puppetZ in Adobe CC
Working on some new material…
I’m a little late to the party, but I’ve just started really working out with the puppet features in After Effects, and it’s pretty fricken awesome. I was sitting back thinking about my next move and I noticed my screen looked really bad-ass, so I grabbed a screenshot and threw it up here :)
Zombie ‘Nom’: drawing exercise
When the Zombies come, I plan to be ready. I’ve read the books… I’ve watched the movies… I’ve played the video games… So armed as I am with all the necessary training, I fully plan to survive.
But you know what they say, Zombies laugh while men make plans… And I realize that even after all my intense preparations, there is always the chance that one of the filthy Undead will catch me offguard and put the bite on me.
In that event, I go to my backup plan… to be the most awesomest Zombie evar.
And yes, I will eat your brain… but it will be your honor.
Headshot, Zombie Down: an Animation Exercise
Here’s another animation exercise done in Pencil.exe. Yeah – it’s a bit gory… but if you’re gonna draw zombies, then you’re gonna have to scramble some brains now and then.
I know I’ve complained about the buggy-ness of the freeware Pencil 2D program, but I really love the rough, sketchy feel it allows you to create. It’s like drawing with a PENCIL… lol. If this program got some serious funding behind it, it could be straight-up awesome!
This is by far the most detailed animation I’ve done in the Pencil 2D animation program to date.
* MORE ENTRIES *
Zombie Slayer: an Animation Exercise
Another rough animation done in ‘Pencil’… this is a great tool for these quick exercises.
* MORE ENTRIES *
Got Walking Dead? Kill the Head!
The Walking Dead on AMC. Sweet.
I was turned on to the comic (or graphic novel, I guess… I’m never sure) around a year or so ago. I loved it right away.
The combination of the brilliant story written by Robert Kirkman, and the striking illustrations by Tony Moore, just really does it for me. Both the story and the drawings in The Walking Dead are direct and efficient, without ever appearing to be anything less than Kirkman’s and Moore’s very best effort… on every page and every panel.
Maybe it was foolish of me, but I was a caught off-guard when Frank Darabont’s TV version chose to use a different opening sequence than the one from the comic. I guess the opening sequence in the book worked so well for me that I couldn’t imagine anyone feeling the need to rewrite it in any way. I mean the screenplay AND the storyboard/shotlist were all right there… why wouldn’t you just USE them?
But once I got over my surprise – and reset my expectations – I was able to thoroughly enjoy watching the show.
I mean, when was the last time any of us had the opportunity to watch a TV series about Zombies? And this series is going to based on some top-notch source material… it would be a real waste not to enjoy the ride.
Here’s another Zombie drawing, in honor of the Walking Dead on AMC. DVR – RecordSeries – Check.
Remember… always kill the head.
The Z Team
Wow – it’s been a busy summer/fall for me in my non-artistic life! I’ve only recently started doing some drawing again… and it’s been a reinvigorating experience. Creative expression really does help my state of mind.
I’ve picked up on the Zombie project idea again, and started designing some of the non-Zombie characters who are going to have to survive in the world of the living dead.
So, here are a couple of pics of * THE Z-TEAM *… work in progress.
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1ST DRAFT w/storyline & dialog ideas overlayed
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CAST OF CHARACTERS + a bit more definition
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BACKSTORY w/WORKING NAMES:
MARCUS (front-center):
college student… was on a canoe trip when the Zombie outbreak swept through the cities, towns, and well… campuses. He got back to the dorm… had a look around… and decided to head for the hills… literally;TREVOR (front-left):
art-school dropout & vagabond… was crashing at an acquaintance’s hunting cabin when the dead came to town… and that’s right where he was when Marcus found him;HOOPS (back-center):
biker/mechanic… stays on the move riding with his motorcycle club and kicking Zombie asses along the way… “Live to Ride, Ride to Live” has taken on new meaning… while running for their lives from a pack of TEETH, the boys are saved when Hoops and Co. happen on the scene… suffering a broken ankle in the scrum, Hoops decides to stay with the boys for a bit while he heals;VALERIE (front-right):
USMC Combat Rifle Company squad-leader whose team was eviscerated when a call to “quell a riot” in Trenton NJ put them in the path of several-hundred Zombies tearing through the city… after barely escaping across the river, Val comes looking for provisions at the mall..
That’s it for now… look for more… sooner or later.
