Hurtling Through Space...

...At An Alarming Rate!

Once again, I've been trying out something new for the first time. In this instance, it's matte paintings for an indy web series called Hurtling Through Space At An Alarming Rate. So far I've done 3 quick matte paintings on each of the last 3 Saturdays and while I'm embarrassed to show them, I've started to get a little bit more comfortable with each one. It's nice to have a blank canvas and a problem to solve and know you only have to finish in a couple hours. It's a bit of a misnomer to call them paintings as they're mostly just quick collage and levels-balancing exercises, but I'm getting there! Here's each of the them in order of completion.

Riding on an aeroplane

Just some sketching done on the plane ride back from LA; kinda hard to keep the lines smooth and straight with all that turbulence!

Planet Hundo

Working up some character designs for a small project I'll probably start up early next year, once I get my head around character animation in Flash. They're related to characters I worked on way back in this post!

By the way, if you're interested in a terrific book on drawing for animation, pick up Wayne Gilbert's Simplified Drawing For Planning Animation! It's a quick read that you'll find yourself going back to time and time again.

Sunday turns to Monday...

...and the only way to get by is to keep on drawing. Having lots of fun with the silhouette studies, not so much fun with the shading attempts. One day I'll have better control of form and lighting.

another Sunday, another set of sketches

Started playing with Sketchbook 2010 on my little Dell Mini 9 after finishing up an actual sketchbook for the first time thanks to the building momentum of SketchSunday Sessions. I'm trying out all kinds of new things, like silhouette studies and, gasp, color! Trying to see how far I can take Sketchbook 2010 after I watched the amazing Creaturebox screencaps that popped up this week. So much awesomeness!

A request?!?

Another Sunday, another sketch session. A waitress asked us both to draw up the Joker; it's been a long time since I've been requested to draw something on the spot.

Jeff's turned out way better.

Photo Monkey

Fresh off of a trip to Comicon I started pouring through the 300+ photos I took on the trip, and I was immediately frustrated with how flat my pictures felt. These were shots of heroes and mutants, Star Wars & X-Men, and they were just plain boring to look at. I've been following the Flickr account of a guy by the name of Stu Maschwitz, and I'm head over heels for the color, drama, and storytelling in his stuff, and I've been wondering how he manages to consistently get there.

Besides a boatload of skill, he's also an experienced VFX artist/director, as well as the father of the DV Rebel movement. Or at least he wrote the book on it. Well, I found a post of his that raved on and on about Adobe Lightroom and it's photo manipulation tools. Well, when the guy who developed Colorista and Magic Bullet Looks raves, I tend to follow his lead.

And he was dead on. Lightroom really is amazing, allowing you to twist and bend RAW photos to your will without destroying them in the least.

While I'm most certainly too heavy-handed right now in my vignetting, cropping, and color correction, it's gotten me stoked about picture-taking again. Check out my Flickr account if you want to see more. I'd appreciate any comments you've got.

Sketch Sunday Returns

Fresh off of a wonderful wedding, I called up Jeff (@AnimationCosmic) and we started SketchSunday back up in full force. I was a bit rusty, but chose to dive into designing a specific character I've been posting up here for a while. I'm starting to get more comfortable with facial proportions and just now starting to get into some expressions. He needs some more elements to break away from a generic character, and I'd like to get him a little more elastic, but he's getting there.

The other page is just some more heads. And a scary looking Uncle Sam.