Carbon Dating

My textbooks are bought, my student CTA pass has been collected, and all the animation labs are shut down for a re-boot of the system or some-such.  Oh, and I'm trying to get used to a new haircut.  And my childhood fascination with paleontology has resurfaced.

If ever there was a time for me to go totally off my rocker, this weekend would be it.

Today I found a free portfolio building site called Carbon Made which looks like a good place to (finally) construct a professional portfolio.  Linking to deviantART and Vimeo is fine and all, but it doesn't give off that extra flair of knowing what you're doing.

Last week I read a fascinating book about the Field Museum's most famous fossil.  Tyrannosaurus Sue by Steve Fiffer (what a great last name!)  It goes through the whole complicated backstory of Sue, legal battles and all.  (Someone actually did jail-time by the end of it all!)  It also covers some major points in the history of fossil collecting in America.  And all of it is written in perfectly understandable modern lingo, so go check it out if you can.  It's a good read.

But of course this has gotten me looking at more books about ancient critters, though I've decided to look at the Cenozoic this time, see what kind of crazy rhinos and four-legged whales people have dug up.  It should be interesting.

Earworm of the Day: Giggle at the Ghostly from MLP.  Yeah, another one.  I've had this stuck in my head all day.

Two Lady Birds

First, I would like to introduce the newest member of my puppet collection: Julia the marionette.

Julia strikes a pose.

Though I decided Julia was a female bird (or hen I suppose?) in real life most female birds aren't anywhere near as colorful.  It's the males who are invested in putting on a show with long feathers and bright hues (remember that anytime a woman in media evokes a peacock fan.  Peahens are a little more conservative with the tail feathers and are usually brown and green.)

With my recent work on Dripbird, who is definitely male, I started wondering what the female bird of his (totally fictional) species would look like.  And thus I sat down and created Damselbird:

Damselbird, female counterpart of Dripbird

Besides the brown and green coloring (to camouflage against undergrowth) Damselbird has shorter tail feathers and crest feathers, as she would only be using them for communication and defensive postures rather than for showy mating displays.  Her wing feathers are the same length as Dripbird's because, though their species is mostly flightless, they use wings for extending jumps and balancing when running.  The female would need to be equally well equipped for jumping and running, and so the wings stay the same.

I would like to make a Damselbird in Maya in addition to Dripbird, which I don't think will be too hard.  I'd just make a duplicate file of Dripbird and do a pallet swap and a scale function on the feathers.  As for what I'd do with them?  Well, a cute short about Dripbird courtship wouldn't be out of the question (being cartoon birds, you know it'll be just a little sillier than what you've seen on Animal Planet).

Earworm of the Day: Your Love is a Song by Switchfoot

Avian Emotions

Beth will willingly dive into battle with aliens, robots, crime lords, and homicidal librarians... but spiders?  She doesn't do spiders.

I bought a bag of coffee for my dad today and put the bag of beans in my backpack for safe keeping.  My favorite sweater was also stuffed in there.  Now my sweater smells amazing!

In other news, I've been working more on Dripbird.  His legs and claws are now fully rigged, as is his face.

It lives!!! Buahahaha!

Unfortunately I waited till now to create the master locater thingy (usually seen as a big set of arrows at the character's feet).  Everything is grouped under it.  The problem is, when I grouped everything under the locater, the neck sorta... went nuts.  Like translating the character would turn it into an alien giraffe. So for the moment I'm back to square one on the neck.  But that's ok.  At least I have books to tell me how to do that.

Earworm of the Day: Trip the Light by Garry Schyman and sung by Alicia Lemke.  As seen on the fantastic video called Where the Hell is Matt? 2012.  Seriously, it's great.  The scuba-diving part is my favorite.

Rainbow Alarmclock

First, the drawing I mentioned last time with the clock and the frying pan.  For context, it's set the morning after giant killer roaches invaded Dennis and Beth's house and they had to barricade themselves into Beth's room.  After a tense night with little sleep, well... Beth's a little jumpy...

Frying Pan of Doom indeed.

And I know the sizing here makes it super hard to read, so here's the transcript:

Dennis: Zero to deadly in 2 seconds.  I'll have to remember that.

Beth: And it was the nice one with the colored numbers too...

And for the record, Beth's clock with the colored numbers is real.  I got it at Target several years ago.  Sadly, they don't seem to be carrying these anymore.

