Sketching

Some WIPs - a couple of very rough sketches of potential layouts for a previous illustration project.

It's Spring?

It snowed early this weekend. But it's April...and today is Easter. From what I've been hearing in the news, just last year it was close to 90 degrees on this day. The latest snow that I can recall since I've lived in Texas was March 28th. So I figured it was safe to plant some new flowers (for pretty) and herbs (for cooking) in my patio boxes - and, of course, I had to bring them all in for the weekend so they wouldn't freeze. That's Texas for you, I guess.

Happy Easter!

And check out this funny little bunny video to celebrate those sinful little bunnies of Easter past...as I vaguely recall from one of my old art history lectures at university, bunnies in early christian religious art were symbols to represent the "sin of lust" possibly to challenge the old pagan fertility association. What fun!

Have some more freelance illustration going on for the next few days (wee), but as I wait to get approvals on my concepts I keep on with my own work as much as possible. I'll post some of the work in progress from that in the next few days.

Behold the Enemy

Free At Last

Wrapped up the freelance illustration work for the children's textbook series at last today (well, until the next time they need me and I have some free time), so I'll be back to working on my own stuff after the day job and posting merrily away once again, for the next month at least. Wee!

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Mina seems to be responding well to the thyroid medication this past week. Her coat is looking better and her behavior is more the occasional spasdic sweet cat like she was before. Haven't gotten the others tested yet since they weren't showing any of the symptoms mentioned. Unfortunately, I did get an email from Petsmart this week with the info that I'd purchased the tainted food - tracked me and the numbers by my PetPerks card. Isn't that lovely. Ah, well, I suppose it's a good thing I only buy cat food from Petsmart.

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Had a quiet birthday this past week. Planning on going out tomorrow night with some friends to drink farewell to my lost youth. ha! I need to color my hair pink again - we all miss it. Tracey, my hairstylist, wants me to try this new iridescent pink. Sounds like fun!

My Friend Mina: Part 2

More news about the petfood recalls on the tv and in the papers today:
"...her first thought after hearing about the recall was, “Oh my gosh, I killed my cat.” Fluffy’s health deteriorated after Tracy fed her Special Kitty brand food, one of the recalled labels, and she had to euthanize the 11-year-old cat last week."

I have to admit I've been in a panic all weekend since I pretty much felt the same way. Evidently more dogs and cats may still be victims of kidney failure in the next few weeks; and in particular, cats, as it appears they are more sensitive to whatever contaminated the pet food.

Meanwhile, yesterday's tests and exam results are in - Mina has hyperthyroidism. She'll be on medication the rest of her life, but it's a treatable disease. Her kidneys seem to be functioning fine at the moment. My sister's cat Coco evidently had the same problem and lived till he was 20 before his kidneys finally failed him (...let me see...that's two pills a day for 365 days a year for about 7 more years...that's gonna be alot of pills...over 5000, if I did my math correctly -- sigh). For the next few months, I'll work with the vet to figure out what her dosage will be, and get her tested twice a year after that to make sure all is well.

Mina easily took the first pill without issue this evening. Hurray!! Hopefully, that continues for the future...have to admit that I didn't think that the pill pocket would work, especially since Mina isn't used to taking treats, but it did, yay! And here's hoping that the rest of my cats will have even better exams in the next few weeks.

I'd rather be sure than sorry, so I'll get the others examined and tested, too.

My Friend Mina

My 12-year old cat, Mina, hasn't been quite herself lately. Worse, she may have gotten ill from some of the canned food I've been giving her recently as a treat in the evenings (she usually only got the Science Diet dry food and no people food ever, but I've started feeding her and the other cats canned food once a day, too, for added moisture and coat improvement) -- unfortunately, the same food which was just recalled this weekend due to some kind of contamination. Turns out it may be the wheat gluten additive (for extra protein) from a new supplier for Menu Foods is what they said this morning on the news. In any case, I took her to the vet for a full "senior" exam which will hopefully pinpoint the problem so that the vet and I can get her feeling better and living a quality life for awhile longer yet. Her sister, Tabitha, seems to be fine. But, depending on the results of the tests that are being done for Mina...I may be bringing Tabitha in sooner than I'd originally scheduled for her annual physical exam and senior blood and urine tests. Here's an old picture of the two girls when they were about 4 months, I think. Mina still had a short coat then.


