One of those 1920's Slappers

That's what they're called, right?

Color Test... and a Post

You know, it's nice to have color calibration software. Problem with that though, is that true colors look like true puke. Kind of a juggling match, color adjusting.

It's also nice to take a break from antelopes for a little bit, but that's coming back on real real soon. This is technically a life drawing.

Really have to update this blog more.

IT'S OVER

I may have just seen Paperman again...

Helloooooooo Summer!

Freakin' Out Man

I still added the typewriter!

Clarity of form? 

For whom does the bell toll,

but for the poor,

 poor,

huddling masses of animation students,

 with the shadow of portfolios at their throats?

This isn't the Spanish Civil War, but it's Almost As Bad (maybe). Like some kind of strange purgatory where work constantly rains from the sky and can never be finished. 

Forever.

Sketch on the ground

I don't even know man.

The Great DQ Tree

Thanks to Charlie for the idea. 

Suppose for a moment, that time was water.

Imagine then, that the span of the Christmas break was a bowl. The time that constitutes that span is the water sloshing in the bowl. 

Now let's assume that Productivity is Shin brand Ramen noodles. These ingredients would be put into the bowl of water, and God willing, become something edible. That bowl of Ramen would be the culmination of a productive break well spent.

Follow?

Now imagine taking that bowl of water, going to your bathroom, and dumping both the bowl and the water into the toilet. Suppose then that you took the packet of Ramen and rabidly tore at the packaging with your teeth, scattering the ingredients onto the bathroom floor. From your rabidly foaming mouth, you would deposit the shredded packaging into the toilet, and you would flush. Repeatedly.

You do not know why you are doing this, and in your mind, you reel in horror from the inanity of your actions. Yet you do not stop. You are gripped with a compulsion that gurgles from the dark recesses of your subconsciousness, and against the force of its necessity, you can do no more than let out a single, tortured rasp. You step blindly and wildly, crunching the scattered Ramen noodles on the ground like bone dry autumn leaves, as if to make for an exit. Yet still you flush, and flush, and flush... 

That is, I think, one way to describe my break.
It was actually pretty cool otherwise. One of my better Christmas breaks, in fact.

Crazy patterned fish from the zoo.

O Son of Morning

Crunch time is crunching. Crunchity crunch. 

Taking a break from layout work. This sculpture is from life drawing today, 3.5 hours. Beats staring at a harsh white Cintiq screen, I guess.

My Ecorché Totoro

But seriously though, I really need to do actual work.

Dinosawrs

Group B1! From left to right... eh, you can figure it out yourself. 

Note that Izzy and Maria were drawn by the wonderful Maureine Good, who also helped with the coloring. A real credit to the team she is.

And our group logo, designed in 5 minutes on short notice. We are technically the only religious organization to have ever produced a film at Sheridan. I think it's funny, but I'm sure the cabal of lawyers staring at me through my window don't think so. They need to maybe prosecute a chill pill.

Some drawings from the dinosaur show. Funny bit about that, we didn't even draw any of the dinosaurs from the show we payed money for. These are from the permanent collection. The idea is that we'll piss away our money now, while we aren't starving between ramen packets.

Clickety*Clackety

Heroes and Villains

THE VILLAIN, when a man's unfathomably deep frustrations weaken the barriers between his mind and the minds of those beyond, becoming deformed and deranged in the process. As the nameless horrors force themselves onto our fragile world, their aspects increasingly and grotesquely intersect with that of their unfortunate host. Let's call him OCTOPUSMAN.

THE HERO, Pavel Parson takes great pride in his ingenuity. Having always been as weak as a kitten, he has had to make up for the shortcomings of his frame with the breadth of his intellect. He scales the urban landscape with the aid of his mechanical contraptions, moving with far more dexterity and grace than even the most physically able of his peers. Let's call him DR. SPIDER.

Also preliminary linework.

Church of Animationology

I can't really sleep tonight. Nerves, you know?

This was one of the ideas we had for the group film. Ignore the cheesy font. It's about a pair of nordic ancient aliens who are not Tom Cruise and John Travolta artistically beaming patterns onto a suspiciously blue planet with their vaguely DC6 shaped spacecraft. Sure it's stupid, but it's a charming sort of stupid.

I also took my layout workbook and colored it a little. Since I was going to start doing dailies to bolster my portfolio, and this is as good of a place as any to start. 

Also life drawing dump.

30s and 1's

Potpourri

Forget About Freeman?

They released Black Mesa. In our lifetimes. Before this, there was about an equal likelihood of Black Mesa being released as there was of the world ending. In fact, many actually considered the release of Black Mesa to be one of the precursors to the rapturous ending of all. I'll be watching the news for incoming meteors and suspicious horsemen.

On the other hand, it's actually MORE likely for the world to end than for HL3 to be released. Perhaps the few survivors clinging to life in the charred husk of a landscape following the apocalypse will stave off radiation poisoning long enough to witness the release of HL3. 

SHERIDANVANIA II: DISNEY'S CURSE

This layout could have turned out better. Would've been nice to scan it or something, photographing line work really kills the line quality. I'm hoping a good post-sketch process will help work out the kinks here. 

Also, first week of extra life drawings. Really gotta work on the shorter poses.

Freddie Mercury min

30s

2 min

1 min

3 min? This isn't even a good drawing, but it sort of reminds me of "Old Man With A Guitar"

5 min

5 min

5 min

5 min (Marker technique needs work, A LOT of work)

5 min

5 min

10 min

AND sketches. 

Also a self portrait. Technically the first homework assignment of the year. I included some ribald little jest about my desire to draw better in a hastier fashion this year, but in a far more direct manner.

I WANT 2 DRAW GUD FAST

Yup.

Once More Unto the Breach

Welp.

 There goes the summer.

A squid headed goddess of death

"

An avian god of art

A richly adorned, fox headed god of thieves

I made a bunch of pastel sketches based on a random text generator a while back. My final project for the summer was to develop them. Beyond redesigning them, the point of these was to wean myself off of an over-reliance on digital tools.

 The digital painting in this lineup is the thing that frustrated me enough to drop the digital angle. It is decidedly unfinished.

I also have some lore-like snippets written up for these characters. Those I'll have to proofread a little more. There's  A LOT of made up words.

Clouds by my window

This is basically the only study I did all summer. Since I had my laptop reanimated, I haven't been able to get the color settings right, so these could look like... anything, really.

5 min

15 min

10 min

 Last life drawings for the summer. 

This is the same model as the one from the first session of the summer. 

Heh.

Stuff from the zoo.

 I caved and bought a membership on impulse, so now I have to go to the zoo more, if I ever want to recoup my losses. I'm always sort of hesitant to go to the zoo, since people there treat art students about the same as the animals.

I can't really read it either

Finally, this blasphemy of penmanship. I've been waking up at 3 in the morning and writing whatever comes to my head on this piece of newsprint the entire summer. Between this, a .txt file on my desktop and a few pages of Iphone notes are about 10 to 20 different ideas for the group film. Of these, only about 5 are worth anything, and of those five, only 3 have coherent plot beats. 

Still.