Also worked more on Dripbird today.  I'm reasonably happy with the leg rigging, or at least I'm totally sick of it and just want to be done.  The skin hasn't been connected and weighted yet, so I attached some cubes to the rig so it could be seen and made this walk test:

Earworm of the Day: Germs by "Weird Al" Yankovic

EY Dragon Profile Image

Got the picture of EY Dragon done.  Certainly it is one of the most girly pictures I have made since Flying Pigs and Yellow Tulips.

New profile image.

Honestly, I'm not happy with it.  I think I've stared at it too long or something.  Or maybe it's the composition that's askew.  Maybe it's the girly colors or the flowers.  Whatever the reason, I think I'll post it do my deviantART anyway and give it a month to grow on me.  It's worked before.

I was also going to speak of my latest archive-binge on Mark Watches: Avatar (it's great), and post a sketch-comic involving frying pans and alarm clocks, but I think I'll save that for later because I had a really... weird experience this weekend.

So, this weekend I was poking around deviantART looking for cool stuff and I got looking at fan-art of How to Train Your Dragon because I too am a fan of the movie (Toothless and Hiccup are both incredibly adorable/adorkable in their own ways).

Now, I myself don't make fan art.  None.  At all.  Zip.  The last character I probably ever drew that belonged to someone else was probably a pikachu.  And that was probably back in middle-school (which was about the time that I discovered the magical experience of creating original characters and building my own worlds around them.  How do fanfic writers live?)  However, I am still totally capable of admiring fanart by other people.

So I found a beautiful wallpaper of Toothless that someone made and I instantly added it to my "favorites" jar. I asked the artist if downloading a copy for use on my own desktop was allowed (still learning the rules of the internet art, always best to check) and he gave the thumbs-up.  So I did.  I had Toothless on my desktop background.

Then a weird thing happened; I felt bad about it.  The Toothless wallpaper just felt wrong being on my macbook screen.

Now I don't believe I actually did anything wrong, but it felt like I had.  Like I had crossed a personal moral horizon somehow.  And since I'm prone to analyzing my own behavior, I have several theories as to why I felt so bad about changing my desktop background that night.

1. I decided to browse the rest of the fanartist's work.  Let's just say the "mature content filter" was blocking a lot.  And some of the remaining works had just enough for me to surmise that the blocked content was slash-fic.  Hiccup/Toothless slash-fic.  I just... um... wow... er... zax.  My vocabulary does not have words to fully convey what I felt at the revelation that a fellow artistic mind has gone there.  Anyone got a pint of brain-bleach on them?  Anyone?  Please???  Again, the wallpaper as a stand-alone piece is perfectly rated-G... but still.  It's the knowing.
2. Overtones of idol-worship.  And I'm just speaking about my own heart here.  I actually stopped and asked myself "By making this image my wallpaper, am I putting the How to Train Your Dragon franchise on a pedestal where it doesn't belong?"  Having to ask that question in the first place was setting off red flags.
3. My friend Kristen.  Practically since I got my laptop I have had one of my own artworks or original photographs as my desktop background.  Every time I showed a friend something on my laptop, that was the first thing they saw.  An "E.Y. Original".  Then one day I changed the background to an image of Earth that was in my computer's default background folders.  Kristen noticed.  She was instantly annoyed.  "You changed your background," she said accusingly.  "Yeah," I shrugged, "I decided it was time to change it."  "But it's not something you made." I was a bit surprised. "It matters?"  (note: that's the general gist of the conversation, not an actual transcript.)  Now I finally realize what she (might have) meant: I'm an artist, it's my laptop, and my desktop background is an expression of "me".  If it isn't wallpaper from my own hand, it has no business being there.

So Yeah, that one image of a nightfury flying joyously through a cloud of sparkles had left me with a totally guilty ick feeling.  It was totally irrational, but that's how I felt.  I turned off my computer, sat and analyzed what had happened for a bit, then went to bed, realizing I'd learned a little something about my identity as an artist.

The next morning I changed my wallpaper back to Bunny Field.

Earworm of the Day: For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her by Simon & Garfunkel

Pictures!!!

Finally downloaded the photos from my phone's memory card.  So today I give my readers the gift of pictures!

First a bunny:

City rabbits.  Totally cool with you walking up and snapping pictures of them.

Still haven't gotten over the novelty of city wildlife not giving a darn.  Was literally a yard away from this rabbit; it didn't even pause to look at me.

A short while later I was looking at the side of one of our school buildings.  According to the masonry, it was originally built for the science department.  They have these decorations between floors.

pictured: side of building.

Then, I noticed something strange about the second floor...

Are those... upside-down frogs?

If my eyes are not mistaken (and with 20/20 vision and a near obsession with all things animal, I'm pretty sure they're right), the old science department building is decorated with frogs.  Architect had a weird sense of humor.

