Updates and Inspirations

I have not had much to post lately even though I've been keeping busy with projects.  Here are some updates.

"What's New in SAND 1.5" comic
So I can't actually post it here, but I essentially completed my very first comic.  We completed version 1.5 of SAND at work and were asked to give a presentation of it to the TD sup's and leads.  We put together an outline of the material we wanted to cover and then I decided to put it into a comic form!  It took a few late nights at home, but it turned out really well!  (It was received really well at the meeting and word spread about it.)  I'm quite proud of it and it works really well as a proof of concept for communicating very technical things in a visual, accessible way.  I've been wanting to do that for a while and have some other ideas on where to go next :)

Avatar: The Last Airbender - thumbnailing
I finished up thumbnailing episode 2, but since I started in the middle of it, I decided I should thumbnail the first part too.  So I wrapped back around and still have about a third of the episode to thumbnail.  Oyy... still learning a lot, but some days it's pretty monotonous.  Will scan them up soon.


20th Century Boys - thumbnailing
In case I haven't mentioned it before,  I've also been thumbnailing the pages of 20th Century Boys, currently my favorite manga.  I'm also learning a lot here and getting a better sense of pacing in the comic form and how much dialogue you can get away with and how to keep it interesting.  Progress has been slower on this though because I'm working much smaller and it feels even more tedious.  Will scan some up soon.

Project Apricot
I haven't made much more progress on thumbnailing and have spent more time working on the two studies above.  Though honestly I've probably been using the two studies above as excuses to not work on my own stuff some days.  I need to readjust my goals and motivate myself to just do it.  New goal:  thumbnail for an hour for Project Apricot every week; outline for an hour for Project Apricot every week.

Concept Art 
Haven't done much in that regard lately, but following the posts of my talented friend Patrick Jensen, I found and joined a great facebook group where an amazing collection of super talented concept artists from the industry post 30 minute paintings inspired by topics of the day.  Daily Spitpaint is simultaneously inspiring and makes me want to pick up my tablet, and also intimidating because I have so far to go and no time lately to follow down this new path.  New goal:  Do at least one daily spitpaint challenge a week.

Artists to watch
Since my last post, I've gone to APE (Alternative Press Expo) again and though we were rushed this year because of time constraints and other engagements, we saw a lot of amazing artists, and I've compiled a list of links to blogs and websites that I will frequent for inspiration.  Here's the list:

artist blogs

e t e l o i s

Rad's blog

d3capmode

gheehappy

Greg Peltz

Brittney Lee

Francis Vallejo | blog

Josh Kao's blog

Nathan Fowkes Art

LIBRA BEAR

Charicreatures.com :: The Art of Genevieve Tsai

Charicreatures Blog :: Genevieve Tsai

The Art of Eunjung June Kim

Tuna Bora

Scribbles For Sweetpea

cake-o

Keiko Murayama - Online Portfolio

Everyday Love – the art of Nidhi Chanani – Home

Everyday Love

LITTLE BITS

Nhu Q Diep - Home

Waffles the Cat | Home | Online Store Powered by Storenvy

Pickle - The little bird who doesn't Tweet!

Hediun's Atelier by hediun on Etsy

Thousand Skies

tonybuifanclub

♥Cindy Chen♥

Pin Illustration

Hula Bunny - Cute Animation - Dress Up Games - Sketches - Art

Berkeley Mews -

Animated Shorts
I've also been playing with the idea of making some shorts out of the Prairie Rabbits universe.  This has gotten me researching shorts and digging up my favorites again.  Here are a few:

Mirage (which I've shared before)

Mirage from Iker & Dana on Vimeo.

Oktapodi (Octopus love)
 

Paperman (currently not available online because it's being considered for an Oscar)

Carn (visually striking and haunting)

The Wedding (perfectly neurotic and just a bit poignant and just a bit profound)

I found some of these from a site called shortoftheweek.com.  Great collections of animated shorts.  I'm still making my way through.  A lot of good stuff here.
http://www.shortoftheweek.com/category/style/animation/
http://www.shortoftheweek.com/category/style/3d-animation/

Wow.  That's enough for now I guess.  Not much to show, but there's definitely a lot happening.

