Groovin' in color

I wanted to play around in Toon Boom more, so I cleaned up and colored an older flash animation. Enjoy!

Sighting

I try to keep this blog about the short I'm trying to make, but every now and then I'll throw in a sketch or photo about something off topic. Like now. I was just in Florida for 10 days with my family and we snorkeled off the shore as we usually do when we're down there. The visibility wasn't as good on a particular day, and I couldn't see more than a few feet in front of me. We were by some rocks, peacefully watching the schools of silver fish sail by, when suddenly a huge shape came right at my face. I had no idea what it was, I just knew it was huge. And swimming fast. At me. I immediately and quite inarticulately yelled, "Guys, BIG! THING! HERE!" And booked it back to shore as fast as I could. Well I shouldn't have been so chicken, because my dad got a good enough look at it to determine that it was a harmless manatee. We got to see it later when we were standing around in the water sans snorkels and it swam around our legs for a few seconds, before taking off to deeper waters. Below is a quick sketch I did later of glimpsing the hulking shape underwater before fleeing. In other marine life news, we followed a large manta ray around for an hour, and rescued a baby sea turtle. Now I have a few more little summer trips before getting back to the grind.

The first tube monsters

Ceramics!

No, I don't have a kiln. Yes, this is more art from college. Sorry, but I'm out of town for a while so I don't have a lot of time to make new stuff. And it's relevant! These are the first versions of the little creatures. Sorry for the long time between posts. I won't be back in town and in the swing of things until mid August, but I may have a few posts for you until then!

Another crack at the pod

Painting over the plasticine wasn't going so great, so I tried this instead. I used the conte brush in Corel Painter. I'm not sure about the little things on top. Ooh, and I just noticed that highlights in the holes at the bottom are too bright.

More fun with plasticine

I made this little pod ball out of plasticine today. The plan is to paint over it in Corel when I get that extra RAM I ordered for my Macbook. (The UPS site says it's in the truck somewhere in Brooklyn....) I know the previous post of the painted pod was done quickly, but even so, I'm not very happy with it. It's a little crude, especially in the shaded dark area in the lower left. Not enough reflected light in the holes, just darkness. But I guess that's what happens when I try to paint without reference. Hopefully painting over/from photos will help that. I don't care if it's cheating - as long as I get results!

Pod tree color test

My first Corel Painter effort! I used the same acrylic brush for this one, so I didn't experiment much. When I tried to use a really big brush to paint the background it was REALLY SLOW. Hopefully the 2 gb of RAM I ordered will arrive soon and speed things up a bit. More painted bg tests to come. If you click on the image and zoom in you can see all the brushy details.