Christmas Project

Its been too long. I've been missing drawing and animating, so I'm going to get back at it.

 This project started as a little joke that got started in my family. My mother isn't the biggest fan of the holidays, in fact she's really like a Grinch. I've been wanting to do a Christmas picture or something like that, and drawing my mom as a Grinch was pretty fun. I'll probably end up coloring and inking this picture.

Finished Anniversary Pic

Ok, my life got a bit hectic for a while there, but I managed to finally finish at least one of my projects. I'm really pleased with the way this turned out:

Here are the reference and work in progress pictures:

Update time

I wanted to post an update on something since its been a while. I'm still working on my flapper, the progress is slow because of my lack of time to do it, but its coming along nicely. I'll post an update of that when I make a little more progress. For now I'll post a picture of the logo I'm working on for my website.

I came up with this:

I think it looks neat, but I'm stuck with how I'll actually use it. I think it would look really neat on a business card

Anniversary Pic-WIP part 1

Still slowly working on my flapper project when I have the time. Everyone once in a while I'll work on other things when I get inspired to do something new. I've been wanting to learn more about illustrator. This technique involves taking a picture and tracing over it with a custom brush to give it a more sketch look. I tried it out with a picture from my anniversary:

 Here's the original:

...and here's the work in progress:

I'm going to go in a tweak some of the lines and add a little color later on. I'm really pleased with it so far.

Flapper Dance Update

Not much of an update, but I'm working on the background for my character. I'm going with her performing on a stage. I'm going to add in some characters playing instruments and the background music much later. Now just to finish the animation itself and clean it up.

51 Great Animation Exercises

The last year I've been really anxious to improve my animation, its something I'm always thinking about. I practically jump at any chance I can to get better. I've been discussing how to do that on the ASIFA group on Linked In. Someone suggested this website to me, and so far its going pretty well.

Animator Island- 51 Great Animation Exercises to Master.

This is a great way for me to revisit the principles of animation and a chance for me to understand them a lot better. This is also great because its an opportunity to just practice and not get too caught up in a project that gets too troublesome later one.

I've done the first to exercises on the list already this week:

1. Ball Bouncing in place, no decay (loop)
2. Ball Bouncing across the screen

I did both of the exercises about 3 or 4 times in a row, every time I thought I was done I would look at it again and start over. Paid more attention to timing and archs. I did some squash and stretch because I think it makes everything look a little more interesting. 

Flapper animation update!

I got to animate this scene a little more tonight and finally got to work on the motion of her dress. So far it isn't a complete disaster but it still needs more work:

Still haven't quite worked out what to do with her other arm, I tried animating her hand resting on her hip, but I didn't like it all that much. I'll keep at it until I find something I like.

 I also found background music that I like for this project. I went with Jazz since it fits the time period, here's the link to it:

Flapper WIP, hair

I finally got a little time to work on my flapper dance. Also did a few little sketches of how I want her hair and dress to look during a little down time at work:

I did a little research on women's hair style during that time period and decided on the finger wave style. I have her a little hat with a feather in it for a little more secondary action. I'm going to have fun doing the ink and paint for the character.

Line Art and an update!

I've been wanting to give my portfolio site and blog a more professional look, so I'm working a new logo and background design for my websites. I think I've thought of something pretty cool, I did a few sketches during break at work yesterday:

I  want to do something that plays off my name, that means "queen" and also something to do with animation or illustration in some way. What I thought of was a silhouette of my head. I incorporated a peg bar to represent animation and around it will be a fancy border. I've come up with a nice color scheme and I've been doing a little work with it today. So far I really like it.

I wasn't planning on redesigning my blog, but after playing around with some new techniques in illustrator today I'm going to give it a try. It will tie into my portfolio website with the same theme except it will look a bit more like a sketch.

I also worked a little on a sketch I drew of a woman on the bus, I did the lines for her. I'm probably going to give her a little color and a background too when I have more time.

Flapper Dance Progress

So I've been working on my flapper animation whenever I can find the time. I'm really having fun with this animation.

I didn't know what I was going to do with her arms. One will be doing a motion, probably going to keep the finger wagging thing there, the other will probably be on her hip. I want to get this part looking good before adding in hair and her dress. 

I finally bought a scanner

Today I finally got around to getting myself a scanner which means I'll be able to update more often and it'll make projects a little easier for me. I like to do lots of sketches of a project and then do my work based on them, it will be much easier to do that with a scanner at home.

