I put my heart and soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process.

It's a long story. But the point of that story would have been that I've gone mad. Anyway, I'd not drawn anything except for work. I really would have liked to draw more, it's not that I didn't want to. I really have no explanation except that I'm a total nutter.

So here's the first thing I've drawn since I've graduated from college. And it's my high school logo and mascot.



I don't miss high school at all. But I sure do miss our mascot. She was really smart.

School's Out

And for the first time in a semester, I could draw something that WASN'T my senior project! Which is still unfinished, but I really did get as much done as was physically possible and I'll probably post the work in progress soon. Anyway, I did some figure drawing to start off... gotta ease back into being an artist now that I'm not animating my project for 15 hours a day.

The beautiful and wonderful Sara King gave me some tips on drawing in Photoshop and I'm finally trying them out and I think she's a genius because these lines look way better than before.

Fast Forward

Guess what? The backgrounds are done. Those things that I was supposed to do a year ago? They're done now. It feels pretty good to say that... even if it's super late. Everything always takes 10 months longer than you think it will.

They're all delicately hand-crafted and there are enough of them to make over one second of 30 fps animation. The rough, stand in animation's almost done too. It'll either happen today or tomorrow.

I'd also like to thank everyone's who's been putting up with my high-stress state of being. It's hard, I know. I'll draw Bayonetta fan art soon, I promise.

Crash and Burn

Things were going okay for my senior project until the past couple of days. Since Wednesday we're showing for the first time this semester, I really wanted to get everything together in a structured, comprehensible format so that everyone could finally see what I'm doing.

So much for that. Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. And now, I have no chance of having something worthy of showing. I feel so comfortable as a character animator, and I work best on paper. But as a film maker... I can't get my drawings on paper to the screen. It's a hurdle I just can't seem to get over. All attempts at compositing it failed. Now I don't have time to make it work.

This is what one of the shots would look like... had I been able to composite it.
I guess... until I figure out, that's all I have to show anyone. That and a big pile of animation paper with drawings that don't make sense by themselves on it. If you can think of a process that would work as far as putting it all together goes, I'm up for suggestions.

UPDATE: I think I figured it out! It only took half the week and now that I have it figured out it's 7pm the day before showing... so yeah, I still can't show a whole animatic, but at least now I know how to make one.

Summer Internship

So I've begun my summer internship at Soup2Nuts, doing character design and animation. I had only applied for an animation internship, but they felt that I had some strengths in design I guess and put me to work under both departments. My first task is to design and build a character based on myself in the style of WordGirl, which is the studio's main project. After that, I'll add the character in a scene in an upcoming episode of WordGirl as an extra. I've finished the character (and actually, this isn't the final version here, but rather the penultimate version), and have begun animating.

So far it's been a blast working there. Everyone is so nice and... eccentric. Not to mention they've got an industrial sized coffee maker that I'll probably live at more and more as I get more and more comfortable there. Everyone's been really eager to help and are always thinking up little tricks and tips they can show me. Though at the end of each day I've been completely wiped due to the mass of information I've been given and struggling to retain. I'd better get comfortable with getting up and getting coffee soon.

Thirty-five and a half hours to go!

So the plan used to be to finish up two character sheets tonight before going to bed... but since I'm exhausted and I've got to leave for a math final at 6:30... I'm just gonna leave it at one and hope for a productive miracle tomorrow.
This may be the parental-figure-type character in my senior project, based *very* loosely on my own mother's appearance, and her personality more closely. Happy Mother's Day!

Radio Doctor Character Designs

Yeah, so clearly I'm on a roll with the posts: learning the art of blogging and whatnot while I finally digitize some of my work in preparation for final crits. I'm trying to hide the fact that it has been a comparatively unproductive year, for many reasons. Wish me luck, eh?

Character Designs from Character Development

Beginning to prepare for crit...