This kind of little creatures drawing is my favorite. There is a lot going on and they just looks fun.
Pencil Worlds
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My Earliest Drawings
At least the ones I could find.
My sister says I was already drawing from very early age when we lived in Estonia, before the big event in my life.
After divorce of my parents, when I was 3, my dad “kidnapped” or took me to West Ukraine without telling anyone. I remember a few moments when he came to the daycare and we got into a huge truck with lots of his belongings. It was a fun journey for a child, since I could see all the Baltic countries on the way to Ukraine.
I remember drawing when we were staying for a few months in some country house and later, my dad’s relative’s apartment, before we settled in a village called Sadky. That’s where he married a new woman.
I have surprisingly many memories from that time, but sadly none of the drawings I did have survived. After about 2 years my mom finally found my whereabouts with the help of the police. When she arrived I could not take anything with me, as she rushed me to the car. I never returned to that village again, but the real tragedy for me was that I could not see my dad again during the rest of my childhood. Only after 18 years did I meet him again, but that’s another story.
Back to the drawings topic. I will keep posting here my entire collection of all the different stages of my development. The only problem is that there might be inconsistency with the dates of my earliest pieces. Because there is this gap between age 3 and 5 when I was in Ukraine and none of the drawings remained from that time. So there might be a mix up of the drawings I did before going to Ukraine and of the ones I did after returning at the age of 5. Anyway, I will try to sort it all out.
Here is one drawing that has my age written (top right corner) at least. I wish the other 500+ drawings showed that as well.
this is the flip side of that drawing
Then there is this one, which looks older, but it does not have a date.
I am guessing this one might be older too, it says “Jerry” and is most likey from Tom and Jerry cartoon.
I find these quite interesting to study. The way a child tries to capture his/her thoughts into shapes and forms has always fascinated me. Also, it’s worth noting that most children start out on the same level of drawing and later develop a specific style, so I’d like to see how I chose the path I am on right now.
Transfer Student – Production Log
Lately I have been changing this site, but I didn’t want to leave out my very first post I made in 2011, so I think it can stay here.
03.02.11.The start of my 2nd year film in Flash. It took quite a while to make sure the plot fits in the short 1.30 min, but after all the cuts and edits the production has started. I’m not sure how it will turn out, but it will be fun working on it.
Since the first part of the film has been chopped off, I changed the opening scene a bit by letting Roy chew a bubble gum (which will play a role later in the story)
11.02.11.The small intro of the main character Roy, who is sent ot a new school (every day), he is watching over the playground during recess and goes down the steps. Notice the coulours of the kids in the background. These colours are representing individual social groups who play a role in most schools.
Seriously, I cant stand using a normal tablet and staring at the monitor. This is not only frustrating, but also isnt accurate to draw. I know people who got used to it, but nothing can replace paper for me, thats why I got Cintiq, which is the closest to traditional drawing style.
Here I
24.02.11.The better view of the group is seen from Roy’s profile view. the nerds, goths and jocks are seen minding their own buisness. It’s supposed to be a pan, so the camera follows Roy all the way through.
Flash isnt completely useless, in fact its really good at making inbetweens and thats what I love the most about it. The tween options are also helpful for many things, especially for my individual project, where theres lots of drawings needed, but theres noone to draw them.
04.03.11.As Roy passes by the bully group, Rex, the group leader spots the new kid. Rex takes off his bag to pull an emo kid from it and throws the child at Roy.
I started colouring the scenes and characters while animating at the same time, which I shouldnt be doing. I think it gives me more developing ideas as I experiment with different things along the way. Thats the freedom you get when working alone on a project!
Right after I got Cintiq I finished all the keyframes in a week. Still, now that I have the tools, I need the brains to use them. Animating loads of kids at once isnt easy, they all have different clothes and faces…who wouldhve thought!The good thing though is that I dont need to redraw same bullies in every scene, since theres a whole pack of them, so creating a new one for each scene is fun.
11.03.11.The whole concept for the film came from Jet Set Radio music, I was inspired by the rule-breaking world and I thought it would be perfect to animate. Yes, the main character is an anarchist!
The basketball court scene is animated with music and everthing is fast-paced and energetic. Remember not to wink when watching this!
20.03.11.I got all the keyframes done, but now theres gonna be hours and hours of inbetweening and colouring.
Now that the holidays are coming, Im planning to spend all the time on this film. But some trouble might come when I start using sound effects, and I also need to record voices of 3 people.
I notice that the whole project is more like a comic book, so if it succeeds Im going to make Transfer Student into series.
There, now this post is safe and sound.
Cherry Cheers – Slightly Alternative Path
This is not exactly considered a comic, but the way this beatboard looks makes want to put it in this category. The main difference is that the word bubbles are under the panels! Also, this story is a kind of a remake of the already posted comic. When I was submitting it to Cartoon Hangover I wanted to wrap the first Cherry chapter up in a short pilot episode.
