SADCAT's Studio

Costume Play

2012-02-03T00:01:00.000-05:00

This term life drawing is all about the costumes! I gotta say, this is the most fun I've had in life drawing class. We're encouraged to experiment with a variety of mediums and styles and develop characters based on the models. Three hours has never gone by so quickly.

I took some photos of a few of my favourites so far.

Allow me to demonstrate...

2012-01-29T21:26:00.000-05:00

Finally got my demo reel finished! Music is "Four Seconds" by The Barenaked Ladies, who have been and will always remain my favourite guys. Go and buy all of their albums right now.

Also, hire me to work in your studio for the summer! In addition to drawing and animating, I am very, uh... clean?

Also these guys were done for the opening of the demo reel:

Chuggin' right along...

2012-01-24T01:43:00.001-05:00

Just a couple more portfolio pieces! I have a ton of sketches to scan and many more pieces in the works, as well. Panic sure does induce some intense creativity, I must say.

Ignore the random nameplates on these. Slowly saving all of my portfolio stuff with the same template.

The game of stuff.

2012-01-13T16:51:00.000-05:00

Let's see, what do I have for you today...

First off, a couple of really spiffy videos:

(Pretty incredible stop-motion piece. Ah, the secret life of books.)

(This just blew my mind. The paintings look so simple at first and then suddenly it's not even a painting anymore.)

Next, some scarecrow designs for another portfolio piece I'm working on. Like most times when I fiddle around with character designs, I ended up liking the first one the most (cute derpy one on the left). So stay tuned for more of that guy...

And last, I forgot to post this previously. Done the most recent "Year in Review" meme, and posting the previous years for comparison. Not seeing AS huge a change this year, which is kind of disappointing, but that just means I've got an even bigger and more exciting challenge ahead of me.

It Begins (Continues)...

2012-01-07T00:18:00.000-05:00

PORTFOLIO-ING CONTINUES.

Fell quite a bit behind, unfortunately. We had been expecting it to happen for a while, but my grandma passed away on the 30th, and art has been the furthest thing from my mind. I am forcing myself to really jump back into it this weekend, however, and so far so good. The creativity is coming back to me, so I'm exploiting it as much as possible.

I have a few big pieces in the works, but I managed to finish this smaller one tonight. I'm trying the 100 Themes Challenge at long last, and this was for #1. Introduction.

Little kid Chase and Sue! Pretty sure it was all downhill from there.

Moving right along...

2011-12-30T12:32:00.000-05:00

Well 2011 is almost over, and I'm pretty sure I only just got used to writing 2011 instead of 2010 on my daily to-do list. I know every year we say "wow, now those twelve months sure did go by quickly", but I'm pretty sure our planet has encountered some kind of spacial... timey-wimey anomaly or something, because I'm confident it should still be March.

That said, despite the days not being nearly long enough, I have managed to finish a few things, and will show them to you...

NOW!

First I've got my finished Action Analysis. I'm about... 50% happy with it. I could have done more, I could have made it NOT about a dog humping a piece of furniture, and I could have not resorted to Yoshi jumping sounds, but the work-load otherwise was already painful and, for now, I am only just one person, and that one person had a killer migraine toward the end. I'm pretty pleased with the layouts, at least.

Now I am devoting my break to coming up with several useable portfolio pieces for co-op, concentrating mainly on character design, story, and layout. This is the first piece I've actually finished, though I've got a bunch more in progress. I'm trying to have fun with it, draw things I've wanted to draw for a while. I'll hopefully be able to throw The Awakened and Ghost of Man in there somewhere, and squeeze in some film pieces.

That said, it's been a kind of depressing holiday again (we always seem to lose the ones we love during Christmastime), so I'm not as artistically enthused as I was hoping. If anyone out there has got ANY suggestions for themes or something you'd like to see me draw, I'd appreciate any and all input.

Cheers, all! Enjoy whatever time off you've got and go hug your loved ones RIGHT NOW!

And then some more things happened...

2011-12-14T18:52:00.001-05:00

Wow, it has been busy.

