Cap'n Bill Wheedles

Spring semester has started! Nothing but animation classes to occupy my time now! I'm currently taking Character Design from Jacob Parker and it looks like this class will be very helpful and fun. Our first assignment was to draw Cap'n Bill Wheedles, an ex-sailor guy, after reading a description about him. Here's what I came up with:
Pencil and Photoshop. Paper texture came from googling "old paper texture," and coming across psdeluxe.com. Paper texture does not belong to me.

I LIIIIIIIIIIIIVE!!!!!!!

So tell me what mortal needs my protection, great Ancestor! You just say the word and I'm there! Let me tell ya something, cuz if anyone's foolish enough to threaten our family, vengeance will be MIIIIIIINE!!!!!!!!!

OK, that was a much-needed stress reliever.

If anyone's wondered what the heck has been going on, it's a little things called viruses and finals. OK, that's two things, but that's not the point. The point is that I was studying my brains out, packing, and working on my uber-huge Drawing for Animation final all at one time. Such is the life of a college student. Go figure.

Our final project was called "Epic Lie," in which we had to take a non-Grec0-Roman myth, change it up a bit to make it our own, and make it an epic final boss fight involving a hero, love interest, and a villain. So I poked around Aruthurian myths and found out that Merlin had a pupil, Nimue/Lady of the Lake, who wound up turning against him and turned him into a tree. Also, in a much lesser-known part of Arthur myth, Merlin had a wife named Gwendolen, who he gave permission to remarry since, well, being married to a wizard is a little complicated since hubby's not exactly home all the time. But, that marriage ended badly due to the fact that Merlin killed the new husband (oh, mythology, how dysfunctional you are). After that, Gwendolen just kinda disappears. If you want more info, check out this website. It's got a whole bunch of information on not just Arthur myths, but a lot of Norse and Celtic mythology, along with the Greco-Roman myths.

So, for my "Epic Lie," Gwendolen comes back to reconcile with Merlin... only to find that he's a tree. That's a problem. And the Lady of the Lake doesn't exactly want him to turn back into a person. That's also a problem. Hence, an epic boss fight ensues.

For the project, we also had to do a rough draft and a final draft after several critiques and research. It took the better part of a week and a half and staying up until 3AM finishing it up. All in all, it's WAY better than the original, but boy, it was a lot of work! But, the water was a whole lot of fun to draw, despite how complicated it was! Heck, I might even be a little interested in effects animation now... I should look into some classes for that.

Best part of the project, though? A friend suggested that I look up some fencing techniques to get a better gesture on Gwendolen. So I looked up a bunch of videos about fencing and samurai fighting techniques, and even trying them out for myself with a broom, and watched scenes from "Pirates of the Caribbean." Any project in which I get to watch samurai and pirates for reference and use a broom as a practice weapon to feel the pose is automatically awesome. This is why being an animator is the best thing ever. Pencil, Staedler, Prisma, and WAAAAY too many hours... and a long-winded explanation. There you go.