And remember – Kill the Head!
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Zombies NEVER Knock… how rude
If there’s one thing I just can’t stand about Zombies it’s gotta be how damned inconsiderate they are…
Ya know – it doesn’t make one bit of a difference to a Zombie what plans YOU may have had for the day, oh no…
The ZOMBIE wants to rip your arms off… the ZOMBIE wants to tear open your skull-bucket and devour your brains… It’s all about the Zombie… ZOMBIE, ZOMBIE, ZOMBIE!!!
To hell with your important business meeting… or your long-awaited vacation… to hell with your lunch date with grandma… to hell with your stupid wedding reception… GAH! See what I mean??? SO friggin selfish!
Seriously… I mean half the time they can’t even be bothered to use DOORS…
“Knock, Knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Nevermind… I’m coming through the WALL!“
What a bunch of JERKS…!!!
Come here so I can eat you!
CLICK TO VIEW PICTURE FULL-SIZE
Well anyway…
I think this may be my favorite of all my Zombie sketches so far. It captures the look and the style I was after throughout this exercise. I’m really satisfied with this one.
As a matter of fact… this is the last Zombie sketch I think I’ll be posting…
At least for a while… I’ve got some other doodles that I want to give a little time to.
But you know Zombies… you can’t ever really get rid of ’em… not really.
So You’ve Got Zombies, eh?
In a world following a massive-scale Zombie outbreak… lots of things will change… many sights that would surprise you today, will become commonplace…
Traditional law enforcement and military forces will likely be otherwise occupied with securing strategic infrastructure (or protecting the “important” people) or they may even no longer exist… except maybe as uniformed Undead
Bands of citizens will have to organize and pull together for their mutual survival… groups like the one in this sketch won’t be uncommon at all…
These guys look like they’ve survived quite a bit and know what they’re doing… they also look like “good guys”…
Which brings up a good point – even if you’re alone and on the run from flesh-eating Ghouls, a roving gang of armed men isn’t necessarily a good thing to run into… but I think these guys would help you out… if they could…
Jeez... the old neighborhood sure has gone downhill, eh...?
I decided to combine 2 pix in this one post. Though they’re not exactly related, I think they go well together visually.
Not too much to say about this next one… I think it tells its own story…
You can fill in the details however you want… but one thing is for sure… some shit is about to go down, and it ain’t gonna be pretty…
'Now look what you did... MUD on my favorite boots...!'
The “Zombie Whisperer”???
Zombies are mindless animated corpses, operating strictly on the simple instinct to pursue and devour… no external force affects or influences their behavior… right? Well what if something, or someONE, could? What if some sinister figure had the ability to coordinate–to direct–the legions of the Undead? How would that change the playing field?
So, I’d sketched up some ghoulies, dreamed up a hero and carved out a back-story for her–partially setting the stage for the overall story in a spontaneous fit of creative writing (don’t worry… that doesn’t happen often.) So what next…?
Well, I’m the kind of person who craves balance. So once I’d defined the hero, it became important for me to come up with an Anti-Hero. “Protagonist… meet Antagonist. I’m sure you’ll hit it off famously.”
To be honest, I never did come up with quite as clear of an idea about who the Antagonist was, or where he came from. Maybe I was being lazy, but I decided that he would at least start out as a complete mystery… and I figured I could sort out the rest if it ever became important. And knowing that I was doing this as a creative exercise, and never really planned to actually MAKE a movie out of it… I figured that was good enough.
The Antagonist as far as I did define him was a man… probably incredibly old, but with no appearance of physical decline… grim, but not unattractive… absolutely fearless and intimidating beyond belief. In fact, I modeled the basic idea off of my memory of Stephen King’s ultimate villain Randall Flagg, from one of my very favorite books ‘The Stand.’
- Smile & Wave Boys… Smile & Wave… CLICK FOR FULL-SIZE
Like I mentioned previously… my main goals in this series of drawings were:
1) move quickly – don’t spend too much time on details
2) experiment with framing
3) work on color schemes to convey mood
On that score, I think I did well with this one. Although, I’m not exactly crazy about the face, or the figures in the background (truthfully, I’m not even sure what they were supposed to be… but I’m calling them Zombies now… weird, lumpy Zombies) I do like the framing, the colors and the overall sense I get when looking at this sketch, so… I’ll call it a keeper.
And ZOMBIE makes III!
