SolStars Character Profiles: Part One

Hello, to all of your from the heat of the night!

The only reason I'm doing this post this week is because of that slight promise I gave from last week: to briefly talk about the characters who are going to be starring in my three (or four) animatics. I'll go in the order of the animatics' "release dates." All of the profiles have been done between last August & this week (well two of them were revised).

Enjoy the read!

Animatic #1: Mint: Conditioned

Ceasar "A. C." Southermire

A teenage boy who is often described as "too cool for words," witty and expressive with his actions. He can be considered a mutant, since he was blessed with psionic/ telekinetic powers and super speed through constant torment and ridiculewhen he was younger. He joined the SuperToons as a teenaged intern, until he became something of a force of nature & became a full- fledged member.

Stephanie Monroe

A teenage girl who majors in Journalism and loves dancing (in the "artful" way). She became more active in order to keep up with the crime fighting episodes of her best friend/ boyfriend Ceasar, who offers her many great tales of the city for her schoolwork.

Dr. Plago

An aging mechanic who was once viewed as one of Sunshine City's shining citizens. Years ago, a horrible accident took place during a bionic demonstration that forced his hired doctors to implant his own mechanical devices/ projects into the left side of his body to ensure his body's stability. Plago now plans his villanous deeds against the city in his subterranean ship, the Stromanga.

Animatic #2: Wigged

Revenda Domestic

A teenage kitten who is a science wiz with sharp sarcasm that often helps her way out (and away) from certain situations. She was hired as the SuperToons' first "young" crime fighter, as she keeps an eye on the doings of the schools that surrounds her own. 

Martha Clue

A nursing- major turned detective, thanks to her retired detective parents. Forced into the SuperToons thanks to her older brother John Clue being the leader, Martha had to adjust herself quickly. She relied on her tae kwon do skills, (seemingly) tough- as- nails attitude towards criminals... & her ability to handle two guns at once.

Geraldine Archer

A headstrung, yet coldly free minded rabbit who has been working with the SuperToons for years as a reliable detective. She hardly enjoys a working through a dirty case, and would much rather force herself though a daily gala hosted by the criminal minded.

Robert Miles

A husky, workaholic beaver who was promoted as one of the head detectives at the Sunshine SuperToon Services. He often has a dry sense of humor and has a worrisome trigger finger when it comes to anyone who seems superior.

Animatic #3: Game, Set, Magic!

RaiStar Twinkle

A wishing star from Rainboa, the floating village above the skies of Sunshine City. RaiStar, after years of granting beings their wishes & fighting nightmares, wished for himself to appear as a true hero to the city's citizens. He got his wish through his youthful bravery, obtaining psionic
powers, control of electricity & super speed. He joined the SuperToons through his acts & cuteness.

Cameron Comet

A wizard alligator who believes himself to be a "master sorcerer of the shadows." He gained control of a species of creatures called the Shadi and he uses them for his own crimes and experiments.

(And... if the fourth one is indeed made...)

Animatic #4: Rhapsody in Mopped

Rhapsody Rabbit

A forest- dwelling bunny rabbit who often runs & glides through Faithful Forest with her whirling ears to meet many new animals. Her dream one day is to become a successful electric guitarist with her band, the Black Canaries (she's the outcast of the group) & take their forest- playing band to the big city... all the while helping the SuperToons.

Moppy Gerbil

A manical gerbil who has had many experiments done onto him by Plago & his gang. In response, he often causes the SuperToons & the villains much headache even after going clean & joining the SuperToons. This was all courtesy of RaiStar, Mr. Mysterio, Ceasar & Moppy's cousin Aamoco Gerbil believing relunctantly in his crime- fighting skills.

Nitro

A former circus tiger whose training & induction into the city's armed forces left him under the impression that pushing aggression towards his foes (and many times to his fellow SuperToons as well) is the best way to handle his duties.

The animatics will be underway for the next two to three weeks, & hopefully they'll all be done once mid- August hits. And then comes the sound editing, which will include sound effects, some music (cited of course!) & yes: voice acting!

Have a great weekend!

The Way of the Future

It's been two weeks?! Time flies when you're busy.

And yes, between hectic job hunts & off-&-on city treks, I've been gearing up for the inevitable: something else.

After my graduation (& when the year started), I've had thoughts of what's more to come, let alone what can I do within the time. It hit me: 'Aaron, create animations for your cartoons! You have enough characters & stories; DO IT.' Well. that's easier said than done. I have yet to acquire the proper character animating skills to go on with those projects. However, there's a newer, radical idea I had that definitely works in my benefit:

I can make animatics!

This is the rough cut animatic for my senior group project, Toll Freeze. Before this, I've never done animatics before & there's one thing I've learned from this: when in doubt, storyboard it & add sound.

This way, I can properly add more to my online portfolio. This August, I'll be creating three (possibly four) animatics based on a few of my Solstars shorts. That's why I created an event on Bookface for my friends to allow me to steal- excuse me- utilize their voices for my selected characters that I KNOW I can't voice! 

