Toby's New Year

I wish you all a Happy New Year! I for one will start working on Toby Skybuckle I (besides StarDucks of course), in January. Cheers and big thanks to Crisse and the good girls 'n' boys from Soleil Productions for letting this boy's adventures begin...

...I call this, btw, a Swiss sword. And I've had a few optional Austrian-Salzburgian extras installed ;)

Something Special

This Christmas, I got a wonderful present from Achdé. A copy, fresh from the press, of his newest Lucky Luke* comic album...

...including this incredibly wonderful illustrated inscription. What a gift:

So, now it's on me to give away some goodies to Achdé and Crisse... wait and see :)

*For those who are not familiar with this very cowboy: Lucky Luke (Wiki article)

Big Christmas Stocking

Merry Christmas And A Happy New Year!

Star Router

Update: The finished piece... (colour palette included)

The original post from this morning:

I should finish this rough piece today sometime but I've a massive headache from that party battle yesterday. Let's see what this does to the colours...

StarDucks Design Work By Degrees

By this example (I showed the finished piece "birdish critter on horse" once before) a great inspiring key element was a sort of external component, a design driven clay figurine of a horse bought at a crafts shop while I was in Montevideo some months ago...

Btw, much more about the StarDucks project and its influences and thoughts behind will follow in the next issue of the GOmotion Magazine... (Cheers to Marta)

Yellow Critters

As mentioned before, these kippers are from a closed/stopped project...

...still like the colours.

Talking Inspiration...

Not only do the colours of Carl Spitzweg's paintings bring inspiration my way but also the concept gives me a boost. And look (butterfly!) how well that panned out for this New Yorker homage ("The Many Faces of Eustace Tilley") I did last January:

Image source ("Der Schmetterlingsjaeger"): Wikimedia

The Butterfly Catcher is, btw, one of my favorite paintings. Oh, and sorry for posting something old... but I promise to improve with the next post ;)

Update: The same - I'm referring to the colour palette - is true for these characters from a different project (which will never be made, but it was big fun while it lasted):

A Little Chilly This Morning

Colours, again... I took those pics in my town's City Park, this morning.

Photos: © Satzinger & Hardenberg Archive

Clockworkpunk: The Mozart Duck Reworked

HAPPY THANKSGIVING AND HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

This is my last regular (re-)design job of sorts before starting the StarDucks production adventure. I'm reworking the Mozart Duck character (aka Wolfgang Amadeus Duck©). The design will be adjusted to the StarDucks style for some marketing reasons. The colour keys stay the same:

Well, this means a lot of looney Steampunk gimmicks, eh?

BTW, I prefer to use Motorpunk or Clockworkpunk to mean Steampunk. Sounds more fitting to those gear wheels and stuff. Anyway, I'll post the finished piece soon...

Apropos Steampunk, Jake radiates joy with his latest vehicle design, doesn't he?

Feather

To be long in the leg...

Production Art: Freaks

Another rough vis-dev piece from the same project. For the moment, the last one of that kind I'll have here. The next post will contain explicit... ducks!

Visual Development Roughs

Here're some other vis-dev roughs and character designs I did, last year. I blueprinted some really wacko things back then...

In this connection my compliments to my fellow co-heads of development, Robert and Andy. They're versatile wizzkids to the core. The same goes for our long distance trouper from Atlanta, Michael. 'Hope we'll set up another one of sorts in the near future...

I for one have now moved on to "StarDucks" and "Toby Skybuckle", my first "French connection" projects in fact... caused by Crisse :)

Layout

As I do not have any new stuff to show on this very day, I put this oldie on the blog. A rough animation layout test I did for a cartoon series pitch, some years ago. I posted this piece here once before. Sorry for the re-run.

BTW: BG/layout work is quite important to my character designs. It is fair to say that I draw the place before I draw the characters. Or more philosophical: I form the characters from within the scene.

Update: Talking of old things, here's another rough one. Two racing pilots of sorts. If I remember rightly, the Chinese ideograph means "path" or "route".