surprise birthday cards for my friends Brian and Manny!
I may make this a 'my friends riding giant animals' series.
am also trying to make making birthday cards for people a habit, I have had hangups about it for a long time now. I'm always afraid I'll forget someone and they'll feel left out, so I just end up never making them at all. but I'm tired of holding back because of that. I get some great images in my head as gifts for people I know and love, and they all deserve them. I shall attempt to bring these to paper or screen, even if it's just a silly doodle.
so if you're a good friend and next time it's your birthday, watch out for artattacks! *ninja* and if I do forget, you have permission to request I draw you things.
hope all my stateside friends had a great thanksgiving!
to break this awful habit I have of not posting, here's more stuff people paid me to do:
pet portraits for a couple friends!
I am still taking orders for pet portraits if anybody is interested. :)
I've also been very busy with sticker-making -- I love sticker-making so much! will save those for another post though, I still have to sort out all the scans and photos. I've got an account on etsy now and once I stop procrastinating I will have to get active on there with art. such a lovely site!
couple drawings of a new character of mine. or rather one I've had for some time now but only just managed to be able to draw to my satisfaction.
more about her later on, if enough people want to hear about it. I figure I should stop being such a wuss and post more about my personal art here, since most of what I seem to post are random crap and work-art.
I was having a not so nice day. but it's all good now.
picture that somebody commissioned me to do of their original characters:
I finished this a while ago but figured now was a good time to put it up. it was an interesting digital painting learning experience and I really enjoyed working on it. both characters are supposed to be that balloony, shiny kind of texture and I was working on making that show through.
plus, I think I need to start drawing more monsters and maybe some *gasp* gory stuff too. I actually love doing that, it's just a side of me not a lot of people see since I tend to be seen as the kid that draws cute puppies. I need to work on making my scary things look more scary. :C
here's a fun art meme someone on deviantART made, draw your character as a variety of beasties and monsters:
in case you can't tell, I'm an Alien/s and a 28 Days Later fan. hahah.
if you don't have any characters you can just draw yourself I guess! the blank one is here, just click the download button on the left side of the page. if anyone I know decides to do this please link me, I want to see. :D
happy belated halloween! I had a great weekend.
to end off this monstrous post, some cute mixed with scary 'cause that is how I roll, as they say.
did these over wednesday - friday in between doing work things. :) cintiq fun hah. most of these are my original characters, I labeled those with their names.
I'm suddenly finding myself in another I-hate-my-art phase, so here's some finished work that was commissioned from me by some very nice people over the past few months. :)
Picture for a friend of her vampire character. I was supposed to draw inspiration from the Who song 'Behind Blue Eyes'. I was happy to do something a little different from what I'm used to.
technicalities: sketched on paper, scanned, coloured in Photoshop.
A badge/nametag for my friend Mazie, of her beautiful whippet Ballie. ♥ whippets are my favourite kind of dog and I hope to have one someday.
technicalities: sketched and inked traditionally on cardstock, coloured with Prisma pencils and marker, cut out and laminated.
A drawing of my friend Mike's dodo character Randy! He paid for this by buying me a ticket for Up in 3D.
technicalities: sketched on recycled paper, coloured with Prisma pencils.
Pet portrait commission of the customer's four dogs: (top to bottom) Katie, Nemesis, Pepsi, and Kona. I love drawing pet portraits, it makes people so happy to get renditions of their 'babies'. and everyone knows I am all about the happy.
technicalities: sketched on paper, scanned, inked and coloured in Photoshop.
it's good to be commissioned to do art! makes me feel productive and useful.
okay, the spit-take I made up, but the conversation was only mildly edited. also I conveniently erased Brian from this scene. sorry, Brian. it was an artistic choice.
I need to draw people I know more. and really just draw more in general blargh. hope everyone had a better summer than me! :)
I had some spare sticker paper and a day to myself, so I made some doggie stickers:
chihuahua set
whippet set
I'm selling prints of these, actually (contact me if you're interested) and they were so fun, I want to make many more. :) maybe I should get an etsy store, I know a good number of people that have them and it looks like a great site.
dang if only I could spend the rest of my life making cute things and living off it.
guess which drawings I did! :D I drew twice (2 x 8 frames) and there is a hint on one sequence, hahah.
I put together a GIF of my friends' and my ghetto anijam too -- click the picture to view. (disclaimer: this is in no way indicative of our skill level in more professional situations.)
just for the sake of variety, a picture I drew recently of two of my original characters.
