Life Is But A Moment, A Single Grain Of Sand, That Slips Right Through The Hourglass, That Slips Right Through Your Hand

I tried to play with textures, but it didn't really work out. I spent literally 1 minute on the hands, so they look more like talons than anything. 

An exercise in futility? I think so.

I would have put this in the last post, but it didn't really match the subject matter. I have bruises from all the rolling on the floor I did when I saw the video that this is from. Horribly slow murderer indeed. 

I would have had something else to post, but the other digital piece(s) I was working on was murdered. It scrambled through alleyways seeped in shadow, frantic, out of breath, and praying for a miracle. It knew that no matter how many twists and turns it lead through the winding paths of the city, no amount of dancing would elude that which pursued it. Emerging from the alley, it paused on a seemingly abandoned street corner, struggling to regain its composure. The city's skyscrapers loomed over it, their immense silhouettes gaunt and imposing, jet black towers that blotted out the glow of the stars. Emptied of their diurnal occupants, these monoliths were without any sparks of life. No company for the damned, it thought. It continued onwards, hoping that as it tangled its way through the lifeless streets, it would eventually find aid in someone, anyone. But it knew, it knew in the deepest reaches of its soul, in the fear stricken crevices of its mind. It would find no one, and it would not escape. It kept on running, futile as it was, through the forest of concrete, dashing through the lanes, the sidewalks, the intersections. Its steps reverberated against against the buildings around it, in panicked, rhythmic thuds. Alas, fate allows no one beyond his grasp.

It felt the presence of the Thing long before its sight could grasp any coherent image, before its hearing could comprehend the cacophony of the Thing's approach. Forced to a stop by the immense gravity of the Thing, it could not help but be overwhelmed by its pursuer. This was the end, it thought, as it looked upon the Thing's horrible visage. With the deliverance of its death, it heard, piercing through the silence, the Thing's final, terrible pronouncement: 

"Error loading PSD File; Unexpected end of document."

So yeah, I accidentally corrupted that painting I was working on. Whoops.   

Slendermen And Slenderwomen

I've made it my mission to post these classwork assignments as soon as I'm done with them, if for nothing else than consistency. Something my character lacks in spades, by the way. 

This is the facial expression sheet for Character Design class. My character is based on Max Shreck's character, blended with a skrull, a bat, a snake, and the progeny of Clan Nosferatu. Done with one of those really awesome Staedtler mechanical pencils.

Find all the off model details! It'll be like a quick session of Where's Waldo, except Waldo's dressed in drag and The Years Have Not Been Kind To His Figure.

This Here's A Neuronic Hwhip

Confucius says: Blag is used for school work

Yep, so I'm going to get around to posting things from school. This is my character from Character Design class. It's clearly based on Benny Goodman, colloquially known as the King of Swing. 

The line quality took a hit during the scanning process, and my attempts to readjust the lines were met with mixed success. I'm fairly pleased with it, if only because I don't normally draw cartoon characters, and when I do, I have no real criterion to judge them on.

Like A Bolt From The Blue

It's time for Royal Winter Fair Review! Ahem. I may have missed the point of the entire exercise, something about structure and form, er...The pencil sketches I made right at the fair were all fairly mediocre, so I made the forms a bit clearer. I may have made the lines a bit too stiff in some of the sketches. One of the sketches is actually cut off. That is because I did not position it properly in the actual sketchbook, and thus ran out of space near the knee joints of the horse, which, luckily, is where the partitions that blocked us from the horse began to conveniently obscure my view (O lordy I hope that one flies). 5 minutes is kind of a subjective term, I think. Who knows, 5 minutes to any other person could be like 6 minutes. Or 10. Relative time, you know.

The studies don't show quite as much structure as I'd like. I expect my mark to take a hit for that. Also, though I attempted to replicate what I saw as closely as possible, some of the muscles will still look kind of wonky. Or completely made up. Boy, I gotta say, the lighting was not optimal in the gas chamber that was the petting zoo, the hazy methane fumes swirling in a noxious vortex, the light a shimmering incandescence through the choking miasma. I did studies of mostly stationary animals, like the cows and sheep. I find that the goats calm down after eating enough to justify chewing cud. The horses stay still while eating, or, rather, while staring at people drawing them, as was the case of one particular horse (apologies for depicting the person the horse was looking at so poorly, but I think that the very  incompetent nature of the drawing should reasonably obfuscate your identity, and thus, render the problem moot). The cows are like statues. Statues that occasionally poop in harmony.

I hope the zoo next semester will be a less harrowing experience than the Royal Winter Fair. Fresh air is, I think, a welcome reprieve from the suffocation of indoors animal exhibits. The Korean BBQ was nice though. It was mostly beef: a poetic middle finger at the audacity of the farm animals for deigning to not smell like Febreze fabric softener.

Bloop Bloop

So this is what I believe I have animated. It's not exactly a squid, nor it is exactly an octopus. I actually animated 8 tentacles, but I made the tentacles a bit too thick in this, so I could only fit 6. Still, that's a good, wholesome number, 6. I'm sure actual squids have much more variety to the various elements of their bodies than what I have decided to include.

I plan on using this as a color key, so that eventually, if I ever want to clean and color my animation, I have a point of reference. The lighting, for the most part, conforms with the background that I had painted for my animation. I was going to do a color key for the sperm whale as well, but I have concluded that since its mostly grey, I'll just use the fill tool. I was actually in the middle of painting it before I totally decided that it wasn't worth the effort.

The big IF is whether or not I have the WILL to color every single frame. Totally not feeling it right now.

Baals

I've also decided to pad my post count with animations from this year. I heard if you get up to 1000 posts, a genie arrives at your doorstep with an offer to grant your greatest desire! (Or a letter of acceptance from Hogwarts!).Only the Bouncing Baal has the background from Digital Tools, though. Uh, I did the Baaloon freehand, before I knew about The Key Frames, so it looks sort of shoddy. That's why it's in my Recycle Bin, and not an object of public Schadenfreude.

I Want To Believe

So I've, uh, updated the background, based on some very helpful suggestions, and I've also layered the pencil test onto it. The animation itself could do with a bit of a polish, though I am very well aware that the only part being graded is the cycle, which appears clear enough. The squid propels itself just a little too fast in the second entry, and the sperm whale also swims a bit too hastily towards the end. More detail would probably help in distinguishing the sperm whale AS a sperm whale, instead of just a swimming blob. The background is a little bit dark, even after contrast and brightness fidgeting, but that may just be because the line quality is a little fuzzy.

I got rid of the hazy shapes in the back, so that there's more open ocean. Got rid of the weird looking smoke, and added another statue to help the emptiness.

With Strange Aeons Even Deer Antlers May Break...Whoops

So when they said that we were supposed to animate sea creatures, I thought "Oh joy! What a wonderful time I shall have concocting the most deliciously maritime background!", more or less in those words. As it turns out, anticipation=/execution, and the background, according to the vague notions I had when I began, needs work.

Those hazy blue shapes in the back, those shapes represent how I wasn't able to think of anything more interesting beyond Corinthian pillars and rocks. The glitter effect, while cool, doesn't work on everything. Maybe rocks, but probably not menacing looking Great Old Ones who look like they were on the receiving end of a particularly festive beauty pageant. There are probably a few issues with composition, potentially due to irregular lighting. The smoke looks really amateurish.

I will definitely retouch/redo this one, uh, eventually. Before the animation is due, I think. Yeah.