Disney Sketches

These are just some sketches I did from The Princess and the Frog and Tangled - most of the ones of Flynn are from the art of book. A lot of the structure lines in these have gotten lost because of the scanning and whatnot, but I drew them rather lightly to begin with. Obviously doing these sketches is about the least original thing an artist can do, but it's great practice, especially in regards to getting a character on model.

Honestly, to some degree I enjoy doing stuff like this more than personal art...which is good since I know I can stand drawing characters that are not mine. If I couldn't, I'm sure I wouldn't last being an animator, haha.

Layout Pan and Portfolio

Our last assignment for my Layout class was to create either a repeat horizontal pan or a repeat vertical pan (I chose horizontal). I'd definitely recommend clicking the image for the larger view...since it's difficult to read at this size. I spent a ton of time on this, mostly because I  didn't really have any other assignments to worry about since final assignments for the other classes were mostly due the week prior to this one. Our teacher isn't really a hard marker, so I really could have gone a more simplistic route, but I don't want to get in any kind of habit where I do easier works just because the teacher doesn't mark that hard. That's a mindset I really want to stay away from, I know I won't grow much as an artist if I don't challenge myself!

For those reading this blog who aren't really familiar with how things in animation production work, so family and whatnot, this is separated into different levels. There's the background, the animation, the overlay/underlay and the special effects. You have to think of this piece in terms of how it would look on the screen. So on screen, you wouldn't see this image in its entirety, you'd only see a portion of it at any given time as it'd be panning, with the leopard in the foreground walking, and the guy in the raft moving along in the river.

Final version:

Rough version:

And the initial concept:

 

This is just a picture I took while I was working on it, so you can get a sense of the scale. 

Also, here is a close up of the tribal guy, since he's rather small even in the larger image. The fingers on the hand grasping the spear are a bit wrong, considering they should overlap the shaft...but whatever! There's so much going on in this piece that that's rather insignificant. Don't mind the crudely drawn ripples in the water either, haha.

 

In addition to this assignment above, we had to hand in a few pieces for a layout portfolio. I wasn't really sure how refined this portfolio was to be, but Komza did say it could be just sketches if that is how we wish to be represented. Below are a few of the pieces I handed in for that.

 

These are mainly just concepts...not at all finished pieces.

Bone Portfolio

Well, I wasn't going to post this, but I spent so much time on it I figured I would. We had to do a bone portfolio for life drawing class...making it informative yet also creative/fun.

 

Ball & Tail Animation

Here's our last animation assignment of the semester. Basically, we had to animate a ball...with a tail, but give it some personality! This took a little under 200 drawings. There are some parts I'd like to be slower, but I can't be bothered to add more frames in those areas...no way do I feel like pencil testing this again!

Master Copy Painting

Here's the painting I did for none other than my painting class. We had to choose a background from anywhere, be it a movie, tv series or short film, and then replicate it. We just traced over the print out, which was a method that surprised me at first...seems like cheating! But this wasn't meant to be focused on the drawing the elements, it was meant to focus on the painting of them. Plus, this is how things would be done in the animation industry. Those who paint the backgrounds generally aren't the same people who actually drew and planned them out, unless perhaps it's a really small studio or something. You can have a perfect outline and still end up with a totally terrible final result if the painting was executed badly.

I chose a background from Lilo and Stitch, the tv series I believe. I could post the original background up, but having them side by side just puts mine to shame! Looking at my painting on its own though, I'm pleased with how it turned out. There are some slight color differences between this and the original, but that's alright. Matching colors exactly can be quite tough. So here is the painting that consumed many hours of my life:

Character Expressions

Here are my character expressions for Character Design. I think this is the first character design assignment that I'm pretty pleased with! When I showed the teacher my design he said that I should give it no neck, because with the neck, it looks like an older baby. I like the neck though, so I kept it. He also said to get rid of the gum line in the open mouthed expressions, because it just looks confusing. I prefer it with it though, so that's the 2nd piece of advice of his I completely disregarded. Hopefully he doesn't mind too much that I didn't alter my design based on his suggestions. I don't really like the one where she's scared/frightened, but it was the last expression I did, so I just wanted to get it over with.

