Posts Tagged ‘concept art’

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Television and Film Concept Art

by Colleen Doran on January 23rd, 2012
Posted In: Blog, Colleen's Work

Had a hiatus from comics a few years back and spent most of my time doing illustration, television, and film concept art.

While I can’t show and tell all, I can share a few of these pieces with you.

The producers have had this on the website for some time now. This project is backed by the folks who brought you Baywatch. Also on the job: show creator, actor William Katt and young adult novelist R.L. Stine. Actors have been hired to do some pre-production costume tests, but I don’t really know how much progress has been made.

This was only the second job on which I did digital art (circa 2009). It was quite a challenge learning the ropes on deadline.

Quite liked this fellow, but don’t think he made the final cut. Prelim sketch.

Teen leads. Quite like the girl. Purple is a passive color, but I don’t think it looks passive on her camo pants.

Prelim attempts.

Must have gone through 100 hero costume designs, and settled on these. They were later cut.

Fun robot design. Cutting room floor victim. Sad.

Alien design, unused.

I’ve seen 3-D animation of this. Very cool.

Though way too Disney-esque for the job, it was fun to do these doggy doodles.

Below, a villainess who didn’t make the grade.

Thanks for dropping by. Check out this sale on some of my comics and art.

c

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More Concept Art from “Distance” by Warren Ellis.

by Colleen Doran on December 30th, 2011
Posted In: Blog, Colleen's Work

Once again, thanks to Warren Ellis for allowing me to put these concept sketches from our project “Distance” on the internet. Scroll down to the previous post for more details and drawings. These are circa 2000-2001.

A major problem on this project was my complete lack of digital skills. I did not even know how to use the Paint Bucket tool in Photoshop, nor how to properly scan and deliver my original art. Comedies of errors.

Some more costume designs for Jack Ho.

Really, I could do this all day:


Alien costume designs. I loved doing these. These aliens were from a world covered with fine silver sands and the idea was that they would wear a variety of veiled garments. These sketches show how the veils might be raised, lowered, and used as architectural elements for the costume.

More aliens. Quite like the first garment.

Jack had to wear a veil, too. The funky item in the lower left is an alien kettle.

Marker color guides for an animated shot of Jack. This scene from “Distance” is the only time I’ve animated anything. The staff had no luck capturing the look of my art, so I was asked to come in and give it a go myself. Here are a few frames.

The inked cel.

Penciled cel set up sketch.

Inked final.

Color sketch.

Color sketches of background elements.

City designs.


Spaceship doodles.

More later.

c

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Warren Ellis: “Distance” Unseen. With Special, Totally Unauthorized Appearance by George Takei

by Colleen Doran on December 27th, 2011
Posted In: Blog, Colleen's Work

With the kind permission of Warren Ellis, I posted a number of concept art pieces I did for a KIA animated series written by Warren entitled “Distance”. That was years ago on my old blog, which no one ever read (it’s down now). So few saw it. Now there are thousands more of you, and I’m reposting this for your edification.

“Distance” was commissioned by fledgling internet comics/animation entrepreneurs Pipe Studios, doing the internet stuff way before their time. And not making much money at it, so almost everything got shut down. One of their fledgling projects was ArtBomb, a webcomics site which published my first web story, also by Warren Ellis, entitled “Super Idol”. This was eleven years ago. Holy cow.

Anyway, “Distance” got optioned by Sony (I think,) but it all died on the vine in 2001. I spent about six months doing designs for it. Here are some of the sketches. I will post more later.

This science fiction tale, the exact nature of which I cannot remember, had a lead based more or less on actor George Takei. His name was Jack Ho.

We did an awful lot of running about to nail the look of this fellow.

With varying degrees of success.

Since the animation was going to be fairly primitive, I had to whittle Ho’s face down to fit the limits of the technique.

While we started referencing George Takei as a model, we later abandoned the idea, not sure if we could get a license from the actor.

Quite a bit of fiddling around going on, eh? In the end, I started tweaking Jack Ho more along the lines of actor Sanada Hiroyuki.

Final turnarounds.


There’s lots more to see of the “Distance” concept art, so tune in again later this week.

c

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My Unpublished Betty and Veronica Art for Archie Comics

by Colleen Doran on September 27th, 2011
Posted In: Blog

Here’s another gig that was killed in action: a Betty and Veronica project to be drawn by me in my own style for Archie Comics.

