In Which My Train of Thought Waltzes Down the Produce Aisle

I have had some very silly songs stuck in my head for the last 3 days.  But I'll get to that in the earworm section.  First...



Second...

Sketch of Cll'Li jogging along.  Color inverted in Photoshop because it looks cooler that way.

...which I am currently coloring by trying out Photoshop's various brushes.  I'll post when I'm done.

And Finally...

Earworm of the Day: Oh No What We Gonna Do? from the VeggieTales episode "Where's God When I'm S-scared?".  I recommend reading the lyrics too.  I was 3 years old when this came out and my Grandma worked at Berean Book Store, so yeah, our VHS collection was 40% VeggieTales growing up.

Looking at old VeggieTales from a distance of 19 years and a B.A. in Animation?  Well, now I get all the jokes.  And the CG is on par with a 1st year animation class, but the character design and acting (asymmetrical eyes, great voice acting) is very professional, and also just plain hilarious.  I mean, come on, cucumber singing about his lips, peas parodying Monty Python?  How can you not laugh?

--End of Babble--

Return of the "Flams"

For my animation final this quarter I've decided to pull the animatic Kitchen Chaos off the metaphorical shelf and move forward with production.  For those of you who may not have been reading that far back, this project was started in my story-boarding class last year.

So here is the first pencil test for what will soon be a fully animated video (I only have two weeks to complete everything.)  So far I'm optimistic.

Nothing gets the creative drive flowing like animating a very angry wallaby-thing running around with a butterfly net.  The character with the net is named Jimmy (thanks to an earlier project concerning a sound clip from a certain show).  His mom is a giraffaroo and his father is a very large frog, which means I'm still waffling on whether Jimmy's skin (or possibly fur) is yellow or green. The frog-clam-annoying-mouth-things are a little less puzzling, having officially been dubbed "Flams" today by my animation teacher (because "Clogs" is already a word.)

I also wrote a chunk of script in Celtx this morning for the first time in months (at the expense of homework time, but totally worth it).  I won't post it here because it's long, but let's just say Spitfire wins a fight using pacifism and parkour.

Oh, and found another cool video concerning movies. Warning: that video has some language in it, (because many good movies are not rated PG.  Sorry, fact of life.)

Earworm of the Day: Zorba's Dance what else?

Hands-On

I totally forgot to upload this Monday.  Wow.  I'm scatter-brained.

Matt Owl asks "Am I in the right century?"

In other news, today I applied for my degree conference (did I spell that right?).  If all my records are filled out correctly, and everything administration wise goes right, then an official paper that says "B.A. in Animation" should come by Christmas.  (I hope.)

In the mean time, I have the supreme hilarity of having a Motion Capture class and a Hand-Drawn Animation class back-to-back.  Yes, I go from the most automated form of animation to the most hand-crafted form of animation within the span of 3 hours.  I love my life.

I also love traditional animation.  Here's a bird jumping for an apple:

Earworm of the Day:  Due to my rule of not repeating earworms, I've officially got nothing.  Pick your own catchy tune and jam out to.  Heck, let's make it interactive.  Post your own earworm in the comments (video link is optional).

And So It Continues...

Fleet the Super Gerbil, boldly running into battle with his trusty... kitchen broom?

I know I said this would be the last "digital sticker style" character I'd make.

But...

Then a friend of suggested I do these guys next...

Galleon and Jacobson: critters from another dimension

Which got me thinking again of characters and poses, and so then I drew this...

A chrono-drive is not nearly as good at telling time as a normal watch.

And it would be a shame not to color it in... .  So it appears I'll be making these for a little while yet.  Hope nobody minds.

Earworm of the Day: The One (I'm Fighting For) by Article One.  I consider this song to be Fleets "theme song".

Wands and Light-boxes: No, This Isn't Hogwarts

I said I'd get it done, and I got it done:

Spitfire:  always a bad idea to get him mad.  Especially when he's armed (or decaffeinated...).