I feel like I have not stopped moving in weeks, but I'm sure to still be living--and I like to live--I've managed to do so now and again. But Christmas break is on the horizon and I will soon have, well, at least a week to relax (before two weeks of my break are then hijacked by co-op portfolio work).

A few things to share (there's a whole truck-load more but honestly I don't know where to begin and I'm not sure all of it would be terribly interesting).

First I've got the layout for my Action Analysis:

This was my first real serious attempt at a lineless painting in Photoshop. I learned a LOT from beginning to end and started to develop my own method of doing things. I'm really looking forward to trying some more of these over the holidays, now that I have a vague idea of what I'm doing.

And here's the whole thing composited:

I've also got a little illustration here from the People and Places assignment. We kept sketchbooks this term of people we'd observed, and I'd been watching some travel documentaries... ... ... ... okay so it was Destination Truth. Regardless, I saw some rad Romanian dancers and thought the portly fellow with the beard was particularly adorable, so I chose to develop him a bit. Then I felt generous, so I gave him a fine lady to dance with.

Got a little more to post, but I'll save it for now. MORE HOMEWORK TO TACKLE, AHOHOHOHO--*weep*

This little piggy went to life drawing class...

2011-11-16T09:43:00.001-05:00

A couple assignments here done for Life Drawing. The first are some anatomical studies. We were supposed to choose a part of the body that we have difficulty with (oh such joke potential--but no time!). I chose the feet because, while they're my favourite thing to draw, they're easy to draw poorly. I figured practice could not hurt at all.

And the second assignment is a drawing done for the Royal Winter Fair, as has become the yearly custom! This year we were to focus on story-telling with our drawings. I chose to be cruel (also now tradition). But seriously, it's next to impossible to get close to the pigs with all the little poky children crowding around.

And the beats go on...

2011-10-19T21:22:00.000-05:00

So our group film has come a long way since my last post about it. We've got a much firmer story now, and we're moving into finalizing designs. I've been managing the story team and this week we'll be submitting our film's design pack, so we handled the coloured story beats. I did the first two:

I will leave these completely vague and without description, because not only will that potentially heighten anticipation for the film itself, it will also confuse and annoy!

I also had some fun with the design pack and caricatured our entire team as ghosts:

M&Ms

2011-10-05T18:15:00.000-05:00

Most recent project was the "Heroes and Villains" assignment for life drawing. The idea was to take three drawings we had done in class or at Extra-Life and mimic the poses whilst creating a character who either embodied that of a hero or a villain.

So we've got a Musketeer Man, a Mistress Mink, and a Mustache Monster. Yes, yes that's right.

The Prince and the Assassin

2011-09-24T19:33:00.000-05:00

More roleplay art!

Here's my completely inept and dorky prince Laurent somehow managing to look rather suave as he gets frisky with Jessica Channer's character Rin the blind but extremely competent assassin (except where cats are concerned).

The scene didn't end well, but freeze this moment and they almost look normal.

Oh hi!

2011-09-23T17:55:00.000-05:00

I never really know what to post when a lot of time has passed since my last update, because of course I've been drawing every day since my last update and now there's just so very much to get caught up on.

Second year of animation came to an end, and I again worked full-time over the summer at Sheridan for facilities management, cleaning and painting and making the school all sparkly and majestic for the next year. This success is of course foiled within the first day, when students smear their conte-laden fingers across the wall, doodle genitalia over every available surface in the most permanent of inks, and cover everything else with masking tape and stickers.

But I digress. Here have some art!

A bunch of stuff from my sketchbook drawn over the summer.

And with the third year of animation comes the infamous.... GROUP FILM! I was lucky enough to end up with an incredible batch of talented individuals, and I think we've got a pretty spiffy story with a lot of potential for some exciting art, effects, and animation. In short, this year is all about improving my skills, expanding my portfolio, and pushing myself to try new things.

Here's a little of the art I've done so far, for our as yet untitled project.

