Cartoonist | Concept Artist | Game Designer

Cartoonist | Concept Artist | Game Designer

Top of the Mornin'

Hey there kids, the names Christopher Zito, with a BFA in fine arts and illustration uder my belt from School of Visual Arts, I've also enrolled at Academy of Art University for a masters in game design. I'm rather gooie inside for cartoons, comic, animations and whathave you, maybe someday I can have what it takes to be a what cha call em? An artsit! Yeah thats right.

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

So...Dragons huh?

So yeah How to Train Your Dragon, one of the definitively better Dreamworks movies I've seen, and whats even more shocking was I didn't see the main character of the movie makes the traditional "Smug Smirk" that every Dreamworks movie title is riddled with. That smile is almost like a precursor to the shit the movie has to come.



Thank god that smile was absent from any image I've seen-



.... Son of a bitch.

Joking aside, I feel Dragons has a strong cosmology to back it up, the characters were interesting. Though you could tell where the direction was going with the overall plot, there was a rather nice twist twords the end that I wont spoil that actually made me say, "Wow...I did not see that coming". Though my girlfriend said something that made me think alittle on the negative side of the story, it's kind of a mood killer for the entire plot. How in the instance that the kids of the village we're born to slay, mame, and obliterate any dragon they see in their field of vision, and yet in one quick turn around of events they all are hunky dory, super best friends with the enemy they we're programmed as vikings to destroy? As well as within the movie it takes I'd consider a good month or so for Hiccup to train Toothless and be able to ride him, when twords the climax of the movie, the rest of the kid vikings all ride feral dragons within an hour. Also I know Night Fury are like one of the deadliest breeds of dragons in that world and are rarely seen, but come on, Toothless was the only one of his kind through the entire damn film! This isn't the Last fucking Unicorn guys, if no dragon slayer has been able to take down a Night Fury before, why the fuck is there only Toothless there?



But then I remembered, this was a kid's movie so I guess theirs so much continuity a child can absorb and take for a ration strand of logic. (I blame video games.) Oh speaking of video games, I've been tinkering around in a fun little program known as maya as I've found a liking for character modeling.



Kicking in at about 11 hours of work, I've found that speed modeling is a fun way to test your comprehension of the program, and how sane you fucking are tweaking every single one of those polygons, and this bad boy is still no where near completion. I found it ironic that for almost all my life as an artist, I've always disregarded the idea of drawing life. Sure as shit this idea of thinking has come full circle, as I now curse myself for having to make a human head, and then go ass backwards to deform all the polygons you worked your ass off to make perfect. Lifes funny like that...



Ha ha ha...

Theirs still the head, details, and UVing to which I'll have to make some title UVs for in Photoshop, I'll post those up later down the road. On a fun note, if you're not familiar with Max Gilardi's work, you should.



Max is a pretty high level humor mongerer of sorts, by which his trade of laughs comes from his flash cartoons on Newgrounds.com. Responsible for the Jerry series, which follows under the writing direction as Morel Oral (Which is a very very very good thing.), yet has a sense of dark humor and is very big on drama, something Newgrounds rarely sees with all the game parodies and wanting to be the next Egoraptor cartoons, the diamonds in the rough shine bright and Max's toons are one of them. Especially with his newest series, Wacky Game Joke 4 Kids, which hides under the guise of another really bad video game flash cartoon series. When on the inside it appears to be a bitter human being just raging and ruing everyone good time. When on the inside of that is a level of humor that shows professionalism in writing and understanding the core concept of satire.



Go check it out, but I warn you, its not for virgin ears.

~~~~

Oh before I split i have one last bit of fun things to show you guys.

Apparently, this guy, who made this book, released a trailer for this movie, who is also making this game, which is a 2D sidescroller with art direction by this guy, and music composed by this band.



...Fuck. Yes.