Next I'll do Fleet the Super Gerbil, but after that I'll give this style a rest.  My schedule's filling up now so I better turn my focus back to art projects that will have a grade tacked on.

Today was the first day of the last quarter of school for me.  I'm giddy with excitement; I'm cringing with fear; and I'm all-out stressed about my future and its scheduling.

But it's better than 80% of this summer has been, so I'll take it.

The two classes that met today were Motion Capture and Hand-Drawn Animation.  In motion capture we learned how to calibrate the mocap studio and how sensitive the cameras are to anything reflective.  Like glasses, belt buckles, reflective running shoes.  I swear at one point it was picking up the spiral binding of my notebook; there was a cluster of dots that moved when I did.  It was weird.  But not as weird as calibrating looks.  It involves a reflective ball on the end of a pole and you walk around the stage waving it in figure 8's.  How the computer makes sense of all this, I have no idea.

Hand-Drawn Animation started with the revelation that I already own most of what I need for this class.  Pegbar?  Check.  Hole-punch?  Check.  Stack of paper?  Check.  Richard William's Animator's Survival Kit?  Check.

Light box?

Uh...

So there's always one thing.  But that's nothing compared to my supply list for figure drawing.

Earworm of the Day:  I've had Winter Wrap-Up stuck in my head again, and I hate to repeat myself.  Ooh!  How about the Korra's Main Theme?  Now that's some beautiful background music!

Digital Stickers

So there's this style of drawing/coloring characters, usually chibi versions of characters, that I've been noticing on deviantArt; it involves solid outlines, sharp two-toned shading, and often some sort of flat border around the whole thing to make it look like a sticker.  Often the coloring is textured or water-color-like in some way.  Examples of what I'm babbling about can be found here, here, and here.

Now I rarely attempt to emulate other people's styles.  Sure, I'll gradually incorporate specific techniques as I learn the reasons for them, but going all-out and trying to copy a complete style is not something I try very often.  And really I should because to copy a style one must first understand what goes into the style.  This requires a close examination of another person's artwork.  The end result is learning techniques that were too subtle to notice at first glance.  Coolness comes from the details.

You know how in art class, your teacher always made you stare at master works for, like, ten whole minutes trying to pick apart the color scheme.  Or made you re-draw a da Vinci sketch line-by line?  Or had you try to emulate any other artist's style. This. Is. Why.

I repeat: Coolness is derived from the details you never noticed.

And yes, I only just realized this yesterday.  My apologies; I will now end my rant.

But yeah, that style I mentioned?  I tried it out on Beth:

A sketch, a scanner, a high-texture piece of paper, and 2 ^1/2 hours in Photoshop.  Yup. 

Then I wondered what other characters I could do in this style.  So I drew Spitfire...

My roommate's scanner, have I complained about it enough?  I'm not sure I have.

... and I'm currently in the process of sticker-fying him too.  Maybe I'll be done tonight.  Hard to say.

Earworm of the Day: Shooting Star by Owl City which I listened to while drawing these two images.  Wait, does this mean... *Gasp* I'm turning into an Owl City fan!  Nooooooooooooo!

On second thought, I don't really think there's any way to make me more dorky than I already am... so... I'm immune by virtue of saturation!  That's possible, right?  Right?

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

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.

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

Hamster Humans and Hamburgers

So, I picked up this book called Animal Skulls: A Guide to North American Species by Mark Elbroch.  It's fascinating.

And that fossa skull I was working on?  Anatomically wrong on so many levels.  The most glaring flaw being the lack of a foramen magnum... which is kind of an important structure considering it's the hole for the spinal chord.

Yeah.  Kind of important.

All this just stresses the point that research should come first.

In other news, my brain was keeping me awake Saturday night wandering on "what if" tangents as it's wont to do.  I hit upon "what would my characters look like if they were human instead of rodents?"  I ended up drawing this:

Still haven't decided whether or not to color it in.

Also went out to lunch with a church group yesterday.  Epic Burger has really good turkey burgers, but I forgot to tell them to hold the pickles.  While waiting for my food, I got bored and drew this:

Pato and Lynx eating burgers.