I went through a few of my sketch books as I was testing it out:

This first one is from a life drawing session earlier this month:

These two are sketches of random people I drew on the bus ride home from work two weeks ago I especially had fun with the second one, thinking about doing more with it:

This was a sketch of my cat character I drew a while back ago. I drew her then decided to use her for another the reaction animation.

I can't wait to post more updates. I plan on doing life drawings and sketches during the week and doing a large blog post with them at least once a week.

Flapper Dance

Wow, its been a little bit. But I'm happy to post an update. I've been working a whole lot which leaves little time for me to work on projects and practice animation. I've been trying to make more time to keep working at it. I'm planning on buying a scanner soon which will make daily updates much easier. I can't wait to put up pages of my sketch book and little doodles and ideas I come up with at work.

So on to my current project:

I saw this gif-

And was inspired to do a little animation of it. I'm having a lot of fun with it so far and its making me think a lot more about animation. I'm working on it now, but I'm still pleased with it so far:

I'm really excited to work on the secondary actions, but before I do that I'm what to work on this a little bit more. I want to add a little more motion to the body before I move on to adding in other things.

I also want to design what she'll look like in the colored version of it. I'm thinking either black and white like the gif or more like the "Almost There" scene in "The Princess and the Frog"

I'll post more on this project as I work on it. I'm really excited to be working on animation again.

Face Animation practice

I had a day off today, so I wanted to do some animation practice. I haven't done too much work with squash and stretch in the face so I animated a little face changing expressions. This practice was really fun and taught me a lot about how stretchy the face can be.

I really miss having more time to animate like I used to before I started working. I was so immersed in this I really didn't notice the time just passing by. Hopefully I'll be able to do more soon.

Progress on Daniel Tiger Character

So last month was very busy, I've been working a lot lately and when I haven't been working I've been resting or spending time with my family and friends. As a result I didn't get too much done on my two projects. I was off today so I decided to get back to work on them. I worked on the Daniel Tiger character today since I was still in the beginning stages of it, so it was easier to continue working on.

I got a lot of work done on his face. For the longest time I had trouble with getting the details of the face, especially the head the way I wanted it to look. In the show many of the characters have curved lines around their heads and I wanted to replicate that, but I didn't know how. I played around a bit in illustrator and I finally found a way that isn't so hard to do. I created a shape with the pen tool and added a ton of anchor points around it. When I got the number of points I wanted I did effect
Right now I'm still messing around the with face patterns and the fur texture I picked out. I'm not quite satisfied with it yet, but its off to a good start:

Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood Inspired Character

 Last weekend while hanging out with my boyfriend we started watching PBS because we were bored, a show called "Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood" was on. I thought the show was really cute, but what really caught my eye was the design of the characters:

I really like the different textures and the other little details like the lines of their eyes and mouths. I got inspired to make my own little character that could fit into that world:

My idea is a little ferret that is into playing sports. I want to take him into illustrator and color him in the same way. This project should be interesting. I'm already seeing a lot of things I'll have to do like finding or creating fur like textures and using the mesh tool and gradients a lot. I've done a character similar to that style before in flash, but I'm going to use illustrator since it should be better for this project.

I'll post updates on him as I work on it!

More on the Cat project

I've been really busy lately working, so I haven't had as much time to animate but I'm making progress when I can. I have a day off today so I'm taking the opportunity to work on my projects.

Here's some progress on my cat animation:

I'm starting to like my animation a lot more on this project, its finally starting to come together the way I planned, there are still some things I'd like to work on before I clean it up. But I really like it so far. I'm going to start sketching out the kitchen background for this and make the finishing touches on her colors today and tomorrow.

I'm also starting an illustration project pretty soon, I was inspired after watching a kids show on pbs kids with my boyfriend over the weekend. I'm pretty excited about it.

Cat wip

So I got a new part time job, something to bring in a little money. Its not an animation job, but it'll do for now. I have less time to do any animation work, but when I'm off, like I am today I like to something to practice. I'm still working on my cat animation.

I fixed a few things, but ran into a few more problems I'll address later. I'm still figuring out timing, but so far I like the progress on this. Here's what I have now:

I added a little extra time in the beginning so it doesn't just go into the animation, it just her looking disinterested and looking over towards the tuna can. I like it. I'm also working on the secondary action in the tail. I made her take in the middle a little more exaggerated, but I'm starting to not like it as much. I'm going to draw back on that a little until I'm satisfied with it.

I'm still not done adding frames, I feel like the ending should be a little slower, I feel like the take in the middle is fine, although it needs to be smoothed out.

