Char. Des. Challenge!

Old Mermaids ahoy!
First we have ancient mermaids(men).
There's nothing more ancient in the sea than whales. I figure that mermaids (or mermen in this case), when they get old enough, must turn into whales.


Then... OLD mermaids...
... who are always young at heart.


And finally... TOO old mermaids.

Just some doodles from sick-ville. You know, being sick when you're a kid is great because you can just sit around and watch t.v. (unless you had parents that were of the mind that if you're too sick to go to school then you're too sick to watch t.v. which makes absolutely NO sense). But when you're an adult and don't have cable it totally sucks. I've... been watching a lot of 'Buffy'.
On the other hand, it give me plenty of time to get ready for the CharDes challenge!


Picked up a copy of The Rabbi's Cat when i pre-ordered my copy of Harry Potter Book 7. I first saw this at a comic book store in Berkely last summer and wrestled with buying it for a while. A month or so ago a friend of mine left a copy of Vampire Loves in Jason's appartment and one by one we all read it and fell in love with it. Once i realized that The Rabbi's Cat was by the same guy i had to go out and get it. Joann Sfar is great, i reccomend anything he's done.

Went out to Nova Cafe and Molly Malone's with Kelly, Lars and Jojo the other night. Nova is pretty much the coolest place to eat anywhere. It's this little hole in the wall place right in the middle of the Jewish section of Fairfax, and inside it's decked out floor to ceiling in years worth of collected sci-fi decor. Good food, too. After that we went a couple miles down the street to Molly Malone's, the Irish pub where Flogging Molly first got their start as a bar band. It was fun atmosphere, and okay drinks, but the band playing was non-spectacular and after a while people watching got dull. The same people were standing in front of me, or people that LOOKED like the same people were standing in front of me, so i did a little doodling and after about an hour we left. It was fun, though. I kept hearing about that place and i'd always wanted to check it out.
Kelly's gotten wind of another pub a little closer (?) to us, so i think we're going to have to investigate at some point in the future. Bars seem to make for good gesture drawing, a little more so than coffee shops. In coffee shops you get people having conversations, which is good, but they're always sitting. In bars you get people sitting, standing and leaning, and it's also good for drawing groups of people. that's a thing i've never really thought much about before. In life drawing classes you usually get one person on their own, but not much opportunity to draw them physically interacting with another person.
In any case, my gesture drawing skills have gotten flabby, and it helps me stay in shape.
Similarly, my body has also gotten flabby. i need to get THAT into shape. I bought some bright blue exercise pants :)

She stole the fish.

Although one can only wonder why.








Went to an ASIFA screening of 'Paprika' last night. It's by the dude who did 'Tokyo Godfathers', which i've heard is very good and should see someday.
'Paprika' was pretty schitzoid, and a tad hard to follow, but a cool idea and a lot of fun. In some ways it's the kind of film idea i've always wanted to see realized, only it never made enough sense to i never made it. 'Paprika' never made enough sense, but hey, it got made and i enjoyed watching it :)
If nothing else it's theme song is positively captivating. I've been listening to it on a loop all day. I'd post a sample of it if i could... it's on itunes, go take a listen.

Well, this new blogger is completely retarded, but somehow i've managed to get through it all.

So! A few weeks ago i shuffled off the bonds of student-hood and traded them in for the bonds of real-life.
I graduated.
In a few months i'm going to start a six-month apprenticeship at Disney Feature in the story department, so i'm totally excited about that. (don't let the lack of exclaimation marks detract from the implied levels of excitement)

In the meantime i'm chillaxin' hardcore in dull, sunny Valencia and tryin' to draw whenever i can.
Here's some sketchbooky stuff (kinda old-ish stuff, from my senior portfolio, but it's not like i actually updated this blog at all this year, so... who's gonna know? *grin*)


















And a comission i did for my mom (two summers at pixar, four student films and a BFA, and my mom is STILL the only person who'll give me comissions). Happy early Dia de los Muertos, everybody!




More to come! i'm aiming for daily blog posts this summer. After so much downtime, if there's anyone stil checking this out, you've gotta hold me to it.

Until i finish my film this year, this is going to be more or less a film progress blog, because lord knows i can't really do much else these days!
Middle of February and i'm forgin' on ahead into backgrounds. Two weeks on backgrounds, I'll have about a month to make an animatic, scan, edit, and fully animate what i can, then two more weeks for sound.
HWOO!
Here are some designs for the gas station logo. Yeah flying fossil feuls!

And THESE are all the boards i've done on the the film so far.
They're all thumbnails, not necessarily in order and not all of them will be used. But there's a fat stack of these sitting in my cube, so i thought i'd spread 'em all out and take a look at 'em.



I'm pretty much freakin' out. Like if i had another semester to work on this i think i'd be able to get it done the way i'd like it. I'd like it to be in color, i'd like it to have totally badass lighting, i'd like it to be fully animated. I'd want it to have it's own original score, and i'd like time to really get the hang of doing some cool photo composites for my backgrounds.
I do not have time for any of these things :)
I will probably have to settle for some cool backgrounds and some alpha-channelled story-telling poses... at best.

*explodes.*

It's really, really tough to board a sequence of someone playing a musical instrument and still keep in interesting.
Unless that instrument is an air guitar. That's almost always interesting.

