Dexter Morgan WIP

Today I freaked out when I turned on my cintiq and couldn't get it to detect my pen. I asked my dad, he had a quick look and said I hadn't plugged in the USB. (I plugged in some other USB.) LOL bimbo moment. In my defense, there's way too many cables around me!!

Anyway, I love this show. Hahahah.... This is a work in progress, I intend to refine it. =D But I like how it's looking so far.

As for my storyboarding, gosh it's coming along so slow... I have one more scene left to make backgrounds for each frame (ugh...) and then I can start doing the characters. It's the BIGGEST scene though... hopefully I can knock it over in a day's worth of work. But I'm working for the next 3 days so it probably won't be done until Friday. Nuuuuu...

Better head to bed!

I gave up on colour...

Whoo! I did a bit of work today! =D And yesterday!

I've decided that it might speed things up a bit if I went through my EP storyboard that I'm tidying up and laid out the backgrounds... then went in and tidied up the characters. I got 5 scenes done (a grand total of 4 yesterday!) and so I have about 6 more to go. Hopefully will finish the backgrounds this week! =D

Meanwhile, figuring out how to work storyboard pro... is coming along well. I really really like the drawing tools. But there are quite a few cons like not being able to change layer opacity and not being able to have two projects open at once... and a bunch of other things. So every time I get frustrated with it... I go into photoshop and paint some.

It is with mixed feelings of joy and sadness that I share this black and white digital sketch with you.

Joy because I'm glad I finally have something I've actually signed and declared FINISHED. Sad because it's Eliza Dushku and the reason why I'm doing it is because one of my favourite TV shows, Dollhouse was cancelled due to ratings not being good enough. >:( (bring it out here earlier - like THE SAME TIME as the USA air dates - not one season behind - and I'll watch it on TV dammit!)

ANYWAY... If you've known me for a while, you know that I like... NEVER do fan stuff. I don't think this is really a fan thing either... I've just been grabbing photos of some celebrities and trying to paint them to practice. But I guess Eliza Dushku is one of my faves - I totally loved Tru Calling (and that was cancelled too dammit) and loved Dollhouse. Ba humbug.

As you can see, I gave up on colouring for now... concentrating on values first and getting the features right so my paintings actually LOOK like who it's supposed to... then hopefully I'll be able to pick up colour later and do some of that.

I've also been going to life drawing. Here are the best sketches of this week and last week. I think I'm getting too comfortable with the brush pen. But I suuuuuuckkkk at pencil. Need to learn how to use pencil properly.

urk... getting there...

Started life drawing again last week... plan to go every monday! I was originally going to take classes... but there's a couple of expensive things I need to buy/pay for soon and taking time off to work on personal projects means I'm living off my savings at the moment (ahh! DX) so I've resolved to just learning off books and practicing as much as I can for now. When I get a new job I'll do the lessons.

The painting is coming along. I'm finding the shadow area really really hard to get right... ~_~;; comments/critiques/help is completely welcome... again, I am working off an existing photograph but it looks NOTHING like her...

Much needed creative ego boost.

I'm currently learning Storyboard Pro and it's a bit off putting because it's so different to Adobe and I just can't find my way around very easily...

It makes me feel lost and technologically inept. So I closed the program for the day and went and did something more familiar to boost my ego again... I painted in photoshop.

Ok so this is like half a face... but hey, the skin tones are looking alright. 8D Now I just gotta... finish it >_> Well, at least every time I get fidgety and frustrated with learning SBP I'll be working on this for constant ego boosting. 8D

Aru's back in action! =D

Started drawing... hopefully getting into full swing this week!

Finally have something blog worthy. Had a craving to paint something... looked for a photo of Keira Knightly and painted this from reference. Kinda stoked it soooort of looks like her (I'm really bad at drawing real people... haha. Hence why I tend to prefer drawing original characters.) But still I have a long ways to go. Hopefully will do a lot more so I'll get really good at it! =)

This was a quick paint... took about 80 mins or so. Mainly because I don't have the patience to do anything in more detail.. unless I was paid for it. ;)

The Making of Erky Perky

I've had a lot on my plate last few months... job and personal life. I'm looking forward to get back into more creative stuff now that things have started to settle down.

No new work for this post from me... well, nothing worth showing ya. ^^ BUT! I do have an awesome video to share from the Erky Perky website:

The Making of Erky Perky

"A Day in the Life of an Animator"

with lead animator, Duncan Ransom

Click on the stack of movie reels, a hand will pop out saying "choose a video." Choose the first one.

I'm randomly in there for like a split second towards the end, drawing on the cintiq. HAHA.

Anyhow, hope to post here again real soon!

Ama Mami: Comic/Story Idea

This always happens to me. I get incredibly swamped with work and then big and juicy ideas start avalanching in.