And finally, some random art I've drawn recently of mine and my friends' original characters (Shaari from the first image belongs to Jessica Channer, and Tinette is of course property of no one, but is imagined with caution by Annie Hughes)...

Loved Lost Found

2010-12-10T19:05:00.000-05:00

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.

Years go by...

2010-12-09T10:58:00.000-05:00

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!

Merry Christmas?

2010-12-08T21:00:00.000-05:00

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.

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

2010-12-07T02:14:00.000-05:00

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).

Roleplay Arts

2010-12-05T15:33:00.001-05:00

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.

Royal Winter Fair

2010-12-04T12:52:00.005-05:00

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.

World's smallest stop-motion animation...

2010-09-21T21:45:00.000-05:00

Shot with a microscope. Pretty freaking amazing:

Floating heads and boards.

2010-09-20T17:08:00.006-05:00

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!

Oh hey we're back!

2010-09-15T21:38:00.005-05:00

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!

Amimawls

2010-06-14T18:02:00.008-05:00

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...)

Let's play catch-up!

2010-06-13T13:54:00.006-05:00

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.

The same ol'.

2010-02-17T20:05:00.005-05:00

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!

Panthers and Alligators

2010-02-01T21:23:00.006-05:00

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.

About Sarah Anne Davis (SADCAT)

2009-12-06T13:50:00.034-05:00

Let me tell you a little about myself. In third person, of course, so as to give the impression that someone was so floored by my genius that they decided to write about my life.

Sarah Davis has been working as a freelance artist since the age of 15. Specializing in colourful fantasy illustration, sequential art, and character design, Sarah has worked for such companies as Ponder Games, Inc., Channel M, and Coca Cola, while maintaining personal projects like SADCAT's STUDIO and The Awakened Online Comic. In 2009 she graduated Art Fundamentals with high honours from Sheridan College. She is currently enrolled in Sheridan's Bachelor of Applied Arts Animation program.

I am almost not as crazy as I look.

Commission Information

2009-12-05T13:25:00.066-05:00

Looking for an artist for a project?
Have a vision in your head and want it brought to life?
Maybe you'd just love to see one of your original characters drawn in a different style?

I am available for hire on a freelance basis!

If you'd like to commission me for your project or for a single piece, send me an e-mail.

Please provide as much information as possible about what is required, and the time-frame for completion, and I will get back to you with a price estimate and further information.

..:: Single Piece Commissions ::..
For simple personal commissions, my prices range from $10 for clean sketches to $50 for painted works. For more complex pieces with multiple characters and intensive background work I charge more. The price for anything really depends greatly on the complexity and the style (cell-shading versus fully rendered, for example). Send me a note with what you have in mind and I can give you a price estimate.

Children love the petting zoo!

2009-12-04T00:09:00.003-05:00

For my layout package we were required to depict a scene from the Royal Winter Fair. Who better than Crazy Mouth? The lovable alpaca! He just wants you to put some food into his crazy mouth.

For the record, I DID feed Crazy Mouth, and he was very polite, despite the frothing.

Also made an ATC of Stitch for Victoria! She's loves her some Stitch. And if there're any Sheridan students reading this who are interested in ATCs (Artist Trading Cards -- check it out), I will hopefully be starting an official ATC club at the school. First meeting after the winter break! If you're interested, drop me a note.

It's that time again...

2009-11-30T18:11:00.004-05:00

FINAL PROJECTS! And what a very large and terrifying amount of them! Let's see here... What do we have on the menu.

Ball and tail animation (it's a ball... with a tail! Bouncing and acting and squashing and stretching and S and C curves oh my.)
Artist presentation (from what I gather we pick an artist to profile and give a presentation on them--sounds too simple. I suspect a trick.)
Final storyboard project (yet to be assigned, called "Bird in the Hand". Suspecting more tricks.)
Repeating panoramic background (with two characters included I believe).
Two 9x12 juxtaposition background gouache paintings.
Second life drawing portfolio!
Bone drawings (9 views of vertebrae, 3 views of scapula, 4 views of pelvis, 4 views of skull, two views of arm and hand, two views of leg and foot--most of these are done already).
Leica reel! 20-40 storyboard panels music, sound effects, camera moves, etc.
Research paper on animal welfare legislation in Canada.

