Friday, December 30, 2011
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Monday, December 26, 2011
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Time Thieves
The lyrics "shake that thing" are awesome if you are thinking about quaking ruins and a ridiculous chase. Perhaps when the gods dance the creatures below are summoned to conflict and adventure.
Tell me, can you done know yo destiny?
Tell me, can you done know yo destiny?
Compelled to share...for clap clap clap snap...
Sunday, December 18, 2011
A little alone time
I've been knocked out for a number of days. While not enjoyable, I did catch up on lots of reading and Inuyasha episodes. Kings in Disguise and Perelandra were a couple I read through and really enjoyed.
My imagination gets the best of me when I'm alone for extended lengths of time. It always feels like little creatures are nearby. Something moving about just out of sight. Keeping to those lines of vision at the edge of the eye. Plays of light perhaps, or something sinister. That can be scary to think about, but then, I'm never bored either. I think I'd take the mystery over boredom given a choice.
more things that taste of the ocean
What goes better with oceanic creatures than lemon and butter?
Perhaps saxophone, bikinis, and khaki chorus lines!
(I'm fairly certain these people are in their underpants and not bikinis at all...)
(I'm fairly certain these people are in their underpants and not bikinis at all...)
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
CTNX 2011 Wrap Up
Not only was the convention a success, but the entire trip to Burbank was awesome!
One of the happiest most exhausting trips ever.
Quick highlights:
Getting drunk at the Oakland airport at 9 in the morning. Trevor and I sampled California Kings at the vino volo kiosk.
Taking a tour of Disney Animation for the first time ever and not turning into a puddle.(Thanks Bobby!)
Hitting up the Princess Brunch at Disneyland with some of the best people I know!
I'm torn between Enchanted Tiki Room and Toy Story Midway Mania for my favorite attraction of ALL TIME.
Wearing shorts! (It's been cold Seattle.)
Chickening out of saying hi to James Gurney.
Hanging out by the fire pits at the pool after midnight.
Meeting tons of new people and making new best friends.
Watching my rental car's keys fly to Seattle without me.
CTN this year was even better than CTN last year, and I loved last year. The main difference is I had a table this time around, shared with my friend Trevor. While that meant a lot of chaos pre show, and the inability to go to all the awesome talks during most of it, it also meant just hanging out and talking to all kinds of neat people and loads of doodling all day for three days.
I'm not sure I can express the concentration of art at CTN correctly. It overwhelms me. I'm a big dork for animation, and everybody is there! Showing off the latest and greatest, often work you'll never see anywhere else. I saw so many personal sketchbooks and portfolios, wonderful work all around. I only saw one demo and one talk, but they were perfect and exciting and energetic. Florian Satzinger was out in the Atrium drawing, and after the floor closed I saw Michael Defeo talk about sculpting with traditional and computerized processes, staying on model etc, the good stuff. Hopefully some of the other talks will go online, because I would love to see them.
On the conventioneer side, I really packed my half of the table with stuff. While I only brought down the two sketchbooks I've made, I also talked a couple of friends into giving me some of their work to sell. One of the things I enjoyed most was selling their works. I get gleeful when I see people getting excited about art. One of my favorites was selling a sketchbook of Matt's to Jake Parker. I'm so familiar with Matt's stuff, that when I saw Jake's I had this moment of familiarity that was hard to put into words. His stuff is way different, but way similar if that makes any sense.
There were a number of people I ended up being too shy to talk to. Mostly I wasn't shy, but it gets the best of me still! I was really happy Trevor was my table buddy, it made being chatty easier. Strength in numbers? A few of the people I chickened out on were James Gurney, Terryl Whitlatch, Andreas Deja, and Pascal Campion(Pascal is possibly the most wonderful person on earth).
After the show each day there would be the chaos of herding friends and new acquaintances into finding food and hangout time. Which always managed to sort itself out. Inevitably turning into a late night indeed. I loved walking through the hotel at any time, day or night, and seeing all the people mingling and having a great time. The animation students in the lounge working away constantly were awesome. I love their drive!
I think the thing that surprises me is how many people from games are at CTN considering there is almost zero games presence. Almost everything is film, tv, and commercial animation industry. Which I think is fine, but I'm still surprised. I mean, games are about 1/3 animation, more in some. I wonder if there would ever be a similar game arts convention? :) I'd go!
One of the happiest most exhausting trips ever.
Quick highlights:
Getting drunk at the Oakland airport at 9 in the morning. Trevor and I sampled California Kings at the vino volo kiosk.
Taking a tour of Disney Animation for the first time ever and not turning into a puddle.(Thanks Bobby!)
Hitting up the Princess Brunch at Disneyland with some of the best people I know!
I'm torn between Enchanted Tiki Room and Toy Story Midway Mania for my favorite attraction of ALL TIME.
