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...)

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.