And this next one is from about 2 years ago, in her usual queenly pose.

I figured after bringing Mina home from the animal clinic (she was so stressed out by the visit that she was panting like a dog when the vet brought her to me in the exam room) that she'd run and hide under the bed for the rest of the day once I let her out of the carrier. But she's a trooper and instead wanted me to brush her for a bit (she's a very pristine cat) after she checked the apartment out to make sure everything was as it should be...and she is currently resting in the cat tree by the window watching the birds flying by while keeping a close eye on the two pigeons that persist in calling my apartment balcony their new home.

Stupid pigeons.

Believe Me

Just a quick little sketch of a memory to take a break from the tedium of textbooks...

While I was working on my freelance textbook illo's last night, the local PBS tv station was running a British music special which was providing some fun background music. When Dusty Springfield started singing "You don't have to say you love me", I just happened to be walking by the tv and saw the performance - and totally had a flashback to a time when my mom was dressed up for a night out with my dad, and looked almost exactly like that -- big blonde hair, sophisticated, too cool for words. Well, at least to my little girl eyes.

I thought she was perfectly beautiful.

Dream On

Since I was about 4 or 5 years old, I've had the occasional vivid dream that I can later recall quite strongly. Either because it was a recurring dream (I have a few that I can still remember from back then, although unfortunately most of those were nightmares) or I enjoyed the dream-story so much that I wrote it down in one of the notebooks that I have hanging around me. Just reading my notes about the dream brings it all back once again.


There are a few times when I'm lucid dreaming, and in some of those I like to completely change the dream or at the very least, manipulate the "story". Some of my all-time favorites involve shape-shifting. I think it's memories from lessons in my old anatomy classes that also make shifting so attractive -- instead of changing in a flash from my own self to whatever creature I want to be (werewolf, swan, Tyrannosaurus Rex, mermaid, etc.), I like to make the changes properly and methodically, so that I can feel the bones and muscle grow or modify, the weight difference from my original self to the new creature, and the addition or modification of my limbs...and how the new body all works together once the shift is complete.

Elements from those shape-shifting dreams are currently driving some ideas I have for my participation in a fun little comic anthology. I'm working on it along with some concept artists (professional and student-level) that I've gotten to know in the last year. Not something we plan to sell, but rather use as self-promotion; and some have mentioned that they plan to include their contribution as part of their sketchbooks for this year's Comic-cons. In any case, I posted some of the very rough sketches I've been doing over the weekend for that.

Interesting, too -- it appears that there is a japanese feature animation called Paprika that is about a "dream detective who can enter into people’s dreams and synchronize with their unconscious to help uncover the source of their anxiety or neurosis". It looks pretty cool. I really wish that there were good animation studios here that also did movies for adults and not just kiddie films. Anyways, the movie was released last year in Asia and should be in theaters here in the U.S. in May or June 2007, most likely in rather limited release.

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In other news....

Just back from a brief visit with the Disney folks for another licensing meeting for my day job. Had a nice dinner conversation with David P., a long-time Disney artist who has worked on a variety of feature animation projects and who most recently lead the creative development of the Disney Signature furniture collection (really cool and unfortunately every piece is way out of my budget), on working with interns (we both have some that will be starting in the next few months) and on some key creative best practices or maybe a "creative nugget" that we could take from the many years of professional work that we've done (we each have about 20 years of artistic work, his with the various Disney departments, me with various freelance, corporate and private companies in some creative capacity of one kind or other) that could be passed on to our future interns. After some discussion, we agreed that the simple idea to not immediately refuse a new project simply because you don't have prior experience is one of the best bits of wisdom we could pass on. Don't let inexperience scare you away!

Now, I just need to listen to my own advice....

