... This thing on?

I don't know what's more impressive: that I was able to easily access this blog again despite having no recollection of how blogger worked or what my password might have been, or that I am spending time updating a blog I am pretty sure no one has bothered to glance at since early 2013.

I suppose it goes without saying that things have happened since then?

Biggest of course was graduating from Sheridan, moving to a new city, and starting a job as a full-time animator. It's hard to believe two years have passed, but I have loved every moment of my first foray into the wild world of producing kid's cartoon shows.

I could go ahead and unload a monstrous amount of artwork, but instead I will suggest checking out my current portfolio site www.sarah-davis.com (newer, shinier portfolio site is currently in development), or stopping by my Tumblr.

I will, however, post my updated demo reel!

And that's it for me for now. I'm sure I will make some effort to update here again!

Lovebirds One Minute Film

“Lovebirds” my thesis film!

This is the one-minute version. The full version is 2 minutes 30 seconds, and I’ll continue to work on it over the summer, but for now, enjoy!

http://www.sarah-davis.com/

Music by Dean Burry and Julia McFarlane
Voices by Andy Davis

Allow me to demonstrate...

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:

Moving right along...

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!

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.

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.

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).

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!

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.