Royal Winter Fair Drawings

I went to the Royal Winter Fair last Friday and drew animals for a good 9 hours or so. I didn't really understand the hype of it all, I guess I just found all the animals too ordinary. I expect that I should enjoy the zoo trip next semester much more than this. The RWF still made for good practice though. I'm ashamed to say this is essentially my first time really drawing animals, excluding the few drawings I did for my portfolio and such. Because of this...these drawings aren't great or anything, but a couple of people I know wanted to see them, so here they are.

I dislike the standing cow drawing that's above/to the left of the cow sitting down. Just thought I'd point that out...I quite like my pig drawings though!

Textures

This is an assignment done for painting. Each measures to  4.5 inches by 3.5 inches. I really enjoyed doing these; my hatred towards painting has decreased quite a fair bit. I think it's acrylic paint that I really hate...I honestly don't mind gouache painting, unless whatever I'm working on isn't working out. I don't particularly care for the first one of these, so I did an extra one because of that. We only needed 4. I think my favorite one is the walnut, though the leaf is up there too!

Nemooo.

Here's what I did for the marine animal assignment. It is most definitely nothing special compared to a lot of other 1st year students' animations, but that's okayyy. This view was just tough for me in regards to envisioning the fin movement and what not, so that partially made me get tired of working on it very quickly. Also, with this view, I feel that panned background wouldn't really be panning in this manner...but that's how we were to do it. Had I done a profile shot of it it would make more sense, but that would have been even harder to capture the fin movements! I could have pushed myself more with this, but what with all my other classes I found that to be less of a priority.

Life Drawings

I noticed I haven't put any life drawings up, so I figured I may as well do so now. I believe most of these are 3 and 5 minutes, with a 30 and either a 30 or a 1...When I make another life drawing post I'll try to do so in a better manner by displaying the time frames for each drawing. For now I figured I'd just throw some up.

Earlier Assignments

Below is just one painting from a set of 3 (using the same composition but different painting methods). This was done weeks ago, but I only just got it back, so I was finally able to scan it and whatnot.

And here is the first assignment done for my layout class. So again, this was done weeks back! Our second assignment revolved around this first one, but I really do not like how it turned out so I'm not even going to bother putting it up! There are some things I would have changed about this drawing here, one thing being not having that cluster of sand toys behind the seagull, which makes that area a bit hard to read. It ended up that way because I initially had the seagull bending down eating from a puddle of melted icecream, so the background worked fine, but by changing the position of the seagull, things got a bit crowded. I probably could have focused on the layout more so than I did, but there's no point in worrying about that, especially considering it was only the first assignment.

Cloud Painting

This is my final cloud painting for my painting class, in its best form...and by that I mean, before an additional half inch was added to each side so that it would conform to the size requirement. I guess it would have been smart to go on the school computers and read the requirements before, and not after, I did the painting. I just went along with what a classmate had said about the size. It's tricky adding the additional inch...getting the colors to match and whatnot. In the "new" version, you can kind of tell that it doesn't match up perfectly because of an underlying pencil line...but it's alright.

I quite like the color palette, it was inspired by a particular photograph I saw. :)

Character Poses

An assignment for Character Design class. I like the character overall but not so much the poses I came up with. Especially the 3/4 back view...looks weird. But it was a required viewpoint so eh well. With practice I'll get better at posing, though more specifically, drawing out the pose that I imagine in my head. Also, I'm still not satisfied with my ability to draw feet/shoes/boots...I'll work on that. As hard as I am on myself I don't despise this piece by any means, I just tend to pick out the flaws instead of focusing on the positives!

Animations

This is a book page turn, done for an animation assignment. I got really confused when planning it out...lines galore. It came out alright, though.



The next animation is something random I did today just as an experiment of sorts. I've never animated a character so I figured I'd spend an hour at making that attempt. I used the character I'm using for a character design assignment. There are of course a number of issues with this, but it was just for fun so I don't care!

Todd White

So, Todd White came to speak at Sheridan today from 11 to 12 something. I had English class from 9 to 12 where we had to write a midterm essay, but I wanted to go to the lecture so I might have sacrificed the quality of that essay by rushing and leaving early...oh well, I know it wasn't bad enough to get me a failing grade. Anyway, Todd was a lead character designer for Spongebob Squarepants for the first 5 or so years of its production, he also worked on the Angry Beavers (nostalgia!) and some other shows. Nowadays he isn't so much into the animation industry, rather, he focuses on painting. He was the official artist for the Grammys in 2007, and he recently worked on a project for Coca-Cola (his artwork will be produced as a limited edition on their bottles). Anyway, he's gotten to be pretty well known, so it was pretty cool to be able to see him speak/meet him!

