An Excuse to Post Another Earworm.

So I finally saw Wreck-It Ralph.  I can honestly say it lives up to the hype, and even my trope-savvy brain didn't see the ending coming. Though I really should've.  It's foreshadowed way ahead of time,but it's so subtle that on the first viewing it's hard to catch.  It ranks up there with Megamind on my list of "Movies I'm Impressed With".  I did not see Wreck-It Ralph in 3D, but frankly it doesn't need the 3rd dimension (unlike Megamind which certainly does).  My exposure to video game culture came in handy for this movie (a character used the Konami Code and I'm pretty sure I was the only one laughing) but even if you don't play games this movie is entertaining because it's all about the characters.  Any plot-relevant game mechanics are explained in-movie, so the audience can just sit back and get absorbed in the story line.

It also has catchy music.  Wanna hear the catchy music?

Earworm of the Day: Shut Up and Drive by Rihanna  It's in the movie.  It's been stuck in my head for days.

The Merits of Meyer's Other Book (a minor rant)

I woke up this morning and I'm all like, "I must write!!!"

Today is my last day of college.  All I have to do is show up for the figure-drawing critique and turn in my class portfolio.  Then try to maintain attention long enough while forced to analyze each student's artwork for ten minutes while having to stand up... yes standing is the hard part.  I can't take standing for long periods of time, it gets me all stressed out and cranky.  (Walking for long periods of time has the opposite effect strangely enough.)

My Hand-drawn Animation final was yesterday.  Here's how it went:


Kitchen Chaos: Pencil test stage from Elizabeth Young on Vimeo.

On a related but totally different note, movie trailers that have succeeded in making me want to see the movie:  Warm Bodies, and The Host.

A word on The Host, it is a book written by Stephanie Meyer.  I've read it, and I thought it was better than the Twilight series (for one thing, there is only one book of The Host).  Was it the writing caliber of Timothy Zahn, Anthony Horowitz, or Naomi Novik?  No.  Of course not.  This is Stephanie Meyer we're talking about.  Was The Host at least more palatable than Twilight?  Yes.  Yes it was, and for no other reason that the narrator is a space alien.  The narrator is still a Mary Sue who can do no wrong and has no depth (read: expert/victim/flaw model, implied back story, 3-dimentionality).  When she does mention a past life, it seems to come out of left field (this character can fight?  What?  This was not foreshadowed or referenced in the preceding pages!  I call shenanigans!).  But, any Mary-Sue-ishness can easily be written off because Wanderer is a space alien.  She doesn't feel human, but then again she's not human.  Disbelief remains suspended.  The story was at least decent.  I'd be willing to pay money to see how the film makers handle it (because frankly they can only improve upon it.)

Earworm of the Day:  The BG music to the video Our Story in 1 Minute.  I put the video link first because you must see the epicness that is the video, but the song itself is Our Story by melodysheep.  I am seriously considering downloading this, it would be worth every penny.

P.S. Because I promised to post when I was done...

Cll'li jogging along... and she doesn't look happy.  Safe to say someone's in big trouble.

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?

Grumbles about .Gifs

So, I think I'm changing my posting schedule to Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.  Why?  Because that's when I've got time.

First, I finally (finally!) figured out how to make an animated gif.  As per usual, I was only missing one button to make it work.

Also have a really cool idea for a deviantART avatar image now.  Involves a hamster of course.  Now, a bit of a note about animated gifs and my opinion of them.  I don't understand the phenomenon of chopping up a perfectly good YouTube video of a dog doing something and making it into a 6 panel animated gif comic strip.  It's a mutant if you ask me.  Too many things moving at once.  Mono-tasker's nightmare.

I also find endlessly looped gifs to be cute for the first two seconds, then annoying for the rest of their existence.

That being said, I wish I had looped the rainbow as it is a very short animation and may be hard to catch when the page loads.  I get that.  That makes sense.  What gifs need is a pause.  Some breathing room.  But making a gif longer means more work, and more animation skill.  In that sense I understand why annoying gifs happen.  They take less time and energy to make.

Well, I'm an animator, so I'll just have to expend the extra energy and make something fantastic.  My work ethic won't allow me to do otherwise.  Huzzah!

Earworm of the Day: What is Love? by Haddaway OR played on 8 floppy drives

'Tis My Birthday! Hooray!

Another year older, and life is moving at a pretty fast clip.  Today I worked on a 2D animation of Dripbird jumping for an apple, which I hope to have refined and posted by Wednesday.  I also, finally, purchased an Adobe CS6 package for my PC.  Two weeks from now, I will be creating awesomeness from my own desktop!