Speaking of freelance and future job projects, I'm doing some freelance illustration work once again for some more children's textbooks with a publisher I've worked with before, so my postings will be rather limited if at all for the next few weeks.
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And, back to those dreams of mine....

One of my more recent interesting dreams pulled in scenes and characters from two different books I read some time ago, "Blood and Chocolate" and "Moon Called". Well, the second was a year ago and the other one about 6 years ago I think. Both of them were werewolf stories - which made my dream most excellent IMO. Nothing like turning into a werewolf and having a bit of fun. Grrrrrr... :) However, since I hadn't reread those books in a while, I believe that the dream may have been influenced by a project I'd been thinking about...a painting I've been wanting to schedule time to develop....and that's probably what really got me dreaming about werewolves. I've posted one of the initial rough concepts sketches for that illustration below.

Rubs hands together with glee -- Let the creative work begin!

Still Hunting

Couldn't find the Life Drawing classroom over at UTD Friday night. I'm not familiar with the campus and the directions that I had were not much help. I'll have to try again maybe next week. And maybe get a better map... In the meantime, I picked up an interesting Barron's book over at the local Borders book store, The Fantasy Figure Artist's Reference File. It looks to have some good turnarounds of both male and female models in a variety of "fantasy" types of costumes, all in color -- and lots of draping cloth. I love drawing draping cloth. Plus, it comes with a CD of all of the photos. Nice.

More Doodles

Another one of those ideas that I'm working on. Just random thoughts at the moment.

And a little "comfort drawing" of a horse. :)
Except...I'm sooo out of practice drawing horses - so was not really all that much comfort after all.

Doodles of This and That

I have entirely too many at-home art projects that are going on at the moment, but it's a sort of nice creative problem to have. :)

While I don't have an idea box like animator Keith Lango recommended in a local talk he gave a few years ago -- basically to tuck away those other fun personal ideas and projects so that you can focus on one project at a time...and finish it (ha) -- I do keep an "idea notebook". For me...the option of creative multi-tasking on my own work lets me take a break from a personal project that I may have lost a bit of production steam with. I can always pick up the random project again, often with some additional insights to make it even better -- or at least that's what I tell myself. You know, like those horrible computer crashes when you lose your entire harddrive (brief pause to knock on wood here) and having the need to redo the work makes you get it done even faster, and hopefully, better. Well, that's the positive way to look at it anyways. :)

In any case, here are a few bits and pieces from a couple of the projects that I'm developing in the next few days, weeks and months...oh, and I've finally started watching my Wendy Froud DVD so I'll be posting some of my new polymer characters in the next few months...weee!!!

Random Creature

What the heck is a Golden Guddle Greaper? I'm not sure either, but this is the creature concept I came up with - 30 minutes "research", 1 hour sketching, 1 hour coloring:

And here's the original sketch:

It's Cold

And that's all I really have to say about it right now. Brrrrr....

Old stuff

I was going through my old stuff looking for some of those "comfort drawings" that I used to do. And found these horsie ones. :) Mostly pastel art. A couple of them were of my horses, a mare (based on a photo we took on the day she was rescued) and a gelding. Some were drawn when I was in high school (long, long ago); and others are from when I was just starting university about 20 years ago...trying to figure out art on my own (was studying biomedical science back then) and doing t-shirt paintings for extra money.

Counting Down the Book Binge: Next

I've been quickly going through the nice stack of books that I got for Christmas, gifts and otherwise. Over on the right in my "Reading/Watching" section you can see the listing of books that I have on hand and haven't read just yet. My book binge at the moment is about a book a night or so. I'm going through them fast! The most recent book I finished was Next by Michael Crichton.

Well the story wasn't as engaging to me as some others that Crichton has written (Andromeda Strain, Coma, Jurassic Park, Airframe) and at times it felt like there were entirely too many characters that I had to try and keep straight in my head (flipped back a couple of times to make sure I had remembered the right character during the first third of the book)...but the info behind the genetic engineering - the genetic patent quandaries, who owns your cells, your very DNA, the media manipulation...wow, too much! Had me both enraged and stunned at the possibilities at the same time. Heh, one of the reasons it was probably a good thing that I'm an artist now instead of a scientist, as much as I enjoyed my time in the labs studying genetics back when I was pursuing a biomedical degree for veterinary medicine, I was entirely too tempted to come up with my own little creative creatures by having some fun with cellular manipulation. (Ah...sweet unicorns...ha!) But that was long ago. And as an artist of today, I have no interest in creating "works of bio-art" with lab developed tissue or glow-in-the-dark bunnies.