I'm most motivated to create my own work whenever I'm way too busy to do it!

Anyhow, I'm trying to write out all these ideas that are just popping out of nowhere. Ama Mami is one of them...




SYNOPSIS
Ama is a self-assured individual who lives a satisfactory, ordinary life until she comes face to face with her Doppelgänger, "Mami."

Ama finds her twin, incidentally a trans-dimensional adventuress to be far more extroverted, confident, smart, talented and charming than Ama could ever dream to be. Fighting off her self-complex, Ama is determined to find out exactly why Mami has slipped into this dimension. The reason, Ama instinctively deduces is bad news for her universe.


Anyhow, I'm taking a cue from Robyn Paterson and not going to start doing the artwork for this until I've written the whole thing. I've been wanting to get back into writing - it's possible I might turn this into an audio theatre with just some artwork to go with it. Not sure. I guess it depends on how big the story gets.

I better get some sleep. =P

Just Keep Swimming

I seem to have a nack for jumping in the deep end of things and barely swimming my way out!

I had no idea that applying to work as a designer on Erky Perky meant I'd be a lead designer - until I actually started working there. I realised I'd be one of the 'big girls' and be on my own. :O Once I figured out procedures, it wasn't too hard. I love going to work and love the fact that people find it strange that I always look forward to work.

Now I'm doing a storyboard of an episode and I find myself in a new deep pool. Not starting as a junior position as you normally would... lol. I'm storyboarding a whole episode! I guess I couldn't say I'm on my own... I've got a great experienced director teaching me - Cameron Chittock and I've leaped milestones. Again, I've been really lucky. But these 13 minutes that I'm story-boarding are the longest 13 minutes of my life!

Anyhow, I've been busy so I hadn't gone to life drawing for 3 weeks... finally people at work talked me into going. >__< haha. This model kept sitting down for the longer poses. This normally doesn't bother me because normally I'm at the front. But we were a bit late and they moved us down stairs and there was this dude with a massive afro covering her feet... grr.




Here's a digital sketch of something I did yesterday in about 2 hours. I guess I started feeling frustrated at not making anything that was not work-related... It's Squire Esther from Twin Stars - and a present for the show producer, Rob in congratulating him for having Twin Stars aired on radio through the Sonic Society. If it goes well and they air the whole first season I'd theoretically be making my radio debut! XD

It's not finished - I had to go to bed - and I've still got to finish my storyboards so I'll have to finish this some other time.



And to answer the cliff hanging question in my last post... it was green tea caramels... gosh these are so juicy.



I'll try to make these monthly posts at least from now on. =)

And So...

Forgive me blogger for I have not kept you up to date.

I'm 3 months into my job at Erky Perky doing designs. Almost finished, just a handful of episodes left to go. What else can I say? I love it! And it's kinda sad it's almost over. =( But in saying so, I've got more work lined up for me - I'm doing a storyboard for one of the episodes! Squeee!! XDDD Also doing designs for David Webster's secret project. Hmm... I don't know how secret it is, therefore I can only say this much: It's a secret.

Shame I can't post any work up here... I'm pretty proud at the jump in quality of my work... and just my over all capability to actually paint. About a year ago I hadn't the faintest clue how to paint in photoshop. Thanks to Bobby Chiu's course I can! =DDD

I've been going to life drawing with a few of the animators. The numbers keep dwindling every week as everyone gets busier and busier though! I HAVE to go because I'm the one inviting everyone. lol. It's been a good motivator and it's actually an important part of my job anyway so I don't mind making the effort every week. I've gone 5 times now!

Here's a few drawings. I'll post more in my next update.




And finally... can you guess what juicy treat finally motivated me to update my blog??



Find out in the next EXCITING update! Whenever that is!

Bye Ehushu~

I'm taking advantage of the holidays to clean up my room.

GOOD BYE EHUSHU....



yes... in that coca cola package about to go to the recycling bin is approximately 95% of all the animation frames and extra drawings I did for ehushu. Gone. Bai bai...

For those of you devastated, think of it as me making space for new future projects. =) Which is essentially what I was doing. Not that I foresee any new animated projects yet. No, don't get too excited.

And ok, so I'm lacking new work. I actually took a proper holiday and did NOTHING. Absolutely NOTHING. The reason why I did this was because I was scared of being burnt out. I did not draw a thing for a whole week. Unfortunately, I found myself loosing motivation to draw and it was hard to get back... but I found my inspiration again so I'm looking forward to getting back into drawing.

This is a very very very very very and did I mention VERY rough digital sketch (done on my brand new cintiq ^^) for EOW101. It's really crap, the deadline is monday which frankly I don't think I'll make it but well... here is the start of it.



Now, I have to stay awake for another two hours so... uhm... I'm gonna try tidy up a bit or something. Yeah...