Hiccup and Toothless

Hi everyone! It's been such a long time since I've posted any new work. I've been really starving to do some personal work, but up until recently I just haven't been able to motivate myself to get it done. Well, I finally did, and this week I got to the half-inked sketch I had done MONTHS ago of Hiccup and Toothless from Dreamworks' How To Train Your Dragon.

I love that movie. It was such a breath of fresh air, and a real win for Dreamworks. I have to tell you the truth: not even the last few Pixar movies have gotten me as excited to get back to the theater. Anyways, I really just wanted to draw toothless and what started as an indulgent doodle became a...more...biggerer...doodle?

It was really just going to be a character portrait on nothing, but then I got a little ambitious and decided (late in the game) that I would treat it as if it were a 2d animated version of the film, which meant painting up a background with *gasp* no lines. So that's new. And of course I defaulted to blobby and "painterly" in an attempt to disguise the fact that I don't know what I'm doing :p

In the end, I'm pleased with the result, even though I usually thumbnail out something like this and plan ahead. So the composition is WAY boring, and it feels a little slapped together. Ah well. At least I made something, right?

Since this is my self-indulgent blog, I figured I'd toss in some different states of the piece for those interested:

The lineart, and the whole piece, was done after-hours at work on a Cintiq, so it's all-digital. I still miss pencils.

The cel-shaded look gave me another excuse not to spend time rendering. I would say it was an excuse to do less work, but I spend a lot of time rendering designs at work, so it's actually just a nice change of pace :)

And then, yeah...the background. It looks WAY better as a tiny thumbnail like this. I advise against clicking on it :)

So that's it for now. I'm just really glad to have gotten something done and out there. I hope you guys like it, and I promise I will get off my butt during my off-hours and try to eek out some more personal-work in the not-too-distant future! In the meantime, life continues to be good. The job is great and I can't wait to be able to unveil what we're working on here :D In due time, of course.

Till next time, God bless!

-n