To develop a character by concepting.

I am the one responsible for bringing the character of Gurkin to life with a story. One of our teachers adviced us to write a character bible. This document contains all kinds of information about Gurkin. If he would drive a car, what kind of car would it be? What is his first memory? What is his biggest fear and what is his most valuable possession? Some of these questions might seem irrelevent to the story. But the more and (seemingly irrelevant) questions you can answer about a character, the more you will be able to relate to him. This will make it easier to animate him more believably and really bring him to life.

I enjoyed getting immersed in an non-existing world and write a story about a non-existing character. Here's a glimpse of the history of our green little bugger named Gurkin Pickles. This bit is a part of the character bible and not a part of the actual animation.

"Gurkin is a small green monster with a gherkin-ish physique. He's friendly and also a bit clumsy. Gurkin is the only one of his kind in the forest he lives in and as far as he knows, he has always been alone.

His mom is the queen of a green planet called Pickles. His dad the royal castle's jester. This could turn out to be one of the biggest scandals in history. No soul on the planet of Pickles was to know about Gurkin's existence for it might have resulted in a devastating war. Even though it hurt both Gurkin's mom and dad more than they could bear, they decided to send off newborn baby Gurkin to poor but friendly relatives of the jester on the planet of Troolaloo. Mother rocked Gurkin to sleep, placed him in a space capsule and launched him into the treacherous night sky. Well on his way, the capsule was intercepted by a comet taking sleeping baby Gurkin to the horrible and dangerous planet of Atrocitos.."

My website

For now you will find most of my stuff on this blog. But in the near future I will use my website for my portfolio as well.
I'm definitely not a html/css-genius and I'm not wishing to ever become one. Therefore my aim was to design and develop a website that suits me, that works, and makes people smile. I hope I succeeded in doing so! :)

Besides animation and many, many, many more things I also have a thing for photography. For a glimpse of my photos, take a look at my website. I want to take a look!

Gurkin

I am currently working on a 3D animation project which is quite challenging for me since I am new to all 3D software. NHL Leeuwarden assigned us with the task to make a promotional product for Communication & Multimedia Design and for its Minor 3D in particular. Our team - consisting of 7 students - is creating an animated short. From concept to production.

During this project I will work as Art director, Concept artist and Animator.

Thus far we have our story, we have a character and we have an environment. The exciting challenge lying ahead of us now is bringing it all to life with animation, texturing, shading, lighting and audio.