Speaking of animals, I also downloaded my pics from the Lincoln Park Zoo.  Most of them are from such a distance or through so much wire that it's impossible to even tell where the animal's supposed to be.  But there were exceptions.  Here are my favorites:

That pic I mentioned previously of me and the black bear.

Cute, chubby little meerkats, watching the visitors go by.

Pygmy hippo posing for it's photo-shoot.

The Best photo of an african wild dog I will probably ever take.

Earworm of the Day: The button factory song as preformed by Shari Lewis on Lamb Chop's Singalong

In other news, I just now learned how to link a video so it starts on a specified spot (hint: use the share button and click a checkbox for it)

Coloring Fiend

So yeah, spent most of the day coloring.  Granted, I was coloring original drawings inside a computer for future use in my portfolio; so let it be known that I was in no way slacking off.

I will not be posting progress-reports on the aforementioned colorings, but for the sake of fun, here are the original starting-sketches of both:

EY Dragon with her sketchbook and hamster buddy, Dennis.

Marvin: age 11,  17, and 100

The Marvin 11-17-100, as I've dubbed it, one is just a piece I thought would be cool, but the EY Dragon Portrait is going to become my profile image on deviantART.  I will post the images here when finished.

Which brings me to my next topic.  I decided to color EY Dragon on one of the school's cintiqs, because I'm not going to be using the image for monetary gain, and cintiqs are fun to draw on.  Being summer, the school recently updated the software in the labs, which I kinda knew, but didn't really give much thought to.

Then I opened Photoshop.

No joke, sat there for a solid minute staring at the screen and vaguely wondering why Maya had come up before finally exclaiming, "OMG!  Photoshop's gone graphite!!!"

Yes, Adobe CS6 is now officially in-style with all the other creative software.  The Photoshop interface now matches AfterEffects, Maya, Z-brush, Final Cut, and this blog.  Everything is graphite.  Luckily all the buttons seem to be in their usual places and everything still works the same as it always did.  No surprises 

Except AfterEffects.  It's got selection-preview now.  Adobe developers, you rock!  :D

Earworm of the Day: Watercolour by Pendulum.  Fun fact, this is what I was listening to when I drew the Marvin 11-17-100 sketch.

Deviating from the Norm

Hear ye, hear ye!  I now have a deviantART account!

As of yet, it's nothing much because I don't have a whole lot of content to stick on it.  But maybe having a place to display stuff will motivate me to actually make stuff to display.

Is that logical?  I hope it's logical.  We'll see how it goes.

Earworm for the Day: the theme song to Flying Rhino Jr. High.

Characters

I've been at it again.  Creating characters.  Animalburg is by far the most character-heavy story with a total approaching 300, (Twiggy and the Jackalopes, in contrast, has 20 at most.)  And yes I keep a spreadsheet to ensure I don't accidentally make two characters with the same name (though intentionally having two with the same name has happened.)

To be fair, Animalburg does take place in a large city.  Some characters will probably occur for one episode, others will be re-occurring, and some will only be referenced or alluded to but never appear on-screen (in the main story anyway).  It's still useful to catalogue their existence for consistency.

I usually create characters for a couple of situations:

• "What if a character could do ___ ?"
• Ex: Marvin, Toby, Blade
• "If I had a character like (insert other author/creator's character), I would do ___ differently because ___."
• Ex: Lupe, Click
• "What would (real-world friend or pet) look like as an Animalburg character?"
• Ex: Beth, Nightfall
• "Given the plot of the story/rules of the world, ___ has to exist.  Who are they and what do they look like?"
• Ex: Most parent characters & families, most of the Ninja characters, and Fleet the Super Gerbil

From my experience, all of these paths are equally valid reasons for creating a character (though I'll add a disclaimer to the third that working friends into your story may ruin the dialogue and tick off your friends.)  The important part is that with every character you sit down at some point and figure out their strengths, weaknesses, and backstory.

My new character, Angela, springs from reason #4.  She's notable for being my first character with a tattoo (not something I get to draw much because of the fur-factor).  She appears in the story when the time-stream gets messed up, and she replaces another ninja character.  Everything gets set back to normal thanks to Snow (see crazy ninja from previous entry), but Angela will probably pop up a few more times (I hate to burn bridges, especially with fun characters).

Twister has a crush on Angela in both time-lines; the feeling's NOT mutual.

