Rhys Harvey Artist

Hello all,

Its been a while since i have posted on my blog and the main reason is because i have put my focus else where. So if you want to see my latest work i will be posting more regularly on these sites:

Website: http://www.rhysharvey.com/

Artstation: https://www.artstation.com/artist/rhysharvey

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Rhys-Harvey-Artist-1677059882513226/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/RhysWHarvey

Intagram: https://www.instagram.com/rhys_harvey_artist/

Feel free to follow me and ask any questions you have about my work. :)

Headless man

I have worked more on the headless man idea for my pre-production module and have come up with a simple story that Im happy with at the moment and it goes something like this. 

Opening scene,

The birth scene of the headless baby with the head and body separate, the head comes out first and everyone panics and goes crazy.

Cuts and goes straight into the apartment of the grown up head and body in their 20s starting a day like any other.

We start to see the conflict between the head and the body as they don’t work well together. The head is lazy and the body is energetic.

We see them do the same routine every day and get more and more angry with each other through various activities and scenarios. We see then arguing and struggling to work together but the only time we see then want the same thing is when they pass a book store each day and see this girl through the window, even then they aren't working together but this is where they show the erge to peruse the same thing.

But the head and body still don’t like each other and argue more and more,

The conflict between the two grows and grows to a point where they try and kill themselves.

Just before this happens they see on the news that the book store where the girl works catches on fire and she is trapped inside. They both burst out the door and come to a crowd of people around the store, they cant see what's going on so the body helps the head by lifting it up above the crowd to see. They make a brave decision to go in and save the girl and finally they come together and work as a team to help each other out and save her from the burning building. The head gets trapped by a fallen beam but the body saves the head.

The girl makes it out alive but the building collapses and you don’t see weather the head and body survive.

Big pause and the finial scene is of them in their apartment like every other morning but there is contraptions and inventions all around the flat and you see them working together as one person. The place is full of books and as he goes out to the book store you see on the news the birth of another person with this headless problem.

It is very basic at the moment but i want to keep the story quite simple with the main focus being all about the head and body learning to live with each other and becoming one person or in their case two that work together to become one.

Getting the style of Robert Crumb

A main aspect of are pre production project was to get the artists style and try to create are work in a very similar style. It took lots of copying and practising to get a similar looking style to his amazing illustrations which are so unique and feel like I still haven't achieved it.

I started with just looking at his work, copying it and then trying to put that style into my own characters. I originally just used a Biro pen to do the drawings but later on started to use ink in the same way that Robert Crumb did to try and get inside his head and do the work as he did. Watching This video was also a great resource to get an idea of who he was as an artist. The Confessions of Robert Crumb

so i copied his work and finally adapted it to fit with my characters in my project. One of my characters is Britney spears and instead of trying to make her look like Britney I decided to try and make her look more like Robert Crumbs work but in a way more simplified.

The next thing was to try and create my backgrounds to look similar to that out of Fritz the cat.

I wasn't that pleased with the outcome and didn't feel like I achieved the style as well as I could have but I still enjoyed creating them.

Fritz the Cat

For my Pre-Production Project I chose to look at the art work of Robert Crumb and came across the animated film Fritz the cat, created from the comics Fritz the Cat by Robert Crumb. Many people would say that this film is Outrageous because of its very racial and crude content. But I disagree, yes it has got allot of content in that may be offensive to people but then again so has every film. I watched the film mainly for the style and to study the animation its self but found myself loving the film for its content as well.

But anyway I studied the animation as i would have to mimic this style in a piece of my animation and also looked more in depth at the backgrounds that where painted in this film. I went on to find that they where painted by Jonny Vita. It was this water colour effect that particularly intrigued me.

When trying to find these backgrounds I found this blog to be a great resource www.michaelspornanimation.com

Backgrounds from the animated film Fritz The Cat:

Pre Production Project

Another update on my pre production bible. I have altered my story for the third time but now am happy with it and have been focusing on getting all the design work for it done.

