A brand new character I'm fiddling around with. I was looking at frogs and also thinking of the stop motion film "Wind in the Willows" for inspiration. The species of frog I got interested in was the amazon horned frog. Below are examples of what I was looking at:
I also looked at this blog with interested designs that inspired me to exaggerate the features of my frog. http://melissavart.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2012-02-07T20:04:00-08:00&max-results=7&start=7&by-date=false
So I looked at the frog and liked how he had these crazy "brows" and enlarged them. I loved his knobby hands and feet as well! So I made them small instead. Right away I knew I wanted him to wear a steam punk outfit. There was something about his figure that told me that he should be this "pompous" guy who is very stylish. I enjoy details so I decided to experiment with textures and paint over them to get a sense of how the cloth was laying over the form of the character. There's more work to be done for folds of the cloth and more information in various other parts of the outfit like the boots, leather straps around his wrists, and his white collar. So far this has been great practice and a lot of fun to work on!
I like this character design enough that I want to make a puppet out of him. That would make a fun trip to the fabric store! Just thinking about it makes me excited!
A quick update on my T-Rex toothpaste character! So below is what I have so far. I've decided that I will go into Lightwave and model a bottle. I will then throw the design over top of it and position my light and camera. I think this route will be better so that I have an even lighting source instead of trying to individually add a gradient mesh to each and every letter. I didn't complete the effect because of this new idea. As you can see, the mesh isn't looking that successful. However, I was pleased with how the mesh on the bottle (minus the letters) turned out. Anywho, I feel confident that this new solution will turn out much better!
Hey artist, animators, bloggers, and everyone! So I've been digitally
painting more and even came up with two new characters! I had a
colleague/friend comment on how much better I've been improving with
painting. So, that made me feel really good and more inspired to keep at
it! I had tons of fun playing around with different colors to paint the silky terrier's hair with! His back is just a bunch of different assorted blues and a tad of gray.
Steampunk is one of my favorite genres! With the heron character below, I got an interesting idea to make the heron mechanical and mix some of the natural elements (feathers) to contrast against the hard, smooth metal. I was inspired off of a book of sculpture artists using the steampunk, old, grungy, industrial, worn theme. It was an awesome book to flip through! So I picked elements I liked and put my own spin on them while I was looking at herons.
I've been fiddling around for the past few days with a cute little T-Rex dinosaur character. As you can see he is brushing his fangs. This is because I'm testing out my illustrating abilities on branding products. This one in particular will obviously be for toothpaste, but aimed at children. However, this isn't for a client, but just for fun. I wanted to try something new and see where it goes. I'm still looking at my brushes and seeing what else I can do to add just a little bit of texture to his skin since I already have texture going on with his nails as well with his mouth area.
Hey artists!! Hello everyone!! It's been a long time since my last post
in December 2011!! Wow!! Well I suppose I should update you on past
drawings. I think I'll keep that turkey as is since I've began new work
on a marionette to start off the New Year :)! I started it last week. Anywho, I have been drawing through January. So I'll post
something more substantial soon of what I've been up to. I think I'll
revist the Lulu Marie Antionette and repost that when I'm done with it. I
hope everyone has had a great new year to begin with and had a
wonderful Valentine's Day!
Anyway, for today's new post I'd like to share a couple of in progress
photos of my dog marionette puppet. It's a puppet of one of my
chihuahua's, Glory. So far I'm killing two birds with one stone by
working on both the head and body of the puppet(not at the same time
though)
How the body started out.
The body getting more shape.
The head after sanding. Then I added quick marks of where the eyes, nose, and mouth will go.
Its that time of year again!! I can't believe its Christmas Eve!! It's a
weird feeling being graduated and being home for Christmas. My sister
is home for winter break and graduates in the spring next year. It's
great having the whole family home for the holidays :) ! Below is a
speed paint I made yesterday. I was listening to this song called "Santa
Claus is Coming to Town" by The Crystals off of a mix holiday album
called "A Christmas for You from Phil Spector". It's such a great song
that got me inspired to make a funny drawing of my chihuahua/corgi mix
Willy. He loves to beg and sits on his haunches when he does it. Anywho, this is all I have for today and will have more next week to show since everyone will be busy celebrating. Drive safe and enjoy the holidays!! :) MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!
Hope you all have had a great Thanksgiving! Looks like my trip to visit
my sister got pushed towards the last week of the semester. So Ill be
leaving tomorrow and will return about Christmas Eve. Between the last
post and this post Ive been working on several drawings. Ive made a self portrait, and a funny drawing of my once chubby chihuahua, Lulu(she has lost some pound since then, so I wanted to mock her). My turkey
drawing is almost complete, so youll be see that one as well. Ive even
decided to post a sneak peak of what the blog background will look like.
Its not totally done, but I thought it'd be worth showing. Ive also
went ahead and inked up my design of my dog Glory from the last post. Im
super excited and posting them because they now have this "marker"
effect that makes my poses look bold. You know, now that Im thinking
about it, Ill just go ahead and make that the first drawing in the
series for tonight's blog post.
