drawings and stuff

cheesy cameras

2010-08-17T19:20:00.000-07:00

Sparky is concerned about his mummy's addiction to vintage toy cameras.

Lubitel 2

Diana

Kodak Brownie 127

cum laude

2010-06-06T07:57:00.000-07:00

Finally finished my Bachelor of Animation with Honours. I am so glad it is over. I learned a lot in the process but it was very draining and I think it will be a little while before I do anything like that again. I'm not sure about my thesis but I think the film project turned out OK.

betty and sparklepuss: garden has four parts: the physics of potting mix, the physics of lemons, the physics of tomatoes and the physics of harvesting. I made them in that order, and I think it shows. I got a lot better with my animation towards the end. I would like to show them on the web, but Andi says I should enter them in festivals, so I guess I need to make some other betty and sparklepuss stuff for the youtubes. I might post some still frames or something.

Right now I'm doing tourist stuff in New York, though, so don't expect anything new right away. This city is giving me sensory overload at the moment. Way more people than I like to deal with at one time, but it does have some nice stores and things. I think I will still be glad to get home.

[/lurk]

2009-12-01T01:52:00.000-08:00

I have run out of things to say about my lack of blogging. Yeah I don't blog. Guess I need more motivation or something. Like maybe some readers to nag me?

Added some drawings to my website. I thing this one sums up how I feel at the moment.

Also I got busy with a video presentation for a girls' school or something. I had never made one of those before, so the experience was quite stressful but also very edifying. They were really happy with it and played it at their speech night, so I guess it all went OK.

More later.

does anyone still read this?

2009-07-03T16:25:00.000-07:00

It has been kind of difficult to motivate myself to blog lately. When I am not dealing with the depression (and obsessive-compulsive disorder and autism) I usually get kind of stressed with everything I haven't done yet and I forget about blogging and personal correspondence and stuff. I think the worst thing about clinical depression is a kind of numbness and apathy and a feeling that the apathy is reciprocated.

But enough about me, I'm pretty sure my loyal readers (both of them) are more interested in Betty and Sparklepuss:

I finally finished a draft script for the new short film, garden. The script came after much creative visualization and procrastination (and Andi telling me that I needed to have a script now). It's based on a bunch of conceptual drawings:

Betty experiences Newton's third law of motion

Betty chases a brush-turkey with a rake

lemons are funnier than oranges

Betty snaps

I don't think I could have come up with the script first. I kind of think in little visual vignettes that I have to draw down, and then I like to have other people to help me make sense of them and it kind of grows in an organic sort of process. I'm pretty sure it's not the traditional way of doing things, where the script is done first and then the storyboard and visual elements. I think I have to draw the idea first, and then maybe I can gather the self-control to work out a story and decent composition for the picture.

With my first film, samwich, I just had an idea and I went and animated it straight ahead, without any planning (except for a six-panel cartoon "storyboard"). I didn't even do any backgrounds or layouts or anything, and I added the sound, music and voices after the animation was finished. Yet somehow it worked and the responses to it have been overwhelmingly positive and I got away with it. But samwich was only a minute or so while garden is shaping up to be about 5 minutes, and I need to learn a more disciplined process where I plan things beforehand. I think it requires a bit more thought and self-control before I rush into the drawing part.

Right now I have to do a storyboard and animatic, so I can start to see how I'm going to put it all together. I made some animation tests, but they lacked the spontaneity and looseness of samwich, so I'll have to try again. Spontaneity is a really hard thing to plan.

betty & sparklepuss project

2009-04-03T03:43:00.000-07:00

I met with Andi today to talk about my honours project. She's really happy with the idea of using Betty and Sparklepuss in an animated short. Except she said I have to go and flesh out the characters of Betty and Sparklepuss, and work on designing the garden in which the story will take place. I drew some concept art, which people think is funny:

My research on the physics of animation is going fine. I found a couple of neat sites - Alejandro Garcia's Animation Physics and also this one. Also I got my copies of Thomas & Johnston's The Illusion of Life, Whitaker & Halas' Timing for Animation and a couple of others from Amazon. I think they are going to be very useful.

I watched some Wile E. Coyote vs. Road Runner films again. Andi suggested examining the physics in them as part of my essay, since they are perfect examples of both principles of animation, and how the laws of physics can be violated for comic effect. I think the animators who made these films must have had an intuitive understanding of physical laws and properties and how to apply them (and also when not to apply them).

linoprints

2009-03-15T18:16:00.000-07:00

der Kater hat seine Haare aufgespuckt

2009-03-09T00:51:00.000-07:00

I drew this while I was taking notes during my first honors lecture last week.

I'm studying Animation with Honours now, which is a bit daunting. I decided to study the physics behind the principles of traditional animation, which should give me plenty to work with.

As part of my honors work I'm supposed to keep a sort of professional journal, so I have decided to use this blog for study and work-related stuff, and my livejournal blog for personal silliness.

almost March...

2009-02-24T15:17:00.000-08:00

...and I have not done well with my New Year's resolution of trying to make something creative every day. But I have been drawing things! Honest!

Random people.

(see, I can draw things that kind of look like the things they look like)

My attempt at a sort of medieval manuscript style.

I hope it is not too much like Scott C's stuff. I would hate for him to be mad with me.

Also I am going back to school for my "Bachelor of Animation with Honours"[sic], so perhaps I will be motivated to be more active with things.

bleah

2009-02-06T00:46:00.000-08:00

I have not posted anything for two weeks. I got busy for a little while building a website for a friend, then I got depressed again. Clinical depression sucks.

