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)...

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.

Years go by...

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?

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).

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.

Royal Winter Fair

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...

Shot with a microscope. Pretty freaking amazing:

Floating heads and boards.

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!

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!