Starbugs

Poster

2009-07-09T11:28:00.002+01:00

Its once again been a very busy time here at Victor! We recently got back from Anncey Animation Festival in France. It was a great event and it gave us the chance to showcase some new Starbugs work. One of the pieces included this brand new poster!

Mak Concept

2009-05-13T14:09:00.001+01:00

Faint Bug Colour

2009-05-12T15:23:00.002+01:00

Mak Painting/Concept

2009-04-27T19:01:00.001+01:00

Recently I have been working on the coloured version of Mak, Ive attached a painting process aswell as a near final version of Mak, I have only got a few things to alter but its getting there!

Faint Bug - Clay Model

2009-04-26T18:10:00.001+01:00

It's been a very hectic time at the moment with a number of projects all going on at the same time. So it took me a little longer to complete Faint Bug than I was expecting. The hardest part in the model was trying to get the face right, Simon produced many different ideas for the head and I liked elements on all of them, so the design has turned out well...but maybe not quite what the final character will look like as I think there is room for improvement.

Coloured Chefs Expressions

2009-04-07T12:38:00.002+01:00

I have managed to finish the rough expressions, i decide to not add the 4th expression because it is very similar to one of the expressions i have already painted. Here are the final, rough painted expressions..

Faint Bug

2009-04-04T16:06:00.004+01:00

Faint Bug is one of the background characters who has his own side story. Named faint bug simply because he is completely terrified and is always on the verge of passing out. In the sketch you see Simon's original design on the left, then an altered version on the right. These changes are simply to make faint bug look more like an off breed of Mak.

Chef Expression Coloured

2009-04-03T14:08:00.008+01:00

This is my first post on this blog, so hello! my names Simon and im one of the concept artists for the Starbugs animation.

I've recently been working on some coloured versions of the chefs expressions, these are only rough coloured versions, just so we can get a better idea than just the normal line drawings.

I'll update later with all four finished, coloured, paintings.

Mak Clay Model....COMPLETE!

2009-03-31T22:13:00.006+01:00

Finally after alot longer than I was hoping, I have completed the first Mak model. I'm pretty happy with the final model and I think will help a great deal to design the character.

One thing I have learnt from creating the model is that Mak will not actually be able to drink coffee very easily. This is because his front arms are too short therefore we will have to lean on something and kinda bend over to reach his hand. This may be something that could really add to the character and the story or we may make no fuss and just change the design!

Jeebs Poster

2009-03-19T23:48:00.003Z

After having Jeebs coloured in I'm now working on different layouts of posters. I'm just testing different styles at the moment as I'm still working on different ideas for the identy of Starbugs.

Clay Mak & Chef designs

2009-03-17T23:45:00.002Z

Last week I pushed on with Mak (originally called Mac). He is the main character of the film, he is bounty hunter. He is the biggest and probably the hardest to design. After many designs Mak was getting no were until Greg Hanna (one of the first illustrators on the project) pulled out an amazing illustration. It’s a very basic colour 2D image but captures that mean aggression look that we have always been after. So now nearly a year later I'm constructing the clay model. It’s had about 3 weekends worth of work so far but still not quite complete. One major issue that I had was that I made the head too big - so I had to completely start that again. I would think it should be ready this weekend and I shall take some photos!

For once a bug has been designed with very little problems! Chef bug designed between Simon and I took very little time and I think it’s a very strong background character. Look out for it on the website I think its really nice!

Storyboards

2009-03-01T00:39:00.000Z

This week I’ve been overwhelmed with the storyboards. This is because I’ve been slightly unhappy with the way some of the story has turned out. It all seems great when written on the scripts but as soon as it starts to become visualised problems start to appear. So I’m now left with a huge jumble of images, around 180, of which I feel need a great deal of modification. To help pace and add some dynamic to the story I’m highly considering adding a new character with a very simple side story. It’s both a mad time to add such a new change and secondly need to convince Pedro (I’m keeping this on the low side from him until I have some killer visuals so he has to love it, it can take some convincing to please that man!). So right now I’m taking everything and pinning it all up and hopefully can have this story nailed ASAP!

.....more designs!

2009-02-22T00:37:00.001Z

Finding time to design everything in an animated world is very hard, even down to how signs are thought of... Should I design what I like, or what the owner of the coffee shop likes? Or what the coffee shop owner could afford at the time? All these questions I ask myself before skechting, along with colour ideas and how it would fit with everything else. After having loads of ideas, I'm still not getting that far and struggle to find anything I’m completely happy with and, I guess the Starbugs signs will be toyed with many times before we settle on anything...

I've been taking some ideas through to Blender, a new program I’m leaning while producing Starbugs. And since I’m still, mainly, working with drawings I’ve not needed to enter 3D that much. But when I do, do it will create a whole new set of problems! I've been using 3Dsmax exclusively for the past 5 years or so. Trying to learn something new is very frustrating, I'll get there but I think it will take many sleepless nights!

Pedro is a few months in front of me with Blender, in fact he has completed his first 8 sec animation in it, and it’s very impressive and look out for it when it gets uploaded!

Character Design

2009-02-08T00:36:00.002Z

Character design has taken the lead in our productions for the last 3 months or so. We have wide range of characters and each one takes on a certain role in our film (worker bug/chef bug/reading bug/funny bug etc). Coming towards some kind of finished level is Jeebs. Intial concepts where created by Arrthi Parameswaran (who now works deveopling the storyboards) and I've created a clay model of jeebs. This ironed out some problems of how the charcter looked and took it to the next level of detail.

The Starbugs Diary

2009-01-30T00:27:00.000Z

Starbugs is Victor Animation Studio's first film and what a massive task it is proving to be! The idea came about a few years ago, before the studio even formed, and now a couple of years on we have developed and produced many animations but Starbugs has always been a special project for us. So, as of today we have decided to form a blog to talk about how all is developing!