Busy Busy

So I'm absolute junk at posting, mostly because all my free time gets consumed working on my thesis project. As it stands, I have 48 seconds pencil tested (just a little more than half), and 20 seconds in color (about a fourth). I've got so much to do between now and December, but to keep myself from going crazy, I've squeezed in some tangentially related pieces.

Dreadbeasts are made for punching!

First off, this ended up being my Timeline banner on Facebook. Dreadbeasts (the little black demon thing running away from its imminent punching-out) have become somewhat of a running joke amongst my friends and I. It has, in part, to do with the fact that I made almost all of them stand around in the Powell lab and act the scene out. The wide variety of takes created a lot of laughs, and thanks to their help, the scene ended up winning 2nd place in the Academy of Art 2012 Spring Show. So naturally, my claim to fame around AAU became these little black monsters. That, and circus afros (don' ask).

Here's the scene in question:


As part of the process of animating a trailer, I've spent a lot of time thinking about who the other people in this hypothetical film are. Thomas and Fel (the two on the left) are the two characters who actually show up in the trailer. But it's my belief that no film that is on as epic of a scale as this one would be can survive without a cast of sidekicks and villains, I went ahead and culled some buddies and foes for Thomas and Fel out of the recesses of my imagination. Eligius (the dude in the middle) is the resident mage, and the son of the Earl of Verdis, one of the locations Thomas and Fel travel to on their quest. He is quite a fop, and doesn't like getting his hands dirty, which is why he elected to be a wizard. That being said, he is also a dragon - on the world the story takes place in, dragons are born looking human, but the more they use their draconian powers (flight, firebreathing, etc), the more dragon-like they become, until they're honking great lizards with an insatiable desire for large amounts of shiny things. This might be foreshadowing. Celeste, the cat girl on the right, is a sky pirate. I haven't come up with much story for her yet, but she has a French accent and is extremely feisty.

And then lastly, on the far right, is the villain, who I'm quite proud of. In February, I went to see the musical "Mamma Mia" with my mom, and I kind of fell in love with the ridiculous disco outfits. Who could I possibly put into tight sparkly pants and a codpiece? And then it occurred to me that no parody of a JRPG could possibly be complete with an over-the-top effeminate villain with questionable bondage taste.And so Orpheus was born. He'd always been intended to be a reflection of Thomas somehow, but when I struck upon the idea of "Sparkle Disco Jareth Thomas", he was very easy to give life. Color wise, his outfit is the complete inverse of Thomas's, and the rest of his palette is a very desaturated version of Thomas - this is to allude to the fact that he basically wants to take over Thomas's life, and is an evil manifestation of all of Thomas's disappointments.

Lastly, a redraw. In 2010, when I took character design, one of the assignments was to pick a movie and draw the hero, heroine, sidekick and villain. "Serenity" was a first choice for me, and, well, the original assignment was... ehhhhh. Recently, however, I was invited by the same teacher (the awesome Michael Buffington) to redraw the assignment and present it to his current class.

While Mal could look a little more like Nathan Fillion, I would say it's an over-all success. I know that my understanding of volume and structure has improved 1000% .

School and side projects continue to go strong - the few moments I get to hang with friends and family are precious, but very soon I'm going to have to click-clack into my little hole and just put my head down to work. I've only got 20 weeks before it's over. Yikes.

Here's the current (ish) version of my reel. I'll leave that here and probably see you guys in several months.

LAME

I haven't updated since summer of 2011?

 Uh.

Well I've got a lot to report! I'll do that when I've got a spare moment. In the meantime, check out my award-winning animation that will be featured as the runner-up in this year's Academy of Art Spring Show.

The Summer, Part 2

And now for the thing that occupied 100% of my brain for about two months: the midpoint review!

Started off by working out Thomas and Fel's designs 100%.

The designs were well-received, but due to animation complications, I'm going to have to do one more redesign to simplify everything.

Next, the beat boards.

lastly, some of the fully rendered environments

The Summer

Well everyone, it has been an interesting summer. I was rather prolific, and yet somehow didn't actually post a lot of the work I'd created. Not any time, really. But the good news is, I passed a rather difficult class, and I passed my midpoint! Woohoo!

Naturally, this means I've got a lot to show you. So fasten your seatbelts, and prepare for the art dump.


First off, I finished the 1000 Head Challenge (and am the first lady to do so, apparently). It was arduous, but absolutely worth it. Since posting one thousand drawings of faces would be a bit tiresome (both for me and for anyone reading this), I've assembled a collage of every 50th head.



Next, some of the assignments from Drawing From Imagination. I learned a ton of stuff in this class, about drawing backgrounds in perspective, reflection, and light and shadow.





Finally, there's a TON of stuff for my Midpoint Presentation, which I'm including in a separate post.

The Hour Draws Nigh

So my midpoint review is just around the corner. I got the email today telling that I basically have to have everything ready by the 24th - as in, next Friday, it's go time.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Not to worry too much, though. It's really a matter of finishing all the work, which is moderately doable. I spent the majority of the semester working on the development, so all I really have to do is some completed work, turn arounds, mood boards, and environments. Ive got to refine the Animatic/Storyboards, too, but all I anticipate doing there is adding some extra scenes, and getting better voices. 

SO ANYWAY.

The expressions!:

Drawing faces, of course, has brought me closer to my goal of 1000 heads. I'm now at 880, which means only 120 left to go. Once I get my midpoint stuff finished, shouldn't be too much to worry about.

The Doctor is In...

... Tron: Legacy, apparently.

Argh, this show! I've been watching it while working on stuff, and once I got to the David Tennant era, I was kind of hopelessly hooked. Doctor Who ended up being sort of the perfect storm of everything I like in a series - witty writing, good characters, a fascinating premise, aliens, time travel, and of course, David Tennant.

School goes as it goes. Wrapping up a warped perspective layout, and I finally pinned my thesis project down! All I have to do now is finish up the designs and storyboards before the end of May. Shouldn't be too difficult...

With thanks to /co/, 800 heads

Normally, I avoid 4chan like the plague it is. Widely considered to be the diseased anus of the internet, 4chan is an anonymous image posting forum.Its most infamous board, /b/ is responsible for a LOT of things that are considered bad about the internet, including rampant porn and harassment of young children "for the lulz." /b/ (and most of the rest of 4chan) is not a nice place.

There IS one tiny corner of 4chan, though, called /co/ - the comics and cartoons board. /co/ is widely considered to be the "nice" board - illegal things (like links to downloads and porn) get your IP banned, and risque images are hidden behind a spoiler tag, making them easily avoidable. Being a jerkwad usually results in being shunned by other posters. So it's a fairly friendly place, and I like to go there occasionally to catch up on news about comics and cartoons.

So even though I hadn't been there for several months, in my pursuit to finish my 1000 heads project, and having run fresh out of ideas, I remembered that every so often, an artist would go "hey guys, I'm taking requests." I started one myself, and the thread EXPLODED with requests and praise. It hit its maximum image limit while I was asleep, and another one was started. So while there's no way I'm drawing 200 heads right now (I DO have other things I gotta do), I feel rather accomplished.

80 heads in the last 18 hours ain't nothing to sneeze at, and some of the heads requested were so darn cartoony it was a challenge to kinda... unstylize them and put them in my own style. :D

 

So yeah. OFF TO DO OTHER THINGS.