Earworm of the Day: Changed Forever by Toby Mac. That is honestly what's stuck in my head today, and it's driving me crazy.  I can't pinpoint why, but I have a very low tolerance for Toby Mac.  Something about the background singers, or the ear-wormy-ness, or... some other factor that can't be quantified... .  Beats me.

"Facing the Doppelganger": A Process

Hold on to your hats.  This will be a long entry, but there will be lots and lots of pictures.

So Wednesday I got tired of not having a proper Facebook cover image.  I'd originally planned for a character collage, but it ran into some sizing problems and... in a nutshell, it's been languishing in half-doneness for a few months.

So because I felt like drawing, and inspired partly by the thunderstorm raging outside, I sat down at 9 o'clock at night and drew this:

From left to right: Leah, Beth, Marvin, and an evil shape-shifting space-alien.

The blue colored pencil is a new technique I've been trying lately thanks to a step-by-step process by Kazu Kibuishi who makes the comic Copper.  Here I wasn't utilizing the tactic of inking then removing the blue in photoshop for clean lines.  In fact, I didn't want any outlines at all for this one.  But sketching in good-quality colored pencil is much more fun for me than drawing with graphite, the wax goes down with less effort making a more readable drawing.

I scanned the above image the next morning at about 9am, then brought it into Photoshop.  Another thing I've recently learned is always start with a background color.  I chose a gradient to help my brain wrap around the light and shadows.

Background gradient and original sketch set to "Multiply".

Then I colored the base colors of all the characters and their accessories.  It must be noted this is the first time I've colored my alien character Marvin in his "Earthling" disguise (his fur is dyed black.  His natural fur-color is a garish shade of spring green.)

Character base colors.

Next I added the road surface they're standing on.  I used a speckled brush set to a really big setting to give it some texture.

Road

Then I turned my attention to the background.  I dislike drawing backgrounds, so I try to keep things simple.  For this one I needed a cornfield though, because the scene is part of a larger story and that story happens to be set in the middle of farmland.  But this is a character-focused drawing, so I decided to go easy on myself.

First, I made a corn plant:

Just realized I forgot the ears.  It's corn, trust me.

Then, I duplicated the corn.

Corn.

Then I made three more layers of corn, using rudimentary linear perspective to get the sense of rows (I did use a reference image to estimate the spacing.  I'm from the country, but I'm not that country.)  For each layer I used the Levels tool to make the corn slightly darker and the "Gaussian Blur" filter with a slightly higher setting each time to create depth.

Corn rows.

At this point, I can't remember what order I did things, but the background went something like this:

Sky with stars made using the "star" brush.

Soil gradient, layered under road and sky.

Then I stared adding shadows, which I always make with a layer set to "multiply" and a brush color set to 50% grey, then change layer opacity to taste.  Added to the corn, it made a more dramatic effect.

Shadows added to corn.

Then there was the matter of the distant hedge-rows and horizon line.  This was simply a large speckle brush of a dark green color.  I've hidden the corn so you can see it better.

The name of the game is "Suggestion", not "Detail".

With the background elements in place, I duplicated the original background gradient and brought it between the background and the characters, setting it to "Overlay".  This gives the whole thing a nice dramatic tint.  Note that the characters are on top of the tinting layer, so they are unaffected.

Drama!

Finally, I focus on the characters.  I added the shadows in three passes for each character, that's 12 layers total just for the character's shadows in this piece.  Again, this was done with a layer set to "multiply" and a grey brush color.  The benefit to all these layers is control.  If I change my mind and want a shadow darker or lighter, all I have to do is move a dial rather than erase and re-draw.  By having shadows on a separate layer from the base color, I can lock the base color layer and play with the shadows freely without fear of messing up my earlier steps.

Grounding shadows added.

Character shadows, first pass (aka the lightest shadows)

Character shadow second-pass (darkest shadows) and extra line-work added like mouths and pockets.