I was interested in Crichton's interpretation of private funding influencing University research versus private research versus government sponsored genetic research.

Also interesting is how in the last few days, the news media is headlining "new research results" about gene variants and stem cell discoveries. Curious, most curious.

Japan scientists link strokes to gene variant

Study: Amniotic fluid yields stem cells

Fun to read articles by scientists who are now publishing responses to what is, after all, only a book of fiction, right?

Why Michael Crichton Is Wrong About Patenting Genes

Michael Crichton's 'Next' is noxious

I'm definitely going to be reading some of the sources cited in Mr. Crichton's latest book, "Next", that I just finished reading this weekend. Food for thought, yesh.

Bird Feathers

After watching my screener copy of "Happy Feet" last night and seeing how the character designers attempted to somewhat differentiate the male and female emperor penguin characters by adding implied waist curves with the black feathers and giving implied breasts to the main/speaking female characters. (I suppose that's better than just sticking a bow on top, adding major eyelashes and calling it a "girl"). It brought to mind a Starbridge story (a series I really enjoyed) that I read back in 1990 called "Silent Dances". The "alien" avian characters in the story were very similar in appearance to the all white cattle egrets (at least in my memory...however they were about 14 feet tall), and it wasn't until the human observers viewed the intricate art and details on the "capes" made from the skins of these birds with ultraviolet light that they realised that the slaughtered avians were an intelligent species with a language and extensive community. The above picture is actually an etching I did in my print class after reading the book "Silent Dances" since egrets were kinda on my mind, heh.

Thinking about the book made me curious to find out if current biological scientists have done any research on emperor penguins to see if they, too, have art or other patterns on their feathers (applied by beak or just grown that way) that humans cannot see with the naked eye. While I didn't find any specific research about emperor penguins feathers, I did find a rather interesting article about songbird feather patterns as seen under ultraviolet light:

http://www.birdersworld.com/brd/default.aspx?c=a&id=673

BTW, I did like the "Happy Feet" story alot. Title/logo - good lord, what a horrible job! All of the designers and art directors surely must have been out of the studio when that one got approval. Animation, eh. Lighting, texturing, sound, environments, other characters (elephant seals and killer whales - sweet!) really nice job. I also thought it was pretty funny how they tried to incorporate some of the layouts and narration style from the successful movie "March of the Penguins" which I loved. The HF movie was an excellent way to hit the kiddie market with info about the global effects of human mismanagement of natural resources. Reminded me of similar messages in a couple of my kiddie animation favorites back in the seventies, "The Lorax" and "The Last Eskimo Curlew". I do wonder how "Happy Feet" might influence some people in the future like the other two did me....

Happy New Year!

Wishing all my occasional visitors, friends and family a very happy and most successful new year!

Holiday Pink

To celebrate the holidays and provide some family merriment since everyone was coming over to my place for Christmas dinner, I enjoyed telling my hair dresser (beautician?), Tracy, to go ahead and color my hair all pink just before Christmas. :) It was something I have wanted to try at least once. Like getting a tattoo. Anyways, my hair looked like sweet pink spun taffy when she was drying it. Lovely! I'm sad that it's fading so fast and my blonde hair is peeping through so quickly. I particularly enjoyed how unnatural the color looked, heh. Left my bangs blonde, too, for a nice contrast.

Next time, tho, I think I want to try more of a pink bundt cake with white frosting instead of the cotton candy look. ha!