The A stands for "Ass"

Bank of America is pretty much terrible. I mean, they're fine as long as you never overdraft. Or need to talk to a real person over the phone... or the internet. Or have any sort of problem. As long as you are a person for whom problems never. EVER. occur, then you're fine.
I am not such a person. Long story short, BY NO FAULT OF MY OWN my checking statements were being sent to Pixar for the past six months .
So yeah, extra-embarassing. Plus some wierd restriction had been placed on my card seemingly for NO REASON AT ALL.
I went in to Bank of America to straighten the whole buisness out, ready to punch some heads in. The lady teller i talked to was very nice and solved all my problems and suffice it to say i'm not quite as upset as i was when i drew this.

I'm totally still switching to Washington Mutual, though.

It's been a while since i've taken a real vacation.
Unless you count the cruise i went on last summer. I was on a boat with my family for a week. They're good folks, don't get me wrong, but... a whole week. Trapped on a boat. Plus cruises wierd me out. The primary activity on cruises is eating. Their job is to make sure that not a moment goes by without food immediately on-hand.
There were days i'd forget to put the "do not disturb" sign out and the cleaning crew would wake me up at 9 in the morning to change my sheets. They weren't even dirty! I had just spent all night breaking them in.
*sigh*
Anyway, suffice it to say i didn't count that as a real vacation. I'm taking a real vacation this weekend. I'll post pictures if i get any good ones.

Have monsters!

The vacation's over. back to work! I didn't draw much at all while i was home. I sat on my parents couch and watched t.v. and it was glorious. Now my hand is rested and ready to draw!

I removed the last post. Apparently it kept attracting blog spam. Anyone know how to deal with that? I delete them as soon as i get them, but... how do you keep from getting them?

i can... DANCE!

The ghost from my film, sproutin' little leggy-dealies. He doesn't sprout them in the film, but i thought it was cool anyway.

AAAA!

AAAAAAAAAAA!

Kaw!

Some ravens...


I've been considering uploading some photos here. Nothing fancy, i just take pictures of some random stuff (mostly my room mates cats) and some of them come out lookin' neat.

Regarding Photoshop Skills

Today my friend Dianna and i challenged eachother to a duel. A photoshop duel, where we must create the Best Picture Ever using photoshop. This was my final product. If anyone would like a tutorial, i can happily provide one.



Aaaand i guess here's something for real, using more manuscript samples, plus a photo of my bed and laptop. She's a digital medium who contacts the spirit world through the internet (get it? get the pun? i found it appropriate.)

There's a part of me that would love to learn how to illuminate manuscripts. There's a bigger part of me that realizes that the art form is tedious. I suppose that's why i'm an animator.
Plus manuscripting (i don't know the actual word for it, so i made this one up) would have little to no practical application, other than artifact forgery which is good money but weighs too heavily on the soul.
In any case, this is my un-named star of my story this year. i think the manuscript samples i used are the work of the Limbourg Brothers. I just thought they looked neat.

The wierd thing about art school is instead of doodling in the margins of essays you find yourself doodling in the margins of other doodles.
The coelecanth in the corner would be my pirate flag... if i were a pirate.

Pentel makes this brush pen that's impossible to find. My friend Ed knows where to find them and got me one for Hanukkah a few years back. I lost it for about a year, then found it a few months ago. It's a pretty amazing pen. It holds India Ink (i think) and has synthetic bristles that won't fray over time. It's fun to play around with and i need to learn how to use it properly.

Featured below are some attempts to remember how to draw the kanji for "fire". I have failed miserably, my appologies to the culture.

The Ride

This is a a tale of my room mates cat Squash. It is only partially true. Whichever part you choose to believe... i'll leave it up to you.





















To be continued....?

Board-dom!

Some rough boards from my film.


SHAZAM!

It occurs to me that something known as Hollow-Ween. I never really know what to be for halloween these days. Back in the day it was easy... Oh, that cute guy in class likes Star Wars? I'm totally going to dress up as Princess Leia! I actually tried it once, it didn't work. My awkward shyness won out in the end. My hair was long enough to make those buns, though! No wigs for me.
Anyway, in the spirit of the season, my room mates Halloween colored cats. Squash is dresses as a Squash!

Also, some dinosaurs...

Here's the same art from my last post, edited into a photo (courtesy of Corbis.com) to play around with a visual style that i wanted to try for my film. It worked pretty well, but in the end it would be far too time consuming to do for every shot. Still, here it is for your ... enjoyment.

Look at her. She's got hands. Do YOU have hands?

May be the final design for the main character of my film this year. The film itself doesn't really have much to do with hands. The main characters will have hands, but it doesn't really come up much.

And here's some life drawing! It's art that i can make without thinking about it too much :)

Boob kittens and sketchbooks

One of our cats is a boob sitter and the other is a toe biter. The boob sitter is not really that particular (unfortunately, neither is the toe biter)... he'll sit on laps and stomaches. He's sitting on my lap at the moment. But boobs have been sat upon.

Critical studies classes can be kinda dull at calarts. I've been doing a lot of sketchbook drawing, which is good, but i didn't really have the opportunity to just sit and do it all summer. My sketchbook muscles have atrophied, but there's still some odd residual muscle-memory that's allowing me to keep doodlin'