Next are the highlights, which I do with a layer set to "Screen" (sort-of the opposite of "Multiply") and a brush set to the background color that I'll be highlighting.  I always mess with the opacity on the highlight layers.  This is where an object becomes either matte or shiny, which was essential for the hairless, putty-like shape-shifter alien.  Other places, like Beth's green shirt have no highlights at all.  The difference is hardly noticeable, but a good highlight will bring out the shadows more and show texture.

Highlights added.

And if you ever wanted to make a transparent character, here's the part where you hide the base color and get something like this:

I know there's a Terminator reference here, but I never watched Terminator.

Last, I added some atmospheric effects.  A yellow-to-transparent gradient set to "Overlay" and 73% opacity gives the effect of oncoming headlights from the left.

Headlight effect.

Another gradient of navy blue set to "Overlay" and 58% gave an extra aura of darkness for the shape-shifter to be emerging from.

Dark and spooky.

I added a grey-scale adjustment layer to check the color contrasts and to any last minute level-altering (adjustment layers filter the image without changing any information on the actual layers.  It can be turned on/off with a single button)

Greyscale check.  Marvin kinda... disappears.  But there's nothing for it.

Then I exported the whole thing as a .jpg image and posted it as my new Facebook cover.  I finished at about 6:30 pm yesterday.  So with the exception of the original sketch, this really was a one-day project.  That's got to be a personal record.

Click for full-sized image.

Earworm of the Day: Tired of Lindsey Stirling yet?  I'm not.  On the Floor Take Three.

Animated Animals and Mutant Food

That is a preliminary walk-cycle test for my original cartoon character, Beth.  This will be the first time she's ever been animated.  Can I get a celebratory "Whoo-Hoo"?

Too early for that?  Ok, moving on.

Went to the last day of Taste of Chicago.  I decided to be curious and daring and ate an Irish Egg-roll.  Come to find that it's essentially the unholy love-child of a spring roll and a quesadilla.  Both are up there on my favorite foods.  Neither should ever be incorporated into the other.  In terms of ingredients, an Irish Egg-roll is simply an egg-roll wrapper filled with cabbage, flecks of pink meat that were probably part of a pig at some point, and lots of white cheese.  Note that, like a real egg roll, the whole wrap is fried.

Cheese + Frying oil = Me having zero appetite for the rest of the day.

Also yesterday, we went to the Lincoln Park Zoo; which is, by the way, FREE.  I've gotten used to the turnstiles, ticket booths, and bag-checks employed by everything from theme parks, transportation, museums, and even the local public library.  So it was utterly surreal to walk of the street and right up to a grey sea lion tank with no one stopping me.  If you ever get a chance to go, do it.  No, it's not exactly Disney's Animal Kingdom, but it does have a surprising variety of critters for a zoo funded by donation.  My favorite was the takin.  I'd heard of them but I'd never seen one in real life before.  Apparently they're related to goats.  The rest of the Lincoln Park Zoo's menagerie can be found here.

Earworm of the Day: Winter Wrap Up.  Yes.  I'm serious.  I'm a female animation student that spends a lot of time on the internet, it should not come as any surprise that I watch MLP.

Post #100!

Translation of hen-scratches: "Leah is sent to get more chalk.  She zones out when teacher gives her instructions.  Trial and error door-opening."

Today is my hundredth post (I have also just discovered there's two d's in "hundredth".  Who knew?).  I was planning on posting something cool... but the coolness didn't get finished in time, so instead I'm just going to update on projects.

My new animation project currently in production is titled Carpe Noctem.  It is a minute-long sequence told from the first-person point-of-view from an ordinary microchiropteran bat (I can spell "microchiropteran" without spell-check first try... but not "hundredth".  Shows you where my priorities are...).

The project will be photoshop/hand-drawn animation with 3D enhancement... which I haven't puzzled out how to do in a timely manner yet.  Doesn't help that the school printer ONLY prints Double-sided documents.  Not to mention screws up the page order.  .

On the up-side, I remember how to MEL script:

Forest-generator.  Aka: proof that I know MEL scripting.