What made me want to go see him the most was the fact that he worked on Spongebob as the lead character designer. He said that he didn't design the main characters (Spongebob, Patrick, Squidward, etc) because the creator (Stephen Hillenburg) had already had in mind how they were going to look. However he designed heeeaps of characters for the show. Hey, animated shows need extras too! Supposedly he actually designed *all* the characters that appear that aren't the main ones. My interest in Spongebob has certainly waned over the years, but I still enjoy it. I meant to bring my Spongebob Squarepants Movie DVD for him to sign but I didn't even think I'd be able to make it anyway because of my English class, plus I simply forgot to bring it. Oh well, a signed piece of paper is better than nothing!

So yep, that's about it! The other thing that completely made my day was going to the book thingymajig that was being held at Sheridan and buying an Art of Mulan book. It's out of print, and I've been looking to get my hands on one for quite some time because I love the movie, so I'm excited to have finally gotten it! I also got an art of Brother Bear book, as well as a Lilo and Stitch book that contains stories from the film's creators. So yes, good day. :)

Hands & Feet

Here are 12 hands and 12 feet drawings done for my Life Drawing class. :) They aren't even due until Thursday; yay for not procrastinating! I actually started on 'em weeks ago, and each week did just a few, instead of doing them all at once. +1 for time management!

Overall, I enjoyed doing the hands...not so much the feet! I don't know why, probably just because I find hands a lot easier and more fun to draw.

First Animation Assignments

Bouncing Ball, Bowling Ball, Balloon & Pendulum. :)

Character Design

This here's my first assignment for my Character Design class. There are a number of problems with it, but seeing as it was only our first assignment I decided not to put the extra time and effort into redoing the drawings. As long as I don't fail badly enough to get kicked out of the program, I'm not too concerned with marks. I'm more so focused on learning and advancing, and hopefully good marks will stem from that!

Drawing hands in rotation is not my forté, nor is drawing feet. Also, I have issues with the profile view on this particular character, the nose lacks the continuity there is in the other views. In regards to the clothing, the pants are actually (unintentionally!) pretty identical to the ones I used for the character I designed for my entrance portfolio. That being:

The next assignment, which involves drawing various poses of an original character, should be much more easy for me because I don't have to be so focused on lining everything up like with a rotation. It should be a lot more fun and creative as well! :)

Oh yea, and HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MI MADRE!!!

Name Slate

Beware of the rainbow explosion below...

Ah, color! :) This is a project done for my Digital Tools class. It was completely open ended, and this is what I came up with. Kids and their imaginations... Now, as if it isn't obvious, she's pretending she's a pirate sailing the seas, map and telescope (paper towel roll) in hands! Additionally, she drew all over the walls to make her surroundings feel more like a waterscape. The blankets are intended to be reminiscent of waves, though I'm not sure if anyone would pick up on that without knowing that beforehand. So yep, that's about it.

Post Numero Uno!

So...I suppose this is now my first ever post on, practically, my first ever blog! Here is where I'll (hopefully) post art of mine for friends, family and random passers-by to know what I've been up to in my artistic world. :) For this post I think I'll just put up a work in progress of the banner I made for myself over the course of today and yesterday.

More than once has my mom stated how much she wants miniature elephants to exist. Since such a creature will not be a part of our world in the unforeseeable future, having them exist within an art piece is an acceptable alternative, no? I just wanted something fun and cute as a banner, so this is what I came up with. I wasn't too focused on anatomy of the elephants and whatnot, as there was no need to be. A friend of mine pointed out that there's a ton of water pouring out of that bowl, probably more than the bowl would allow, but heck - art goes beyond such laws of the universe! In hindsight I could have made the water a bit transparent, but ehhh whatever, it's just a header! Hopefully there's nothing I want to change, because I mistakenly destroyed the PSD file just a few minutes ago... 

All of the pieces that I digitally color end up being very softly shaded. It's just what happens when you pair me up with Photoshop. Many times I've told myself that I'll try to develop another, more painterly, digital coloring style, but I have yet to actually do just that.