Also, my roommate and I teamed up and made cupcakes (from scratch!) and decorated them with icing and chocolate (from the store).

Yay, cupcakes!

 In other news, I was helpful!  I got to help make a prayer network board Willow Chicago is using for its kids' program. I designed the swirly background and mapped out where the colors would go.  The painting and string was by some other super talented person.  I think it turned out great!

It's also upside-down.  But I kind of like it better this way.

Earworm of the Day:  We Got a Dollar (or I Got a Pickle in some versions) from The Little Rascals.  Of course, thanks to NATSU I now have an entirely different (equally catchy) song stuck in my head, but I'll let them have the glory for that.

"I got a birthday.  I got a birthday.  I got a birthday, hey hey hey hey..."

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Bizarre Concept, Adorable Characters: the origin of the Jet Pack Penguins

I feel obligated to post something since I skipped out on updating Monday.

First of all, while I'm still on a digital art kick, I thought I'd revamp the title banner for Penguins with Jet Packs.  Full disclosure: the original (and as of this writing, current) banner for this blog is made from penguins pasted from a drawing I made in High School when I was going through a phase of "bizarre concept, adorable characters."

For your viewing pleasure, here are My Best Old Drawings, circa 2007:

Penguins with Jet Packs

Flying Pigs and Yellow Tulips

Elephant & Butterflies

Paradox's Den

As you can see, I was not a teen with much angst.  In fact, I think the ninja hamsters was about as dark as it got.

But yes, it's been 5 years.  I've had 3 college-level drawing classes since then.  I have a Wacom tablet now. It's time to update!

Don't worry, the penguins will still be there, they'll just be a little less...grainy.

Here is the base sketch for the new banner:

Noises like "zoom" and "whoosh" are encouraged.

Today I had stuff to do, like actual "be at x place at x time wearing a nice blouse" stuff to do.  Which is fantastic.  I love feeling like I'm getting something accomplished in the bigger scheme of things.  But it also means I have to put off completing the banner.  I hope to complete it tomorrow and have it ready to unveil on Friday.  I am setting that goal now to you, my readers.  So I better have it done.

Earworm of the Day:  Cotton Eye Joe by Rednex.  How did I get that one stuck in my head?  Blame The Nostalgia Chick.

"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.

History and Monsters... Sort of.

Only two things I can possibly think of to blog about right now, and that's American history and Juniper Lee.


A few weeks ago I picked up possibly the most interesting history book I've ever read: American History Revised: 200 startling facts that never made it into the textbooks.  Mind you, it's not contradicting anything in the text books, this book simply adds in the missing bits.  The human factor, the dumb luck, and the minor details that made history take the course it did, and that the schools forgot to tell us for the sake of time.  Published just 2 years ago, the book covers everything from the pilgrims to Enron and does it in a categorical rather than linear order.  I found it at the library, but I'm considering buying a copy for future reference material.

Secondly, I've found the first season of the short-lived cartoon show The Life and Times of Juniper Lee on YouTube.  This was another one of those shows that I would've totally kept up with if it had been on TV at a better hour.  Now that I have 4 years education in animation and story-telling, I'm realizing what a gem this show actually was.  I love the understated reactions of the characters, and June's character animations (particularly the flipping) is very fun to watch.  (I would love to learn how to animate such a thing myself, but sadly I don't have any original characters with super-jumping capabilities).

Earworm of the Day: Electric Daisy Violin by Lindsey Stirling.  Yes.  Another one.  Hey, that's how it works.  I get it stuck in my head, it becomes earworm of the day.

Geeking Over Movie Trailers

At long last I am making progress on the rigging of my CGI character Dripbird.  As of this writing he has controls to make him blink, look at things, raise/lower his crest, bend his neck, lean his body back and forth, and move his legs and feet.

Screen-cap of Dripbird rigging in progress.  The control shapes are a little hard to see.

I am still not happy with the controls for the legs and will probably re-do them (It is not unusual for me to repeat a step 3 or 4 times before deeming it worthy of keeping).  This build continues to be a lesson in problem-solving and info-gathering as I am doing this on my own time and without the guidance of a professor.  That, and all my old text-books only show how to rig characters with plantigrade feet.  They do not address how to rig a digitigrade character, which seems to be a horrible omission considering everything from horses to cats to dinosaurs walk on their toes.

I also re-did the UVmap for Dripbird because that's another thing I was unhappy with (and I do believe this was my 3rd go at UVmapping this character.)  With all the mapping I've been doing lately, the new map for Dripbird was relatively quick to assemble.  It took somewhere between 11/2 to 2 hours to complete, which might be a personal record for mapping on a character this complex (mind you I had also hit the "smooth" command already, so there was 4x as many polygons to deal with as well).

