Garden Encounters

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

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.

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...

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.

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*

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:

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)...

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.

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.

We don't need no stinkin' surprises!

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.

Sneaky Peeks and Fun Linkage

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.