Im pleased with how this spread came out. Ive put alot of thought into
the look of both Glory and my stop motion film she will be in. I dont
have concept drawings yet of how the backdrops are going to be, but I
watched several paper stop motion films and discovered two obscure
paper/experimental stop motions by Yuriy Norshtein from Russia in the
70's. His two films, "Tale of Tales" and "The Hedgehog in the Fog" are
BEAUTIFULLY made and well animated! The overall ethereal quality of both
films captured my attention immediately and I KNEW that these had to be
my inspiration! Here are the two films below:
I picked these two films because I wanted to preserve my drawing style into my film. The use of texture I observed intrigued me since I love details! The lighting fascinated me as well! I dont think Ill have dark lighting in my film since it'll be more of a comedy, but I'll go back and watch these maybe two more times to see if there is anything I didn't pick up on before. I've also viewed some Lotte Reiniger films as well. She is a wonderful paper stop motion animator and is a master of the silhouette of her characters! Lotte will prove useful for me as well since her films show strong poses against a total black silhouette.
Moving along, here is another look at my turkey that is almost done. I did alot of work to the leg and looked at many turkeys to approach the feathers a different way instead of what I was doing before(as you can see on the right side of the bird and in the top left). I feel really good about it, and will continue in that direction to work my way around this piece. I found that using the brush mode "multiply" adds some really cool effects to the colors as you layer them! When you paint more than one stroke using multiply, it darkens the color as you go. Ive also played around with the different modes with the layers so that it has a different tone effect when layered underneath another layer. This means that whatever mode a layer is on, for example I may have used "color burn" in one of the layers for the red area. So by moving the layer around, it may appear brighter when I place it over top of a darker layer. Hopefully that makes sense.
Ive always been trying to get better at making a self portrait of myself. At first with this drawing below, I was just testing myself to see if I can come up with my own human character. Along the way, I thought of my new winter hat and drew that on her head. Then it came to me that I should just do a self portrait while I was already so inspired from this piece below. So yes, for now its on the back burner. I dont know if I'll ever finish this character I have. I just wanted to show what I was thinking about prior my finished portrait.
Below is my self portrait. I played around with the opacity of the brush as well as with different brushes to get the effect you see. I'm very happy with the outcome. Although, I would have to say it doesn't look 100% like me, but I still like it.
Now for my drawing of Lulu! I was thinking of one of my favorite films starring Kirsten Dunst called "Marie Antoinette"! I had this idea of dress Lulu up like her and just surround her with food. With her breed, they have this "Napoleon Complex", and think they are in charge and rule the house. So yes, Lulu does think she's in charge! Lulu is a very nice dog though. Anywho, my family and I don't overfeed her, but tends to steal some food from my other two dogs when Im not looking for a moment. She's a funny little dog :)! This drawing is still new, so I'll be observing more dress to lock down her dress more. I did research Marie's outfits too.
Finally, I'll wrap up this blog post with a sneak peak to my blog background! :) I've played around with different color modes too as far as the hues go. I will be taking my sketchbook up with my while I visit my sister for awhile. So I MIGHT post a drawing next week. Until then, for those who have snow and ice, drive safely! If I don't make a post next week, have a wonderful holiday and a great 2012 New Year!! :)
Hello! I hope you all have had a wonderful Thanksgiving! It was because of this Thanksgiving that sparked an inspiration for a new turkey drawing! I have some exciting work Id like to present that are in development! I think it helps me to have different projects to work on so that it keeps my mind active with more inspiration and ideas. Anywho here is my turkey(in progress):
My turkey has teeth as you can see in the opening of the beak. Ill color them and see if I like them or not. Im afraid they might make my turkey look took terrifying. But thats the fun of experimenting(seeing what looks good or not)! Speaking of experiments, I also played around with brushes and the painting mode. Im pleased with how the burn mode turned out for the larger feathers above his head.
When I looked at my last blog posting, I did say I should post drawings from my sketchbook sometime. Well it just so happens that I did some while I was away in NYC as well as over the weekend with my dad while he was oil painting in his friend's gallery. Here are excerpts from my sketchbook:
The first one are just random characters. This was where I also tried out an inking pen(Not the inkwell kind, but the plastic one that you can squeeze, and has a brush tip.)and careful outlined my sketches. It was actually pretty fun and would like to try inking again!
My last 3 excerpts are design ideas for a stop motion film I have in mind. You'll see a few drawings where she looks "snake-like". That's because my story will be about how my chihuahua, Glory, sneaks up to a dinner plate to eat something real quick. Ive caught her on more than one occasion trying to eat from my plate. Its pretty funny! She only has this behavior because her previous owners(my family and I believes)let her eat whatever she wanted. So we've been trying to correct this behavior. Anywho, the best part is that my other chihuahua, Lulu, has acquired a new funny behavior! Every time(well almost)she sees Glory try to sneak a bite, she will growl at her as if to say "Dont even think about it!!". I want to play around with how Glory is so skinny, lanky, and snake-like. Ill even exaggerate it too. As far as the medium goes, I was thinking about making this into a paper stop motion film. I remember animating a super short little story in paper in my first animation class. So it has been quite some time since Ive used the medium. If I do go through with paper, I would like to use different textures to make it interesting as well as to make the shots have a nice composition.
Thats about it for now. I will be visting my sister and friends next week until the end of classes. I WILL however keep developing my Glory character and she will definitely be posted in the next blog entry!