Movies in color - color study

Did another color study.  This is a frame from The Godfather, which, I admittedly, have not seen.  Cinematography on this shot is pretty amazing.  Had to experiment a bit to pick up the green in the upper right corner darks, and the blues in the middle gray area.  This one was pretty fun.

Movies in Color - color study

Jason Sheier, a concept artist from work, gave a great tip about learning color for concept art paintings.  I'm starting a series of color studies where I pick out entries from the blog moviesincolor.com, and try to replicate them.  Hopefully, as I get better with color, it will look closer and closer.  Here's a first attempt.

Concept Sketch Practice

Tried another exercise in concept thumbnail sketches.  These are both rough scene explorations for two characters from Project Apricot, namely the two twin goddess whose powers can manipulate sound.  (I did a really rough sketch of these characters early, here.)

The bottom one is looking up from the inside of a tall tower, with a figure flying up.  This was a tricky perspective to do and I modeled it after this picture of the Inverted tower in Portugal: 

It still needs a lot of work.  The colors on both look flat, but the textures required are really challenging.  Ugh.  It sucks, but I'll keep trying.

Concept Sketch Practice

I attended another art dev class at work, this time taught by the amazing concept artist Jason Sheier (see his blog here http://d3capmode.blogspot.com/).  And it was really incredible to both see his process and get his thoughts on constructing a compelling scene.  I am continually inspired and blown away by the amazing talent in our company.

So with some of his lessons still fresh in mind, I forced myself to sit down and try it out.  It's not great, but it's a start.  I'm practicing the thumbnailing technique he demonstrated.

And I painted it using the very first photoshop brush that I made!  It looks like this:

The next step is to work on varying the value.  Right now, the values are too similar and most of the image blends together.  Another thing to do is to add more elements so that there are more entry points into the image and also creating more paths for you eye.

On the topic of blogs of artists from work (in case I haven't posted it before), here are blogs from two very cool artists from work:
Rad Sechrist (who taught the outstanding comic class) - http://radfordsechrist.blogspot.com/
Priscilla Wong - http://etelois.blogspot.com/

Pacific Mraow

So this pic is a bit belated because I was all about Pacific Rim and it's not in theaters anymore.  But still.  Loved it.  And here's Pacific Mraow.

And the dimensions?  Yeah, I basically made it specifically for my facebook cover pic.

Thank you cards

This is a thank you card I drew in photoshop and Michael vectorized in illustrator.  We have most of them sent out... We're so bad at stuff like this... though I've been trying to get Michael to push through the last of it.

But here's what it looks like.  Referencing our honeymoon to Belize and the lovely and serene resort we stayed at.  It was pretty magical :)

New sketches and progress on "Tea For Two"

I've been spending a lot of time lately trying to develop my style for Project Apricot and other projects that require stretch beyond what is naturally comfortable for me.  But this style is what I naturally gravitate towards when I doodle.  It's nice every now and then to develop these doodles further and get something cute out of it.

golden gate view

jamz

next iteration of "Tea for Two"

Classy Cats!

I'm starting a new series of doodles I call "Classy Cats".  These are a little rough, but I like the feel of them :)

Classy!  I'll clean it up more and work on coloring them later.  Stay classy peeps.

More Cardboard Moroccan Cat Palace pictures!

Here are some more pictures of our darling little Dynamite enjoying her Cardboard Moroccan Cat Palace.

Top level entrance.

 

Top level, facing the window.

Sometimes, I just see little paws sticking out from behind the arm chair...

And it's because she's lounging like this :)  This time on the second level.

Inspirations

I'm pretty behind posting inspirational things here, though I've continually been collecting them.

Here's an amazing trailer for Kairos (a French comic).

KAIROS Trailer from Studio La Cachette on Vimeo.
Here's a fantastic student animated short called Mirage.

Mirage from Iker & Dana on Vimeo.

And intricate laser-cut paper, layered together.

See more images of this here.

