and daughter own and operate a repair shop, Danielle (Dani – 17 yrs) and Richard (late 30s-early 40s), in a small, West-coast city. Dani follows in the footsteps of her quirky father who is brilliant as an inventor and she often can be found wandering the outdoors, collecting specimens from nature to expand her knowledge of science. Her father believes that he has created an invention that might patch the holes in the ozone layer. The artificial ozone patches however, are designed to repel chemicals that come into contact with it, begin conflicting with the elements of the natural ozone layer and begin to repel it. As the remaining ozone begins to deteriorate, people begin feeling the drastic effects on earth, plant-life and wildlife dying, water supplies dry up and oxygen grows thinner and thinner. Before time runs out, the father hopes to reverse the effects of his experiment and attempts to put his recent experiment involving a set of stones that can harness energy capable of achieving time and dimension travel that has not quite been finished yet. They do indeed transport the father, but the stones are left behind. The daughter is left to combat with the declining conditions of the planet and attempt to find a way to use the stones herself so that she may save her father. She fashions them into devices that she attaches them to an earring and her set of work boots. She is skilled, but not as adept as her father in the ways of science, and therefore has no idea of how to track where or when her father may have gone, causing her to search through a vast variety of times and dimensions to search for her lost father. She ventures off into time and space just as the very city she lives in begins to melt and collapse into flame. Each dimension that she enters presents her with an alternate world, with an alternate planet-threatening disaster and an alternate version of herself. Each alternate-self she encounters presents her with a new set of skills and abilities that she has mastered only in this world. She continues her nature-collecting habits in these new dimensions, storing specimens of plant, insect, etc, in the jars attached to her belt to bring with her when she returns to her own time. Gaining skills, equipment, and special abilities, she quests for her father and a way to return to save the dying planet in her own dimension.

I was envisioning this story as a video game, each dimension functioning as a new mission, or new level.

Monday, April 25, 2011

Big Huge Games Trip

BIG HUGE GAMES

I’d like everyone to meet me at the Mount Royal Light Rail Stop at 4:20 PM on Wednesday. Even if you can drive, I’d prefer that you light rail with the class as I have papers for you all to sign.

Bring your dinner and money for a roundtrip ticket on the light rail ($3.20).

At Big Huge Games we’ll do the following:

1) Studio Tour

2) Demos (3d Studio Max and possibly one other one)

3) Brief Q&A with industry professionals outside of concept art

4) Critique of Jo-Jo and the Fiendish Lot. Guest critics are Andrew Auseon and Big Huge Game artist/designer Jessica Hara.

Because we have a pretty good projector, you don’t need to print the final Jo-Jo pieces. We’ll just look at them all together on the projector.

Following those four things you’ll all be released to take the light rail back to MICA.

For next week:

Take your story idea and do ONE concept, either character or environment, of your choosing.

Print this out to at least 8” x 10” and bring to class for one last critique.

Be prepared to briefly explain your story. Also give a quick write-up of it on the blog with your post.

Thanks! Email me with any questions!

-Colin

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Max

In Class Homework

Wonder

This Guy!



A character from the first week! He looks really fast but hes really not...

monster thingy (in class)

Wonder




I've been wanting to try this for a while


blarhh

Strength Roller Derby Final

From way back at the beginning of the semester.


I took a thumbnail from the first assignment, from speed.

Jo-Jo


Here's Jo-Jo for tonight's assignment