durians keep fallin' on my head

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!

figurepost

pah, thesis has been eating me. I miss posting things. I'm on the home stretch here, though - whoo.

anyway, figure drawings from the past two weeks I attended:

year of the earth ox

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.

a durian and a pangolin

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

HOLY CRAPSICLES

"if you guys aren't freaking out about your thesis by now, you're probably doing it wrong"



yeah, I got that one covered.

stretch 'n squash

it's gonna be fine, oh-nine

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. :)

annnd 2009's first figure drawings page:


that's all for now, have an awesome january. :)

trust

20 years and I'm still learning how to do this.
(personal art, obviously.)

Here's to a new year, a new start. *clink*

oh look, a post

whooo, I fly home to Singapore tonight for the holidays, but first an update!
first, sketchbook stuff:



I love drawing toy breed dogs. they've got 'cute' proportions which I'm more inclined to favour in my character designs, and I think they're a lot of fun to exaggerate and stylise as well since a lot of them look kind of weird. the 'ugly' or 'weird' dogs are the ones I find the most fun to draw. :)

as you can see though, I also like making them badass.


werepomeranian, werechihuahua, werepoodle. I think I need to draw these guys more often.

next, I played another round of what we now affectionately call 'sketchbook hero' with some other animators! the results are thus:


this is pretty self explanatory. I really like my ugly turtle, I might make him a character. or something.


drawing of Ed is pretty blah (I get self conscious drawing my friends, I seriously need to get over that), and I don't particularly want to explain the happy little bunny-sunshine-flowers scene. but apparently considering 'mafia/gangsta clown on crack' came completely out of left field, I did pretty well!

finally a figuredrawingdump since I haven't done one of those in a while:



♥ and ☮ and happy holidays, all!

SKETCHBOOK HERO

so I was hanging out with my friends Carly and Mike and we randomly decided to challenge each other to a fast and furious three-way drawing jam battle. "anything you can draw I can draw better" as Carly called it, hahah. it was a whole lot of fun, and I decided that the results, while not the best drawings in the world since we were basically scribbling them up on the spot in maybe two minutes tops, were fun enough to post. :)


Mike's first prompt was to draw a really grumpy lion, so I did. the red col-erase came as an afterthought and from that moment on I could not look at the drawing because I kept bursting out laughing. *dork*


My friend Deanna who happened to be around at the time gave us this prompt. I have no idea where that came from but it was pretty funny.


Carly's prompt: NINJA. I'm so proud of this, I had put down my pencil so I just grabbed the first writing implement that came to hand (my pilot g-2 clicky pen) and went with it.


me: "I see your ninja and raise you a pirate"
the one on the left is my character Lallang (as a human, she's normally a pirate cat, hahah). she's supposed to be Singaporean so her costume reflects it. I tried to make a more 'traditional' lady pirate on the right but that failed and now she just looks like a weird Disney's Esmerelda thing. eh.


Mike: "Draw Mickey Mouse in your style"
at this point I'm actually not really sure what 'my style' is, since I'm in an evolving stage. I just went with drawing Mickey's simple basic design as I understood it (after all, we're not referencing stuff here).


Carly prompted with Tink right after Mickey. I really like how mine came out. :D


one of our friends requested Fievel from An American Tail, which I'd actually watched about maybe two years ago so it was somewhat more fresh in my mind than it would have been otherwise.


my prompt, since I've had brawling on the brain recently. SUPAHSONIC FTW
this is me recreating a battle I had over summer with a couple of kids I didn't know that happened to be at my cousin's house. they were both playing Pit and ganging up on me because I'm a girl, omg. I wasn't doing too well but payoff eventually arrived in the form of a smash ball. revenge was pretty sweet.


this looks nothing like Papa Smurf. hooray.


yaayy Beckermans! :D drawing him from memory was tougher than I thought but I think this is recognisable enough.

this was really fun and I'd love to make it an actual event for us to do every week, the more the merrier too. drawing with other people makes me happyyy~! :D

artsplosion

WOW. I've been drawing a lot over break, I have a lot to show. doodles are fun!

