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.