It's time to go home!

Illustrator doodle-of-a-day...

...shhhh >.>

Webby

Here's a quick mockup for the redesign of my (ye anciente) website. I need to update it PRONTO. >.<;

And now...to hastily vacuum the apt before people see it tomorrow....

Cats and fancy-do's

So I went to the grand reopening of the local Petco today. Snagged some goodies and about half their stock of cat food ::rolls eyes at pudgey kittens:: In amongst the loot, I found a Petco Bandana! And guess who got to wear it?? Yup that's right! Mr. Buttersworth himself! MWAHAHA. And now I present to you: Butter showing off some Petco Pride.

He was really mad at me and kept trying to hide in a corner. I told him to take it like a man, but he pointedly ignored me ^_~
Anyways, back to some art: here's a color comp of that illustrator sketch I uploaded like 3 entries ago. Not totally sold on the color palette (as I'm not a huge fan of bright purple, however my friend likes those colors and seeing as it's for her...)

Deep River Muster

Geeked out this weekend with a Fife and Drum Corp Muster down in Deep River, CT. I didn't actually play anything (since I'm still pretty craptacular at the fife), but it was fun to listen to the corps and watch the phenomenal amount of white trash wander around drinking beer. Got a few sketches down when the 'f' troupe started (that's the big jam session at the end of the evening).


By the time I decided to stop trying to sketch drummers (the fifers were hidden in the mass of drummers!), it was getting a bit dark. I soldiered on though! Started sketching my surroundings instead. Here are a few drums and tents in the background.


This sketch took me a while to realize that as the music crescendoed behind me, I was more and more frantically scribbling! I had to consciously slow myself down for fear of my sketchbook bursting into flames or my pen flying out of my hand. haha. It was at this point that I really wished I'd brought some paints (and a big floodlight to paint under!) because this food stand was lit with brilliant yellow-orange and white light - while everything else around it was dark green-purple. Maybe I should try a color sketch in photoshop. We got photos of it, but I find photography annoyingly unsatisfactory - since the colors never look the same as they do in real life.


Also been trying to get a handle on some more animation. Teaching myself the proper way to do a walk cycle from The Animator's Survival Kit by Richard Williams. Fabulously informative book with great writing and humor. Having a hard time switching back to keyframing versus straight ahead animation (which is essentially what I've been doing successfully for the past three years). Oh well, its like switching from digital art to paints, just requires a mental tweak. All this reading of animation techniques and looking at other people's work makes me realize how much of a gap there is in my animation education. Guess I gotta fill it with knowledge from books and stuff now!

Bit o' animation

It occurs to me that I haven't shown any animation on this blog yet. That said, here's a quickie I did tonight...link!
AND I watched Batman: Gotham Knight, which is awesome and on the whole, a heck of a lot better than the Animatrix. Hurrah for animation!

Hot, with a capital H.

That's right, it's hot. And humid. So damn hot in fact, that all productivity has come to a rather sweaty stop. Instead, I lie on my couch and bemoan about the stifling heat while succumbing to my ultimate nemesis: The Telly. Yes, that huge black box has hogged many hours of my life recently.
BUT! I've managed to do a little sketch for a friend and am currently in the process of coloring it in the computer. Here's the outline form from illustrator (it looks like a mess now - shapes are blocked in line form and will be filled later!):


I recently trekked up to Maine for a mini-Fourth of July vacation, which was fabulous (including perfect weather!). We swam and did some archery and cookouts and I tubed for the first time! Also rode around in a speedboat for the first time! Which oddly enough made me realize how well animated Elastigirl and kids were in the Incredibles when she turns into a speedboat and has Dash whizz them off to shore. Anyways, it was amazingly fun and I tried to sketch a few things and failed miserabley...possibley because there was so much other stuff to do...
Poor Skittles is lying underneath my fan, I don't think she's quite got the hang of standing in FRONT of it yet to get maximum cooling. Heh, poor hot cats.
And now...off to the only airconditioned room in the house! bleh!