Pitch submitted

I made a concerted push in the last few weeks and finally finished the pitch document for "Prairie Rabbits" and submitted it at work.  Now I guess I just sit and wait.  I really have not idea what to expect but I'm not getting my hopes up.  It's really just nice to get it done and off my to-do list.  I'm reasonably happy that the pitch document captures most of what I had in my head even if it does not have the actual scenes I envisioned.  I'm happy with how the idea shaped over the span of my work on it.

Yay!  It's done.  For now.  (Unless it has the good fortune to catch the interest of someone important.)

Project Apricot Thumbnailing

Alright!  Thumbnailing for Project Apricot.  This is an exciting and terrifying first step because this is the farthest I've ever gone with this project and also this is the closest these ideas have ever come to fruition.  And what if it sucks?

Well, Rad told us expect it to suck the first time.  It's more important to make progress and iterate, than to keep preparing before going forward.  So here is the first attempt at a forest scene.

Well that wasn't too horrible... maybe.  But after thumbnailing Avatar - The Last Airbender for about two weeks, and thumbnailing various forest photos, I gave it another shot and here's how it looks so far.

 It feels more interesting and more in context. It still has a long way to go, but it's encouraging that I'm moving in the right direction.  It just goes to show that there's no replacement for practice.

Here are a few more thumbnail sequences.  (Not edited yet, so it's not entirely coherent.)

Thumbnailing for Trees and Prairie Rabbits

I did some similar thumbnailing studies on trees or landscapes where there are trees to study how different forests might look.  The opening scene of Project Apricot takes place through a forest.  In the next post, the first attempt at the forest scene was done before this study.  And the subsequent attempt was done after.  Again you can see the huge different it makes to have some practice and have some reference.

This felt really good to open up my mind and refresh my imagination so I can spice up the opening scene.  And also, trees are amazing!

Also, here is an attempt to thumbnail for the opening of Prairie Rabbits.  I didn't get too far, but it was a nice little challenge to myself.

Avatar - The Last Airbender thumbnailing

As I'm attempting to thumbnail for Project Apricot, I've been finding it really helpful to study the framing, composition of other comics, photos, and animations.  So I turned to one of my favorite stories and shows, Avatar - The Last Airbender.  I particularly love their action sequences, and thought it would be a perfect place to start learning about how to tell an action scene story effectively.

My goodness!!  It was so helpful and enlightening!  It showed me the limitations I'd be faced with in trying to portray complex action scenes (as complex as they had) in the comic form versus animated form.  It also showed me a lot about framing and composition that can serve the scene's intention.  Anyway, here are the thumbnails from about half of episode 2.

And just the act of practicing thumbnailing really added to my sense of feel for it.  It lets me feel out the boundaries of what I can do, what I can try, and how to best capture the scene in my head.  I'll post later some of the thumbnails I've been doing for Project Apricot, and it's pretty easy to see the improvements between the first attempts and the later ones.

Jamie baby shower

This weekend, I helped throw a baby shower for the first time.  Emily (thank goodness for her!) and I split the responsibilities for the shower for Jenni and Nathaniel's baby and it went pretty well.  (It was more of a meet-the-baby party or a belated 0th birthday party, since the baby had already been born.)  Aside from me being a bit too overly ambitious with the food, everything came together well.

I don't have any pictures from the actual event right now, but here are the cardboard letters I made of Jamie's name and some matching pennant banners.  These went over pretty well.

The flowers also turned out pretty well. I went with a mix of white flowers (daisies, cala lillies, tulips) from Trader Joe's in the carafes I had left from the wedding.  The arrangements looked simple and fresh.  Perfect for a baby shower with a greenish color scheme and a spring time feel.  Hope to get some pictures of these later.

And I made two Dominion cards as a baby shower expansion pack since Jenni and Nathaniel both love Dominion.  We didn't get to use it at the party, but maybe for the next game night.

I printed these suckers out, cut and glued them onto spare sets of Dominion cards that I bought online.  Turned out looking and feeling fairly legit.

Vis dev art for Project Apricot

After being freshly inspired and motivated from the comics workshop, Mari, DanAnh and I have been doing daily sketch time together!  It's amazing what a regular habit of sketching for 15-30 minutes each day can do to further vis dev which had been a blocker for me for a while. 

