The Message

I made this looping cycle for my New Media class, inspired by the Marshall McLuhan quote "the medium is the message", and how ideas can come across rather differently depending on how they are transmitted. Though a lot of interesting things were discussed in that class, typically enough I couldn't just pick one to explore deeply, so I based this a lot more on feel and impression rather than thinking too much about it. I think it worked out. I tend to be more satisfied with what I produce when I'm not thinking too much.

LET'S GO FOR A RIDE

Hello, friends, school has been keeping me busy but I'm very excited to post something I've been slowly chipping away at for a while! Some members of the Dota 2 art community have organized a massive collaboration to illustrate a dota-themed traditional tarot card deck, with each card being represented by a hero. So far it's been a wonderful mix of professional and hobby artists and everyone is inspired and inspirational and is a joy to work with. The card art is all coming along beautifully too! You can track progress if you're interested on http://dotatarot.tumblr.com/ !

For my card, I picked (surprise) one of my favourite heroes Batrider, who's representing the Knight of Cups in this collab. I am told that it's about traversing difficult terrain, which of course - as my fellow Dota-players know - suits him to a T!

Since I don't do a lot of illustrations with this amount of detail, I also kept track of progress and made a process gif since I've always wanted to try doing one:

And just for fun some more casual drawings I did of him on a separate occasion - love this character!

sweet dreams

I made Kirby themed valentines this year! Enjoy!

Also, here's an alternate version of the Star Rod one. I had drawn in the little Dark Matter blobs before I remembered they weren't in the same game, but I thought they were cute enough to keep. Disclaimer here in case some individual decides to take me to task for it, though.

I also made another one of these for those who like Lalala more for some reason.

greyhound guitarist - process!

I've really been missing animating in two dimensions so I'm going to try and make an effort to do simple little things now and then. been working on this on and off and I thought I'd record and post my progress! 

I've been animating in Photoshop lately because even though I'm more efficient with Flash's interface, I still really don't prefer the drawing mechanics in that program. There were originally a bit more than twice as many drawings here but it looked much better as a simpler cycle, so I cut most of it out. Rough keys and motion down!

Clean keys! Easier to add in-betweens when lines are clear.

In-betweens added to smooth out the motion and timing spaced out. I ended up redrawing some of these to tone down the follow through on his nose, which is pretty over-exaggerated here, and tweaking the timing some more for a better rhythm.

Finished animation! Yay! (and yes I completely forgot to add the tail until the last minute, so that's why it looks a little hastily done)

blizzard blues

back at school and it's snowy and blowy outside! here's something to mark the occasion... stay warm everyone!

flop

officially done with class this semester! here's how i chose to commemorate that:

cyclops and goblin

school has been super busy but I am learning a lot! here's a couple characters I've been doodling around for a while...

12

Well, after four or five years of living the studio/freelancer life, I'm back in school and doing my postgrad in 3D animation currently! Feels like it's time to get some new tools in my inventory, as it were, and I'm looking forward to getting started.

For now though, it's back to the basics. My assignment this week was to demonstrate Frank & Ollie's 12 Basic Principles of Animation in whichever way we feel inclined, and of course because 2D is what I'm most comfortable and feel I'm best at, I decided to do it that way. Unfortunately I didn't set aside enough time this week to finish it to my satisfaction, but in the future I'd like to revisit this thing and make it a whole little short of its own maybe. And my little polar bear guy was fun to draw in any case! Here's some gifs. I did my drawing in Photoshop because as much as I like the ease of working with Flash symbols, I'm not so crazy about them drawing mechanics...

Xiao Xiao cover art

Joyce Chng is an A+ fantasy author and fellow singaporean, and i recently had the pleasure of making some cover art for her latest story Xiao Xiao, an ongoing YA fantasy set in Qing Dynasty China. if any of that sounds like fun times to you (and why shouldn't it), go click that link and READ IT! :D

Dr. Glasgow on Comedy Central's Trip Tank!

I’m pleased to announce that a short film I helped animate last year, Dr. Glasgow, will be airing on Comedy Central’s Trip Tank this Wednesday night! Tune in and catch it if you’re in the States!

