Draw a Day still Underway

Ehhhhh so for the time being, and until I can submerge myself back into HTML editing without getting eyestrain I'm defaulting to a different blog template for now.  Thanks to those who offered tips, I just gotta dig around where all the values are for proper layout...

Also BACK TO ANIMATION SOON...I promise.  Well I promised myself so I've got to set my time aside wisely, but I'm gonna be switching my catch-up personal stuff around since this month is so short.  For now here's some more drawings/paintings (all digital here) for the going-ons over at Satellite Soda this month:

 ^ I did this one with my opposite hand for shits n giggles and because I am a jerk.

A Wee Delay but Still Tons o' Stuffs

Ok ok, so I'm a little behind with my personal animation, but that should be gearing up again in a short while. In the meantime I started a Monthly Draw-A-Day Challenge that I haven't taken part in for some years now with a fantastic gang over at SatelliteSoda.com. Here's my first entries so far...the rest of the month to go!

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Also, if anyone has any tips on how to reformat a blog so posts and images arn't chopped in half (like you're probably seeing now), any help is appreciated!  I'm going a little crazy trying to fix this...

January "Finish Me!" Work and Susano

So before the weekend starts I'd like to kick off my first batch of resolutions - my "Finish Me!" three month series. I'm starting off nice and easy - a bit of animation I began a couple months ago and had pushed aside until now.

I'm in love with the Japanese film Wanpaku Ôji no Orochi Taiji (sometimes called The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon, read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanpaku_Ouji_no_Orochi_Taiji) and draw a lot of visual inspiration from it. It's fairly simple in terms of story, but the execution feels like a very nostalgic fantasy.

Trailers for the film, which was released in 1963 in Japan.

I started the ruffs in Flash, and had just started cleaning up the keys, but want to take it into Toon Boom and clean up the animation from there. I've been working in their Harmony software and am quickly becoming a fan of the program. For the background I've got a couple ideas to work out in After Effects, but we'll see about that later.

A model sheet from the film - I love the simple design of the characters, but they all still exhibit clean action lines and emotion.

So when I set about thinking of a small bit of animation I could start for practice - something that I didn't have to necessarily design from scratch and just focus on straight animation and compositing while sticking to a finished model - Susano, the main character from Little Prince popped into my head. He rides the most adorable little Pegasus, and the action directed for the horse is hilarious and fun, not strict and literal.


Unfortunately it's pretty difficult to find a good copy of the movie - it seems to be one of those films confined to a vault and only available on an obscure DVD copy or two (that's not in my region code, OF COURSE). The only copy I have is a recorded television broadcast, in a fairly obnoxious English dub, but, ah well what can ya do =\.

Happy New Year!

The start of anything new and fresh is always good mental inspiration for a lot of things. Change, repairs, and clean starts are present in a lot of personal resolutions, and are never short of present in creative fields. That's why I'm bucking up and solidifying goals for myself this year.


My animation has actually grown pretty stale, and I'm making quite a few adjustments alongside projects for artwork. A few things I'd like to post on this blog consist of a handful of monthly animation goals - not on new projects but on pieces I've actually begun and failed to finish as of yet. It's nice to start completely fresh on things, but very discerning to leave perfectly good beginnings to collect dust.


Each month I'll be working on short animation pieces - not necessarily complete shorts, just something to practice on for different reasons. January, February, and March will consist of three clips each that will have progress posts to share, while when April hits I'd like to post an announcement for a much larger project.


As terrible as I am with personal motivation, I hope that pushing myself to publicize these guys will give me a good incentive to keep up the work on them. Some things fall a bit short sometimes this way - I never really continued with my weekday morning drawing exercise that I started here - but trying to plan experiments like this help to see what's blocking progress, and I'd like to continue to correct these kind of shortcomings.


I'll be posting the first update on January's animation work later this week. It's already pretty far along so I can upload what's already done then.