A render of Dripbird standing in a very harsh lighting (sorry about that).

In other news, I've become fascinated with 2 movie trailers, both large-scale CGI stories: Epic and Rise of the Guardians.  Rise has got me the most interested of the two, which requires some analysis because I hate holiday movies.  Ok.  I don't actually hate them, but I seriously dislike them because they tend to be simplistic, cheesy, predictable, and impart empty aesops.

But look at the trailer for Rise of the Guardians.  Seriously, go click the link, I'll give you a few minutes.

You back?  Good.

Holy cow! This is freakin' awesome!

I shall make a list:

1. Jack Frost's character design is a barefoot kid in a hoodie.  Instantly likable.
2. The Easter Bunny is Australian.  It took a day or two of pondering before it totally makes sense. (But it totally makes sense.)
3. Santa is a more traditional European "Father Christmas".  A big, burly lumberjack dude with a thick accent and a big fur coat.  Much cooler than a fat guy in red saying "Hohoho."
4. They appear to be fighting a guy who gives kids nightmares.  Nighmares.  Not "threatenting to cancel Christmas".  Not a story about "that one kid who didn't get what he wanted under the tree".  No.  A guy who invades kid's dreams and turns them into visions of 4 horseman and hellhounds.  An actual super-villain in a holiday movie.  Now this I've gotta see.

As for Epic.  Well, I have to admit it's visually beautiful, but I think 90% of the awesome comes from the sound-track.

Earworm of the Day: The Lightning Strike: Part I by Snow Patrol

Psychedelic Fossa

So yesterday I finally got back into the computer lab and worked more on the fossa skull I've had on the back-burner.  The modeling is completely done, save for the addition of some smoothing.

Rawr!

Also, for your enjoyment, I hunted around YouTube and found a video of a fossa.  It's kind of cute with it's big eyes and round ears.  But holy cow, that tail just goes on forever!  It's half the body-length or something.

Also finally got around to getting a UV mapping grid to work with.  Besides the pretty colors, the extra lines help flaws in the mapping to stand out better and the numbers show if the normals and/or UV's are facing the right direction.  The website I got it from has a whole bunch of these in various color schemes.  It's very nifty.

It's hard to look at, I'll admit.

This is my 3rd try on mapping that part of the skull.  I think I'm finally getting the hang of mapping organic forms.  The shapes are never going to be nice and simple, but as long as they look good.

Earworm of the Day: Mess of Me by Switchfoot.

PSA Link Storm

Step 1 on my animation final this quarter.  It had to be a PSA.  I'm thinking of doing stop-motion paper cutouts so I can work at home.  I'm getting tired of sitting in front of the computer.  I want to make something a little more tangible (and a little less accidentally-erasable.  That's another lesson I reviewed recently).  More info about the featured invasive species can be found at The National Invasive Species Information Center.

I considered doing cain toads and rabbits too, but rabbits are in fact native to North America (though I've heard there quite invasive in Australia), and how do you animate the devastation caused by cain toads under a time limit?  Have a dog lick one and die with x's over the eyes?  That's some dark comedy people.  I think I'll stick to funny sound effects, thank you very much.

While researching for this animation, I also learned that starlings are sometimes kept as pets.  Let me just say that I have nothing against keeping starlings as pets, provided they stay that way.  In reality they're probably safer for your neighborhood wildlife than a pet cat.  Domestic cats can wreak havoc on delicate ecosystems (poor Stephens Island Wren).  It also turns out that starlings are capable of imitating human speech.  It's kind of creepy but cool at the same time.

Earworm of the Day: Remind Me Who I Am by Jason Gray

Homework Storm Ahead

I have redesigned Arnie the Acting Aardvark, giving him a more brighter, more cartoony color pallet and a less articulated framework.

He's questioning my decision to put the navigation bar on the right side.

The animation is due on Monday.  Five days from this moment to complete a 29 second clip.  The problem is my 3D thinking brain is driving me towards character moves that don't work with 2D puppets, meaning Arnie will be a composite character: arms ears and body will be 2D puppet, but the face and legs will be hand-animated in Photoshop.

I made a list of steps I'll have to do, made some estimations, and came out to a minimum of 12 hours of work to get it decently completed.  If I can spend an excess of 2hrs per day on the animation, I might, might get it done.  At least I don't have to re-draw every element like Winsor McCay did.

In other news:

Terke Piloting the Di-Zok

Photonegative drawings make nice spaceship pictures.

Earworm of the day: A Guide to Marine Life by Falling Up  I am shocked with myself for having not put that as an earworm sooner.