Back to the Hoverboard!

My posting has been lacking. Life + work has been taking up my focus, and while I have a contrillion idears swimming about in my noggin, I haven't had enough time to get them on paper/screen just yet.

THAT being said.... I made a hoverboard! A friend of mine suggested that I should be Marty [a la Back to the Future] for Halloween, and since those movies are borderline an obsession for me, I wholeheartedly jumped on that train!

The pics are the proof. And now I have a hoverboard and it makes me SO HAPPY. [See above.]

Starting the process... you can see the pic of the hoverboard on my iPad - I just eyeballed it as I painted and hoped for the best!

The finished product on my desk at work - and I won Most Original Costume for my efforts, yay!

I even found the photos online from the first and third movies, as well as the Save the Clock Tower flyer - it's about the details people!

A striking resemblance!!

Craft paper flux capacitor.

I love digital design as much as the next dudette, but today I had a hankering to get out my scissors, glue stick, and imagination - and just GO! So of course, I turned to Marty and Doc for inspiration.

It was an experiment, but me had the fun. I was proud to not use Photoshop for once! Looking forward to trying more of these, but working more on the colour scheme next time before I get cutting!

Fraaa-geee-laaayy...!

Here's the second part of the cast of characters from "A Christmas Story" - what fun I had designin' and colourin' these guys up!


Merry Merry Happy Happy Christmas to one and all :)

I triple-dog dare you!

Doing caricatures from Xmas movies just got a lot funner. Yes, funner. Here is the first half of the "A Christmas Story" cast, all coloured and in their fashion. See below for an enlarged version of each character; Ralphie is shown in the previous post. More coloured leg lamp fun to come!

Ralphie, now in Technicolor!

As I said, I have the whole cast inked and am in the process of adding color to them all, but here is Ralphie, avec color!

"You'll shoot yer eye out!" SNEAKPEEK

I love Christmas. And I love to draw. Soooooo why not combine them, you say??? Exaaaaaaactly. This morning I put on "A Christmas Story" and was inspired immediately. The clever dialog, the retro-ish outfits, and the Christmas appeal - 3 for 3.

I ended up doing a caricature of most of the cast, but I just finished inking them, and won't finish them complete with colour tonight.... so I am putting up a sneak peek. Here's Ralphie, roughly inked, sans colour.

Stay tuned for the final with the rest of the cast!
Happy Christmas!

"Tah-Dah" - now available on the web!

"Tah-Dah" [2009] from Stacey Chomiak on Vimeo.

Since the film fests have started to die down [although this month "Tah-Dah" was screened in five different locations alone, yahoo!], I thought it was time to put it online. I hope everyone enjoys!

Buffalo girls wontcha come out tonight....

A quick holiday sketch I did during "It's a Wonderful Life"... one of the great Jimmy Stewart's best!

A Feel Good Film Fest Interview!

The great peeps at Actors Reporter let me know that they posted the interview they did with me on the red carpet at the Feel Good Film Fest this past August. [See above :) ]

It was such a wonderfully trippy experience to be, first of all, on a red carpet at all, and secondly, to have pics taken of me and asked to do interviews! I am so proud of everyone who helped and supported me to finish "Tah-Dah", and I wouldn't have been to any film fests without them!

LA Shorts Fest + "Tah-Dah" crits

My brother Cody and I jaunted down to LA this past weekend to see my film "Tah-Dah" Premiere at the LA Shorts Fest. The films screened at the Laemmle Sunset 5 Theatres on Sunset Blvd in Hollywood. It was his very generous birthday and early Christmas present to me...it was amazing!

A couple quick videos to show our excited experience: [we are obviously related]
Seeing Courtney Cox
Seeing Scarlett Johansson

It was a great experience, besides getting to sit right beside A-list stars like Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher & Lena Headey, I got to screen and participate in a filmmaker Q & A after my film screened. It was a huge honor to be invited to screen my film among these true Hollywood productions! I met a lot of great people in the Industry, and got some really positive feedback on my film. It was overall definitely worth the trip!

