Self portrait numero uno

So I get these random ideas in my head.

And I get them all day long.

It's just tough to actually accomplish any of them throughout the crazyness of each day! I have been meaning to start doing self-portraits for eons, and I have been inspired by Sketchbook Pro....and recently purchasing a few fab sketchbooks by a few choice ridiculously talented peeps.... so tonight I finally sat down long enough to do a quick sketch of meself.

It's fun to layer and colour in Sketchbook... I had no idea just how much!

Perchance I will try to do other peeps portraits...'tis muchos muchos fun.
At least for me. :)

Mouth-only Lip Sync Animation

This term in animation we are focusing on adding DIALOG to our animated projects! Wooooo-hoo! Well, so this one is just a mouth. Just so we ... all » could get over the whole "HOW THE FRANCE DO YOU ANIMATE A MOUTH???" thing. I think I'm over it. Guess where my line is from? We had to choose from about 10 lines. I thought, "Who's voice am I going to get least sick of hearing over and over and over and over and over and over...."


You get the point.


Stay tuned for more fun lip syncs - with bodies, even!

Sheepers Keepers layouts

I painted these layouts from my storyboard panels. I wanted to experiment with a flatter, WB-ish look, rather than realistic-ish. [Which I normally gravitate towards.] These are gouache done on watercolour paper. Ya just don't get the same effect doing the Photoshop thang....plus, PSD isn't nearly as tactile. There's no Cmd-z in gouache! I think that's a good thing. We have to learn to walk away from the keyboard....pick up the paintbrush.....

But I digress.

Me loves gouache.

Drawrings o' Life

Here are a few of my life drawings from this past term. Life drawing [as it seems in most things involving any analog sort-of drawing!] is always a struggle for me. I always battle between letting the conte go on the paper and just feeling the form, and being too stiff.

I do see an improvement especially when I compare my life drawings from the beginning of last year, so that is a huge encouragement to me! I love it when something, even something tiny, finally clicks and I don't feel completely incompetent :) Studying all the muscles has helped tremendously as well, seeing the understructure beneath the figure.

I have also discovered NuPastel this year, which has been fun. It's more smudgy than conte, but there's something so tactile about drawing with it.

These ones range from 1-5 minutes in pose length.

Da Big Bull

Once again, I drew this big boy at the Royal Winter Fair in Toronto. We were just walking by and they had these guys tied up. I couldn't get over how massive they were. They had a few of them in a line, I think the smallest one was over 2200 pounds or some insane thing. They're fun to draw because they are already so massive, it's not hard to charicature them. This was another super quick drawing, maybe 3-4 minutes or so, 'cause there were a lot of people around. But as I have found, it's sometimes those that turn out the best!

Sheepers Keepers Leica Reel

For storyboarding last term, we had to come up with our own stories, involving a human character, a beaked character and a muzzle character. It had to be about one minute [if fully animated], but have a complete short story involving the characters. Uh huh, it wasn't easy! My story changed so many times since the beginning...yeesh. I decided to take a leap of faith and do all my storyboard panels digitally with my newly purchased version of Sketchbook. Oh MAN do I love that program! But drawing solely on a tablet, and drawing on paper were TOTALLY different. Plus with the crunch time I was gonna make it reeeeeeaaaally tough on myself if the digital panels didn't work out. In the end, I was satisfied with the result. Sure, I lost all use of my hand due to severe cramping - but isn't what this degree is all about??? :) I then put the panels to a leica reel [timed them all out as if they were animated], added dialogue, music, sound fx, and some sweet foley, done by my friend and yours, Tammy Robson. Props to Tams, esp on the wolf-hit sound - classic! The story involves one precocious young girl named Emily, her not-so-brave bird-friend Pinky, and their soon-to-be friend, Leonard the Sheep. Oh, and there's also a mean wolf thrown into the mix. He wasn't given a name. Well, okay, "Mean Wolf". This is their story.

Interesting couple at Winter Fair

I drew this couple at the Royal Winter Fair in Toronto. We had been there all day drawing animals and people, and as usual, I was exhausted from the pure A.D.D. of seeing so much and only being able to draw so little.

Tams and I decided to sit in on the rousing goat auction that was about to take place. Little did I know there were such interesting folk who were in the "goat business", if you will. They were both so intent on the goats at hand, they completely failed to notice I was frantically trying to capture their likenesses with my brush pen.

I actually liked this drawing when I finished. That is rare for me to say. I think it happened because I wasn't trying, and I had a whole day of drawing beforehand. Lesson in this: Don't try? Hmm.

I call them Jim and Dawn. Feel free to name them at your leisure. They won't mind.

Walk and Run

Walk and run animation for school - I did two Italian mobsta-type dudes which were contrasting in size and personality. This made for interesting walk and run cycles. Then I added music and sound, and my own dialogue. Tams did the voice of the angry dude, but we did adjust the pitch! I did the screams of the other guy, and no, we didn't adjust the pitch :) Fun stuff!

A blog beginning.

Well, here goes! This is my first post. I have entered the world of blogs and now have to attempt to update not only my site, but this as well. Should be fun! Let's see how I feel next week when our projects start pouring in!! Anyhoo, I thought this would be a good opportunity to explain the images a bit more than my site design allows. And it's great to get connected with my fellow bloggers!

I drew this chickie whilst having coffee with my gal-pal Tams at Tim Hortons. For all you American peeps [or International, for that matter] out there....Tim Hortons is not only a Canadian institution, but darn good java. And lookit the kinda characters that waltz in for me to draw! How could you go wrong?

ps - Her name was not really Brittany. Well okay maybe it could be. I don't know. I didn't ask. But she struck me as a Brittany-esque sorta girl. Any resemblance to real or fictional Brittanys is purely coincidental, and frankly a little frightening.