Ciaranator 9000 - Glazy Strikes Back

That mischevious modeller Andrew Glazebrook has been at it again! He's taken one of the concept drawings from here and built it as a 3D model. Thanks Glazy, we think it looks great! Andrew has this posted on his blog:

Here's a quick 3D model I made based on Niel Bushnell's concept that he posted over on his Mad Tom's Farm blog. The model took around 75 mins but the render took 3 hours at 1024 x 768 in Vue, I did have it on the superior setting though. I've worked with Ciaran who this fridge is named after, and it bares little resemblance to him...for one thing Ciaran has a beard.

Gerard is building this here too - he started it a few weeks ago but we had to put him onto another project pretty quickly. His model has a few more details on it as I'd given him a lot of reference pictures that Glazy hasn't seen, including these:

When Ged is free to complete the fridge I'll post the results here.

In The Mix

We've both tried to think of the influences on us when we came up with the main concepts for Mad Tom's Farm. Here are the results, (inspired by SFX magazines charts), although Gordon protests loudly about the Darling Buds of May!
The biggest two influences were Calvin & Hobbes and Garfield, not surprising considering it was a newspaper comic strip first and foremost. We were both big comic fans anyway, reading mostly UK comics like 2000AD. I'm still a fan of black & white artwork, there is a simple honesty to the the work that is lost is photoshop coloured comics.
The other infulences were from some of the shows we both enjoyed at the time, namely comedy and sci-fi! The Farm has a bit of each of these shows as well a being peppered with my other influences along the way that have either been unconcious or forgotton with time!

Character Profile - Tom

I can't believe we've not done a proper 'character profile' for Tom yet! So to correct the oversight here is all you need to know about Tom.

Tom's not the sharpest knife in the draw, not by a long way, in fact he's not even in the draw! If he was in the draw it would be full of sheep and all the other knives would soon be blunt and living in tents. The draw itself would probably go a bit soggy underneath and no doubt all sorts of mushrooms and fungi would begin to grow on it. Shall I go on?

Tom was the first character we came up with and to be honest he was pretty two-dimensional to begin with, no pun intended. We wanted a typical country bumpkin sort who would be good for laughs and probably not much more. Over time Tom has, like all our characters, evolved. (He couldn't stay as simple forever now could he!)

Yes, he's still pretty stupid but what he knows about is the Farm and he knows it bloody well! The farm has been in his family since the dawn of farming and its traditions and methods, (unorthodox as they are), have been honed and passed down through the generations. He may give the outward appearance of just bumbling along but he knows stuff! Lots of stuff! Tom knows all the secrets of the farm, he a one-man confessional booth. Tom isn't judgemental, has no emotional baggage, no issues to resolve and no axe to grind, so he's the perfect person to work through your problems with. (Like all the best Psychiatrists he'll just throw your questions right back at you!)

He's also perfectly in tune with his surroundings, knowing when it’s going to rain, when to harvest and when to dance nude under the full moon! Tom is a classic family man, he loves to spend time with Bernie and little Flossie who can do no wrong in her fathers eye. The only time you would see Tom angry or raise his voice is in defence of his family and his farm.

Gordon posted some of the first Tom sketches in an earlier post but here are his first and last appearances to compare how his look developed over time.

Stand by!

Gordon is receiving a message from the Mother Ship!


Sorry Gordon, I couldn't resist!

ITB: The End of the Beginning.......

Well dear readers, these are the last two sheets of the earliest sketches that I could find. This first set is of some of my pencils of Bernard, Tom's HUMUNGOUS wife and all round lovely cook type woman.

At this stage, she was almost complete, I think the only major change we made was to enlarge and round off her bottom jaw line.

The main illo has a tiny homage to the Hellraiser films, an assortment of butchering knives hanging from her belt. I've always had a problem with the characters eating their friends(ie, cows, pigs and sheep etc!) I doubt we'd do that in the animation.

Another crazy thing I've just noticed is that Bernie has currant eyes (the bane of all greetings cards illustrators fact fans!) Her and Flossie were the only ones with eyes like this, whereas the rest of them have the classic, whites around their pupils. Mad eh?



This is it then, the last one! One last set of Tom's (funny how we concentated so much on Tom, but hardly anything else on the others!) Like the Bernie illo's above, we'd almost got him ready for the outside world, all he needed was a tiny bit more refinement and off he goe's!

Quite a few sheep illos on here as well, I like sheep...sheep are funny and soooo easy to draw. One of my all time favourite strips was of the sheep being sheared and then getting their wool knitted into wooly jumpers which they had to wear! All very silly!