Festival is in November at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood:

The second fest I got some great feedback from was the AniMazing Spotlight - my film was included in the Quarter 3 entries and got feedback from amazing professionals in the Animation Industry all over the world.

Here are some of the comments I received about "Tah-Dah":

Nancy Beiman: [worked with Chuck Jones & a Disney Animation veteran]
"Good sound, interesting design. The animation is good, The style is highly derivative of 1950s Disney design and story but the film is professional looking and pretty to watch."

Bill Dennis:

"Delightful little film. Loved the sound track."

Paul Dopff: [animator & instructor from France]

"Just perfect, with a very good tribute to the UPA style.

very professional creation, visual and sound level together."

Bill Matthews: [Disney Feature Animation veteran]

"A short (very short) animated film using the flat, designy approach reminiscent of the 1950's style of commercial animation. Rather refreshing departure from all the 3-D computer shorts in this competition; used a jazz-type background for a character playing a cello concerto!! Nice expressions but just as I was "getting into" the idea, it ended. (Usually, I found that editing on some shorts would have tightened up their stories...here, I couldn't get quite enough!)"

Thanks so much everyone!!

Straight to your airwaves...

I'm on the radio! Or, I was.

First off, a huge thanks to Toni Pennacchia at MergingArts Productions, who invited me to come and do an interview with her on Spoiler Alert Radio.

It was great fun! I have never been on the radio before, not even as a call-in for a contest, so this was an entirely new experience for moi. It's now available as a downloadable podcast on the Spoiler Alert Radio website here.

For more info on Toni's awesome film festivals, Short Short Short Film Festival and Womanimation!, click here.

To Kill a Mockingbird

Moving forward on tackling the AFI's Top 100 films....I screened To Kill a Mockingbird and did a bit of a longer watercolour study...prob 30 mins-ish. I was focusing more on tones again, but this time I blocked out the structures. I think because of the structure, this turned out better than the Singin in the Rain studies.

I fundamentally enjoyed this film...great acting, surprisingly captivating...definito enjoy-ito.


Gotta love those sweater vests. They never really go out of style, do they?

Set the Tone

This week in Life Drawing, Bobby had us purely focus on tone and shadow - so much so that we had to draw all of our poses ONLY using shapes of the shadows, no linework. Sound easy.....it wasn't! Without blocking in your drawing, things can get out of proportion SO easily unless you concentrate like a crazy monkey. [Don't ask.]

So, call me a crazy monkey, but although it was reeealllllllly challenging, I loved trying to see things more as abstract shapes of tone and shadow and not, 'Oh that's a leg, or an arm, or a shoe,'....I can see how this will definitely help the strength of my drawing skillz if I keep on practicin'!

I tried out what I learned by putting one of my fav films in, Singin in the Rain, and doing a couple quick watercolours by painting tone only. [see below!]




How can you NOT love Gene Kelly??

Ottawa Animation Fest '08 highlights!

A bunch of us went to Ottawa for the annual Animation Fest, and this year was fab! Of course it had nothing to do with the fact that The Celestial Ox made it into the Teletoon Scholarship Competition and was screening there....naw, that had nothing to do with it :) [BTW we got Voter's Choice, go Penguins!]

This was my second time there, and it was great! Saw many great shorts, and saw some amazing peeps - most fab for moi was Doug Sweetland [Director of Presto from PIXAR], Richard Williams [uber-animator who did Roger Rabbit!], and Eric Goldberg [animator extraordinaire legend from Disney]. See below for a pictorial overview of the fun!

Cliff, Alysia and I in front of some of the awesome buildings in Ottawa, we were walking to another screening.

Eric Goldberg giving a talk about character animation - awesomeness!!

Andy and Brock [fellow Celestial Ox animators!] at our Teletoon screening, yay!

Moi drawring at one of my fav places in Ottawa - Byward Market.

Alysia and I being silly amongst the sculptures.

