Spaghetti Western Poster Art

I've been looking for some inspiration fort art style I want to use, in particular colour schemes and found some pretty cool 60's spaghetti western poster art. I like the bold colours and the thick outlines suit my drawing style. Also the high contrast and use of abstract imaginary suits the overall aim of the project. I need to complete some media tests first to see if I can actually make it work.

Storyboard:- Alternative Opening

These are some of the storyboard drawings I did for the original opening scene for my animation. I haven't included any annotation but the basic idea is you have this old guy sitting on porch with the sun beating down on him. He's looking around the barren wasteland and trying to keep cool in the midday sun. He decides to have a little nap only to see this ominous figure appear from nowhere. The figure reaches towards the old man, who understandably freaks out. Instead of hurting the guy the stranger reaches past him and grabs a wanted poster that's pinned up behind him which is supposed to introduce the main antagonist and set up the big gun fight at the end.

It became apparent as I continued with the storyboard that the animation was running too long and I was therefore obliged to redo the opening scene completely which is a pity as I was quite pleased how it came out. I was trying to emulate the long build up in the opening scene from Sergio Leone's "Once Upon A Time In The West" but sadly it would have been too much work. The new version is much shorter and doesn't include any real set up but rather just features the stranger walking through the desert with the famous Monument Valley style background. I'll be posting the finished storyboard and animatic shortly so you can see which version is best :)

Pose Sheets

I've already done a few pose sheets to help me with the storyboard but time allowing I'm hoping to do a a couple of them again. The art style I originally used for the first versions was quite realistic, or as real as you can get when you're depicting a gun-toting octopus. I looked over some of Jamie Hewlitt's stuff since then and have sketched out a few its and pieces and decided the art style need to be a bit more dynamic. I've looked at some examples which I've posted here and I should be posting up some work of my own soon.

Abandoned project idea

For the first 5 weeks or so I had been working towards making an animated music video for my final year project. I had done some initial sketches and design work and produced a rough animatic. The basic aim was to create an animation using a demo that my friend had recorded. I wanted to use cut out animation only primarily as a way of making sure I could complete it (the song is 4 minutes long which is a lot of animation) and also because it would be more focused on the illustrative side of things which is one of my goals. In the end I abandoned it because I didn't feel it had enough depth in terms of development. I wanted get into the character design side of things and also build on my storyboarding skills which I didn't think I would get a chance to do with this idea. Although I've had to start my project from scratch I'm still glad I made the decision to change it. Hopefully I'll be able to go back to the idea in the future and perhaps develop it as a personal project.