More Morning Sketches

Here's some more of my morning warm up life drawing sketches. I try to spend no more that a couple of minutes sketching each figure out. Sometimes I admit that I get lost in the drawing and keep on doodling away.

I Got The Sketch Card Crazies

I found out about sketch cards a little while ago and have been itching to try making some on my own. I first tried painting them in acrylics but that took forever. Then I tried watercolors and I wasn't satisfied with my results. Next I tried color pencils, and well let's just say that approach didn't work out. For the last couple of months every time I walk into an art store I have been scoping out the Prismacolor markers. I broken down recently and purchase a set 48 and have been having a lot of fun with them. Color is still a weakness in my artistic armor but these Prismacolor markers are a great way to learn and explore.

For those of you who don't know who the sketch card characters are, (starting at the top left and moving clockwise around) that's Marvin the vegetarian dragon, Hubert the duck with the magical sword and belt, and Bermaw the pink thing and eats everything from Lewis Trondhiem and Joann Sfar's Dungeon series, lastly that's Katara from Avatar.

My Animation Links

I've been following a bunch of animation blogs in my reader for sometime now. It seems like recently a lot of great stuff is being posted on these sites. Here's a list of some blogs that I think are putting out the best stuff.

http://bobbyboom.blogspot.com
http://fliponline.blogspot.com
http://handdrawnnomadzone.blogspot.com
http://www.keithlango.com
http://drstepheng.splinedoctors.com/blog_pat.html
http://splinedoctors.blogspot.com
http://www.synchrolux.com
http://sevencamels.blogspot.com
http://www.navone.org/blogger/

I follow a few more but these guys are my favorites. These links don't just cover CG character animation, although most of them focus on that. Mark Kennedy's Temple of the Seven Golden Camels mainly focuses on storyboarding or drawing. Keith Lango's blog often trails off into discussing storytelling and trends in animation. But each of these links is a treasure chest full of animation secretes. I also added an animation links section to my blog to the right. Enjoy!

Morning Sketches

Here's a page out of one of my sketch books. I've been warming up every morning with 10 minutes of life drawing. It's a slow process but I've notice that my drawing skills are getting better.

I've noticed that my sketch book habits are a lot like my reading habits. At any given time I'll be reading 4 or 5 books. Right now I'm reading G.K. Chesterson's Orthodoxy, Lewis Trondheim and Joann Sfar's Dungeon Volume 1: Duck Heart, J.R.R. Tolkien's Two Towers, and Gary Faigin's The Artist Complete Guide to Facial Expressions. When it comes to sketch books I got a 3.5"x5.5" Moleskine that I use to record story ideas in, a spiral bound 5.5"x8.5" Strathmore Sketch that use as my portable go anywhere sketch pad, a hard cover book bound 8.5"x11" Utrecht that I think of as "my sketch book" where most of my doodling go, and a spiral bound 9"x12" Strathmore Drawing that I do most of my life drawing and "practicing" in. Of course that isn't counting the sketch pad the paper I'm using to draw Louie comes from. (I'm on page 47 out 200 now!) Or the 9"x12" Utrecht Sketch pad that I mistakenly purchased, I thought was book bound but it wasn't. I use that one as scratch paper.

I guess I'm the type of person that likes to have a lot of projects going at one time. It helps me stay interested and see the projects I'm working on with a fresh eye. At least that's my excuse. What's yours?

Hot Dog Walk

I was working on an overlap exercise but I got a little distracted when I saw that many companies are looking for animators with experiencing animating animals. I know that in theory the amount of legs a creature has doesn't affect the principles of animation. But adding an extra pair of legs to the equation just adds for more things to go wrong. I hope you like my little doggy walk.

A Lazy Sunday

I had a rare relaxed Sunday. It was great. They don't happen too often any more so I made sure to take full advantage of it. I took a nap, surfed the web, watched some Youtube painting tutorials, and I did some painting.

I've recently discovered sketch cards. Sketch cards are original art non sport trading cards. Topps with their line of Star Wars trading cards commissions a bunch of artist to draw their own version of the popular Star Wars characters on trading card size paper. Then they insert one of those drawings (not a copy or a reprint but the original art) in 1 out of every 25 or so trading card packs. So when the lucky collector opens up his pack, surprise! He is the proud owner of an original piece of art. I thought it would be fun to do some of my own sketch cards.

I decided to start out with Aang the main character from the cartoon series Avatar: The Last Airbender. Avatar is my favorite TV show going right now. It is so well written, smart, and the attention to detail is amazing for a "kids" show or any TV show. If you like Samuri Jack or Martial Arts or just quality animation you'll probably really enjoy Avatar.

For my next sketch card I'll probably take a slightly different approach to help speed up the process, but I'm happy how it turned out. I did this one in acrylic and I did another version in watercolor. The watercolor version was a disaster. I hated how the colors came out. I still have some learning to do with watercolors.

AMer Short

Ales Mav, a former classmate of mine at Animation Mentor, just finished his short. Check it out. It's a lot of fun.

http://www.alesmav.com/DaphnesNewBroom/

Monster Fight!

Don't ask me why but monsters fight all the time.

Narnia

I'm in the middle of watching The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe here's some images from my sketch book.

Victorious Viking and boogers

I needed to get some more of my animation in a presentable format so I thought I'd show that off here. It's all stuff that I've shown before at various stages of the creation process. But most of it is at least six months old. Searching through my school stuff I've discovered that a lot of it isn't useful because I've learned and grown a lot since I finished it. I guess it is a good problem to have.

Louie Progress 29 / 200ish

Here's page 29 of my Epic comic adventure Louie! OK so maybe it isn't so epic but it's an epic undertaking for me to finish it. It is coming along nicely if not a little slowly, but that's ok it isn't my highest priority for now.