So anyway, here is that board
Cherry Cheers
In 2009 after playing Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan (押忍！闘え！応援団) on my Nintendo DS I was consumed by the idea of a cheerleader heroine. But of course it would be boring to have a mannequin cliché for the main character so I thought of letting Cherry be as far from the proportions ideal as possible. So mixed with her hyper personality and incredible dreams I think she could be one meaty package for the cartoon lands.
This big gal took a few different stages in shape and form.
Actually, her original name was Betty.
This is was her birth form in 2010.
These are some sketches a few months later. I guess she gained weight pretty soon.
I already had ideas for a short story of Cherry’s origins. Here are some thumbnails.
In 2011 one of the university’s assignments was to create a poster for the next year’s student film. I still cannot remember what I was thinking when choosing these awful colours.
When I was studying abroad in CCSU (Fall 2011) I chose to do a sort of a mockup of a pitch bible (for cartoon series) as my final submission for the colour drawing class.
Here, I could explore her expressions a bit
And I think that was the first time I let Lemo play a role in Cherry’s world.
There was this woman in the university, I never got to find out who she was, but she had a really unique voice that I thought would work very well for Cherry.
Cherry’s home idea was also born during that project.
Cherry’s family made debut here as well
Kinda weird drawing that’s depicting whats not ok to do in the show
Here are some support character ideas
Cherry’s high school
Lip-sync
some quick concept work
Thanks to that colour drawing project I managed to gather loads of ideas for Cherry’s world, so in 2012 Cherry left her Betty phase. This was her peak in personality development as she starred in her own comic book and later was considered for a short film pitch.
A bit of messing around with acrylic.
She became more flexible, softer and just cuter with that giddy grin.
I live how the latest Cherry looks, and I hope to return to her sweet madness one day.
Mr.Sneaks
I guess I can say this is sort of my mascot since he tends to show up in my work more than anyone else. After all, it takes seconds to draw his stick figure. With his trademark nose, bushy eyebrows and wide grin Mr.Sneaks is a wacky character who lives just to have fun. Though for Mr.Sneaks there are no boundaries, so he is not exactly a nice guy when it comes to choosing ways to enjoy himself.
Does he have a heart or does he even need one? Maybe one we’ll find out.
This cheeky fellow has been trying to find his form over the years and I think he did it.
Here is Mr.Sneaks’ 2010 appearance in my sketchbook
In 2010 there was this little idea for a short film. Here, Mr.Sneaks was supposed to be a flat paper-like shadow trying to get to the 3D world.
I sometimes left the tail out
2009 Everything black was also an idea for him
2008 What is up with those hands?
2007 Shortly after his birth. I wish I could find the very first Sneaks image in my high school notebook, but so far this is the oldest one.
Delight’s Plight – Work in Progress
You can follow this project on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Delightsplight/?fref=ts
Delight can soon unleash his/her rage in this 2D on rail beat ’em up game!!
One day a tragedy struck the calm fields of Delight’s home as all the animals started to turn ferocious. From goldfish to giraffes, the previously hunted became the hunters. Even the top of the food chain now prey on it’s own kind. What in the world is causing this insanity? It’s up to Delight to find out.
While Delight is always on the move in this game, you have many ways to control him/her in each level. Delight has forward slash, upward slash, air forward slash, air down slash, grab and throw. You can also make this feline grab branches/vines to climb higher. There are also Hyper moves that you can level up by defeating enemies!
Are you precise enough to sweep everyone in your path?
White is also here to make sure you fail. He has many tricks to keep you on your toes.
There are many different enemies rushing your way so learning the patterns of their attacks is key to staying alive.
There are only 2 people in this project, which means I take the visual part and my friend, Alexander, takes the programming (in Unity engine) part. Though it seems like it’s gonna take forever to complete this, we actually did a lot of work in the past year. All the Delight controls are done (only Hyper moves remain) and level progression elements, so right now we are working mostly on designing levels.
Stay tuned for more updates !!
Animator VS Painter
from 2011
Harvest Crunch
This was an attempt to make a mobile phone game with my friend, Stefan. It was beneficial either way for him since he used this for his university graduation project. I came up with the concept and did all the art stuff while Stefan took control of the programming in Unity engine.
The idea is very simple. You take control of the little worm, called Wormy, inside a fruit (apple, pear, etc.). The main goal is to survive in each level by protecting yourself and your territory from other creatures, and avoiding attacks from farm toxins.
Sadly, we did not go far with this. The project stopped soon after my friend’s graduation. Who knows, maybe one day Wormy will return to the light.
Mr. Sneaks – Episode 2
I wanted this character to do more action so I ended up doing this long episode. All the animation took about 2 weeks, but the sound work and voices took a bit longer. It is all worth it because the music/sound quality here turned out to be spectacular!! Again, thanks to The Intergalactrix who did all the sound work. You can find all their stuff here https://www.youtube.com/user/theintergalactrix
Antoonscape 