Not every Zombie is of the vacant-expression, shuffle & moan variety. In fact, some of my favorites have been the ferocious, screaming & hurtling sort, like the ones in the 2004 ‘Dawn of the Dead’ remake.
<< NOTE: Fast Moving Zombies (FMZ’s) like those in the 2K4 DOTD, should not be confused with the rage-virus-infected ‘Ragers’ seen in flicks like ’28 Days Later’! FMZ’s are undead… ‘Ragers’ are alive. These are 2 very different threats, which require very different tactics if encountered (educate yourself) This has been a PSA from seangallo_designs… we now return you to your regularly-scheduled blog >>
It occured to me that my first 2 Zombies–while they were certainly ghoulish enough–just didn’t look as though they’d be all that difficult to escape from. Either one of them on their own, or even both of them together, probably wouldn’t pose any sort of urgent threat.
Of course as the world slowly & steadily fills up with more and more of these shambling, starved-for-brains creeps… well, at some point it doesn’t matter how fast you can run, cause wherever you run… there they are. And of course it’s exactly that slow but exponential escalation of danger that’s the real genius behind the traditional Zombie flick.
But then… seeing an undead creature that wants to eat your brain (and your leg… and your face) sprinting at you at top-speed… well, there’s something very special and immediate about the kind of primal fear that speaks to.
And so, that’s where this guy comes from… here representing for all the FMZ’s… Zombie number 3.
- … the better to EAT you with!
CLICK FOR FULL-SIZE
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ZOMBIE!!! Too (2)
I thought about it for a little bit and decided to do one post for each of the Zombie-series sketches, and to post them in the same order that I drew them.
Not a huge decision, I know… but maybe seeing these in the order they came to life (or is it death…?) will mean something to someone… maybe not. Either way, now I won’t have to spend any time thinking about which one do I post next, and then which one do I post after that… I hate unnecessary thinking :|
What can I say…? I’m lazy. But don’t mistake that for a bad thing.
“…prepare your mind and your body for any contingency you can anticipate. It’s the lazy person’s way–and I do hope you are wise enough to be lazy…”
~ Chuck Jones quoting his father, in my favorite autobiography, ‘Chuck Amuck‘
I also decided that, like these drawings–deliberately done quickly & w/o too much thought–these posts will be brief and more or less off the cuff. But I tend to ramble once I get started, so we’ll find out together how well that works out.
So without further adieu (ah-doo?) here is the 2nd of my walking corpses…
You uh... ya got a little something on your chin there...
In this one I feel like I got a little too distracted by playing with some of the little details… like the slobber, the cracked window, & the earring… and as a result, I missed the target a bit… something is off with the whole. The balance, energy, motion… kind of “meh”.
But in the end, I like some of the things I did here… I surprised myself with the color work, for one thing… and it reminded me to be more immediate, and to let the details take care of themselves.
* * * more of my drawings * * *
ZOMBIE!!!
So I was talking with my friend Craig, from the KatiesOpinion project (blog on that soon) and we got to jawing about Zombies… which isn’t really all that unusual, since Zombies have been a serially-recurring topic of conversation between me and Craig since like… forever.
Now it’s not like Zombies are our primary common interest… I mean, we don’t talk about Zombies everytime we hang out or anything like that. But it’s also not random or strange for one of us to just spit out a question like “OK – so what’s the best weapon in this room, if the Zombies came right now?”
And please keep in mind… it’s not a question of whether Zombies might come… cuz they are coming, alright.
It’s only a question of when will they come… AND when they do come… will you be prepared?
So anyway, me and Craig got to jawing about Zombies, and he was telling me again (cuz he’s told me before) about how much he would love to make a really great Zombie film.
Now Craig has some really sharp ideas about what would make a really good Zombie flick, and so we ended up spending the next hour or so going over plot devices, settings and storylines for the world’s BeSt EvaR ZomBie movie.
On the drive home later my head was filled with images of the Living Dead, so when I got home I started in to sketching, and this gentleman [below] is pretty much the 1st thing that came out.
Now in the interest of full-disclosure, I did come back to this drawing and clean it up a couple of times after the initial sketch, but I tried to leave it pretty much the way it was born.
I liked this one so much, that I followed it up with a few others… not all Zombies, but all character drawings based on the very loose storyline Craig and I whipped up that night. I’ll post some of the others soon.
* * * more of my drawings * * *
Sean Gallo Designs 