Wearing shorts! (It's been cold Seattle.)
Chickening out of saying hi to James Gurney.
Hanging out by the fire pits at the pool after midnight.
Meeting tons of new people and making new best friends.
Watching my rental car's keys fly to Seattle without me.
CTN this year was even better than CTN last year, and I loved last year. The main difference is I had a table this time around, shared with my friend Trevor. While that meant a lot of chaos pre show, and the inability to go to all the awesome talks during most of it, it also meant just hanging out and talking to all kinds of neat people and loads of doodling all day for three days.
I'm not sure I can express the concentration of art at CTN correctly. It overwhelms me. I'm a big dork for animation, and everybody is there! Showing off the latest and greatest, often work you'll never see anywhere else. I saw so many personal sketchbooks and portfolios, wonderful work all around. I only saw one demo and one talk, but they were perfect and exciting and energetic. Florian Satzinger was out in the Atrium drawing, and after the floor closed I saw Michael Defeo talk about sculpting with traditional and computerized processes, staying on model etc, the good stuff. Hopefully some of the other talks will go online, because I would love to see them.
On the conventioneer side, I really packed my half of the table with stuff. While I only brought down the two sketchbooks I've made, I also talked a couple of friends into giving me some of their work to sell. One of the things I enjoyed most was selling their works. I get gleeful when I see people getting excited about art. One of my favorites was selling a sketchbook of Matt's to Jake Parker. I'm so familiar with Matt's stuff, that when I saw Jake's I had this moment of familiarity that was hard to put into words. His stuff is way different, but way similar if that makes any sense.
There were a number of people I ended up being too shy to talk to. Mostly I wasn't shy, but it gets the best of me still! I was really happy Trevor was my table buddy, it made being chatty easier. Strength in numbers? A few of the people I chickened out on were James Gurney, Terryl Whitlatch, Andreas Deja, and Pascal Campion(Pascal is possibly the most wonderful person on earth).
After the show each day there would be the chaos of herding friends and new acquaintances into finding food and hangout time. Which always managed to sort itself out. Inevitably turning into a late night indeed. I loved walking through the hotel at any time, day or night, and seeing all the people mingling and having a great time. The animation students in the lounge working away constantly were awesome. I love their drive!
I think the thing that surprises me is how many people from games are at CTN considering there is almost zero games presence. Almost everything is film, tv, and commercial animation industry. Which I think is fine, but I'm still surprised. I mean, games are about 1/3 animation, more in some. I wonder if there would ever be a similar game arts convention? :) I'd go!
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Monday, November 21, 2011
CTNX Demo
It can be hard to invent new things. Sometimes you just find yourself stuck. I have a lot of exercises that can help break out of this. One of my favorites is shape games.
Any shapes will do. Below I've drawn a page of simple line shapes. These could be anything though. Someone suggested placing tracing paper over magazines and using all those shapes and values to draw on. I think that is a fantastic idea!
Begin filling the page with an idea in mind. Horses, houses, rockets, samurai, rocket samurai... I went with the concept of a horse in my mind, because they are challenging and I like them. You'll notice yourself placing details in the shapes you put down, but try breaking out of that and also using the space between shapes and also merging shapes together. Hopefully you just ended up with a silly mess and only spent a minute or two drawing down ideas. Don't worry about appearances. The feeling and idea is most important right now. Don't be overly concerned with rendering or accuracy.
Check out that messy page. Anything stick out? Are there any drawings you find yourself responding to? Anything making you smile inside?
I really like the little guy on the bottom left. He's got a good feeling coming off of him. Since I'm responding fairly strongly I decided to isolate him from the herd.
I just squished him up in the corner of the page as reference. Now I'm going to use that drawing as a jumping off point to refine the idea a bit. I feel like this guy looks super happy, maybe slightly proud. I begin a new drawing and push the shape into a proudly held head on a swooping body, trying to exaggerate more. I think the high rear end is funny and keep that, also making it heavier so I feel it more visually. I'm starting to really like this guy, but think I can push it further. I take that second drawing and squish him up in the top right.
I start over again. Now I'm trying to exaggerate that second drawing a lot more if possible. It's better to go too far than too short. You can always go back, but if you can't reach further then you're kinda stuck where you are.
Keep things loose and quick, don't hesitate. Stop worrying about line quality and just run with your ideas.
I think I'm really starting to like this guy. He seems like a very proud animal, maybe he thinks he is beautiful. I begin pushing away from broad feelings and more towards snippits of story and defined personality traits.
I put my sketches on a layer and turn down the opacity. I throw a layer on top and begin drawing in specific details around my sketch. I think about texture and temperature and sounds and smells and movements. Even if I'm not really drawing down all of those things, if I feel them as I draw a little more energy is retained in the drawing. Like I'm drawing the moment before all of that happens.