This gig was kind of a mess on a number of levels. In the months it took to get the contract from Archie, I finally had to stop waiting, and agreed to take on a project with Peter David for IDW. Then the Archie contract finally showed up, and I honored my verbal commitment to Archie and left IDW. I removed several clauses from the Archie contract, stuck it in the mail, and went to work. Some time later, Archie decided not to go forward with the project with the offending clauses removed. So I went back to IDW, but they had already reassigned the Peter David gig to someone else.

Bummer.

I was really looking forward to this Betty and Veronica project, even though it meant a drastic cut in pay. I can either take a bad contract or lousy pay, but not both. One wonders what’s in Michael Uslan’s contracts…

Anyway, here’s a couple of my character sketches for Betty and Veronica. I never turned these in, so no idea what Archie editors would have thought. I did several sketches for each main character. Archie turned out really hot, but I can’t find him in my files. I will dig him out eventually.

I dunno if this is right for Veronica, but I sure like the image on the left for a classic Lois Lane look – a little too Bettie Page, but with a tweak to the face, she’s the Max Fleischer animated Lois. If that hair is good enough for Katy Perry, it’s good enough for Lois. Love the brunette fringe.

I’ve been working on a proposal for Lois Lane mini idea I want to show DC Comics. I see Lois as a super-smart, Kathryn Hepburn/Rosalind Russell type. At a serious newspaper, instead of a yukky on air correspondent.

Anyway, back to Betty.

Outdoorsy and tomboyish. I really like Betty.

These sketches, as well as unpublished character doodles for The Legion of Superheroes, Shade the Changing Man, A Distant Soil and lots of other goodies at my EBAY SHOP RIGHT NOW! GO BUY SOMETHING!

I’ll be adding more Star Wars, Sandman, Lord of the Rings, Marvel Masterpieces, Legion and other goodies later in the week.

All my web sales shut down shortly, with my last ebays posting on October 1. Then everything I have goes back in the vault until later next year. Sorry, too busy to keep this up. Shipped over 100 packages already, and quite exhausted. And will be out of the country, so there it is.

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More Reign of the Zodiac Concepts and Designs with Keith Giffen

by Colleen Doran on August 17th, 2011
Posted In: Blog, Colleen's Work, Culture, Comics, DC Comics

For the background of Reign of the Zodiac, check out this previous post for story and more unpublished art.

Reign of the Zodiac, drawn by me, and written by Keith Giffen.

As you see, we put a lot of thought and background work into this gig, but things don’t always work out as we would like. The book got canned despite our best efforts.

Here’s another scan of my pencils for a double page spread. As I wrote before, large portions of Zodiac were inked by me, including most of issue #8. I got to keep all the art I inked, and Bob Wiacek got the page rate and credit.

The series was supposed to last 72 issues, with each eight issue story arc featuring a conflict between two houses of the Zodiac. I did a good deal of ghost writing on the final issue, because Keith was so despondent over the series getting the axe he had trouble bringing the book home. I take the hit for my clumsy job trying to tie the book up. Keith had the most incredible plans for this project!

One of our plans was to create Tarot cards and Zodiac themed items to tie in with the series. Here’s some sketches I did for these cards. Alas, my old scanner was very poor quality, as you see.

My final pencils were very tight. Nowadays, I suppose we could just scan and print from this.

In this scene, Romeo and Juliet lovers from the Zodiac world Eidelon step through a mirror into the basement vault of the Vatican archives.

A page of icon designs. At the same time, I was hired by a British magazine to do Zodiac icons and designs. However, the magazine had no idea that I didn’t have any digital skills, and when they asked me to do my colors “in layers” I had no idea what the heck they were talking about. After producing some thousands of dollars of work for them, I had to quit the job, but decided not to invoice for it so I could keep all rights to the work.

More costume sketches:

I was to do ten issues a year, but finding someone who could (or would) draw the clothes and sets as I designed them was a bit of a challenge. This was not the kind of job for someone who wants to crank out a monthly comic and collect a check.

I’m posting pages from this and other works on ebay for sale over the next few weeks. Here’s my shop. All my art will go back off the market after this series of sales.

I have lots more to show you. Be back soon.

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