At least I got something done on it, not nearly as much as I would have liked though. I'll keep doing this until I complete it. I usually start a project and then never finish, but I feel like this is a great exercise. It makes me really go back and review the basics, so I want to finish this.

Cat Color wip

I usually do a character turn around that has been fully colored by this point in a project, but it simply sort of slipped my mind. I was having a lot of fun doing the animation for her, so now I'm working on a turn around for her. I think I'm going to make her look like my sister's cat, Grey. She has long grey fur and bright green eyes. I think I'm going to add less fur, but keep her color.

I have her head done so far:

I'm going with a vector look since I'm not going to do cut animation with this. I'm using the pencil tool for my rough animation, it is really messy but I'll use the pen tool for my clean up.

rough cat animation

So earlier this week I did a little work on little cat I mentioned in a blog post before. So far I like it, but I'd really like to push the reaction a bit more. I think I have trouble with just letting loose. I want her reaction to be a bit bigger before I start smoothing things out and cleaning this up.

I like it for the most part though:

Procrastination Creature, Illustrator

So I created this today. I call her a procrastination creature, mainly because that's what I've been doing lately. After a really frustrating night and morning I just sat down and started drawing on Photoshop  After a while I came up with a frustrated looking creature thing:

I decided to color it, and to try and see how fast I could actually finish something. Its been a while since I've actually had a deadline for something, so this was really fun for me. I got it all done this afternoon. I did the color and inking in illustrator to try to learn a few new things. I created a few new brushes and tried them out. I really like the lines it gave me, I'll definitely use them again.

Expressing an Attitude

As usual, I'm trying to improve my animating skills. I know the basics of animation well enough, but I haven't really tackled character acting all that much. So I cracked open a few of my animation text books to practice. One of the many books I own is "Character Animation" by Preston Blair. On about pg 150 he goes into expressing attitudes with your character.

On that page there's also a little illustration of a bear doing a take:

I really like how much emotion and how dynamic these poses are. Along with looking a different acting references, and getting more into acting myself, I've started a new animation project.

I'm going to try to animate a take like the bear above. It going to be sort of a challenge for me to try make it believable and not just copy the actions. I've already started, I'll get more into it after I've completed my Valentines gift for my boyfriend.

Here's one of the beginning frames:

I went with a little cat character and decided to go with her reacting to seeing a can of tuna. The animation is going to be really simple, I just really want to make it look like she's really happy and excited to see it.

Animation Practice

I wanted to animate something today, something to just do a little practice. So I animated a little flag waving in the breeze. Its not completely done yet, but my hand started to hurt, so I'm taking a little break. Here it is so far:

I plan on making it flag for a few seconds then making it stop. Maybe I'll add some clouds or a little background.

Victorian sketch

I'm trying to get used to sketching on a tablet and photoshop. I usually draw in my sketch book, but since I don't have a scanner available to me right now I figure this is a good time to try and work on my photoshop skills. (Or at least getting comfortable drawing in it).

Yesterday while browsing buzzfeed.com, I saw an article on flirting techniques in the Victorian Era. It was really complicated but also very interesting, but what really caught my eye was this picture:

It was the first time I saw a black woman dressed like that during the Victorian era, not to mention her dress. I just thought it was really beautiful and ornate. I drew it much like she's posed in my sketch book but decided to have a little more fun in photoshop:

I took a few creative liberties with her pose, I started just drawing a female body just in the pose and just started to make the dress later. I really sort of like this, I think I'll try to do something with this in photoshop or maybe illustrator. Either way I'll take the opportunity to learn a few new techniques.

Character Color wip part1

I took some time to do the color for the female character sketch I posted a little while ago. I like to start with the head first and the body second. At first I tried making this head:

After a while of messing around with it, I got this:

I didn't like it as much as I thought I would, so I decided to try something different. On the sketch there was a different face I drew:

I didn't like it as much, but I gave it a try, and after a while of trying out a few different things I got this:

I think it looks much better to me. It still needs work until it looks like I want it to, but its a nice start.

I'm trying to keep things sort of simple so if I animate her it won't be too difficult to color her. I'll probably keep the eyes are symbols though. I'll have to do something different with her hair. It works in the sketch, but its already proving to be difficult to recreate.

Flour Sack Animation Practice

I've been getting back into animating. I'm taking it slow and starting out simple so I won't get overwhelmed. My first project is animating a flour sack, and so far I've animated it doing a little jump:

I really want to work on my timing and anticipation this year, so please tell me what you think!