Last few days to finish planning my goals and strategies for next year, both personal and for work. Lots of stuff I want to do, including setting a regular exercise routine (again...darn those shrinking jeans!), painting (can't live without it), managing the interns at work (always an intriguing challenge), developing new strategies to improve how the creative team delivers product concepts and how we can all build our creative skills (blah, blah, blah), traveling to Austria and Germany this summer (so exciting!!), getting that more relevant creative role (i.e. better role/job in the industry I want to be a part of), reading my new books...and yes, finally getting my own lot to the publishers for editing/fine-tuning. Some excellent books I got for Christmas - lovely stack for sure! About a mix of 25 fiction and 5 non-fiction books that I will get to read and study at leisure. Mmmm...yummy. Probably will have them all read by March if not sooner.

sigh.

Almost Christmas!

I finally finished putting up the last Christmas decorations today and expect my mom to be here sometime tomorrow afternoon. The tree was put up first a couple of weeks ago on the weekend I finally started really getting over that horrible cold. Of course, it's not a real tree in my wee apartment, although I do prefer real over artifical - something special and so Christmas-y about the smell of a lovely decorated Douglas or Frasier Fir. Another something I'd like to do once I finally have my own house....and without four flights up to get to my place. The cats, however, are very happy with their new blanket, er, the tree skirt. Usually there's a cat each left and right resting under the tree - like two little gifts on the red material. I'm sure I'll have pictures of that to post later. Unfortunately, my cat Mina likes to eat the ribbon and bows that make Christmas presents so pretty...so it will only be the cats resting under the tree - the presents will have to stay in the closet till Christmas morning. :)

Wounded Beggar

A quick sketch for one of those weekly challenges that forces me to come up with some character(s) and scenes that aren't for some holiday or other - so, definitely a nice change of pace from the daily grind. :) Spent about 45 minutes drawing while I was watching the evening news before bedtime yesterday (the deadline was midnight Tuesday evening).

Yup, as usual with my "rapid" sketches, I already see some rather obvious things that need to be fixed - like the right arm - eek! I was exploring positioning for a somewhat forced perspective layout. That's what I say, and I'll stand by that. For now. We'll see what else I come up with over the weekend...once I finally get my Christmas cards sent out - d'oh!

Got Cold...

Had a rather bad cold that I'm still slowly recovering from this past week. Don't want it to turn into that horrible "walking pneumonia" or worse. I still think it's pretty darn close to what those Antarctic Scientists call "The Crud" that I read about yesterday. ha! Oddly enough, I probably caught it at some point during my trip over to sunny California to visit with Disney Consumer Products.

Lots of randomness going on in the past few weeks which I'll post about later...maybe. :)

Fall Fairy

I've been working on various product concepts that deal with fairies and other folk...so it wasn't that hard to come up with a quick concept of a Fall Fairy for tonight's "at home in-progress" sketch. Particularly after the lovely cool weather we had the last few days and the nice soaking rain last night. Mmmm...Fall is definitely in the air. Think I might color her tomorrow. Might not. I can do that when it's my stuff. :)

And....nope, looks nothing like what I've actually been working on at the job. Sorry. Or maybe that's a good thing. ha!

Today was the last day at work for one of our China artists. He's going home tomorrow. A really nice guy. He made the most of his temporary visit with us in Texas by traveling as much as he could (time and money-wise) and got to visit some great places - San Francisco, New York, Chicago.... I think the absolute highlight, though, was this past weekend when he went to the Frank Frazetta Art Museum and got to meet the artist himself. So lucky! Even has the pictures to prove it. What a great memory to take back home!

A Joke I Can Finally Appreciate

I'm not usually appreciative of the fart jokes that seem to be such a part of today's American culture...particularly in recent animated films (why do they ALL have to have one of those added in); but in any case this one from an SNL skit last week had me laughing out loud - although mostly because I'd only finally just seen an episode of Most Haunted over at SJ's. Nope, I don't have cable or satellite - just basic tv for me. My budget could either fit in buying books each month or a cable/satellite subscription...and I chose books for my library instead. :)

http://video.nbc.com/player.html?dlid=40717

Happy Halloween!

I think I want to color my hair blue next year instead of pink - it's just so awesome. :) The pink in my hair is so faded at this point in any case, you can't really see the streaks at all in this photo. Blue would really stand out, I think. I do wonder though what the blue with my blonde looks like when it's fading. Does it turn purple?

