CONNOR GONZALEZ

CONTACT

Connor Gonzalez (@iguanaguavaa) is a character designer, illustrator, and visual development artist from Orange County CA, and based in Laguna Beach, California. He is currently working towards a BFA in Entertainment Design at Laguna College of Art + Design.Available for freelance work. [email protected]

Education / Awards:
-Laguna College of Art and Design | Class of 2027
-2023 National Art Honor Society Mural commissioned for the Temecula Valley Museum
-2022 Portfolio Development Workshop- CalArts University.
-2020 Summer Intensive- CalArts University.
-2018 Motif Award at the Walt Disney Concert HallSpecialties:
-Entertainment Design
-Visual Development
-Character Illustration/Concepts
-Character 3D Sculpting
-Storyboard Thumbnails
-Color Keys
-Orthographic Character Turnarounds
-Prop Design
-Minimal AnimationSkills:
-Adobe Photoshop
-ZBrush
-Blender
-3DCoat
-Substance Painter
-To be added.

FURVANA

A personal passion project of mine. Furvana follows a group of young animal heroes working to save their tropical paradise of an island from imminent disaster when a dormant lava goddess wakes up from her slumber.

FURVANA - THE SQUAWK N' SIP

In a world where humans don’t exist and talking two-legged animals take over, the sun never sets and the party never stops. After a hard day of play, tiki bar nightclubs settled right along the beach explode in popularity.➤ The Squawk N' Sip is one of the most popular tiki bars along this coast, built right on top of one of the mountains overlooking the ocean. Its typical guests are birds, able to easily reach the top with a couple beats of their wings. Its design is built with function over form in mind, being dizzyingly high up, and the entire bar being tilted slightly to the side. A crude path and rickety ladder allow land animals to join in on the drinks, should they dare.

I began by gathering references and creating a moodboard, researching traditional Polynesian architecture as well as LA nightclubs. The goal is to create a tropical nightclub in the vein of Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room, without leaning too kitschy and cheapy. Notable inspirations were Disney's Lilo and Stitch and Thor Thordarson's charming tiki art.

I moved on to thumbnailing. The focus here was to design an exterior tiki bar that is very crooked in shape, that looks fun but it ultimately a bit dangerous to take part in. Thumbnails began very traditionally "bar" then slowly became more outrageous, being built haphazardly on trees and mountains.

For the longest time, I was torn between two thumbnails (#25 and #27), and was unsure whether to put the bar and its surrounding mini overhangs on a giant palm tree, or a giant mountain. I landed on the mountain over the tree- with the mountain, I'm able to use a lot of green via lush plants as well as dull rock colors to balance it out. If I had gone with #25, the only proper color would come from the leaves of the palm tree, and I felt that didn't align with the mood and color palette of the Furvana universe, which is bright and over the top.I created a 3D model in blender to assist with turnarounds and visualizing the physical space.

Utilizing a Scene Line Art Contour modifier within Blender itself, I was able to generate and edit an isolated line art layer based on the 3D model's topology. This was a massive help on getting me started on my exterior lineart.I edited the shape of the mountain to resemble a shark, adding a waterfall, sharks in the ocean, and stalactites on the underside of the overhang, to communicate that although characters are having fun drinking at the bar, danger lurks right beneath you!

I used the same technique for the interior, using the Freestyle lineart modifier and then sketching right on top of it.

The completed Squawk N' Sip exterior, with a color and lighting pass.The color makes the environment heavily stand out- I'm very happy with how the palm tree came out, as well as the teal of the water. I spent a lot of time tweaking the temperatures of each color in order to create something bright, inviting, and cohesive- without being too sickeningly colorful. If I were to continue work on this, I would add more lush plant life alongside the bird of paradise bush.

FURVANA - PALIKEKE CHARACTER MODEL

➤ Palikeke, referred to as Pali by all of his many friends, is the main character and face of hope for Furvana. He is a young, naive drummer with a big heart and an even bigger beak.My plan for this project was to create a ZBrush model and maquette of sorts, and to work within a stylized sculpt style after having mostly worked with hard-surface modeling throughout my time in school.

I started out with a pose sketch using my existing reference sheet of Pali. It was a great exercise in creating a fluid pose that accurately works with his anatomy and shapes. I went with a pose that would be enjoyable to look at from all sides, a model meant to be spun and turned around.

Shifting my thought process to the modeling itself, I created this reference board with stylistic references taking inspiration from Rio and The Lion King. I was drawn to both movies from the way specifically feathers are modeled, wings being portrayed more like hands-- exactly the way Pali's are. It communicates feathers incredibly well without having a huge amount of them to sculpt and pose out.

My blockout was simple and did most of the heavy lifting. I stuck with spheres or oblong teardrop shapes for most of the buildup, to keep the same shape language through. I incorporated a bit of musculature in the arm that's raised as well as the thigh/groin area, keeping note as to which muscles would flex and extend to achieve this pose.I let my polypainting communicate most of the feathers around the chest. I felt if I modeled each of those out, it would impact the silhouette and make Pali look bristly-- and not approachable -- which wasn't what I wanted.

The most enjoyable part of the process was adding materials and lighting. I kept everything but his eyes and beak a matte plastic material, so he looked like a toy/maquette. His eyes and beak were a glossy "toy plastic" material. It created such a lovely shine on his beak the moment I put a light down. It made his eyes look wet and lifelike. I was so happy with it!

I created one last lighting scenario - a warm sunset red and orange light coming from the side. I balanced it with a subtle blue light from the opposite side.

This whole project was insanely enjoyable, and I will 100% be creating more models like this, be it Pali or other characters of mine. If I were to go back and refine this, I'd make the model higher in geometry, and get ZBrush's Redshift rendering to work just a bit better so I could get some nicer exports. Overall, though, this is the coolest thing I think that I've made and until I make something even cooler-- I'll be showing this one off like it's a trophy!