Henry on a Walk

Haven't made a post in a while! Here's just a ballpoint pen sketch I finished recently and had fun with:



Also, check out this Green Giant spot I completed in a week...been keeping busy for sure!
http://www.facebook.com/#!/video/video.php?v=118689148198872&oid=122520672138&comments

Character Sketch Post

Some sketches before I take off for the day.

A random raccoon:


Cody...and some chickens!


Henry:

Voltron Love

Look at these. Look. At. Them. THESE ARE FANTASTIC. HOW HAVE I NEVER SEEN THESE. Who on this planet was so blessed by the hands of fate that they got to make something so obnoxiously fun?











Even the live action is fun. Campaigns need to be more engaging like this again, maybe TV would be a little more appealing to me...

Cub and Cody and ???

Just a quick sketch journal post before I take off on a trip...



Faber-Castell brush pen in a Moleskine.

Two of our cats.

Kali is a hoot. And a little demon. Lovable kind!

Starfish is the little angel princess. This is all of her for now:

Quick Sketch Post

Urk. Must. Do. Some. Sketches!

Dinosaurs!

Ok, since it's been terribly long since my last post - and I would really like to get back into posting more soon - I'm going to get this over with and share some dinosaurs!

These guys here were designs for a Lucky Charms spot.



And the bust maquette I made for finalizing the look (the dinosaur was CG in the final spot)


And here we have more dinos! This time for a Trix Yogurt spot that was for a stop-motion puppet!


Here's the mock-up maquette for the final puppet...

And the construction for the actual puppet...


...almost done...




...Ta-Daaa!


And in her final glory:


All done here at Calabash Animation!

Some Designs and Sharing Stuff

So I haven't had much of a chance to share work I've been doing for, ohhhh the past YEAR for my job! Just didn't really get motivated to compile a good little collection. And since most of these spots have aired for quite some time, I'm assuming they've run their course enough for me to share some behind the scenes of a few elements.

My biggest and most enjoyable position so far has been character design and color work. Color used to be my kryptonite funny enough, when I was younger, but I've beaten my weakness to a pulp over the years and now love working with it.

All of this artwork in this post are for just a few General Mills spots I've worked on so far.


I really loved this first design here:


This was the final:

I had to paint a doll concept as quick as I humanly could, and she came out super cute!

I love painting mock-ups for scenes to help set the environment. My painting skills in Photoshop are getting faster and faster:


I even got to paint (a ton!) of backgrounds for a series of Trix web shorts. Though since I was still new at it and doing so on a mass scale, I soon found out I was way in over my head and had to bring in extra help!


Which designs do you recognize? See any on TV recently?

Next post will have...DINOSAURS!

Character Art Post

A little something for this morning to share, one of my newer characters...for goodness knows what at the moment to be honest. Wanted to post a bit today since I'll be really busy with guests this weekend.


Mellie the mysterious rock princess.

Gouache Work

Been busy on and off, cutting into time to create pieces for myself or doing any daily drawing. I also lost time to work for July's 11-Second club, so it will unfortunately not be done in time. Will still work on it though for a demo reel pieces since I love the sound effects and idea I came up with. Good news though, I sought out an open drawing session in a gallery close to work, so I'll be working on figure studies once again (slacker me!). Also, here's a random gouache piece for you all:

Daily Workout - Week 7

Just gonna post random stuff all this week! Keep checking back daily for images added to this post.

A quick color and design sketch, two baby tyrannosaurs are stalked by a mysterious creature after their mother dies:


Shoot...didn't get around to posting yesterday due to finishing up a ton of animation clean up, but I've got this little guy for today! I'd going to try and pull together a piece for this month's 11 Second Club competition, especially since it's a really fun sound FX clip and I immediately got a cute idea for it. This is the design of one of the characters in my clip.

I'm only going to add color if time offers me such a luxury, but for now it's only going to be black and white. I just dropped in this purple for fun.

Henry Color Sketches

Some work done over the weekend; practice in gouache.