I was lame and didn't do any make-up effects for the office dress-up, just did another variation on that fun costume standby of mine, the witch. Maybe I will do something different (hmm...the cowardly lioness?) for next year's party, wherever that is.

Haunted Pet Parade WIP

Pet Cemetery was one of the creepiest, chilling, horrific, freaky...well, I can go on and on with the adjectives; but if you've read it, you may understand what I mean. Particularly if you had any family pets that you've lost in the past and then read the book all in one sitting on Christmas night. At least, that's the main reason why that story disturbed me and later gave me a few nightmares.

Could only read it once, silly me.

In any case, what with it being just about Halloween now, and then me dreaming lately about some former beloved pets of mine...I decided to paint a little personal project I'm calling my "Haunted Pet Parade". Yup, these were my little pet friends from way back...to not too long ago. A few of them had fairly long and happy lives before they died peacefully. Others were only around for far too short a time before they died tragically - lingering illness, euthanized, eaten, hit by car, shot by dad, or beaten to death by their next owner. :(

I miss them all.

So. This is the beginning of a rough sketch to help me figure out the composition, layout and so on. It was time to post some more of "my work in progress". Nope, not all of the characters have as of yet been included. Scary, isn't it.

Strategy

Tonight's quick sketch and color considerations (just starting) with one of the characters I've been playing around with in various scenes. Figure I'll do some more doodling around before moving on from this character. I'll post if I like 'em. :)

Got to see Lemony Snicket on Friday up at the Barnes and Noble in Frisco, but missed out on getting an autographed book, darn it. Fun hearing him as the musician from the Gothic Archies, too. I'm seriously curious to see what he comes up with next after his Series of Unfortunate Events now that it's over with Book Thirteen.

Went to a fun Halloween party on Saturday, in my witch's costume of course! Besides, it was the best match for my pink hair. ha! Helped drink a few of the Pumpkin Ale brews that we brought for the hosts. Mmmmm, tasty. Got to see some more people I hadn't seen in a long while from DNA and met some new folks, too. Creative people doing all sorts of things in all kinds of places.

Hear Me Roar...er, Meow?

Until Sarah posted that comment about a Dorothy costume, I hadn't actually considered any of the other characters from Oz as a costume possibility. I've just always fallen back on the Wicked Witch cause I've had to play that part for so many random Halloweens. Which means I have at least a nice broom to start with. ha.

In any case, I could always go as the Cowardly Lioness. :) I'll have to ask Leslie at work (our plush/sewing department head) how difficult it would be to make the plush legs and tail based on my above concept sketch. For next year. Meow.

What to Wear...

Trying to figure out a quick costume to wear to both a weekend party and then to work on Halloween a few days later.... Thinking about recycling a bit of what I already have and make it something new with some different accessories. Hmm....maybe add a nice large crooked nose. Would match the hat.

Exploration

Some head sketches for a couple of new characters I'm thinking about. Still dabbling with my Dahlia, but I'm not ready to post progress. Have some other stuff going on, too; might post a bit of that this week sometime.

Ordered the new Ryan Church DVD from Gnomon on Concept Art Workflow (with Painter) this morning. It's just been released. This particular tutorial seems most applicable to the kind of Painter techniques I'm interested in learning, although the subject matter...maybe not. :)

In the mail today I finally got the Don Hertzfeldt Animation Shorts dvd that I pre-ordered about, oh..hmm, a year ago seems like. It's definitely been awhile. It's nice to finally have it for my animation dvd library. I will admit Billy's Balloon is still my favorite.

I'm simply wicked that way I guess.

Fooling Around...with Color

I have a general idea of where I want to go with the coloring of my Dahlia sketch, so I'm just throwing that down with my mouse at the moment to block in the areas. Planning on doing two color/style interpretations of this one: one "painterly" with PS and Painter (need the practice) and using my wacom; the other via Illustrator and vector shapes. I'll finish this up over the weekend. Have plans for Friday - gotta try some of those Octoberfest beers. ;)

Now that I've started checking out the various Halloween displays set up at different retailers, I have to admit it's kind of cool to see and recognize product that I've worked on or developed initial concepts for (a couple of years ago, imagine that) in stores at last.