BRING IT ON!!

I've got my tonals finished for the dual paintings. I decided to go with Safety and Danger. I was going to go with Dead and Alive (zombies) versus Not Dead OR Alive (robots), but I had a dream last night showing these alternate environments and decided they were more interesting. Plus the first idea was kind of a joke. Kind of.

I also finished my expression sheet, which will be handed in tomorrow. Character Design is definitely my favourite class, and this was my favourite project so far. We had to do an animal character, and it had to be a gender I hadn't drawn yet, so it could have been annoying (not a fan of anthro characters, and I always prefer to draw guys), but I made it FUN, by making the most hideous pig lady ever. Well okay, she could easily have been more hideous. She's mildly hideous. Still fun.

And finally, I figured I would post this here, as I had requests for a copy. I wrote this Sheridan Ghost Story for my English presentation with Chelsea on whether or not hauntings were real. Everybody who screamed on cue was hilarious and amazing and made the whole thing go over really well. It was delightful.

A Sheridan Ghost Story
By Sarah Anne Davis

This story was told to us by faculty members who have requested to remain anonymous, for this story is so horrible—so gruesome—that it may in fact scare away any future students wishing to attend this once thought to be happy, peaceful school.

But Sheridan College has a dark past. A bloody past. A dark and bloody past full of darkness. And blood.

It was a long time ago. Too long now for most to recall, except perhaps Mark Thurman. A sweet young girl with massive aspirations wanted only to attend Sheridan College’s world-renowned animation program. Little did she know… her aspirations would end in tears. Bloody… scream-filled tears…

She worked on her portfolio into each and every dark and stormy night. Rotations and storyboards. Expression sheets and layouts. White piles of copy paper ran red with the blood of her endless devotion…

And then, Portfolio Day.

Her rotations wouldn’t rotate! Inconsistent lines and weights!

Her characters were emotionless and dull! Not enough angles!

Her compositions were generic!

Life drawing lifeless!

What happened to the second action pose!? Pose… pose…

…
…
…

Transfer to Art Fundamentals.

(EVERYONE SCREAMS.)

Dreams crushed, the girl went insane. Picking up a deadly camera tripod, a murderous rampage ensued. She destroyed her competition, one by one, until she made it to the top of the waiting list. But it was too late.

In her madness and despair, the girl staggered to the nearest Trafalgar crosswalk and was killed by the unstoppable force of fifty old people in Buicks.

It is said that the girl’s tortured spirit plummeted to the farthest depths of hell, wherein she pleaded with the devil himself to spare her… to send her back to the school she so longed for.

A deal with the devil was made, and in the midst of cackling laughter her spirit was sent back. But her fate was sealed. Her punishment far more gruesome than her crime. Each day, every day, her spirit would cling to the halls… repeating Art Fundamentals for all eternity.

(EVERYBODY SCREAMS.)

To this day she can still be seen drifting through the A wing, withholding vending machine snacks, knocking over stools, and leaving unwanted invitations to pub nights in every locker. If you listen carefully, you can still hear her pencil tearing away at each new sheet of paper, so desperately trying to break free of her cruel purgatory, to one day see the light boxes at the end of the tunnel and pass into the next world…

Those damn, dirty swines.

2009-11-20T10:59:00.011-05:00

Well the last few weeks sure have been an exciting ride. Albeit, exciting in the "Dear God help me I'm dying of swine flu" sort of way. First was reading week. Ahh, reading week. A time to relax, a time to head home and see family and ignore whatever homework you're supposed to be doing while you nap on the couch in your PJs, or something like that. Welp, I made the very silly mistake of walking in the freezing rain wearing only a sweater (okay, well, I probably had pants and shoes too) on the Friday my mother came to pick me up. I promptly got sick on the Saturday with a sore throat, which turned into a runny nose, which turned into a cough and runny nose, which turned into a sensation of breathing dust, which turned into a migraine, which turned into puking, which turned into a tiny single-celled organism, which turned into a fish with legs, which turned into a frog on the bump on the branch on the log in the hole in the bottom of the sea--

It wasn't H1N1, just a cold brought about by depraved Canadian weather, and I was feeling slightly better when I came back to school, though I was clearly not better in the not-still-spreading-my-various-bacteriums-around sense, because Annie promptly caught it.