The camaraderie is also a really remarkable motivating factor.  It's wonderful to be working side-by-side with these talented ladies who are also passionate about storytelling and really want to bring to life their creative vision.  The only thing better than making progress on my project is also seeing Mari and DanAnh make progress on their projects.  I am so eager to see what wonderful things they will create.

Here is a compilation of some of the sketches I've done over the last week or so.  They are mostly character sketches.  I finally hit a stride with the character faces.  While these are not all finalized, I'm pretty pleased to see that some of them really match what I was envisioning for the characters.

I'm simultaneously proud of the progress and thankful for it.  Inspiration doesn't come just through effort.  Every bit of it feels like a gift.  Here's to inching towards our dreams.

Sketch for "Prairie Rabbits"

I've been working on a pitch and have been keeping it mostly under wraps.  Then I hit a period of lack of inspiration on it and just recently picked it back up.  I'm trying to do some concept art for it, but finding it really hard to draw trains and nature and get the color palette that I want.  So here's a crappy first pass.

I'm not happy with it, but it's something for now.  I'm trying to get a better handle on scale and scope and color, and pushing my style further.  Hopefully the next pass will get me closer to what I want it to be.

tingting-wu.com is up!

I've been in desperate need of web presence for some time now and this weekend, finally registered the domain name www.tingting-wu.com!  (There's no content yet, but there is a splash page.)

I had previously registered misstingting.com, but that is no longer accurate.  And while I never did anything with my old website, I'm going to more aggressively push myself to put together a real website that can link together my professional materials, my hobbies, my progress on technical projects and art pieces, etc.  I'm making a tentative goal to do something for the website every week.  That way it should get built steadily.

Yay!

"Morning Pick-me-up" in progress - part 3

I picked up the "Morning Pick-me-up" piece again.  I got discouraged for a while because it just wasn't going in the direction I wanted and after fighting with it on and off, I think it's finally back on track, or at least headed in a much better direction.

I changed up the color palette: made the background warmer to create a cozy feeling, changed the colors of the girl's clothes to be more vivid and lively.  Then I redid the line work on the guy and the cat.  Yeah, the cat looks less like a mermaid cat now.

This feels a lot better to me.  For comparison, here's the last version of it.

Ugh... so much better.  Just looking at the previous one makes me cringe.

Music practice - in progress, part 2

Here's the progress so far on Music Practice.  I added some more musicians, cleaned up all the lines, fixed the face on the first musician so it doesn't look so doofy, and did a first pass on coloring it.  All in all, not bad.  I certainly use more attention on the background and setting, but this would be an acceptable frame for a comic, I think.

Is this a sustainable style?  Hell, no!  This took longer than I'd like to spend on a single frame, and it's probably too hopeful to think I'll get good enough soon enough for this style to be sustainable.

I recently started a comic workshop at work taught by Rad Sechrist, one of the talented story artists.  (See "Explorer: The Mystery Boxes" for his comic story "The Butter Thief".)  We had the first class last week and he had some really good practical guidance to give, including, don't sweat all the details because most people are paying more attention to the story than the art, and it's more important to finish something than to get it perfect on the first try.  Hoping this workshop will give me the kickstart I need.  I'm starting to apply some of his brainstorm techniques to further the plotting process.

Cardboard Moroccan Cat Palace Update

Cardboard Moroccan Cat Palace has been set up in its rightful place behind the armchair and up against the window for quite a while now and I'm please to say Dynamite has taken to it pretty well.  At first it was probably just for the cat nip we sprinkled inside (Cardboard Moroccan Cat Drug Den?), but since then she has claimed it as her own and uses it for gazing out the window, cat naps and just getting away from her humans.  I'd call this an unqualified success.  Maybe the next cardboard palace will be a Chinese style palace, or a Boston style apartment with bay windows.

Oh hai!

Rubbing up on the cardboard corners to mark her scent.  Note the little kitty-teeth-shaped holes.  She sometimes nibbles on her home.

Hopping out for a snack or a snuggle.

Back for a mid-day cat nap.