Those Pretty Blue Eyes

I went to see The Black Dahlia the other night with a friend. Loved the movie poster - got my attention the first time I saw that in the trailer, too; lovely slow red drip on white. Pretty good movie - I especially appreciated the dialogue style and how de Palma really kept a film noir feel with his film direction. If you're a fan of those old black and white films then you'll notice it, too. A bit odd at the end though. It felt like every loose bit in the story had to suddenly get tied up neatly which made it all slightly confusing. This would be the part if you were watching the DVD version where you'd go, "What just happened?", and then rewind for a second watch and listen. :)

My take on the Elizabeth "Black Dahlia" Short character as played by Mia Kirshner.
Time tonight: sketching about 45 minutes....Alright, yes, I was watching tv, too.
I'll color it in tomorrow night.

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Met the art director (at last) on Saturday along with the other concept artists on the team for the CG feature pitch. Nice group. Mostly students, but not all. The art director, Johan, has some excellent animation experiences...based on the resume I found posted online after I did a wee bit of research. :) He did talk a little bit about some of his prior projects and employers (Disney, Pixar, etc.). Turns out he'll be teaching for a while at AI, along with working on some other outside projects. Funny, I'd just talked earlier with one of my artist friends about how I wouldn't mind taking an evening class now and then...and this guy while we're working on the project wants to teach us, critique our work, and help us gain some practical experience to finally get our foot in the animation industry as visual development artists.

That works for me.

Ahnold says, "Aw wee aw wee Ahhhhhh!"

Thursday must have been a long day at work - at the end of the day we went from sharing opinions (and emailing audio) on Conan and his father's sword ($1500) to Arnold impersonations (so easy for all of us to do). This video from Mad TV was the grand finale:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvGxnLfko5w

The Thang

This Wednesday's horror movie for the evening was John Carpenter's The Thing. Or "Thang" as one of the more southern of the group was heard to say. ha! One of my favorite horror movies of all time. Not a movie that's good to watch alone, that's for sure. Even comparing it with today's CG effects capabilities this old movie still creeps me out. The story, the music, the scientific possibilities....EEEEK!! A co-worker hadn't seen the movie before, so we made sure she was there to catch all the good stuff, BWA HAHA ha HA!!!

This could be cool...read on wikipedia that as of September 2006 (from an article in Fangoria) that there is a real possibility of a sequel or actually a prequel to The Thing:

"In September of 2006, it was announced that Strike Entertainment, the production company behind "Slither" and the "Dawn of the Dead" remake, is combing Hollywood for a writer (or writers) to tackle a theatrical prequel to "The Thing" reports Fangoria."

Interesting!!!

And for a bit of fun that has nothing to do with The Thing (or does it....hmmmm?), how bout sending one of these "thangs" to your friends? I give you a spring-loaded "Ass in the Box". Enjoy!

Experiment

Just having some fun with a bit of doodling. And a dash of Photoshop painting, of course. :)
Time: About 45 minutes sketching (while watching tv, shame on me) and 20 minutes coloring in Photoshop 7.

Horrors!

I somehow also got myself involved in developing a feature treatment and brief synopsis for a horror movie pitch. Curious to see how that develops in the end and how much my involvement will actually be. It's been awhile since I've done that kind of creative writing.

What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?

I've been on a Dusty Springfield music kick this past week. A commercial that's been airing recently used an old song of hers, "What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?", that brought back some old memories of me and my family in the early seventies...as well as some of my little girl dreams of what I was going to do when I finally grew up.

That's me up on the horse from the one summer we spent in Sweden at my aunt's house. If I remember correctly, the girl was a neighbor and had stopped by because everyone knew I was crazy about horses. I still remember how very high up it was, sitting on the horse's back. There was a horse drawing contest, too, sponsored by the local newspaper that summer which I entered, silly me. My drawing of a horse got published with an honorable mention, but that was mostly because I lived in Hawaii and was visiting all the way over in Sweden. Still, that was pretty cool. My first published artwork - I think I was 8 years old. :)

Enough Already!

