Paying Off

This class has been frustrating, I'm not going to lie. Being shoved into a box of grids, squares, and rules for everything really irritates me after a while. Yet through all the nerve hitting, graphic design class is really starting to pay off. Well maybe not pay per se... but it's handy. Like take this flier for instance. Mom asked me to make one up on Monday. I had it for her by Tuesday. Sure I spelled some things wrong (They really need to add some spell-check on Adobe products) but at least it worked. Now I realize how handy a vector drawing program really is.

My dad has been pestering me to use vector drawing programs for years. He's never going to let me here the end of it after this.

Flights of Fancy

I admit it. I doodle in class. Usually it happens when I'm not interested in what's being said, which causing problems when the teacher says something in the middle of a review that is actually new information. I'm just ready for this summer semester to be over with. I wish I could have a vacation and just not have any deadlines for a while. Ah, but real life isn't like that.

To be like a bird, and fly where ever I wanted. Even if I was a big scraggly crow it would be heaven.

Chicken!

I'm not entirely sure why I drew a chicken.

When reading a book, I often get an image in my head that just won't go away. Usually it has something to do with the cover art of the book, but sometimes it doesn't. Like when I was reading Pride & Prejudice I had the image of a peacock in my head, which wasn't unusual because a peacock was on the cover. I was just trying to attach a meaning to the cover art. Now I'm reading Les Meserables (spelled wrong I'm certain). For some bizzare reason I keep coming up with the image of a chicken. I think it's a warp of the peacock. Pride and Prejudice is about english high society, and Les Mes is about the struggles of the french lower class, so the pompus peacock turned into the humble chicken. (or maybe it's something to do with french hens...?)

Anyway, I did draw this entirely from memory. How'd I do?

Toby and Daniel

I have a lot of different stories bouncing around in my head at any one time, maybe I've already mentioned that. One that I've been working on recently is called Nut Job. It's about a mouse named Toby who is a science major. He lands an internship with Dr. Pistachio Harve Vester (thus the title of the story). It turns out Dr. Vester is a bit of a mad scientist, and everything goes downhill for Toby from there. Toby's best friend is his roommate Daniel. Daniel is a graphic design major (yes this class has effected my story writing). Daniel is a little more confident than Toby. He doen't get freaked out about minor crazyness.

Happiness is Like a Box of Cookies

One of my earliest childhood memories is eating Nilla Wafers at my grandparents house. Nilla Wafers and milk before bedtime. So good. I usually pass up simplistic cookies like that these days, but once you get me to eat one the memories come back. They are kind of addictive. I drew this picture the other day when I was munching a handful for lunch.

Happiness is like a box of cookies: It doesn't have to be complicated. It runs out eventually and we have to find a new box. We may even forget what it taste like at times. But for the brief time you have the cookies, they are so good.

Father and Son

One of the things I find the most entertaining when writing stories is showing the passage of time. No Hi and Lois/Blondie/Bugs Bunny time loop for me. My characters change. They have childhoods, college memories, get married, have kids, grow old and play with their grandchildren. It's also interesting getting parents and children to look similar but different. The child has to be a combination of the two parents, or more often I have to work in reverse and create parents for an existing character, which is harder.

So the picture above is two 8-year-old ferrets, but they come from different time-zones. The one on the right is one of my adult characters Greg as he was as a child. The one on the left is his son Cody at the same age. Getting them to look related yet distinctly different was the fun part. The clothing helps.

Cell Phone in the Silent Zone

I love the silent zone of the library. No distractions but the scratching of pencils. When I have peace and quiet, my brain can run at full speed. What takes me an hour in a noisy classroom takes me thirty minutes in the silent zone. It's so nice. Until of course someone's cell phone goes off.

From my experience, when a cell phone goes off in the silent zone it's like, I don't even know. Imagine a guy in a devil costume running down the center isle in the middle of a Sunday church service. There is nothing in the world that can stand out more. Then, who ever has the cell phone let's it ring loud and clear for three to four rings before picking it up and then--and I'm not being racist here, I am just stating an observation--half the time the person starts talking on the phone in some language besides English. In a normal conversation volume I might add. Normal conversation volume in the silent zone is almost as bad as a cell phone ringing in the silent zone. Maybe they need to translate the "quiet please" signs into mandarine chinese. Then again, the other half of the time it is an english speaker talking, so maybe people just need to stop and read. (Reading in a library, what a concept!)

So please, for the sake of the silent zone, if your cell phone goes off, catch it early, reject the call, go down stairs, then call them back. Us studious types would really appreciate it.

StarJumper

You know you're an animation student when you have a trailer running through your head for a movie that doesn't even exist yet. This happened after working on a Graphic Design assignment involving making a title sequence. I'm relatively familiar with storyboards, so it was only a hop-skip off topic to sketch out a movie trailer. The story is one I call StarJumper. The characters Squiggles (a lizard from earth) and Dige (a dog-like space alien) are riding through the streets of an alien planet on the back of a horse-dinosaur thing called a rodeon. Even being blind doesn't stop Dige from being a back-seat driver.

Nagging Doubts

Yesterday I tried to do an exercise involving goals. Bad idea. Goal setting has never worked for me. It's like being attacked by crows nagging me for being a bad student. My grades are consistent A's and B's, but I'm always fighting a battle between nagging self-doubts.

Someone in class was wondering if organizational lines (the "skeleton" of a picture) could communicate motion. This is my example of organizational lines doing just that. I started this picture with only the two lines shown in heavy black marker, then drew the characters around them. Using organizational lines as character backbones is a fast way to make dynamic character interactions in cartooning and animation.

Da-dada-DA! Super Bunny!

One of my coworkers at County Market is having a baby in October, so I thought I'd make a stuffed animal for the kid. I think it'll be green with a yellow poke-a-dot belly and blue feet and ear insides. I also think I'll add a cape held on with Velcro so it can be detached and used as a blanket. I'll have to see it in color first, but whatever happens, it's sure to be cute.