Agni Kai!

This started as a "love note" exchange (done at a church function every Sunday) and, while it stayed weekly for a while, rapidly got out of hand. What we ended up with is something incredibly geeky and criminally insane fun - an agni kai (or fire duel) between our two zodiac characters.

Me = fire tiger snake of Justice
Michelle - fire rabbit lion snake

Before you click any images, I recommend you open this music in a new tab (for atmosphere):

OK. Go.

Travels, 08-09

Done in the airports as I flew from Utah to Ohio and back this Christmas break.

Hanging out in SLC airport...
from SLC to Cincinnatti...
from Cincinnatti to CMH, in a puddle-jumper airplane.
Return trip (CMH-Cincy), tried to capture the awesome lighting scheme above the clouds... with only limited success. It was beautiful in real life.
I will be posting my final images for last semester's character design class, but not right now. :P

Animation studio 2 final

There are still a few inbetweens (at the end, mostly) that I wish I had time to do, but my character design final is beckoning and this is Good Enough. This time tomorrow, I will be watching me some Avatar and eating the things I avoided tonight because I was afraid they'd put me to sleep.

Mountains! And a little storyboard thing!

Painted this when I got home from work today. You can click on it to make it bigger, but... well, one day I will paint things that look just as good full size as they do as thumbnails. ;)

Also, I finally finished a side project that's been going on since summer before last. Had I not lost use of my computer this April it probably would have already been done, but I recovered my files last week and was able to finish at last.

It's based on a book series I was reading at the time but should be fairly easy to understand without knowing much about anything at all. It just means the 8-13 year olds who read the series have really enjoyed it on Youtube thus far. :S

Also I would like to note that I planned this long before I even set foot near the Kites project. D:

*sings * I want to break free-ee...

This is what happens when cleanup in Flash starts to melt my brain (and my throat starts to hurt) at work.

And then I stayed extra to finish what I was supposed to be working on, but I figure I needed the animation break. For sanity's sake, of course.


EDIT 12-12-08: now with a better bow at the end!

Character Design - emulation

This week I tried to draw like

Juanjo Guarnido

Claire Wendling

Mike Mignola

I also got called out on not really getting out of my comfort zone on this one. Which, seeing as two of these are existing characters of my own that I tried to throw into other styles, is true. Oops. At least the drawings themselves went over really well in class. *shrug*

I may play around some more and resubmit some attempts at things that I'm not comfy with. Like Wendling-girls. But we'll see how much time I have for that.

Juanjo practice

I guess that's enough practice. Time to come up with an original character for the actual assignment...

Sketchbook Cover + football

My sketchbook had a boring brown cover. So I fixed it. Had to process the heck out of it so the colors would look like they do on the real thing, but at least I got it close.

And below, sketches from this year's ill-fated installation of the BYU-Utah rivalry. Well... "ill-fated" if you're a BYU fan. At least Ohio State stomped the snot out of Michigan, which is why Brutus has any basis to comfort Cosmo in the bottom right.

The last batch of animals!

And so ends my favorite unit in Character Design class.

The categories:

Human/Animal (horse)

Farm Animals/Equine (either works - donkey)

Bears

Next assignment - emulation! I know I'd like to take a crack at Claire Wendling and Juanjo Guarnido, but I'm not sure yet who my third will be. Maybe Mignola or somebody else who's cool like that.

more animals! and sketchbook stuff!

The next batch!
In the CAT category...

a lynx! At least, that's how he started out. I was encouraged to try to break free of my own conventions, but this looks kinda like maybe one of my cats had a baby with one of Michel Gagne's rabbits.

And in the DINOSAUR category...

Pachycephalosaurus! With a Tootsie Pop! This is pretty much Rachel-style all the way... though I did really like the way the shapes on his head/neck/spikes ended up flowing together.

For the FOREST ANIMAL category...

badger badger badger badger
I felt the most successful in breaking out of my regular approach with this. I had a vague idea of a posture/shape I wanted to fit the badger into and started with that. Though my original mental image way way more heroic and epic than this goofy fella. :)

Halloween sketching on campus. The sketchy dudes in the upper left were riding unicycles with carved pumpkins over their heads.

Church. I was advised to draw more environments instead of all characters in my sketchbook, so I tried it out. Too bad I got that suggestion right as it's starting to get hard to draw outside.

These were doodle pages showing my original direction for the CAT assignment, which is saturated in Rachel's Normal Approach. I wanted to do Pallas' Cat, because that thing is made of FUN shapes and I had a blast drawing it the last time I went to the zoo. I also explored lynx in my style as well - wanted to play up their big paws, thick legs, and big ol' noses. :)

The end.

Animal character designs

Here's the two that were due today - "flying animal" and "ocean animal."

Sometimes I wonder how often this is a true story.

Zootastic!

Abbey and I went to the zoo last Saturday - and then these pages happened.
And yes, I am a terrible copycat. Whatever, brown paper is fun.

And suddenly about here the scans got really weird and contrasty. Sorry about that.

Animation WIP

Watch me make Milt Kahl spin in his grave! :D

Heroes/Villains

These are the rest of 'em. Ryan thought these were very successful, which gave me warm fuzzies.
Pyroman: His passion for saving people is only second to his passion for watching (and causing) burning things. Ryan wanted to see this dude in color; I'll probably post an updated version sometime in the future.

The Puppy Punter has allergies. Which would make her acting out understandable... if there were no pills that could help her deal with it less violently.

This is the Owl... but with slightly sexier shading.

More character design work - heroes

Threaten her little kidlings and you'll get a cyber beatdown.
You don't have to be rich to be a superhero... the evildoers may take you a little less seriously because of your lack of spandex, though. Their loss.

A Self-Centered Post

because it's my birthday today!

First up, my zodiac conglomeration: Fire Tiger, born in hour of the Snake, who is also Libra, = FIRE TIGER SNAKE OF JUSTICE. (sue me for the copout - inanimate objects aren't fun to incorporate into a design) This fella exists because of Michelle, and we have been having a healthy note/comic battle for several weeks now. Ask me about it if you want to see it.


Also, my self-caricature (and wacky expressions) for character design class. Ryan liked it (while pointing out that my eyes are bigger and my ears higher on my head), so it can't suck too bad?



Still, the expressions are kinda terrifying. When we were taking reference photos Monday, Ryan kept telling me to emote more. My face doesn't stretch all that much - I think most of my real expressions are eye-dependent.

schoolwork update

Here's some of the stuff I've done in Character Design so far. I haven't got my silhouettes back from Ryan (didn't get a chance to scan the whiteout versions) so they won't be included here.

SHAPE DRAWINGS


NATURE ELEMENTS (rocks/trees/clouds)
CARICATURE
Next assignment is self-caricature (and then applying a bunch of expressions to that
design). Should be... interesting.