Shoutouts to my co-animator Tris and director/writer/voice-actor/all-around-funny-dude Andrew, Brian and Giorgio who did storyboard work, Natasha who designed the characters, and Laura and Mallory who helped me with an extra late-game push on cleanup/colour when I needed it! and of course producer Scout for her continued support! go team!

Animation and things

It's an animation post for April! First up is a mini web-pilot that I did in conjunction with the talented and funny Andrew Racho, based around hilarious AutoCorrect fails! Andrew provided the script and audio and I handled the animation and design aspects. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out, hopefully I'll get to make more!

Next up, the shot I took on for good friend and fellow SVA Animation alum Kate Sullivan's Moon Animate, Make Up! project. It's a collaborative effort by a whole team of animators and artists to reanimate an entire episode of Sailor Moon, in the same vein as Guard Dog Global Jam and Star Wars Uncut. I had a lot of fun making it and taking all the liberties with the acting in this scene:

Competition And Petty Jealousy from Shelley Low on Vimeo.

You should also check out this Moon Animate preview that's currently up, it's looking really cool so far and so fun to see everyone's styles blended together like this! I'm excited to watch the finished product :)

Moon Animate Make-Up - Scene Preview! from Kaitlin Sullivan on Vimeo.

blood in the water

Sadly I haven't been working on a whole lot of things I can actually post just yet, so not much of an art update for February, but here's the drawing I did for Girls Drawing Girls' theme this week, Mermaids. I thought I'd do something that's a bit of a departure from the norm c:

I'm proud and happy to say that I'm now a member of the awesome art group Girls Drawin' Girls! I applied for membership when they opened up last month, and while I was at it I felt like drawing some new art I could use to submit for that purpose, so here they are. I was trying to show some variety in character design with these!

I haven't been compiling my art here as much as I'd like, so I'm thinking that at the end of every month I'll do a post of my art summary - mainly personal, but whatever work stuff I can post too. It'll help me keep on track I hope!

Say hello to Marco!

I am pleased to announce that the children's book I've been working on, Marco Goes East, is now available as an ebook! Only works for Android at the moment but they're working on an Apple version as well. It's free, so there's no reason to not check it out. Marco was a bit of a rush to finish but I really enjoyed working on the book! Gave me lots of opportunity to practice with layout and colour schemes and background work - and I haven't really done full images in this kind of a style before, so that was a good experiment. Plus Marco was just such a fun character to design and draw! Here are some sample pages from the book.

You can also visit the real Marco at Gardens By The Bay, just outside the newly-opened Children's Garden, if you live in Singapore!

the fawndog trot

whew, busy as usual, but here's a little animation I did tonight of my mascot character to unwind and practice a little.

do drop by my facebook page for more art and doodles! I'll still be updating here, but they'll typically be denser and less frequent.

cutesy kiwis!

whoo, super busy with projects and various other things lately - it's true what they say, I guess, long dry spell and then suddenly everyone wants a piece of you! I'll post more things I've been working on when I can, but for now here's some animation I did a while back for Kiwi Crate, in tandem with my good friend Kristine of Knightingale Studio!

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival! :)

can't hide from the tide

been a bit busy with some projects lately (which I'll eventually post about of course) but here's some quick fanart doodles I did to unwind! one of my favourite DOTA 2 heroes :)

Another slow loris update - the children's book that I illustrated for Little Fireface Project is now available to purchase on their website, along with other handcrafted slow loris goodies!

Here are some sample colour illustrations I did for the book. Lorises are fun to draw.

a lotta lorises

Check out this cool video from Little Fireface Project!! I recently did some work for them and they've used it in the Loris Pride festival that they organized in Cipaganti, Java! I designed the paper loris masks, the logo used on the t-shirts and stickers, illustrated the children's book Slow Loris Forest Protector which should be available for purchase at some point soon, and the loris mascot costume is based on my design too. Really cool for my work to be used in an important cause like this! I've always wanted to get involved in conservation on some level and I'm glad I could help in my own way.