Some Figure Drawing Plus Post-Animation Mentor Madness

...alright, the title of this post is a little backwards. I'm going to talk about the Animation Mentor stuff first. I finally completed all six classes of the Character Animation program. Hurrah! It was a grueling year and a half long process which, despite the fact that it was grueling, was incredibly fun. I have the material for a demo reel, but I'm going to take a little more time to refine it and get it to the quality that I'd really like it to be. And I know, I've been focusing more on animating than updating my blog (but I mean, like, what kind of uncool person still uses Blogger, like, ohmigosh, totally lame, right?) but be on the lookout for my completed reel sometime later this year. I'd like to practice and try my hand out at some of the challenges over at the 11 Second Club, so that might push back my reel progress. Either way, yes, just stay tuned for that.

Onto the figure drawing portion of this post: I found out about an open figure drawing class not too far from my house. Seeing as though I haven't actually done figure drawing since probably the last time I actually posted some of my figure drawing, and since I'm now taking a gesture drawing class, I figured it'd be a good idea to enroll myself and get some practice in.

And I have to say, it was a really awesome session (and I'm so sad that I wasn't able to finish shading that top left pose... it was definitely my favorite)! I thought it'd be challenging to get back into the groove of things, but once I got my paper onto the easel and started off with the first charcoal stroke, it was a smooth transition back into drawing large-scale. I still need more practice though! I also found out about a couple of other sessions happening somewhere else nearby, which is absolutely fantastic. It's hard to find really good figure drawing classes where I live.

I've been doing a couple of other tiny things in the meantime (mostly voice acting and small little graphic designs/illustrations), so once those are done I'll make sure to post them here. I'm also always updating my portfolio which you can view here (or if you're looking at my website right now, just click where it says "My Portfolio").

Happy November! Figure Drawing + A Beautiful Raptor

It's November! Hooray! These figure drawings that I chose to show are actually from last month, but of course... it's still cool to show them! I mean, there's no law against posting pictures from October in November. Psh.

And here's a color/inking guide that I made for the animation that I'm making. I might mess around with his coloring a little more... but you never know! The little guy may just turn out to be deliciously green forever.

Also, have this quick little doodle I did... just 'cause.

Figure Drawing Week Two + Animation and Processing

My camera died halfway into taking pictures of my newer figure drawings, so for the meantime I'll just document half of the drawings I did. I really like the top and bottom-most figures... both are done in charcoal, and I think I was using an HB graphite stick for the other three. Which. Uh. Yeah. I don't think the material suits me well. I guess from drawing cartoons so much I have a habit of making my outer lines thicker than they should be (something my instructor has called me out on a lot) but... I don't know. I like the charcoal lines a lot.

These are a couple of screenshots from exercises I've done in Processing. We're using that program and Unity in my gaming design class, and it's been about two years since I last programmed anything with it. Yipes. Once I figure out how to put them on the internets, I'll link to the actual programs so anyone who feels adventurous can fiddle around with them.

Faceless, skinless puppet armature boy says hi! Earlier this week I started building the skeleton for the puppet I'll be animating for some stop-motion exercises (and quite possibly for a short film I'll be creating). He's not exactly done yet (meaning I still haven't filled him out completely) but later this weekend I'm going to be animating a few tests with him.

Last but not least, here's a WIP of one of the backgrounds I'm using for my animation. And I say WIP because I might go back and paint some of the bushes and mess around with the foreground later after I animate.

Phew! Wow, that's a lot of stuff. There's more to show, but I suppose this post is filled to the brim with work already. So yeah! Back to drinking gallons of coffee and getting more things done!

Figure Drawing Week One

Phew! I made it through my first figure drawing class of the semester. I'm a little rusty but hopefully I'll get back into the swing of things. Top one is gestures, bottom is various poses.