I did manage to get another painting done, another pepper:

Also today I went to the art group run at the local church by a friend of mine. We were supposed to be doing botanical illustrations with colored pencils, but we didn't have any actual plants to draw, just photographs. I did not really enjoy copying photos that much so I started drawing the people instead. Unfortunately only one of them was facing me.

I have also been reading Real-Time Collision Detection by Christer Ericson. It has lots of maths in it and takes a while for my brain to digest but is quite interesting. I am hoping to eventually do some programmy-type stuff with it.

red peppers

2009-01-20T02:19:00.000-08:00

Oil on canvas board, 4 x 6"

happy birthday

2009-01-16T02:07:00.000-08:00

It's my sister's birthday today. She's 31. Which means I'll be 29 this year.
Happy birthday and nose kisses!

3d doodles

2009-01-16T02:03:00.000-08:00

An attempt at a head with proper topology & edge loops

3d version of the great hunter Earl Tharglesnurke

i am not feeling very inspired right now

2009-01-14T02:20:00.000-08:00

No, really.

betty

2009-01-12T02:40:00.000-08:00

cicada

2009-01-10T00:45:00.000-08:00

I found this neat cicada outside my house today. I think it's an immature one that just shed its skin. I like how it's all green and translucent.

more cherry tomatoes

2009-01-10T00:10:00.000-08:00

Oil on canvas, 4x4"
You know something? Rendering glass properly is really hard, or at least a lot harder than it looks. I think I need more practice just painting glass things without anything else in them before I can start painting stuff this complicated, but I did learn a bit more. I think I'll call this one done and try again tomorrow with something a bit simpler.

I did find a couple of other painting blogs I really liked. I think I should study their work and see if I can learn something from them:
Carol Marine's Painting a Day
qiang-huang, a daily painter
Aaron Lifferth's Painting a Day
State Of The Art
With more practice maybe I can get my paintings to look nicer ^.^

wip: cherry tomatoes in jar

2009-01-08T23:26:00.000-08:00

Experimenting with underpainting in Terre Verde and white. Getting the right shape for the jar (especially the round bit on the top) is challenging and I think some of my shortcomings are showing up here. It was getting late so I had to stop for the day, but I tried playing with it some more in Photoshop.

Painting is kind of addictive. I'm still not so good, but that's OK because I'm having lots of fun with this.

apple, orange and tomato

2009-01-08T01:39:00.000-08:00

Stillleben mit Zwiebel und Knoblauch

2009-01-05T22:11:00.000-08:00

(still life with onion and garlic)

I tried using oil paints this time because I have never used oils before. I think oils are much easier than acrylics, and more fun too. The paint does not dry so quickly, so it's easier to blend the colors and add things to the picture, also I think oils feel smoother and it's just nicer somehow.

I took longer than I intended and I still fiddled with it more than I should have. I kind of lost the forms and light and shade a bit behind the details and stuff. Perhaps I should paint even smaller than 4"x4", or just forget fine details like the veins on the onion and things for now.

I have been doing this thing where I use the Photoshop "cutout" filter on my paintings, which drastically reduces the details and kind of stylizes the picture so all that is left are the basic forms and shapes, like so:

Often I end up liking the "cutout" version better, maybe because it gets rid of all the messy details that kind of overpowered the picture. I guess the details are really secondary and should definitely be sublimated to the larger forms. Also, I should have left out that little bit of garlic skin on the bottom of the garlic, because it is kind of distracting.

still life with green apple

2009-01-04T23:04:00.000-08:00

acrylic, 4x4 inches.

I think I should have used a darker or lighter background to contrast more with the apple. I wanted to use a nice magenta, but there was no magenta paint, so I tried to mix a kind of purply color with the paints I had. It came out kind of orange-pink and the apple does not stand out much, even after I tried to fix it with the magic of Photoshop. On the plus side I think maybe the apple came out better than the lemon I made yesterday.

happy new year or whatever

2009-01-03T22:34:00.000-08:00

Maybe this year I shall make regular posts on this blog, instead of the not-posting I have been doing recently. I am not one for making new year's-type resolutions, but for 2009 I have decided to try to do things a bit differently.

First, I would like to stop comparing myself with other people, because it just makes me even more depressed. Instead I just want to compare my stuff with other stuff I made before, and just make sure I keep improving.

Second, I will try to produce some kind of visual art thing every day, so I get more practice and improve my art-type skills.

Lastly, for reasons (I do not know what reasons, perhaps you could make up some to amuse yourself), I shall post said objets d'art on my blog, so I can track my progress. Maybe you could have a look too, if you like.

Anyway, here is today's effort:

Still life with lemon, acrylic on canvas, 4"x4". I like using the small canvases because they are inexpensive, and also because it means there is no room for fiddly details so I have to concentrate on getting the forms and all the important bits of the picture, which is what my life drawing teacher said I should do before I think about details.

what, i have to update this thing?

2008-10-28T23:35:00.000-07:00

I'm not good at keeping a blog. I keep forgetting to update it, or else I put it off because I don't know what to say. Also I don't know if anyone even reads this :P
I'm hoping having a blog will encourage me to do more drawings and update my website more often.

I made all the images in my artwork gallery slightly bigger because my teacher Andi said they were a little too small for her to see properly on a hi-res monitor. I don't know if I should make them a little bigger yet, but then some of them look too big.

Also, I got the CS4 Master Collection ^_^ actually it's only a student license, but it's still better than CS2, which is what I had before. Adobe added some more neat features. I really like the new motion paths and IK in Flash, and the 3D painting in Photoshop.

Recent artwork:

Two ladies race flying boots (I made this one as a birthday present for my friend Monica)

Earl Tharglesnurke finally catches the Scorplefish.

i has a blog

2008-09-07T00:02:00.000-07:00

Um... yay me?