Monday, April 28, 2014
Official Kitty Cat Business
Just started putting together a little comic series that I've been brewing for a while. Simple but fun. It tells a story of a kitty cat who works an office job as cuddle technician.
Working on creating a more official little page for it.
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
New Place!
Also wanted to address the 3 month gap between my entries. It's been a crazy few months! Michael and I bought a place and we moved in! Between renovating, painting, and the move there have definitely been a lot of big and small projects here. Will have pictures once we're actually unpacked and I have a work area setup.
Done thumbnailing for Avatar - The Last Airbender episode 2!
It's been somewhere between 6 months and a year of working on this on-and-off, but I finally finished thumbnailing for episode 2 of Avatar - The Last Airbender. Here are the raw scanned pages below. They're in the order that I did them, meaning, I started in the middle of the episode went to the end and then decided to wrap around to the beginning and finish the rest of the episode.
I'll find time to process these and clean up the bad frames, make the frame sizes uniform (like the later sheets) and maybe even turn it into an animated gif.
I learned so much in this process. And it's pretty obvious to anyone looking at this, how much my basic mechanical skills improved as I went along. Hope this is as encouraging to others as it was to me. This is pretty simple proof of what raw practice can do.
Part of me wants to jump into thumbnailing more episodes (Samurai Jack? Batman-The Animated Series? 20th Century Boys?), but I really should start applying what I've learned to Project Apricot. I also want to do another exercise where I take this and try to adapt it into a comic form using comic and manga techniques. I want to better understand and explore the best ways to portray an action scene in comic form. This exercise already showed me the limitation of trying to turn animation into static frames (check out how many frames it takes to portray action heavy shots!!). But are there ways to portray elaborate and compelling action sequences using the comic format?
I'll find time to process these and clean up the bad frames, make the frame sizes uniform (like the later sheets) and maybe even turn it into an animated gif.
I learned so much in this process. And it's pretty obvious to anyone looking at this, how much my basic mechanical skills improved as I went along. Hope this is as encouraging to others as it was to me. This is pretty simple proof of what raw practice can do.
Part of me wants to jump into thumbnailing more episodes (Samurai Jack? Batman-The Animated Series? 20th Century Boys?), but I really should start applying what I've learned to Project Apricot. I also want to do another exercise where I take this and try to adapt it into a comic form using comic and manga techniques. I want to better understand and explore the best ways to portray an action scene in comic form. This exercise already showed me the limitation of trying to turn animation into static frames (check out how many frames it takes to portray action heavy shots!!). But are there ways to portray elaborate and compelling action sequences using the comic format?
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
Brick by Brick - Sustainable Creativity
Shared this with some friends a while ago, but definitely wanted to log it here.
Brick by Brick, by Stephen McCranie, is an excellent series of visual essays reflecting on sustainable creativity. Gives very good practical advice about making plans, setting goals, and being creative continually with the goal to grow. Love it! It's very encouraging and inspiring.
Brick by Brick, by Stephen McCranie, is an excellent series of visual essays reflecting on sustainable creativity. Gives very good practical advice about making plans, setting goals, and being creative continually with the goal to grow. Love it! It's very encouraging and inspiring.
2013 in Review and 2014 Goals
Happy New Year! It's been a pretty good year for projects, learning and growing.
2013 was the year of the Cardboard Moroccan Cat Palace, the completion of the Prairie Rabbits pitch, of lots of thumbnailing (still have to finish one full episode of Avatar the Last Airbender! please don't let this take a whole year!), of color studies, of really sinking my teeth into Project Apricot, of learning google app engine, and much more. As a whole I feel like I'm getting closer to the vision of what I want to do with Project Apricot and Panataria.
2013 was a rough year, health wise, for Michael, but we also found a new rhythm to life and recovery. It's been the year of wontons, ginger, and blandwiches and getting back to the gym. Here's to good health in 2014.
It's also been the year of house-hunting. May 2014 be the year we find the home for us.
Here are some plans for 2014.
2013 was the year of the Cardboard Moroccan Cat Palace, the completion of the Prairie Rabbits pitch, of lots of thumbnailing (still have to finish one full episode of Avatar the Last Airbender! please don't let this take a whole year!), of color studies, of really sinking my teeth into Project Apricot, of learning google app engine, and much more. As a whole I feel like I'm getting closer to the vision of what I want to do with Project Apricot and Panataria.
2013 was a rough year, health wise, for Michael, but we also found a new rhythm to life and recovery. It's been the year of wontons, ginger, and blandwiches and getting back to the gym. Here's to good health in 2014.
It's also been the year of house-hunting. May 2014 be the year we find the home for us.
Here are some plans for 2014.
- Panataria
- Project Apricot
- House hunting
- Trip to China
- Turning Prairie Rabbits into a series of shorts
Thursday, November 21, 2013
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:
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:
http://www.shortoftheweek.com/
http://www.shortoftheweek.com/
Wow. That's enough for now I guess. Not much to show, but there's definitely a lot happening.
"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 -
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)
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. 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)
http://www.shortoftheweek.com/
http://www.shortoftheweek.com/
Wow. That's enough for now I guess. Not much to show, but there's definitely a lot happening.
Saturday, October 5, 2013
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)