 The basic look is coming together too.  After Conner the Contortionist, I am fed-up with doing outlines in Photoshop.  I've replaced them with gradients and value-contrasts.  Takes about the same amount of time... but it's so much easier to focus on, and the results are so much cooler.

Nighthawk for Carpe Noctem.  In retrospect, I might've made the beak too big...

Discovered in research that nighthawks can make a booming sound with their wings wings (yes, their wings).  Birds, bats, and sonar-jamming moths?  I am in flying-creature-animation heaven this week!

Earworm of the Day: Already did Guide to Marine Life... and can't link to my project's bg music... iTunes shuffle says The 59th Street Bridge Song by Simon & Garfunkel.

I wanted to find a song from a school play I was in back in first grade... but YouTube hadn't been invented yet then.  (I remember practicing the song with a cassette tape.  If you don't know what that is... ... ok, I'll post the link.  I feel old now.)

Nanobots

Every so often, my brain picks a particularly unusual trail of "what if's" and lands on an idea that would work well in a story.  On rare occasions I hit upon an idea that fills in several plot/world-building holes all in one go.

Today, that was nanobots. 

A typical interaction between Marvin and the scientists who want to study him.
Beth, of course, is not typically in the room.

Nanobots can explain about 5 things about Kenlilians without breaking a sweat.  Especially if they're self-replicating nanobots.  That being said, I'd have to do more research on the subject to see what kind of molecular-level wackiness is already possible.  You never know when truth becomes stranger than fiction.

Also, I just love drawing Beth making crazy facial expressions.  Her relatively recent redesign and a few different drawing classes at school have given me more tools to work with.  Perhaps the biggest for me now is cheek deformations.  Getting a bulge right up to the eye when a lip raises does wonders to bring a character out of the uncanny valley and into likable-talking-animal territory.  I've also been trying to do more with her ears.  Every little subtlety counts.

Earworm of the Day: Ok, I'll confess I still have last week's earworm stuck in my head because I'm using it on a project.  I'm not going to repeat myself, so have another nice earworm-free day.

Calling the Hero Out

One of those moments where I get one silly image in my head and it all cascades from there.

Silly image in question:

You know a Kenlilian is angry when they can stop the local Superman substitute mid-flight.

The local superhero (Eagle), in pursuit of a character running from the law, crashes through a cargo shipment being guarded by a Kenlilian (Cll'li).  After bringing Eagle to ground, this exchange happens:

Cll'li: Fourth time!

Eagle: I'm really sorry--

Cll'li: I come through your town, you come through my stuff.  See is problem here!?!

Eagle: The city will pay you compensation as always--

Cll'li:  No.  You will stop breaking things or I will re-enact the Battle of Li'nk Teor* on your face!

(*The Battle of Li'nk Teor kicked off the beginning of a violent governmental/cultural revolution that occurred on  the Kenlilian home planet.  Incidentally, the first day of battle was the day Cll'li was born.)

Earworm of the Day: I got nothing. Good day.

Drawings Everywhere

Kids these days.  They expect me to be updated on the latest Pokemon.  Well I'm not.  Kid in question replied "Just make some up then".  So I took his advice.

Three mons from my own brain. 

At some point I turned my attention to three Kenlilian cousins.  It's hard to tell them apart without fur-colors to keep them straight.  Perhaps I should color these in.

From left to right: Ve'an (5), Zaav (16), and Gen (10).

After Zaav says something snarky to Gen.  Ve'an's just trying to keep up.

And finally, I must complain about Facebook's "Timeline" thing they're apparently forcing on us.  It's far too visually cluttered for my taste.  A mono-tasker's nightmare.  Ugly as anything.

And yet... they give me this blank space called a "banner".  I simply can't pass up the chance to personalize my virtual space.  Being an artist, a simple photo won't do.  No, I'm plotting out an epic character collage.

Thumbnail of epic character collage

Lemons and lemonade.  Fun will be had.

Earworm of the Day: The Rescue by Adam Cappa  I've mysteriously had this stuck in my head these last few days.