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Friday, November 11, 2011
Neato Hopalong Dragon sculpt!
Jose Linares made a really fun sculpt of one of my drawings. Check it out!
Thursday, November 10, 2011
breaking yourself
I'll be doing a demo at CTN next Saturday, Nov. 19th beginning at 2pm at the Atrium station.
I'm thinking of going over some of the things I do to break out and stay fresh when designing critters. I play lots of shape games with myself and friends. Quick reflex, random train of thought doodling. Usually leads to some really fun results and also helps loosen up the shoulders for some legit drawing.
The basics are, draw random shapes and intersecting shapes. The best is if other people can draw the shapes for you! (I left this image at scale in case anyone wants to draw into it.)
Then take a basic idea, in this case "horse" and do your best to put the details and symbols of that word into the shapes. The thing is you can not hesitate! It's about brainstorming and allowing the shapes and lines to influence you immediately. If you end up with a page of nonsense that is great.
Then pick out from the chaos the ideas which seem the most appealing. Those will be your base influence as you go into a more thought out design. For this horse I used the bottom right idea above. I delete everything else so it isn't distracting me from the one idea and begin refining it into a new drawing.
Ideally I'd draw at least three drawings from the single idea exploring different ways it could have been pushed further. Usually the first one out, like this guy, is a bit conservative and has too many of the shapes that I've trained myself to draw. I want to break my own training and make something new happen. That's the exciting stuff!
Along those lines, I'm very excited about next week. I'm really hoping anyone who comes by to watch will ask some questions too!
I'm thinking of going over some of the things I do to break out and stay fresh when designing critters. I play lots of shape games with myself and friends. Quick reflex, random train of thought doodling. Usually leads to some really fun results and also helps loosen up the shoulders for some legit drawing.
The basics are, draw random shapes and intersecting shapes. The best is if other people can draw the shapes for you! (I left this image at scale in case anyone wants to draw into it.)
Then take a basic idea, in this case "horse" and do your best to put the details and symbols of that word into the shapes. The thing is you can not hesitate! It's about brainstorming and allowing the shapes and lines to influence you immediately. If you end up with a page of nonsense that is great.
Then pick out from the chaos the ideas which seem the most appealing. Those will be your base influence as you go into a more thought out design. For this horse I used the bottom right idea above. I delete everything else so it isn't distracting me from the one idea and begin refining it into a new drawing.
Along those lines, I'm very excited about next week. I'm really hoping anyone who comes by to watch will ask some questions too!
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Sea Toitles
Quick sketches and some less quick color practice.
Oh dread... I'm becoming a hipster...
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
octopi
Flipped the head around a bit to turn it into a "nose". The idea of tentacles is so long and curly I have a hard time tearing away from that notion to simplify. I'd love to make those squiggly lines just fill a page.
Monday, October 31, 2011
More weird mermaid
Just chillin' on the beach, turnin' bodies cold with my bald eagle. Sup baby bird friends!
I wonder if mermaids turn into blobs like deep sea fish do when pulled to the surface? Gross.
I wonder if mermaids turn into blobs like deep sea fish do when pulled to the surface? Gross.
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Can I have that back?
Aw yeah its on! Gonna eat at Ariel's Grotto down in Cali.
Man. I bet astronauts are real happy there are no space mermaids.
I love this song.
I love this song.
Hey this one is great too!
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Zbrush seahorse
Sculpting the little green seahorse guy. Trying the new dynamesh feature out tonight. About 40 minutes.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
quick mermaid
Trying to decide on eating breakfast with Princesses or Mermaids. Also, drawing old timey diving suit guy makes me need to watch these!
Okay, Now I'm just getting silly nostalgic for my favorite theme songs. I have a HUGE soft spot for 60s music, especially theme music. Also, also, I miss the friendly super heroes. Everything is so serious these days.
Monday, October 24, 2011
Friday, October 21, 2011
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Monday, October 17, 2011
Geek Girl Con pics
Photos from last weekends Geek Girl Con via Kraken Studios!
There were lots of really cool costumes. Trevor caught some of the gems on camera. The MST3K was my favorite.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Saturday, October 15, 2011
final corgi painting
18 x 24 acrylic
There are a few ideas I didn't execute fully on this image, but I think I'm happy enough with where it turned out. I'll try to use some of the things I've learned on the next one!
There are a few ideas I didn't execute fully on this image, but I think I'm happy enough with where it turned out. I'll try to use some of the things I've learned on the next one!
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
quickie
I got my computer back and I'm really excited about making some art at home again!
I had a fantastic time at Geek Girl Con over the weekend. It's wonderfully run and I loved the smaller convention crowd. Thanks for getting me involved Kelly and Trevor!
I had a fantastic time at Geek Girl Con over the weekend. It's wonderfully run and I loved the smaller convention crowd. Thanks for getting me involved Kelly and Trevor!
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