So without further ado, here are the posters & summaries:

Mint: Conditioned

It's late on a Thursday evening near sunset in Sunshine City. A nearly burned out Stephanie Monroe is wasting the last of her high-schoolday energy on Just Zumba 5, all the while waiting for her crime- fighting boyfriend Ceasar "A. C." Southermire to show up on her balcony with a treat he teased over the phone. Too bad the manical Dr. Plago forgot it was his day off!

Wigged

One day while the SuperToons are readying for more wild fighting sprees, Martha Clue & Geraldine Archer are trading hints back & forth in the headquarters' dressing/ disguise room. Meanwhile, teenage assistant Revenda Domestic comes into the back of the room & listens to them while they finish. Once they supposedly leave, Revenda sneaks over to the table where she sees all of their wigs. Wanting to pass the time by, she tries them all on... & decides to act a bit!

Game, Set, Magic!

Cameron Comet has it bad... very bad. The wizard who specializes in the shadow arts to create minions of his own has always failed at one task: catching wishing star turned SuperToon crime- fighter, RaiStar Twinkle. One day, his minions the Shadi give him a rather intriging idea to mix & mesh together his many magic spells in order to defeat the star. Will he succeed, or will RaiStar laugh his way back to the headquarters.... again?!

There you have it. The characters will be shown & briefly described in next weeks post.

Until then, folks!

The Notebook of Blast Processing

Hiya, people!

The title of this week's post is in reference to two things...... One of them has to do with the way I create my cartoon visuals! The other.... I'll let the retro video game fans figure that out. ;P But this week I wanted to answer the question some of my colleges always ask: "How do you get your picture to look the ay they do?!" The most recent question was asked after I completed this:

Behold! The hilarious (& sometimes, sensual) mis- adventures of my teenaged couple: psychic- powered cool kid Ceasar "A.C." Southermire & shy bookworm dancer Stephanie Monroe have lead them into a mismash of horrific creatures in an episode I'd title The Haunted Valentine. See, I'm not much of a holiday specific- type person, so I decided to mesh two of them together for comedic affect!

I drew out the preliminary sketch a month ago:

While none of the monsters changed in comparison to the finished product, A.C. & Stephanie did. How? Well... in facial expressions. A.C. looked too angry for me & Stephanie was too damsel- like. It wasn't... funny enough! So, that weekend I drew some facials through my own mirror observations (something I RARELY do!):

As you can see, their expressions were pushed much more & through that came the updated visual:

Now I feel the funny! So then it was time to color it. I started with the basics of coloring the two lead characters first:

The multiply paint tool is TOO good! Next, the eerie background:

I thought a pale light blue would make for a good contrast when the creatures are colored in:

Then, it was time to add in the finishing touches of lighting & shading the leads:

And, finally the signature & logo in the final product! I've began applying to this design layout for all of my visuals since May & it seems to work greatly. The point is, everyone has different philosohies towards the way they compose their artwork. I suggest to try as many different ways as possible until you find the one that works best. Even if it takes five whole years!

Until next week, folks!

Sunset Blues

To change things up this week, I introduce:

The other hobby of mine: photography! Granted there's no way for my camera to replace my pencil and sketchbook, but whenever I'm out and about and my big eyes just so happens to catch something I'd call gorgeous (or "limited time only"), I go for broke. As evidenced in this picture, for me it's sunsets. This was one of the first examples I took while taking one of my late day city treks back in the fall. Since then, I've freed up my SD cards for more. So, allow me to show my progress. :D

I always thought that there could only be so many shots of the sun going down next to the cityscape that I can get, but luckily I like adventuring!

Until next time, folks!

The Intro Page

It's been a long time coming. I've debated months upon months throughout the year and here I go.

The name's Aaron and welcome to Blue Aura Oasis: The Quest For Cool! This is my personal blog, chroniclizing my artwork, thoughts, and adventures by the week. I've never had much of an outlet to showcase myself besides DeviantArt and Facebook (I call it Bookface for giggles) and honestly, it's not enough. And here's why:

I'm a COLLEGE GRADUATE.

It's hard to believe that my past five years of a college life has come and gone and now I definitely need to do more. During the last three months of my senior year, I've been thinking extensively of what the future will bring to me. A typical graduate would be hyperventilating for graduation's arrival and to let the party rock all summer. However, that wasn't me... I'm partially lying, but the other part of me daydreamed of this:

This scene from The Graduate (great movie, by the way!) always got to me. Why? Because more than ever it represents the deepest part of my conscience. And many of you who are reading this, I'm sure it affects you somehow too. Let's face it; many of us are either college students or recent college grads. And while we KNOW what we want to do, what's next and how will we get there? Through hopeless dreaming? By splurging/ window shopping every week? Wishing we can take control of our potential fling(s) of the week?

Well... those can certainly help your case on a lonely day! But in all seriousness, it's called progressing. As I type this, I'm in a very calm and collected manner. Many of my friends ask me this common question: "Aaron, life is so screwed up! How is it that you keep you cool so easily?" I could answer that 100% right now, but I'll save that for another day. I'll answer it 50% now:

I keep myself grounded in mind and heart.

