Dailies...A Night at Monaghan's

It was goddamn good soup.

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.

Frothy

They ought to make in-betweening an approved form of "enhanced interrogation". I bet it's cheaper than waterboarding. 

Anyway, how do you make a snail intimidating? Imagine this sort of Gigantic Snail in the mountains, and it's got fire on its back. Sure that fire looks hot, and sure the thing makes mountains look like your backyard anthill, but any immediate sense of intimidation is mitigated by "when was the last time you were outrun by a snail".

 These are people I see around the school. I know some of them, but others I don't. I hope no one recognizes themselves or anything. That'd be pretty awkward, no?

Animal Drawings, Caricatures and... uh.......... EPA?

The Chalk Talk was enlightening. There's certainly quite a bit to think about, but most of it is just wrestling with the immensity of Animation as a field. In addition to incorporating aspects of academic fine art, we're a combination Theatre/Film Making course. At some point, most of us will have to make some kind of duty call to focus a on particular facet of the program, or else risk being stretched too thin over the options. I guess it boils down to being either a story teller, an actor, or a draftsman, with each requiring a unique skill set. Last night's most daunting presentation was on the intricacies of story telling, with its structural complexity and its symbolic depth. Apparently, good storytellers operate in the abstract almost as much as in the concrete, which is manipulated to a T in order to serve narrative continuity. 

Daunting.

I've got a bunch of sketches for different parts of a futuristic supercity with an Egyptian twist. I'm using them to abuse the Blur filter. Maybe I'll learn something from them. 

This painting still has that really unsatisfactory, unfinished quality to it. Everything just isn't working together. This is something that I hope to iron out with more time and practice.

My last character assignment didn't blow over like I had planned. They're pretty far from stellar. Subterranean, even. I know I certainly didn't plan to work on them at 4 AM on the day they were due, for one. To compensate, here's a painting of one of them. 

Bob Jorn of the Oslo Jorns, PROUD VIKING WARRIOR. 

The best kinds of victories in life are assured victories. Congrats to everyone who drew a bear and a tangram.  At least on this occasion, we have all triumphed over life, beat it into unconsciousness, ruined its credit rating and sold its kidneys to organ snatchers in Acapulco. 

Would it still be called the Royal WINTER Fair, even though it's still autumn? Anyway, animal drawings from the Royal Autumn Fair. I enjoyed not having to draw as much this year, but depressingly, I don't see any notable improvement from last year. I'll need to work harder.

Sketches.

 I play a paragon Vanguard in Mass Effect. He looks like but is not explicitly a certain captain of a certain space faring vessel under a certain interplanetary federation. Commander Jean-Luc Shepard, colonist war hero. He's actually British.

But For Me, It Was Tuesday

So when I was about half way through this painting, it occurred to me that being depicted as a Merman With Wings (TM) was not exactly the kind of thing that floats people's boats. In fact, if I was to hazard a guess, I would say that witnessing one's image being distorted in such a manner would likely attribute to their boat being met with an earlier and possibly more devastating end. Functionally, this painting has more in common with your average high yield nautical explosive than any form of caricature. I got the idea from a conversion in our Tuesday Pound Resign Texture, and that's all I've got on the subject.

Yeah, and once again, all these sketches are from Thursday, which seems to be the only day that I can clock in consecutive hours of sketching time. I don't think I even touch my sketchbook on any other day. I meant to have two more paintings ready for this post, but with schoolwork being what it is, both of those paintings currently have about as much form and compositional clarity as a tiled roof covered in pigeon crap...or a Pollock painting (ZING!).

And then there's this. I messed up a lot of the timing towards the end, and went really lax with detailing the splashes. The entire cycle is, on twos, barely two seconds long, which means everything feels rushed. Some of the motion keys don't read at all, and the entire sequence leading from the splash to the repeat is just sloppy as all hell, with all kinds of weird distortions. I wish I had more time to work out the timing issues, but really, c'est la vie.

Urg the MAGNIFICENT

For he is the mightiest of the Orc-lords, unchallenged and supreme in his sovereignty. His followers cower beneath the weight of his majesty, and his enemies invariably become opulent feasts for scavengers. He is the conqueror of the men in the northern plains, the bane of the dwarfs under the western hills, and ravager of the elves in their southern forests. With a blood lust and brutality far surpassing even the vilest of his kin, there is no other whose name is whispered with as much fear, whose approach inspires such absolute dread. There is also no other who would put on lingerie war paint, but really, who's going to argue with him?

Anyway, writing meaningless crap like this is incredibly therapeutic for me. It takes my mind off of the heavier burdens in life, like animating waves, failing at storyboards, and other assorted first world problems. On an unrelated note, Urg is apparently one of the more popular monosyllables that people use to name their orcs. Bummer.

The sketches are basically all from Emslie's class about the contrapposto stance. Speaking of which, I also got this kickass caricature from the man himself. It's like he took a photograph of my soul with a col-erase pencil. Totally my new avatar.

"Chanson" is a genre of french music that seems to cover everything that has singing in the French language, but in modernity refers mostly to Sarkozy's-wife type songs (I actually don't know what the hell I'm talking about). There's a diverse range and a unique infusion of culture (like Bossa Nova), with a fine mix of velvety contraltos and satiny sopranos, all backed by Parisian accordions. It's about four clicks from the Cowboy Bebop Wikipedia article, and was a questionable way to spend the evening instead of animating.

Breaking EveN

I am hooked on a show about drugs, which I guess puts me only a hair's breadth away from watching a documentary about rehabs. 

I haven't done any homework these past few days, mostly cause the wave animation is just kicking my ass. I can't...wrap my mind around it? It's this conundrum that would eat up all my motivation the second I step into a room with anything even remotely resembling a light table. I suppose it'll work itself out eventually, but right now "eventually" has this "in the wee hours of the morning before the assignment is due" kinda ring to it.  

Here's that bear dragon. I'm still working on a way to fit Tim in here, but I'm pretty sure the perspective is off.

The mental patient is my character design for the Spangled Pandemonium, which is inspired (Wait, sorry, what's this "originality" thing you keep jiving on about? Is it some kind of pilates?)

by the Fred Bonaparte design from Psychonauts, in the sense that being bug eyed, lanky and straitjacketed usually invites discriminatory glances from the so called "sane". 

And layouts from the sketchbook. Sort of. Man I can't even pronounce perspective, cut me some slack.