Friday, December 10, 2010

Loved Lost Found

My leica for Storyboarding and Sound class! Much thanks to Nancy Beiman for providing advice and critique from start to finish, to Annie for having to listen to this song forty-thousand times over and not eating my face, and to Chelsea for giggling at the parts I intended to be amusing. It was a fun little story to work on and I'm happy with the results.

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Years go by...

Can't believe it's that time already! Saw the 2010 Year-in-Review art meme on DeviantArt and had to fill it out. Doesn't feel as though a year has actually gone by already... but I guess there has been a rather distinct change in my art, hopefully for the better, over the past 12 months, when you place 2010 and 2009 side-by-side:



 Looking forward to 2011!

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Merry Christmas?

Just posted a placeholder on The Awakened website. I plan to install ComicPress over the Christmas break, and then with luck some actual comic-making will be initiated.


And speaking of Christmas, I have a piece of lovely, wholesome holiday art to share. This was done for our English class, of all things. The theme was "Capitalist Scrooge". Simple explanation is that by the end of the story, Scrooge is still a capitalist, regardless of how generous he may have become with his money. Lots of meaning forced into every corner, which may or may not have been lost as I went on, just trying to make the thing look nice.


No, I don't believe the argument this illustration is trying to make, but it made for something interesting to draw.


Finally, I wanted to share this... I'm sure every animation student under the sun has already seen it (I believe no less than 20 people posted it on my Facebook over the past couple days), but it really does deserve all the attention it's getting. Absolutely beautiful little film.


Tuesday, December 7, 2010

School + The Awakened = ??? (Profit?)

And the race to catch up on missed posts continues.

Today, more "Floating Head Syndrome" sketches. This time of Asher and Montague. Both of them benefited from a nose job, and I would apparently make a rather shoddy plastic surgeon, because crooked hooks and gigantism abound.

I've heard a bit of feedback on both of these re-designs already, and I had to laugh at how many people thought I'd made Asher "ugly". It made me smile for the fact that Asher was *always* supposed to be a very ugly, ugly man. He's one of those so-ugly-he's-charming characters. So if anything, this update has taught me that I really have learned something about character variation. If the old Asher appeared "hot" to people, then I fell far short of my goal. So, as Asher is properly ugly now, I am quite pleased!




Received a mostly positive response for Monty, except maybe a little dislike for his new nose, but we can't all have beautiful, identical noses, people!


Aaaaaand in the world of school, I have... more Awakened stuff!

The assignment was a walk and run. We had to use contrasting characters, so I chose to animate Plague and Famine. I was juggling a fair number of projects alongside this one, so it's not as elaborate as I would have liked (particularly the interaction), but it did give me a chance to update their character designs a little.

(Apologies for the awful white BLOB in the corner. For whatever reason, whenever I put this clip online, the compression murders everything. If you squint, you might have some vague idea of what's happening.)

Definitely enjoying the chance to bring my established characters to life (though I can't do it for each assignment... as, well, the idea is to create new characters).

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Roleplay Arts

First off, yup, I re-did my blog layout again. And I think this one will stick around for a while, as Blogger finally added a proper Template Designer, allowing me to let go of the free-downloadable-template life preserver. Now it's miiiine, all miiiine! Right. And to the post...

Laurent and Ninja
from "The Nine Dog Tree"


Those who know me well know that I really love to forum roleplay. It's an excellent creative writing exercise, and it's helped me to get to know my characters more thoroughly and more quickly than by simply filling out character sheets and charts and poking at my brain with a sharpened stick (it tickles! But on the whole, unhelpful). I only RP with friends, and only in well-structured environments with stable storylines and a lot of behind-the-scenes plotting and discussion, but even then we've got five or six active stories in progress.


And why does all of this matter?

It doesn't! Well, see ya, that was a fun post--Oh no wait, I drew a bunch of RP artwork.



Our most recent story is "The Rift", started by Annie, Chelsea, Corrin, and myself. It's a sci-fi, space-exploration theme, and I'm using Chase as a physicist (for the utter durhurhurhur factor), Fray as a mechanic (an excuse for him to hit metal stuff with other metal stuff), and my Dr. Foss as exactly what he always is.

In preparation, I drew some character profiles. Had particular fun with Fray's if that isn't completely obvious.


I definitely highly suggest any writer struggling with character development to consider roleplaying with some writing friends. Knowing exactly how your characters would react in any number of situations, really becoming them, is incredibly helpful and necessary for constructing believable, unique characters.

Saturday, December 4, 2010

Royal Winter Fair


Once again attempting to catch up on posts here...

IT'S BEEN CRAZY! I'm still loving my second year of animation, but the past few weeks have definitely been exhausting. Many major projects, the holidays wanting attention, various nuisance illnesses... Barely a moment to breathe, let alone any time to myself.

