Garden Encounters

Picket meets Laurent for the first time. He forever wishes he’d just stayed inside and endured his wife’s nagging.

Lovebirds Poster

It's dooooone!

Lovebirds Stills

Yep, still alive! Been working on my final thesis film since my last post. I've got plenty of art to share, but let's start with some stills from "Lovebirds".

 

Still need to do some more polishing before I post the film itself anywhere, but stay tuned!

And then ponies.

Been hard at work on Fan Expo art since my extremely rad internship with Untold Entertainment completed. I'm going a bit overboard this year, but the selection shall be plentiful! Here's the first finished piece...

I'll admit I'm not a huge MLP fan. I don't straight up dislike it, but it's not really my thing. THAT SAID, I am not about to ignore a pretty huge fandom, so I gave it a shot. Was definitely digging the various pony colours.

This'll be a print, as well as individual bookmarks.

Prince Laurent

Laurent is one of my favourite characters to draw, because outwardly he appears suave and handsome, when in fact he is a loud, spoiled, cowardly, entitled jerk under the delusion that he is not only the perfect male specimen, but also irresistible to women.

You keep at it, Laurent.

Gassy Monsters and Mother Goddesses

Just a couple pieces I did tonight...

First up is my half of an art trade with Annie Hughes! She asked me to draw her OC Kara, so I drew her as Kali, because I guess the idea of multiple arms and shiny jewelry appealed to me at the time, and hey it was pretty fun to colour. I haven't done a really brightly coloured piece in a while, so this one made me happy.

Next up, this dude was done for the Sheridan Creature and Character of the Month group on Facebook. This month's theme for creatures was bio-luminescence. Here's the write-up:

"The Gassy Cave Lurkun is oft-smelled but rarely seen. Its massive size makes for natural slow movement, but this is further hampered by bowleggedness and the way its horns will occasionally grow under the front legs. A rough hide coupled with a damp environment encourages bio-luminescent mushrooms to grow on the backs of Gassy Cave Lurkuns, sometimes to the point that they become more mushroom than Lurkun. But this creature will happily dine on itself if feeling peckish, resulting in their glowing eyes and mouth."

One more day off, and then I'm off to my co-op position at Untold Entertainment! I am excited and nervous and thrilled and freaked and pumped and psyched and scared and anxious and determined and... a little sleepy. Can't wait.

Powdered Sugar

It seemed odd to me that I've only been posting life drawing assignments for a while, but then I remembered I don't do anything other than FILM FILM FILM FILM of late! Which is super cool with me because I have an awesome group and we're going to finish this thing, which not too many can claim.

(Okay yeah, it's still early to be making claims, but I am nothing if not ridiculously hopeful.)

Also, look! Another life drawing assignment...

Aaaaaaand... back to film.

And in keeping with that theme...

The result of our 7 weeks of costume life drawing was an assignment for the creation of 4 characters based on the models and the work we've done in class. Here are the four I ended up with...

Costume Play

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...

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...

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.

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)...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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

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

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!

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)...