 Also spawning from a mix of "what if" and "has to happen sometime" is Cicada, the apprentice of Beth and her future teammate Long Jump.  I'm still in the process of creating Cicada's appearance.  I was thinking some sort of long-tailed rodent with hair long enough to braid.  The following exchange occurs during "The Invasion Arc".

Grammar & timeline context.  Always important.

Earworm of the Day:  Inspector Gadget theme song.  Or, if you want 20% cooler, Greg Pattillo's beat-boxing flute rendition

Recalling the Rhinoceros and the Reindeer

Today was fun.  Mom and I went to see the remake of Total Recall.  Despite my trope-literate mind noting everything from product placements to focal-length shifts of the camera, I did indeed enjoy the movie.  My only qualm was that there was no cut longer than 3 seconds (or so it seemed) which after the first hour was giving me a headache.  The film makers made beautifully grundgy CGI landscapes, then gave me no time at all to just... enjoy them.  When it comes out on DVD, I will rent it and use the pause button liberally.

We also went to the Lincoln Park Conservatory, which is also free and filled with plants.  They have the sensitive plant which is loads of fun to play with because it folds when tapped.  They had banana trees with bananas growing on them.  They had plastic dinosaurs hiding out in the fern room, which was hilarious.

Then, just because it was next door, we stopped in at the zoo.  This time I got to see the beaver, an american kestrel, and got a picture sitting right next to a sleeping black bear (there was glass between us, chill).  Also, we saw rhinos.

sketches of the zoo's white rhino (I think he was getting tired of people by then)

In other news, I meant to post this Monday to go with the "out of my mind" concept I was in, then realized I hadn't scanned it yet.  Another Animalburg ninja character; the only one that might be truly insane.

Snow is scary.  All the other ninja are terrified of Snow.

And while I searched my binder for that image, I also found this...

No, I wasn't sure how to spell "Rudolph".  I write, the spell-check spells.

...which I drew while finding a (hopefully clever) way to incorporate the Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer mythology into the world of my Twiggy and the Jackalopes story.  Initially I was going to have Rudolph be a complete myth or a "the ghost" but then thought it'd be fun if the whole "had a very shiny nose" was just exaggerated/mis-interpreted.  My version of "Rudolph" is the head reindeer who wears a very ornate red halter to display his status.

Earworm of the Day:  10,000 Reasons (Bless the Lord) by Matt Redman

And I Cook This How... ?

I've spent most of the day world-building with Animalburg (so many ninja critters, so little time...) and doing chores.  I actually bought raw chicken thighs today.  Raw chicken.  I almost never buy meat, meaning I have no herbs, spices, bread-crumbs, or any workable idea about how to actually incorporate meat into a meal.

Eh, I'll just do what I do with everything else:  Heat it until the safe-consumption requirements have been met and add it to a plate of spaghetti and pasta sauce.  Food's food.

Ninja kids.  Their games of hide-and-seek are EPIC.

Earworm of the Day: Outta My Mind by Anthem Lights

Sigh...

So I didn't post Wednesday because I got sucked into the mother of all archive-binges.  The comic in question is called Doc Rat and is written by an Australian doctor who uses the pen-name Jenner.  It's a good read.  Memorable characters, interesting story-line, and a nice balance between silly and dramatic.  It's a long-runner, so it takes 10 hours to get from beginning to present day.

I checked my browsing history to confirm that figure. Ten. Hours.

As for today, well... I guess you could say I'm not feeling well emotionally.  Was in the middle of a crying-fit and realized that I'd just used the last kleenex in the whole apartment, so I had to pull it together and walk down to the store for more.  My short but increasingly frequent rounds of depression-ish-stuff is connected to a fear of the future.  There's this nagging "what if" in my head that the last 4 years of earning animation degrees could possibly turn out to be worthless, and the past 8 years of putting academics before social life might've been more damaging than helpful.  This is also why I dismiss the suggestion that I pursue a Masters degree (what possible use is a master's degree in animation given the monumental gap between what the schools can teach us and the computing power behind Pixar's Brave?)

I think the best thing to do at this point is sit down and draw a picture of how I feel, which brings me to my next "what if" which is actually positive.  I've been playing with the idea of getting a DeviantArt account.  If I keep making Photoshop artwork like Facing the Doppelganger and this blog's banner, I would certainly have stuff to put on there.  And who knows, it might be useful.

Earworm for the Day: Deathbed by Relient K  I debated about putting this one, but it's honestly what's stuck in my head right now... well, part of the melody at least.  I don't actually know all the words because I can't sand to listen to the whole thing.  It's just too sad.

Yeah, I'm going to go draw that picture now, then maybe listen to the Hampster Dance or something.  Anything to lighten the mood.