I listened to Goo Goo Dolls while I drew this. I don't care who thinks that's cheesy (that was kind of the point anyway).
I'm not much of a drinker, but I'm a huge draw-er (social or otherwise), and when I heard about this great animation jam event going on downtown I had to get in on the party (and of course invite everyone on my facebook friendslist who might remotely be interested). It was great hanging out and drawing with people I haven't seen in a while, and animating pretty much straight ahead on index cards within ten minutes was definitely something new and exciting -- and a whole lot of fun. I had a great time and I hope to show up at the next one!
The zombie sketch wall is a thing of great beauty, I'm glad there are pictures of it up!
my friends and I randomly decided to do our own really ghetto ani-jam while we were waiting around for people. I'll eventually put it together just to see what it looks like. (probably like crap, but oh well.)
preview:
I put up some drawings from the event, too. :) there were some great ones we found lying around and decided to just take home, heh. I would have run off with the bikinizombie wall if I could have.
faces! I need lots more practice with drawing human faces well so I went and found some on flickr.com to draw from. I'll definitely be doing this a lot more.
some designs I did at internship for a Veterans' Day mascot! the pigeon and eagle were kind of fun but the dog's my favourite. he was inspired by the war dog Smoky, a Yorkshire Terrier that became an indispensable war dog -- pretty incredible for a so-called "lap dog" toy type.
I know I've been using the same music since I first made myself a reel, but I've always been really conflicted about changing it whenever I update. I've heard from more than one person that the music reflects my personality well, and that is part of what I want to get across along with my technical skills. I figure my animation is more important to worry about, and I'll change the music when I feel like I need an overhaul. :)
here, have a Flash exercise I did last year. I can't find the original file anywhere, so I'll just have to link to it -- I still like it enough to do so. :)
At long last, my thesis film is ready to go LIVE online!
I realise that up until the screening very few people knew anything about my film. From the beginning I found it hard to talk about:
"So what is your thesis about?"
"Well it's about this pangolin, she-"
"What -- a penguin?"
"No, a pangolin. Scaly anteater indigenous to Africa and Asia. But anyway, she has these durians that she treats as pets, and-"
"These what that she what?"
"Um. Okay, my film is about monkeys. And friendship. The end, go away."
It turned out to be rather nice to have people go into the theatre not knowing what to expect from me. I was able to let my thesis speak for itself and I don't know if it comes across but it's really quite a personal project to me. Lots of people congratulated me on it afterward and I am truly thankful and quite amazed by all the support. ♥ ♥ ♥ much love, all. The Dusty animation show was truly a night to remember, I couldn't be prouder of the SVAnimators of '09. I won't forget it as long as I live -- true facts.
anyhoo. I'll shut up and let my film speak for itself this time, too.
I am attempting to make some (pathetic, by comparison) recreation of our Dusty show through a playlist on youtube, which will be updated as people post their films. Check it. They deserve it.
♥ ! I'll be posting more art soonish, as soon as I get real life sorted out. Yay!
should have posted this earlier, but happy -- albeit belated -- lunar new year! :D I got a couple packs of brush pens on impulse a while back and wanted to try them out.
the still from my film I'm submitting for the show program, both in colour and in black and white. I REALLY like how it looks, and that's a great motivator for thesisizin'. :D
okay it's almost lunar new year so it feels more like 2008 is officially history. hope it's been a blast so far, I know it's been great for me. :) it's going to be an exciting year since I'm graduating and then if all goes well will stay on in New York for an extra year to do some work study. whoooo employment.
anyways, new year means new sketchbook! recycled paper yay. I've since finished colouring, but I like it like this too. :D
some doodles of Labu. she keeps changing even now, dammit. pesky characters.
werechihuahua again. I'm not terribly fond of this drawing but I do like his face. I might do a were-toys series, I need to actually finish pictures sometimes.
and a bunch of fanart: OMG PPG!!!!! I was obsessed with this show back in the day. the marathon on CN and the new anniversary ep was a good enough trigger to get me back into it. I am so proud of my Mojo Jojo considering I didn't draw him much even back then and I used only minimal reference for his face. yeah I watched that show waaaay too much har.
my old fear of markers seems to have done a 180 degree turn, because apparently I love them now. HOORAY. I need more.
pokemon I drew for people. I like the old pokemon designs better, the new ones are weird and a lot of them are ugly.
my friend Carly's character Stormy, inspired by what she's doing for her thesis film. :)
