Saturday, December 6, 2008

A Good Day.




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Hey Guys!
Here it is: the last assignment for Shanth Enjeti's 'Character Creation' class. The prompt was simple: take two characters that you've designed and rework them. Then, illustrate a scene with both characters. This is the result of all those color studies and a long battle with the idea over the week. I just couldn't bring myself to pull out the purple, being that Kojo was so engrained in my head as this misty green/blue palette. The whole idea is kind of based out of dream-imagery for me and so I've been very attached to the concept from the get-go...and it can be hard to subject those kinds of things to a classroom critique situation.

One of the things to tackle was that this illustration, just by the nature of having this big nasty monster in it, had to have that ominous feeling...had to scream "RUN!", so it couldn't get too "pretty". And overall I was realy just pursuing the vision I had for the project in the beginning.
Anyways...this felt SO GOOD to do, I can't even tell you! It's been such a long semester of single-shot character designs against plain-backgrounds that getting to sink my teeth into something with a composition and story was just so nice. Like coming home :)

I'm quite pleased with the outcome, and it went over really well in class! It's such a bittersweet thing, finishing up this class. I feel like I've learned a LOT about character design and how to approach my work in general and I love the people and the dynamic so much that I really don't want to leave, but on the other hand I can hardly wait to get home for the holidays.

In fact, I am very excited to come home to Vienna for Christmas this year! It's going to be great to go home, and I have some exciting work to be playing with over the break that will show itself around here soon enough, I'm sure! I've got a few ideas that I'm sorting through and hopefully I'll get a chance to do come comic-book work soon. I've got some killer classes coming up next semester...two with Jon Foster (I'm bracing myself for a significant workload). I'm also starting to work through the first stages of a project I'm sure I'll be talking about more here later...myself and a friend will be endeavoring to create an anthology of RISD comic work by the end of Spring semester and independently publish...could be really cool!

I just got back in from Caroling with my friends, which was an entirely pleasant experience. Any opportunity to sing in public, really. And I REALLY love Christmas :)

Also: Very soon my personal artist's website will be due, which means that very soon my site will be online. I can't show anything just yet...I'd like it to be a surprise, but I think it's looking pretty neat...I'll be interested to think what people think of it when they see it!
It is extremely late here in Providence and I think I'll head to bed. Thanks for reading and enjoy!
-Nick

4 comments:

Anders said...

Hey Nick, nice piece.

"oh, I knew you weren't going to go with the purple one, but that's because I know you."

Shanth just might be the man?

Anonymous said...

Nicely done, Nick.
Want to know the story!
Hurry home for Christmas!
LOVE it that you went carolling.
Don't forget to do that on the UBahn when you get here. You have a new crowd of friends to train in your peace-shattering, joy-bringing methods! Guess Who

Anonymous said...

hi nick, i love you. love, dan chang. btw, your work is getting even better. stop it, i'm jealous.

anima-base said...

Nick it's very fantastic.
I love all~