Sooooo another week passes. Annie's had the worst of it and is on the mend when we all go to the Royal Winter Fair to draw animals. It's a fun day, with the exception of the 95,000 children running everywhere, most of whom were screaming and crying and pushing and shoving and coughing and spitting and leaking far worse than most of the livestock. It was inevitable, and delightfully ironic, that one of the little buggers coughed all over me in the "swine area", just a few feet away from a sign about swine flu, in the province of Swine, in the township of Swineshire.

You can see where this is headed.

By the time I got on the train that night, I could feel it. Sore throat was back, as well as the cough. The next day the cough was worse, and I was aching allover, I was hot and cold and tired as hell. Then the stomach issues hit me very hard and very suddenly and the less said about that the better. On Sunday a thermometer was acquired, which showed I had a fever. Congestion followed, ear clogged up and was in serious pain. I had an exam on Tuesday, so I staggered off to school to get that over with. I barely made it through with all of my stupid embarrassing coughing fits, (and I'm pretty sure I wrote a one-page essay about logical fallacies being, er, uh, really false and illogical and full of... fallaciousness) after which I continued my stagger to the clinic.

I was forced to don the MASK OF SHAME, was proclaimed diseased with H1N1 (red stamp on the forehead), and banished from the school. The wide birth everyone accorded me on the way out was both hilarious and mightily humiliating.

So I have been sleeping all week, feeling very restless and wanting to return to school, but for this damn cough that would surely give my secret away.

Feeling slightly better now, though still hacking up sputum every colour of the rainbow (if that rainbow were green, yellow, and brown). I feel desperate to leave the house and get back to work! But I think there is a very important lesson to be learned in all of this...

KEEP YOUR KID AT HOME IF THEY'RE SICK HOLY MOTHER OF CHEESE. Who the crap takes their child out of school for an agricultural fair anyway? $20 admission and they're amused by llama hairdos and pooping sheep for all of half an hour (pooping sheep definitely moreso). Try as you might, your kid is going to realize quickly that this new cow looks exactly like the last cow, which looks suspiciously similar to the last fifty lethargic, motionless cows, and you're the one who's going to have to pry all of that caked-on leftover cow from his little shoe treads at the end of the day.

In short: Royal Winter Fair! Hooray! I had an awesome time and I highly recommend it! 8D

No complaints here.

OMFG ANIMATION FIRST YEAR WTFBBQ!!!1ONE

2009-10-14T07:11:00.011-05:00

Yeah okay, so it's once again blatantly obvious that not only were the last two months of my summer fairly eventful, but I am back in school! AND I'M FREAKING LOVING IT. So far Sheridan's animation program is everything I hoped it would be. I'm learning lots already, the teachers are incredible, I've made friends, and am generally ecstatic with my classes and the amount of art I now end up producing on any given day.

That said, I can't post ALL of it. Not only would I be spending hours of my days scanning pages of copy paper, but a lot of the stuff that shows up in my sketchbook is probably only interesting/funny to those who were present when it was initially drawn. Not to say I won't share some seriously random drawings, however.

And hey! Speaking of random drawings! What a convenient opening...

Okay, so... Hm. Most of this is from the first two weeks of school. Zombies and monster thingies... Then we've got some Garretts drawn for Character Design (will be using him for my posing assignment), and... an arm, drawn by nobody!

Oh, and Blimey, who is better than everyone.