We always take a pic of this ginormous spider outside the National Gallery of Canada. This one is hilare, from left to right: Alysia, Cliff [pretending to have succumbed to the spider's wrath], moi [doing a sort of praying mantis], Kenny [apparently thinking the spider leg is a vine], and Andy [making grand friends with the 8-legged horror].

Richard Williams at the 20th Anniversary screening of Roger Rabbit - so fab!!

Tams in front of more coolio architecture...it made all the walking much more enjoyable!

Alysia, moi and Tams enjoying a dog of the hot sort. Yummmm.

You can't see me, I have perfectly blended into the skinny peopled sculptures.

'The Celestial Ox' got selected for two festivals!

Some exciting news came my way in the last couple weeks, and I thought I'd do a special Ox-update post! The group film I animated on for my 3rd year group film this past year at Sheridan [see group film blog here], entitled The Celestial Ox has made it in two film festivals. Yay Mo-Cap Penguins! [Our studio name. 'Tis self-explanatory if ya think about it.]

It will be screened firstly in Los Angeles at the LA Shorts Film Fest on August 20.08 [SO exciting - wish I could be there!!], and secondly it will screen at the Ottawa International Animation Fest on September 20.08 - we made it as a finalist in the Teletoon Animation Scholarship category.

Me both excited and uber proud of my fellow penguins!

#23, The Maltese Falcon

So I have been faithfully renting 2 classic flicks each weekend in my attempt at tackling the AFI's Best 100 Films list [as mentioned in a previous post]....

I have been dangerously lacking in my endeavor of doing a sketch after watching each film....OH I have so many idears, and yet, so little time. Hmm. Make time, I must make time!

Well, tonight was a good try. I put all freelance and other aside for a mere hour whilst I sat down and sketched out a few storyboards from The Maltese Falcon. Who doesn't love black and white flicks? And who doesn't love them WITH Humphrey Bogart? In all his smug bad-boy glory.

I only took a few minutes at these - I remember doing this exercise in first year with Maury Whyte, our storyboarding prof - he would pause it on a scene from North by Northwest or something of the sort, while we would madly sketch the scene in one minute. Ack, the madness of wildly drawing! And in first year, it was wildly :)

Here's my homage to first year days.
And really, it's just kinda fun! In a messy sorta way.

Introspective inspirato

Alright, well, brace yourself, all you 3.4 people out there who follow this humble blogness o' mine!

I have been formulating a sort of blog in my head for months now, but I have not really had the chance to properly sit down and intelligently regurgitate it into the e-world.

So, before I attempt to do so - here's a couple pages o' warm-up sketches I did before work this week. The second page, top left - I did him during a meeting and he ended up being the inspirato for my highlight project of the week. Yay meeting sketches!



Alright here goes. Bear with me! [Bare? I never know.]

I have been working at Fisher Price for 4 weeks-ish now, and it has been really interesting. I have been able to happily combine my graphic design knowledge/experience with my animation schooling into one enjoyable internship parcel. The people are superb, the work is interesting, all that good stuff.

But I didn't anticipate the fact that I would have such a hard time re-adjusting to having to sit in one place all day. I suppose I just got used to the crazy norm that school brings - going to this class, running here, doing this, back to school for a meeting, working all night....yada yada yada. However, this abundance of time [in one place] has allowed me to rediscover something I had temporarily let slide:

The shear beauty and wonder that is the podcast. No, not doing my own [heaven forbid!], but listening to some I had on my iPod but had just plain forgot about. Think about how cool they are! We get spoiled nowadays with all this fancy technology, but HOW COOL is it that I can sit in and listen to 2 dudes at Pixar chat about process? Podcasts like Spline Doctors, Stephen Silver and the Animation podcast. I listened to a few this week, and wow - I never realized how re-motivating it is to listen to a couple of animators yammer on about how their thought process works when they storyboard, or what their favorite movies are, or what made them think of how to animate the scene of Nemo talking to his dad.....

