Joel Bullis - Character Animator

Great new, everyone!

2011-09-05T12:36:00.000-07:00

What Remains has been accepted into the Chicago International Children's Film Festival! Wooo!

Info on CICFF can be found here! I'm gonna be in chi-town Oct. 20-31!

Animation Showcase!

2011-05-10T20:58:00.000-07:00

Tonight was Huntington University's Animation Showcase, where all of the work done throughout the year is shown. It was also the world premiere of What Remains! It was super well received and our team took first place for senior film. Hopefully we can fare that well at festivals!

A Splash of Color

2011-05-09T00:02:00.001-07:00

My friend Brett sent this video about animals and color to someone else on facebook. I being the nosy person that I am watched it, and thought it was really great!

Unfortunately I'm having issues embedding this, but you can watch it here!

Art Spotlights

2011-05-06T19:14:00.000-07:00

If any of you know me, you'll know that my current gaming obsession is League of Legends by Riot.

While LoL is an absolute blast to play, they have a really killer concept art team, which consists of Katie Desousa and Wesley Keil

I knew about Katie but was unaware of Wes's work. He's outstanding. Check out his site.

Anyway, Riot has set out a new Art Spotlight for a new character coming out next week. Check it!

Dyad Games

2011-05-05T18:53:00.000-07:00

My friend and yours Orie Rush started the company Dyad Games with his friends. They recently officially launched a card game! Exciting news! Especially for fans of board games!

Check out their kickstater stuff here!

Dyad Games other projects can be found here!

A trailer!

2011-04-30T23:50:00.000-07:00

Ok! I have the freshest cut of our film's trailer!

2011-04-29T01:52:00.000-07:00

A poster! I had to hash this out for my senior gallery which is in like two days. I drew it with a chip on my shoulder though, because I'd much rather be working on other projects..

yeah...I stretched the truth on my physical stature somewhat. Deal with it.

Logo-riffic

2011-04-28T21:26:00.001-07:00

So in case you checked this site yesterday, you might notice that the logo has changed. I feel what I have now reads more like a face than my old one. Here was the old one

Both were made in photoshop.

Skull?

2011-03-22T18:26:00.001-07:00

I actually tried painting one of these. It was a disaster. I'm looking at frank frazetta...how did he do that?

2011-03-08T20:16:00.000-08:00

LoL

2011-03-04T00:24:00.000-08:00

Rammus again! I was much happier with this take.

DaD

2011-03-01T17:43:00.001-08:00

What's this? A floating island? On MY Internet?

2011-02-22T21:41:00.000-08:00

Drawing a day!

2011-02-22T17:13:00.001-08:00

I drew the main character from machinarium, as if he were a salty actor in between scenes

2011-02-18T12:06:00.000-08:00

I'm looking to redo my blog/website.

preferably so that I can have a "more professional" looking area, apart from the actual blog.

In the meantime, check out this video :

The effects on this video were allegedly done by Corridor Digital, who have a pretty snazzy looking demo reel on their site.

Egypt!

2011-02-17T13:17:00.001-08:00

The theme for today was "Egypt"

Of course, I used floating islands.

2011-02-16T21:41:00.000-08:00

Day three! I may never stop drawing floating islands. So there.

Drawing a day 2!

2011-02-15T13:33:00.000-08:00

Day 2! Boy! It seems like these will never end does it?

Drawing a day!

2011-02-14T17:46:00.003-08:00

I'm stuck in a rut of drawing floating islands. Might as well accept it.

2011-02-14T17:46:00.001-08:00

Painterly

2010-11-18T23:43:00.000-08:00

I've been coloring the monster. After restarting multiple times, I've was persuaded to go with a sponge brush for the moss. I have the moss finished.

Digital!

2010-11-12T23:26:00.000-08:00

A monster I drew for our senior project!

Painty

2010-11-02T23:12:00.000-07:00

I am in a class on color theory. It's more of an independent study, but I'm asking a lot of questions and fortunately near a professor that is more than willing to show me how to improve, as well as be patient with my little color blindness.