And now we journey even further into the realm of randomness... Apparently all the cool kids in our class are playing Pet Society these days, so the other day we were all drawing each others' Pet Society pets. And I guess they were supposed to be cute or something, but what's the fun in that? I drew my own pet, Doug, Chelsea's mentally special pet, Dillan, and Annie's pet, Shuffle, who hasn't been checked on in six months.

And a random boar for Annie...

What else do we have here... oh, yeah.

This is the character I used for my rotation assignment. Earl was just sort of randomly created in the caf one day, and he followed me to Character Design, infiltrating my project. For these pictures I was asked to mimic a pose the teacher had drawn, using Earl, and then show Earl running, walking, and jumping.

The next assignment is posing, for which I'm using Garrett! I spent last class playing with pose ideas... now it's just a matter of making them all larger and inking them. I do this sort of stuff for fun anyway, so this assignment is one I will enjoy muchly. Character Design is definitely my favourite class. I can't quite get over how unreal it is to be told by a teacher to do something I love to do, and something that would have gotten me in trouble if caught doing it in any other school.

Promised to post this one for Annie. Her characters, Ainmire and Kara! This is usually hanging on her bedroom wall but I had to steal it back in order to scan. :B

And lastly, some concept art for Animation. We have to animate a marine animal, and I'm either going to do an eel or a stingray. More likely the stingray, but I didn't have a ref. handy in class today, so I drew the eel instead.

And speaking of animation, I'll try and post a video of something I've done. Most likely my balloon or pendulum, buuuuut I think that's enough for this particular post...

Cheers!

Eventful and Creepy.

2009-07-06T13:02:00.007-05:00

Well so far this summer has been very wet, very cold, and rather uneventful (lots of art and lots of writing but not so much actual... EVENTS). BUT, I took last week off and invited Annie down, and we wandered allover the city, watched many movies, and I actually got some time for random sketching. In other words, I actually have something to post here. SHOCK AND SURPRISE.

First little collection is a mix of the completely random, and then an exercise where we opened a dictionary, pointed to a word, and had to interpret it somehow. It worked... for the most part.

The second collection of sketches I've been having a lot of fun with. My mother loves to write and it was recommended that she go to a cafe at least a couple times a week to write on her laptop and listen to the people around her (not so much as an excuse to be creepy, but rather to get an idea of how different people talk). I thought this would be an excellent chance to draw a nice assortment of people and start a collection of different faces in my sketchbook (though my major excuse is that I am, in fact, pretty creepy). I'll hopefully be posting many more William's Coffee Pub Face Dumps in the future.

Oh, and a belated HAPPY CANADA DAY! And a happy 4th of July to those across the border. :B

We don't need no stinkin' surprises!

2009-05-14T02:09:00.005-05:00

Wow! You'd think I was suddenly on vacation or something from the lack of updates...

I have been super uber ridiculously crazy-busy since getting home, but I'm really enjoying myself. The Awakened updating again has been REALLY refreshing. I can't tell you how happy I am to be able to devote time to that project again, and the practice with digital painting is paying off and I am learning oodles (yes, OODLES).

I'm also working on several business endeavors, as the summer job hunt is turning up absolutely nothing so far, and freelancing is really all that's left. I'm not quiiiiite ready for new commissions yet, as I have a couple that NEED to be finished before I can in good conscience spend time on anything new. But I'm working my tail off daily on those, so it shant be long.

I think my major problem with freelancing in the past was that I allowed too many personal commissions to come in without deadlines, and then new, larger jobs would come in WITH strict deadlines, and I had no choice but to push back the other commissions again and again until a painful amount of time had passed and though I knew there was nothing I could really do about it, I felt like a jerk. SO, as of now, ALL commissions MUST come with due dates. Even if you're of the mind: "Oh, take your time! No rush!" just... make something up! "Take your time" could mean years of I have a steady stream of work with deadlines always on the table. Come up with a number, and it will be done on that date. Eeeeeverybody wins!

All right, enough of that for now. Got a couple things to share, starting with the raffins (Gadzooks and Blimey for those who don't know me personally). I haven't taken nearly enough photos of the girls since they were babies, so I grabbed the camera the other night and photographed playtime. Unfortunately they got overly preoccupied with half of a Kinder Surprise casing and didn't want to do anything but fight over that... still cute though!