OK...out with the sad and angry comments. They are forthwith banished! Must think positive about the future (health AND career) and do fun and interesting artwork and activities. And, on that note...

Four out of Five stars from me for The Illusionist! Sweet story about an illusionist/magician and his long search for something to give his life meaning. Or at least, that's my interpretation. Lovely score, too, by composer Philip Glass. No worries - I did NOT fall in love with the police captain as played by Paul Giamatti. His eyes just were not the same as Cleveland Heeps. I know, that doesn't really make any sense unless 1) you've read my earlier comments about that other role of his, and 2) another personal reason which I'm not going into any more detail about. :)

Interestingly enough, I also just happened to catch this BBC series about a magician's assistant, Jonathan Creek, helping to solve a murder mystery late Friday night just before I went to sleep...kept me awake watching the whole two hours. Looking forward to catching more episodes of this series!

Also, seeing both of these shows now has me all curious about magic tricks and sleight of hand...could do some fun research on that. Plus, another upcoming magician's movie that my friend told me about reminded me about a favorite magic story, Shadowlands, by Peter Straub. I'm thinking it's time for a revisit.

Barely Scraping By - Article from Gamasutra

Applying for Your First Game Industry Job

Read this article yesterday from a link in the "Gamasutra Daily" newsletter I get from Gamasutra (The Art and Business of Making Games) website. While I'm not currently working in the game industry as a concept artist, it does provide some very useful nuggets of information for any creative person considering opportunities in the game development industry. You could also certainly apply some of the information to other jobs you interview for as well.

Of course I especially liked this bit of information since it appears that I'm barely scraping by:

"As an entry level artist, you can expect to be paid at a range of $30-$45k a year. That may seem like a lot compared to what you’re making now. But when you factor in all the costs, you’ll find that you’re barely scraping by."

Ah, yes....ENTRY LEVEL ARTIST. Believe me, I think about that every time in the past year that I factor in my 15 plus years of various professional creative roles....and the job that I currently still have. After two years (ok, ok, I'm an idiot for a variety of reasons for that and I know it), I should realize that there's no interest from management in offering me incentives to stay with my current employer. I just need to stop thinking about it and simply get myself out of the place. Stop being angry and frustrated and stressed...and move on.

As mentioned previously, it's simply one of the daily whips to keep me motivated for better opportunities. I'm such a glutton for punishment. sigh.

Angelina Sphinx

Over at the DrawingBoard, the August Drawing Jam study is Angelina Jolie. Since they provided some fairly good references, I thought I'd do some studies of my own. For whatever reason, her face keeps reminding me of the Sphinx I recall seeing in some movie years ago...maybe it was in the NeverEnding Story; or maybe it was from a book I read. Must be the cheekbones. I'll have to think about it.

So, here's the thumbnail sketch I created to figure out my composition of "The Riddle of the Sphinx". I initially had a full moon shining behind the head of the Sphinx, but decided that I wanted to add in a path for the viewer to be walking toward her; and the best way to highlight that would be to have a nice light coming in from the left. I'll be working on a tighter sketch and some quick value studies tomorrow.

In other news, I'm doing some spec concept artwork for some former co-workers of a friend for a CG feature animation pitch. The story seems fun and I really like the visual tone that they want to have. And, the best thing, they provided lots and lots of references to help explain the visual direction that they want. Excellent for rapid development for characters, props and environments. In any case, it gives me something to do that isn't necessarily cute and for Christmas. I'm feeling very humbug about my work "work" at the moment. Need some Halloween gore or at least something that isn't supposed to be all cute and fluffy. Where's the variety that they promised me? My cute little characters will start carrying knives and getting bloody soon, believe me.

Hmm....there's an idea.

Argh...my hands aren't yet quite back up to my usual typing dexterity. Darn that muscle inflamation, hand tingles and aggravated nervous system! But, I'm feeling a wee bit more normal every day.

Yay!