And here's where I had my Aha! moment this week. In all the different podcasts I listened to this week, with all the different people from different studios/places/etc - they had a couple common pieces of advice. And they were all things I had been thinking/wondering about for quite some time, so I decided to share.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that as you [or I] grow as a person, as I experience more and share more and see more, I grow as an artist. Now I know this may seem like an entirely obvious comment to make, but think about it. Does life experience make for a better carpenter? A better accountant? A better lion tamer? Perhaps. But I honestly feel that as an [aspiring] artist, my personal growth has a direct and immediate connection to my artistic growth.

For instance, this summer thus far. I have only been here a few weeks, but the experience of going somewhere new, living somewhere new, getting used to everything new and living alone - they have all been motivating factors for me to draw more, draw better, explore more, and listen better! I feel like in school, we have our heads down focusing so much on the tasks at hand, that we forget about the important things that we need to be doing in order to truly grow as artists.

So if I am gonna sum up my aha-feelings from this week and from those wiser than myself, here it is. My 6-step-program to becoming a better artist/animator. [I write this more for myself than anyone!]

1 - Go out and experience life. Notice as much as you possibly can. Travel to places, small and big. Observe situations, subtle and grandiose. How do the clouds change when the sun is setting? How does that person's face communicate joy or thought? Why does certain music make you feel certain things? Don't wait to "get somewhere" or "go somewhere" just learn from "where" you are!

2 - Just do it. Okay, so Nike may have branded it first, but it's worth reiteration! All us artists feel it sometimes.... the "ugh, I just don't feel like it today, I'm not nearly as good as this Mr/Ms Joe Artist anyway, why bother...." If you love art, if you feel it inside you, then go for it! Get it out anyway you can, and forget about everyone else around you. Make art for you and remember how it felt to have fun doing it! Grab a hold of that and run for it.

3 - KISS. Keep it simple STUPID! You have an idea? Don't flower it up. What are you trying to say? Why is the character doing that? What is he thinking? SIMPLE! Just communication. One idea can change the world, or do I need to quote Martin Luther King?

4 - Share. Share your ideas, share your experiences, share your feelings! No, not in a Dr. Phil sorta way - but if you feel like something you found or did or drew changed something for you - then don't keep it to yourself! If you feel inspired by it, chances are it will inspire others. And you never know when your little bit of inspiration is given to someone in the nick of time.

5 - Don't be scared to screw up. We all do it! We all fail, and it's impossible to avoid. But, really, don't you find when you DO screw up - it's when you learn the most? Don't give up! I also heard this week that JK Rowling apparently got rejected over 90 times [90 times!!] when she submitted the first Harry Potter book to publishers. That's insane. But she never gave up. And lookit her now - she's a multi gazibillionaire!

6 - Rent those movies you keep saying you want to. Almost everyone I listened to this week kept saying how important it is to study the classic films. After all, we may be animators, but more than that, we are filmmakers! Why not study the best? And it's one of the best ways to get inspired.

That being said.... I downloaded AFI's list of 100 Greatest Movies of All Time, and I am determined to put a substantial dent in that list by the end of this summer. Last night I watched #2 and #47. [Stay tuned for my thoughts and sketches on those!]

So forgive me if this has been old news, or boring news, or useless news, but HEY, it's my blog, I can do what I wanna. :) However, I DO hope it has encouraged someone! And I also wanna thank the creative peeps out there that sent a major inspiration station my way - and they may never know it!

Now get out yer pencil and get back to it.

Sweeney inspired art...

I have been attempting to see [most of] the Oscar nominated films before the big night, and so far so good. Last night we went to see Sweeney Todd, and tonight I watched Surf's Up.

Interestingly enough, the one that inspired me farrrrr more, was the live action one. Sweeney Todd [despite the gore and blood] was so beautiful in its' cinematography, time period, acting and such-fun lyrically genius-esque soundtrack. [Who knew Depp could sing too?]

It inspired me to take out my pastels and get my fingers dirty... and what fun it was! As cool as Photoshop is, it will never replace the tangible feeling of pushing colour around on a thick-toothed stock. I loved this dude [almost as much as Alan Rickman!]... he is so rat-like.

And a few cards I painted today as well... art is so fun without deadlines!