But I'm managing to keep on top of things, so that's about the best I can hope for, and there are only two weeks left until Christmas break, which I think will be very much well-deserved by all.

BUT ENOUGH OF THAT! THIS POST IS ABOUT ROYAL WINTER ANIMALS! Except that none of them were wearing crowns at all, I noted a distinct lack of snowball fights and ice rinks, and I'm pretty sure the goats were just dogs with toilet paper rolls glued to their heads. HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS THE WAY THOSE GOATS CHASED FRISBEES.

In short, our class went to Exhibition Place for the Royal Winter Fair, and drew many a farm animal.




Moral of the story: Don't attend a livestock show if you hope to continue smelling of anything but poop.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

World's smallest stop-motion animation...

Shot with a microscope. Pretty freaking amazing:

Monday, September 20, 2010

Floating heads and boards.

I continue to get back into the Awakened groove with a multitude of little Chase and Sue heads. Chase seems to be pretty much settled in his new design, but I think Sue could still use some work. Asher and the other Hunters are probably up next.




Also got a couple school-related images. Well, technically EIGHT school-related images, but they... kind of go together... so it's like... two, really. *cough*

STORYBOOOOOOOOOAAAAARDS!

I'm really enjoying this class, because I adore sequential art and acting through characters, and Nancy Beiman has a wonderfully twisted sense of humour. Our first assignment was to come up with beat boards for two separate poems, after which we choose one to create a proper storyboard for.






I clearly enjoyed the second one more, so that's the one I'll be boarding out in full.

AND NOW I MUST RUN, for Chelsea is going to demonstrate to me how she achieves such amazing lineart on Photoshop.

Cheers!

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Oh hey we're back!

Second year of animation has begun and I really didn't realize how freaking much I missed this place. I'm back with my little second family, meeting a lot of people I haven't met before thanks to the second year studio, and all of my teachers seem pretty damn rad.

Already swamped with homework, but as always it can hardly even be called that. Too much fun to be lumped into that dangerous category.

A few weeks ago was Fan Expo, and that was amazing as always. I met a whole slew of awesome people, did some commishes, sold some prints and buttons, and was thrilled beyond measure once again to be reminded that this world is literally teeming with wonderful geeky people whose passion and opinions and obsessive random knowledge of everything keeps life perpetually interesting.




Above is the print I sold at the con (also sold bookmarks of each sin).

For the past month I've also been working hard on The Awakened, which I have very big plans for. Aside from a refined script, the characters are undergoing re-designs. Today I was working out Tristan's design, and I threw in a random Asher for good measure.





Will be going through all of the characters as I finish re-scripting Chapter 1. I'll be roughing pages and overhauling the website after that. Haven't decided yet whether I'll be updating on a page-by-page schedule or if I'll put whole chapters up at once. Depends on how much interest is still out there, haha.

Until next time!

Monday, June 14, 2010

Amimawls


Today's post is brought to you by the letter G, the number 57-and-a-half, and multiple drawings of animals done for school projects (unusual sponsor, I realize, though I don't ask questions).

We begin with boring realistic animals, done for Life Drawing class. The entire first year went to the Toronto Zoo to draw depressed-looking animals freezing their asses off at the end of March (seriously, who thought cheetah + Southern Ontario winter = believable home away from home?). It was quite an enjoyable day despite the weather, and also despite the fact we only saw about an eighth of the whole park.


(Many excellent views of the frozen asses in question.)

These are a couple of my gesture pages. Mostly monkeys because the monkeys were inside and the inside was warm.


And some longer studies. The tigers were the only outdoor animals not looking completely miserable. In fact several of us were offered the rare opportunity to bond with our layout teacher through the magic of watching one of these tigers poop into an empty sloping pool. "It's like a game!"


And lastly I have a Swazzle reference sheet. This was done for our last Character Design assignment, so I decided it was about time I used a rat. And which rat better than my funny-looking goofy adorable Swazzle girl? The drawings are cute and all, but they don't do her justice...

(D'aaawww...)

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Let's play catch-up!


Yup. Totally haven't posted anything in five months.

Finished my first year of animation and immediately went to work full-time at Sheridan, so there wasn't much of a break from massive distractions. STILL, I have plenty to show you. In fact, I may have too much, so I'm going to break this down into a few posts over the next several days.

I'll start with sketchbook stuff. I got a new sketchbook, and made a personal vow to myself that this sketchbook would be my new baby and feature nicer work than my usual scribbly conceptual stuff (up until now I've only really used a sketchbook to messily figure out compositions, which I then draw on different paper).