The best way for me to do this is through my various experiences (saga/ episodes as I call them) and art practices. Every passing day, I learn something new and through some miracle light in my brain I do my best to apply those to my future processes. This blog isn't just to give others an insight into my art and adventures, but to inspire those who may not have enough willpower nowadays to keep themselves stressfree. I enjoy being a helpful guy; must be a Pisces thing. :D

To the future, folks! And thanks for reading.

P. S.- I'll leave this here to give a reminder of what many of my posts will be about.

The Kirby- Mario Connection

Hello there!

This is the week where I take sometime away from drawing a bit, readying for work and watching swarmy romantic comedies to bring you this:

Yarn Kirby and Paper Mario! Drawn by me. :D

If some of the past posts didn't make it somewhat obvious, Kirby and Super Mario are my two favorite video game characters! Yes, since the tender age of eight when one of my cousins let me play her bulky Game Boy... something clicked in me. Before that, everyone I knew was Mortal Kombat, PlayStation, or 'Sonic, Sonic, Sonic!'- thirsty and.... I didn't care. I saw too much of them that I wanted to play something different.

Hence my introduction to Kirby's Dreamland.

Sure, it's a simple  and short game; the cutesy apparence of the characters and audio were at an eleven. BUT... that didn't stop me from loving it. And Kirby himself. There's something about the simplicity of him and his universe. Plus, my SolStars mascot, RaiStar Twinkle slightly resembles him:

Look into his eyes!

Oddly enough, RaiStar was my first creation at five years old; I didn't play anything Kirby related until I was eight. Strange huh?! What became just as strange was that my cartoons even resembled the Super Mario games, too! Now granted, Mario I REALLY got into when my parents got me a Nintendo 64 when I was twelve (I was late to the game, I know). My first game was Mario Kart 64. A month later, Mario Tennis 64 came into my household. And at the beginning of that summer, the game that would make me love video games the way the Looney Tunes made me love animation came in: Super Mario 64.

So, here I am eleven years later.... wondering if it was such a coincidence that these two characters influenced me somehow someway. The greatest fact of all this? It was all unintentional! I didn't care to take influences from video games in my youth. During my teenage years, my personal artstyle started to truly form (all this time more Kirby and Mario were being played), and my classmates would do nothing but critisize my cartoons because 1) 'They're too kiddy!' and 2) 'Looney Tunes and Nintendo are played out! Waaaaah!' All I said was, "At least I HAVE a style!" Then, my smirk was born. ;)

Most of those people (or critics/ jocks) stopped drawing, let alone caring about the visual arts. It's strange that so many of my artsy friends fell into the realm of "EVERYTHING I DRAW MUST BE FROM A COMIC BOOK AND ANIME!" and yet.... I just kept drawing influences from everywhere art related and developed my still- growing cartooning style. I'm not even shameful to say this; Kirby and Super Mario helped that.

And to end this, video game soundtracks began helping too! If any musician or band can make an original theme similar this:

I will GLADLY pay to use it as a SolStars theme song! Until next time, folks!

The SolStars Introduction

Happy Wednesday, folks!

I've been in and out of the loop (as in, the Internet) for the past few days and I thought: 'Before my router crashes again, let me do this now!' So as I said last week, sometime in June I am going to begin posting details, pictures and "studies" of my cartooning project SolStars. What started out as a self- proposed idea of helping me break into the animation industry as a character designer and storyboard artist, became a full- blown franchise in the making!

To start off, I'll introduce some posters and character visuals I feel were "good enough" in 2009.

I created this poster back in February 2009 newly entitled The SolStars Originals. Quick disclaimer: The "u" in the title was dropped a few months ago, thanks to Sol making more sense in the grand scheme of my cartoon's setting (Sunshine City= Sol; the characters surrounding it= Stars). So why did I put the Originals put in? These are the characters that compose most of the founding lineup of the SuperToons; clearly their villains couldn't fit so they'll have their own post! Everytime I've looked at this poster, I always said to myself 'I hope I got better with anatomy!' And eventually, I did. Here are a few more examples of earlier work. These I created after this initial poster.

And recently, I made two new Originals- related posters.

The SolStars 2012? Why not?!

Smoke never clears. It just rises back up!

As you can see, some of the designs were altered a bit (Hint: all the animals have 4 fingers now). And thanks to many experiments, I've gotten better at coloring and picture composition. These are two of the pictures I showed off as penciled sketches two posts ago. Both of them took me three to four days to complete, so at least I'm able to work faster now!

There are so many pictures to show. I'm saving them for future posts only because I'm going to attempt to tell brief character stories along with their up- to- date profiles. Plus, I've just signed onto carbonmade.com courtesy of one of my close friends. This way, I can make a portfolio of my best work to complement this blog where I do more talking/ typing. Great idea, right?!

There are my cartoons, folks. And since it seems to be a running theme that I post a picture at the end, I'll post this one. Have a good one!