first, some thesis stuff:



boa and hornbill studies, from photos mostly (though the two hornbill drawings below are from memory. they're going to be 'extras' since as I explained to Gaffney I want my jungle to look like there are more than four animals in it. MORE WORK FOR ME TO ANIMATE, YAY. I'll be kicking myself in two months, won't I. ah well, picking a pangolin to animate as a main character in the first place was kind of telling. anyhow. I LOVE DRAWING HORNBILLS. and I'm happy I get to animate a snake because I love snakes. :)


this is an oriental whip snake, my favourite species of snake. it's probably not going to be in my film, I just wanted to draw one. ♥ evidently I have a thing for pointy-nosed animals.




trying to work out a pose/expression for Labu in this one scene - obviously the second (bottom) one worked better.


doodles. I like drawing with microns - especially when they get old and crappy to ink with, they make for better sketching. also trying to get over my fear of markers, I think we're getting somewhere.


happiness is also a warm bum. radiators you can sit on are wonderful.
I was not happy that the heat went poof over thanksgiving. :|


doggies! as anyone who's familiar with me or my art at all over the past few years will know, I'm a huge dog nerd (as in NERD, not just omg-i-love-cute-puppiez, I can quote you things about many different breeds and I have several breed encyclopedias and photo books. I have also officially drawn every breed currently registered with the american kennel club, except the danged swedish vallhund which they accepted after I'd finished with the herding group. so yeah don't mess with me xD). so whenever anybody tells me they own or fancy a particular breed or type of dog I tend to connect them in my head with that breed or type pretty much forever - since it's also true that people, I find, tend to be drawn to breeds that are closest to them in whatever way. so while I was alone in the dorms I started doodling certain dogs I connect to my SVA buds. yaaayyy, see I thought of you guys. xD

aikido doodles!! I was just thinking about it, since I do practice aikido and I miss being able to train seriously - school and art in general have been taking top priority lately. I also miss my dojo at home, and I hope I can start that up again when I move back. great workout and good for the mind and body. :) I also find aikido is really inspirational to draw from because the poses/movements are so fluid and powerful and the uniform and general silhouette is very aesthetically beautiful to me as well. aah I love it. ♥

I'm not perfectly content with most of these, but I liked them enough to post so. just means I need to draw more! I really ought to do more martial arts-inspired stuff anyway, because it does inspire me.





and that's all for now, whew. oh gah I missed having fun with drawing so much. :[

digicolour'd

happy thanksgiving, all ye american people who are kindly letting me go to art school in your country and teaching me the ways of the animator! :)

almost all my friends went home for turkey weekend, boo. as for me, I've just been in the dorm doing stuff. I've been doing some school work but at the same time it feels great to be able to draw and art (yes, art is a verb now) just for the heck of it; lately I've been so concerned with thesis and school-drawing/animating so it's nice to have some extra time to relax and just have fun again. :)

I hadn't digitally coloured anything in quite a long time, and I think the school cintiqs are ruining me for my tablet. some quality bamboo time was in order, so I dug up some lineart I already had on my computer to work on (original sketches are all in previous post, actually). plus I needed to practice my digital inking anyway - that was never something I was particularly good at.


my character Penny. I haven't digitally inked with coloured lines in a long time.


shading-with-different-colours experiment, I'm trying to build up my confidence with colour usage. I haven't cel-shaded in a really long time either, wow. I know the proportions and such are kind of off and the shading itself is pretty quick 'n dirty, but I still like it, and I quite like the colours too. must do this more.


this was just a silly thing I liked enough to colour. people who've been familiar with my art for some time might notice that my drawing style has been getting a lot looser and more cartoony as of late, and since I've been drawing greyhounds, whippets and other sighthounds for years and years now (seriously... since I was 10, that's about 12 years) they're a fun subject to try and reinterpret. :)

I've also been sketchbooking lots and loving it, but that will have to wait until I get access to a scanner and such.
♥ ♥ ♥ all round!

doodlecrap + figure things II

weekly figure/doodledump:





this is generally what I do on mondays.

there will be more than this kind of post on here soon, I promise. not going anywhere for thanksgiving means that I get four solid days off, and I mean to make full use of them. :D