I started by going back to my art that i was given/chose. The art of Robert Crumb.

I decided to move away from the internet a bit and got a couple of books from the library on this amazing comic book artist.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Crumb-Fabrice-Hergott/dp/2759601927/ref=sr_1_22?ie=UTF8&qid=1385656102&sr=8-22&keywords=robert+crumb

I soon found that this book was a far better resource than anything I could find on-line and would recomend it to anyone who is a fan of Robert Crumbs work. The book was just full of a wide variety of his work, so I started copying some of his crazy drawings trying to mimic his style even more.

my sketches.

I made sure I used pen as I found that practically all of Roberts work was done using ink. at the front of this book there is some scans of his old sketchbooks and it was really interesting to see some of the lines tippexed out where he had made a mistake. This made me appreciate his work even more as there wasn't many corrected lines. showing the level of skill he had as an illustrator. I have came to love working in pen as i find myself focusing so much on what I am actually drawing and not worrying about getting it perfect because I cant rub it out anyway.

Pre Production Project

So my initial idea was a no go. This meant i went back to the beginning and primarily done allot of research, mainly on my style first. I looked at underground comix in detail and found that the artist Robert crumb was said to be the pioneer of underground comix I really loved his style and the content in his comix were just crazy which made me love his work even more.

Here is just a few examples of the vast amount of comics and illustrations Robert crumb has done.

I also came across a documentary called the confessions of Robert crumb, which was really interesting to watch as it gave me an incite into his life and who he is as an artist. i found that he is just as mad as his drawings.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yR9vfcNYBhc

After doing more research it sparked an idea for a new story.

This new story is based around the idea that for the soldiers to get into Hitler army they have to be able to sing. it will be along the same lines as x factory but with Hitler and his fellow men as the judges with the soldiers as the people auditioning for a place in his army. if the soldiers cant sing then they would be sentenced to death. The hermit character is the executioner hired by Hitler to kill off any of the un talented soldiers. I want there to not be much focus on the main story but more on the back stage element of the show with crazy things going on and creature comfort styled interviews with the soldiers and the hermit character. 

I haven't thought a great deal about what format it would be but i was thinking more of  strong black comedy series as it doesn't have a strong story and will have some strong violent and rude content in it.

So the next stage was to come up with some concepts of various bits in the same style as Robert crumb.

I started by trying to create a poster looking concept in the same style of r. crumb but mainly tried to get across the message of what the series or show would be about. and then a quick character design of one of the soldiers in the same style.

here is just a few frames of what the set-up of the show would be with the interview backstage first, then the performance on stage and then the execution and interview at the end. This is a very brief structure of what an episode could be like  and i plan to change allot of the content in each episode to make it more unexpected, crazy and interesting.

 and finally a quick concept of what the hermit could look like back stage as an executioner.

Pre Production Project

For this project we were give 4 cards consisting of a setting, a character, a style and a show. it was completely pot luck and the idea was that we have to come up with a story including all 4 cards.

The card I received where:

Setting : WW2 Berlin

Style: 60s/70s Underground Comics  

Character : Hermit 

Show: Music show

My initial thoughts was to do a story about this hermit character who lived underground away from the warzone above in Berlin. and when it went quiet the hermit would come up to the surface and collect the soldiers souls which he kept in his underground lair in jars and bottles. I loved everything about this idea i had and cold see it going a long way. but after pitching my idea i soon found that we had to stick firmly to are cards in terms of what are animation had to be and mine was a music show, so this quite sinical and dark story went out the window.

here where some of the concept pieces I did for my original idea.


This was my initial character design for the hermit which is this all knowing wise man who represents solitude.

The war zone setting. i Tried to get the comic book style across in this piece but found it harder than i had first expected.

The underground cave where the hermit lives and stores all the souls of the dead soldiers.

again i tried to get across that black and white comic book style but with a bit more detail. I felt that this piece was allot more successful that the one above.