Aaaaand, finally, one of the commissions I've finished since coming home. This is the client's original character, Pasibor (kind of Cthulu like, and therefore awesome), who is looking after his ancient city.

Already?

2009-04-24T07:17:00.004-05:00

I'm finding it incredibly hard to believe that today is already the last day of school! This year has been amazing. A year ago I never would have guessed that I'd be here, going into animation, leasing a house with three friends!

I have no idea what's going to happen this summer. I'm looking for work, obviously, but finding slim pickings so far. I'll be freelancing in the meantime. Contact me to get on my commission list (though I will be finishing up a few outstanding commissions first).

Finished my last project of the year yesterday, in the form of a chair design for Imaging Systems. I of course chose a chair designed to kill people, because... well why wouldn't I choose that? Behold, The Perforator!

Whatever looks good...

2009-02-18T20:22:00.004-05:00

In my quest to conquer the elusive digital painting skill, I decided to pick from the 100 Themes list that floats allover the Interwebz and paint a little scene. I ended up just starting from the beginning with "Introduction" and stuck Nenua and Fray in there. This is vaguely how I imagine they might have first met one another.

And because some friends have been asking me, here's a little collection of progress images. I know it's not really typical to chunk the painting in bit by bit, and usually I'll lay down general colours and light sources when I first get started... but for one reason or another, this one ended up being mostly layered in. Oh well... at least it worked!

I'll probably continue using the themes list whenever I'm lacking inspiration. Plus I still feel like I could spend more time learning about the Ghost of Man characters before I jump into the comic. Not to say you shouldn't expect *something* soon!

Goat Sucker

2009-02-14T21:02:00.004-05:00

Well I never intended for this much time to pass between posts, but we're in the midst of portfolio days at Sheridan and I, like just about everyone else in my course, have been busy trying to meet that deadly deadline! Today I took a bit of a breather to really give my new tablet (his name is Julio Intuez) a proper workout. I wanted to draw/paint something completely using Julio, rather than rely on previously-sketched or inked creations.

I decided to draw a little dude I found in my sketchbook, who was born from a mask design for my 3D class (the mask is supposed to protect against a human frailty, so I chose my social anxiety; the mask completely obscures my identity and feelings and is covered in quills for that extra little bit of "NO TOUCHIE").

In the end I decided to use him as a species for Ghost of Man. One of my favourite cryptids, El Chupacabra!

I have a few sketches here and there that I need to scan and will hopefully have something unique for you all soon!

Sneaky Peeks and Fun Linkage

2009-01-27T17:54:00.007-05:00

Test #1 was a success! And because it was a success, I will actually post a sneak peek (if it had been a disaster, well... I would have just kicked it under the beg, folded my arms behind my back, and wandered off whistling).

This is a page from the Prologue of Ghost of Man. The character featured isn't anyone super important (though certainly significant), so don't attempt to locate him hiding somewhere in the line-up below. I did a few things aside from painting the backgrounds that *should* cut comic creation time considerably, including the shrinkage of the page size from 8.5x11 to a more standard comic side of (roughly) 7x10. I also got rid of those coloured lines. Now, I'm a big fan of the coloured lines and I really think they look better in a finished piece of art, BUT, I can't be super picky. Pages can't take forever, so I'll keep the nice lines for other pieces.

So! There you have it. I enjoyed that experiment and am looking forward to painting again.

Now for something I found this past week...

Little People - A tiny street art project
http://little-people.blogspot.com/

I thought this was really cool, and suddenly I find myself searching for teeny tiny people on the street as I'm walking, just in case I miss something cool or accidentally smush them to death. The artist known as Slinkachu has set up ridiculously tiny people in ridiculously tiny scenes on the streets of London in a really unique and rather bizarre art experiment. Bizarre simply because... how many people have actually spotted them?

Check out the photos! And then be wary of teeny tiny people forever more.