Painting again... Final version?

I went back to the this old painting which has been sitting on my easel for an eternity. Is it done? I don't know. I'm not fully happy with it, but I'm tired of looking at it. I want to move on, so I'll be putting this away. Let me know what you think, what I can do to bring more... something... to it, so that it can be finished proper.

Birthday toast

It's my birthday, and I made this quick sketch of my midnight birthday toast. Try it, you'll love it!

Maya Animation and the story of heartache...

As you know by now I took a course on Maya essentials. For said course I had to do a 10 to 20 second animation, based off a toy that I choose. I picked the "Gazillion Bubbles Bug" and proceeded to hate every minute of staring at him and my screen to get even half of his details right, while learning the program. I screamed, I cried, I bitched at the screen, program, on FB and to my husband. BUt I got not only a decent resemblance of the toy, but also a 15 second animation out of it. Just for point of reference on how... hopeful... naive... enthusiastic... and over-acheiving I was at the beginning of class, I am also going to show you the original story boards for what I had conceved as the animation I was going to do.

But first the Animation:

And now my SB's:

Melting Man

I guess this pic has something to do with the over 100 degree weather we had today, but also cause I felt a little drained right now as well. I feel like it looks a little like a Picasso, but I can't remember which... The Guitar player perhaps? Let me know. Either way, another quick sketch on the computer. I think I may get to liking this drawing on the computer thing after all. I can "undo" "markers" which is great. Maybe I'll finally splurge and get Corel Painter, but we'll see. Hope you like.

"Concept art"

This is for my project in Maya. Basically it means I got to draw in Sketchbook Pro a couple of cute little trees and color them in Photoshop (cause my Painter "demo" expired). After cursing Photoshop for an hour I remembered everything I needed to do and I like the way it ended up. Hope you do too!

Antique Figure Drawing 2

Blues and Browns...

That is what I called these when I scanned them in. I was working with 2 Copic markers that are dying and another japanese brush marker that was a mustardy yellow brown. I look at these and I know I still have a lot to learn. I still cheat (which I know all artists do a bit, well actually all humans do it, without it we wouldn't be able to recognize different styles of tables that we encounter, but that is another story) but I shouldn't cheat when I have the figure in front of me. I should just draw what I see. That is the hardest thing to do. Anyway I hope you enjoy these. Finally started playing with the cintiq at home, so maybe I'll have something half-way descent to show you soon. Sorry for the long absence.

Flickr and then some

So I've been looking into getting myself a new camera. Mostly for Stop Motion, but also for regular photographs. I have a friend who has been quite encouraging with said goal, to the point of lending me his (quite out of my price range, but only if I DON'T win the lotto) camera. With that and my old one I have been putting up a lot of pictures up on Flickr. I had actually opened that account a while ago, but now I'm finally putting it to good use. I'm not sure if I want to use it to showcase my other art, that's why so far it's just my photographs. The good news about all this is that it's been helping my eye in framing. I feel like now I can get a better idea of framing any of my shorts so that they don't look too much like a stage play with wireless puppets and more like an engaging narration. That, I think, is sometimes the hardest thing to learn. The camera is a narration tool, and using it wisely can make or break your story. With that in mind I'm also taking a course in Maya (finally right!), which I know is like going over to the dark side for stop-mo. But basically I want to be able to use my skills in the widest range of mediums to better the animation. Ultimately that is what we all want right? To be better animators or artist or whatever it is that you do and want to be good at. I guess I just take a more wholistic approach which also usually means a longer more round about road. Now without further ado here is a sample of my photos as well as the link to see my Flickr gallery.