Here are two pieces I've done.

Lighthouse in the forest

2010-08-18T15:29:00.001-07:00

So the final theme we decided upon was a "lighthouse in a forest" I bought a new ink pen so decided I'd try my hand at a lighthouse in a swampish area.

Lonely

2010-08-18T15:20:00.000-07:00

This was a drawing I did for our senior project. The theme was "lonely" this is what I cooked up!

Dolls

2010-03-02T20:15:00.000-08:00

Recently, I finished a project in which I was to design and model (in Maya) a set of Russian Nesting Dolls. The theme for my family was Polka Platypus Family. Here are the sketches that I decided on. (Unfortunately my others aren't scanned/lost)My original drawings.

I threw some colors on them to see what would work and what wouldn't. I liked the idea of the monochrome colors at the bottom of this list.
This is actually an ambient occlusion render pass, but I wanted to show off my models.
I started creating my actual textures in Adobe Illustrator. This is the large doll. The accordion player in the polka band!
This is the middle doll. A bass player

And this is the smallest doll. A clarinet player.
After making an HDR (Radiance) image, I rendered out my dolls. It didn't quite capture what I wanted.
After uploading it into the picture of my room, it really didn't fit. Shadows were too dark, as well as an overall flatness of the images.
After tweaking my shadows, lights and materials, the dolls look much better!

If there's anything I'm learning, it's that being an illustrator is tough work! Also, how to UV map.

Cleaned Up

2010-02-28T23:12:00.001-08:00

I was interested in pushing the character I made earlier and wanted to make a muppet babies version. So off I went!

I first blocked out the basic shape of my drawing. After which I did a rough sketch in blue where I forced my character into the triangular shape. I then did a cleaned it up more with a black line over the blue. The shape and the pose were nice, but I didn't enjoy the lines. They were...kind of jagged.
What a perfect time to try out Adobe Illustrator and the wonderful Pen tool! I traced over my photoshop file with the now smooth and vectorized pen lines. I thought it looked very much so like a coloring book picture..

and colored it as such! This was fun!

2010-02-04T19:38:00.000-08:00

These are my first and second assignments for my Character Animation class. It's amazing to see how little I actually knew. I'm excited to learn more.

Final (ly)

2009-12-28T11:39:00.001-08:00

I'm delayed in putting these up. Sorry!

I finished my 3d and motion graphics final.

(my 3d doesn't fit in this blog....so here is the link. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6lDPwg61ws)

Character

2009-11-16T00:56:00.000-08:00

I had this idea of a just an alien gun crashing into some guy's house, and him waking up and finding it during the night. This lead to not only me semi creating a story, but also to this really cool sketch. The size should be good for a background as well. (it's what I'm using it for anyway.)

I don't know if this is going to be final coloring. I'm still playing around. More colors to come??? Maybe.

sketchy

2009-11-15T12:36:00.001-08:00

I've been drawing and copying MANY many hands as of late. Most of them from the book "The Easy Way to Draw Hands". So here are a few pages from my sketchbook!

Wound Up

2009-11-14T09:27:00.000-08:00

An oldie but goodie, I'm finally linking to my second ever 3D project!

Modeled and animated in Maya. I had a lot of fun working on this!

Choking Hazard from Joel Bullis on Vimeo.

copying

2009-10-12T21:32:00.000-07:00

I am/was trying to stay up with Jake Parker and continue to do Inktober drawings (1 ink drawing a day) Unfortunately, I couldn't keep up with it. I still got some really cool drawings though. Most of the ones that look good I was copying though!

Prismacolor ink pen. Jake was copied here.

I removed the characters in the original, and instead made this a landscape shot.

This was my own creation, though heavily inspired by Jake Parker
A windmill!

Lighthouse shot! This was the original drawing that inspired me!

2009-09-17T23:21:00.000-07:00

This is a concept drawing of the pilot that is in my junior project "Stoplight". He has changed drastically now, but I still really enjoy this sketch of him.

Painted in Photoshop CS3 and drawn by hand.