So far so good! My new sketchbook is now my most favourite-est thing in the world. Only downside is the coil prevents me from scanning anything, so I'm just taking photos...


Behold, my completely unnecessary title page! This thing took me close to two weeks to complete, as I was just adding to it on my breaks at work. It represents me and my love for crazy things, particularly demon fetus balloons and the taming of dinosaurs for personal transport.


And also, thar be dragons. I've been drawing a lot of dragons lately for a special reason that I will tell you about eventually. Aside from that reason, well, I just like dragons and missed drawing them.

Plenty more sketchbook stuff to photograph, but I'll leave it at that for now. Today is a day of mourning, as I finally made it to David Tennant's last episode in Doctor Who and am feeling lost and confused. Come to think of it, you should expect some Who fan art soon as well. It is my only way of coping.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

The same ol'.

Well what's new? Mostly the same ol', same ol'. Lots of stuff happening all of the time, so I generally forget to mention each and every little thing. I guess the coolest new announcement is the Artist Trading Card Club that Annie and I started at Sheridan. We've been big into ATCs for a long time now, and have always kind of wondered how much interest an ATC club would get at the school. After several of my animation classmates urged me to go ahead with the idea, we discovered that, wow, in fact LOTS of people are interested! We've got about 30 members now and we had our first meeting last week, which consisted of art jamming, video watching, and junkfood-eating. It was really a lot of fun. We managed to fill four swap groups (5 people in each group) for February, and I'm pretty sure Sheridan's bookstore is going to be consistently selling out of their blank ATC card packs henceforth.

REALLY looking forward to seeing everybody's finished cards at our next meeting!

The painted doodle above is of creepy pervert, Fray. Just one of a lot of random drawings I've done for myself lately but can't find time to colour. I'm also hugely in the comic mood right now and desperate to work on some Awakened, but will have to wait for school to finish. It's like an itch I can't scratch. Especially with our story and film classes, which are really opening my mind to new ways of telling this story and better methods of getting around old obstacles. Maybe I'll get some time to at least sketch/ink some pages on break week.

COMICS. I'm reading a lot of them right now too. Currently I'm in the midst of:

  • The Sandman #4: Seasons of Mists (I was really excited to start this one because it involves so much of the Endless, who I think are the bestest ever.)
  • Fables #1: Legends in Exile (This one was recommended to me by my brother a day before I randomly found it in the Labyrinth and picked it up. REALLY enjoying the concept and the writing and even the art is sweet--gonna grab the next one as soon as I can)
  • The Walking Dead: Compendium #1 (I have to start this one, though I'm excited to do so; it's just so damn enormous that I can't easily bring it to school to read on breaks)
  • Batman: Scarecrow Tales (This was bought for no other reason than I like the Scarecrow and think he's the lamest villain ever, and therefore the coolest; and it turned out that the comics in this collection from 1941 through to about 1980 were seriously hilarious with the bad writing and terrible, terrible innuendos. Robin is a "playground instructor", riiiight. )
There are a bunch more I want to buy, but it has come to my attention that comics cost... MONEY!? The horror. I want to start Y: The Last Man and get the next Hellboy, and continue with Sandman and Fables and I want The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One and, and--stupid cheap student lifestyle. It does not play well with my need for good stories and pretty pictures. Oh well. My conversation with the dude at the comic book store might be worth a cheap giggle:

Me: "I'm looking for a comic, I think it's called "The Last Man"?"
Guy: "Y: The Last Man?"
Me: "... Because I want to read it?"

Yeah it might have been clever if I wasn't completely serious. Oh well. Have another video of the Pink Panther! This is the same panther animation from before, cleaned up and placed on a proper background, done for Digital Tools:



Cheers!

Monday, February 1, 2010

Panthers and Alligators

Just a quick little update with a few things I've been working on, as I've been informed that I don't update my blog neeeeear enough. I guess I have no excuse, except for an impatience for scanning. It's 2010! My scanner should collect my art, scan it for me while I drink lemonade under the sun, and then write my blog posts for me. Psh... the future is a total letdown.

Anyway, I have utterly failed thus far in actually sharing any real animations from my animation course, so here's the latest. PINK PANTHER WALK. If I never see another Pink Panther cartoon it will be too soon. Unless it's the 90s version with Matt Frewer.



Our next animation assignment is the head rotation, and I've chosen Louis the Alligator from Disney's The Princess and the Frog (which is a freaking amazing movie, by the way, and you should spend lots of money on seeing it many times so that Disney takes the hint and keeps producing classically-animated films).

So I've been drawing many Louiseses... seses to get a feel for the character before I even attempt to rotate him. He's actually hilariously fun to draw, but since he's just a big blob for the most part, he's also kind of tricky. I'm not quite there yet, but I'm getting close.



I adore this gator.