No Days Off

I somehow managed to finish my storyboard 3 days early, but my luck being what it is, on my first day off I awoke early in the morning to the sounds of cranes and heavy machinery right outside my window. Scaffolding went up and all of a sudden I had construction workers looking into my apartment. Looks like I have 6 weeks of this to wake up to.

Also, the battery on my laptop has started to swell so I am hesitant to use it for too long. 

My solution? Spend all of my days off at work. I finally got Photoshop installed on my work computer, so I managed to do the doodles above and work on other drawings too. I don't really want to admit it, but I was way more productive at work than I would've been at home.   

Watching: The Philadelphia Story by George Cukor

Reading: 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill
Listening to: Kurt Vile - Bottle It In

Bookish

Trying to get out of an artist block which might seem weird because I draw all day for work, but storyboarding uses a different part of my brain.

 Both outfits were based on clothes by the brand Princess Highway.

Watching: Two For the Road by Stanley Donen, A Foreign Affair by Billy Wilder
Reading: Gilded Needles by Michael McDowell, Strange Weather by Joe Hill
Listening to: Gillian Welch - Time (The Revelator), Neko Case - Hell-On, The Nels Cline 4 - Currents, Constellations, Crooked Fingers - Dignity and Shame

Fox Blouse

This one ended up way more complicated than expected. The colour of the outfit was reversed initally: blue jeans and orange top with a floral pattern, but then I saw a shirt by Princess Highway that had a cool fox print, so I decided to go with that instead.

Deciding on a background took way longer than it should have and it was done in short bursts before and after work. I like to have a few WIPs  going on at once so when I get bored of one I can work on something else.

The saturation levels on my laptop screen and Cintiq are really different, so I have no idea how high saturated the colours are.

Watching: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by Tomas Alfredson
Reading: Sound Man by Glyn Johns
Listening to:Singapore A-Go-Go, Saigon Rock & Soul

Military Jacket

I recently lucked out and happened to get an easy script to storyboard, so I haven't been working crazy hours lately. My motivation to draw is usually strongest in the morning, so I've been going in to work 30 minutes late which allows me some time to draw my own stuff.  

Watching: The Blue Dahlia by George Marshall,
Reading: Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugartsky
Listening to: First Aid Kit - Ruins, Julien Baker - Turn Off The Lights, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit - Here We Rest

Backlit Portrait

 

I recently tried my hand at some portrait photography, which I've been interested in doing for a while. Looking through 650+ photos with a virtual magnifying glass was a frustrating process, because it constantly reminded me that even though I had prepped myself on what not to do, I probably made every mistake short of accidently formatting my memory card. A large part of it was nerves, I found it hard to stay patient with less than 1.5 hrs of daylight. Relying on another person was also uncomfortable for me, even though I have to deal with other people at work (directors/editors/producers), storyboarding is ultimately a solitary endevour.

After 2 days of culling and editing I did end up with a couple decent shots and writing a list of everything I did wrong made me want to have another crack at it.

Watching: Baby Driver by Edgar Wright, L'Assassino by Elio Petri, Colossal by Nacho Vigalondo, Bridge of Spies by Steven Spielberg
Reading: Artemis by Andy Weir
Listening to: Peace - Black Power, Bernard Fanning Brutal Dawn, The War on Drugs - Slave Ambient, Something for Kate - The Official Fiction, Mavis Staples - If All I Was Was Black, The Decemberists - Long Live The King E.P

Sketches from a Rocking Boat Part 02

 

 

A lot of sameness in this sketchbook. It's summer right now in the southern hemisphere so ladies are walking around in shorts and summer dresses, which I dig.

Watching: Ex_Machina by Alex Garland, Only Lovers Left Alive by Jim Jarmusch 
Reading: Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink by Elvis Costello

Listening to: Pops Staples - Don't Lose This, R.E.M - Murmur, Songhoy Blues - Music In Exile, Uncle Tupleo - Anodyne, 60 Tigres - Frenesi

Revisiting Failure

I hadn't really inked with pens since I started in animation and learned about the Clean Up process, so I probably should have tempered my expectations when I decided to participate in Inktober. Although I quit after 2 days, I kept inking sketches for a few days, each one made it clear that traditional inks were not for me.

Having recently picked up my laptop and Intuos tablet from my parent's house, I decided to give some of those failed Inktober sketches quick digital ink treatments. Going back to using an Intuos after months of using a Cintiq at work felt a little awkward, but I think I'm getting used to it again.

I think 1 & 3 came out okay in the end, none of them were particularly strong, but I consider them all to be superior to the traditional inks.

 

 

 

Watching: Nuthin'

Reading: Last Man Vol.3 by Balak, Sanlaville and Vives

Listening to: Neko Case - Middle Cyclone

Sketches from a Rocking Boat Part 01

I'm no stranger to failure, so it came as no surprise that two days into Inktober, despite hours of trying, I wasn't even remotely satisfied with any of my ink drawings and decided to call it quits. Work takes up the vast majority of my time and I didn't want to spend the little spare time I get on making ink drawings I hate and becoming frustrated. It didn't help that all this coincided with my moving into a new place to be closer to work.

But out of abject failure comes a little ray of hope. Because of my hectic schedule the only way I could participate in Inktober was to sketch on the ferry to and from work and ink when I got home at night. Although Inktober was no longer a factor, it didn't mean that I had to stop sketching. In contrast to the frustration I felt when inking, I found sketching to be somewhat relaxing. In less than two weeks I filled up the last 2/3rds of my sketchbook and no longer feel totally rusty when drawing my own stuff.

However, danger always lurks around the corner; sketching on my commutes is how I got RSI years ago, so I have to be careful to not overwork my hands.

Failure. Hope. Danger.

Watching: Paper Moon by Peter Bogdanovich, Her by Spike Jonze, Inside Llewyn Davis by the Coen Brothers

Reading: Bonk by Mary Roach

Listening to:  Torres - Sprinter, Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings The Flood, Lauren O'Connell - Covers

(Red)volution

The evolution of a character design.

 

 

  

Watching: Indie Game: The Movie (special edition) by Lisanne Pajot and James Swirsky, Fog of War by Errol Morris
Reading: Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
Listening to: Feist - Let It Die, Lee Ranaldo - Between The Time and Tides, Chuck Prophet - Temple Beautiful, Justin Townes Earle - Nothing's Gonna Change the Way You Feel About Me Now

Deformed Skritches

I think my drawings have become really lazy, I've just been going through the motions with minimal thought, so I'm trying to draw in a new way to keep things fresh and force myself to think about the drawings. Below are sketches from the last pages of my most recent sketchbook where I was trying to figure out an approach to drawing that is caricatured, but not too cartoony.

Drawing freaky head-shapes is easy, but figuring out how to draw bodies that fit the very deformed faces is challenging. There is a fine line to walk, lean too much in one direction and the bodies are too cartoony, lean too much in the other direction and it looks too realistic.

 

 I have a tendency to make things more "on model" the more I draw that thing, it's a struggle for me to keep things loose and expressive.

Watching: Silver Linings Playbook by David O'Russell, Searching for Sugar Man by Malik Bendjelloul
Reading: Dune by Frank Herbert
Listening to: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Push The Sky Away
Playing: Fallout 3: New Vegas

Trail Mix

I haven't had much time to draw my own stuff, I've been storyboarding on an animated show and have been working around 12-13 hrs a day.

I wanted to do another Maya (from Borderlands 2) picture because the last one I did was pretty bad. I haven't played BL2 yet though, I'm gonna wait a year for the Game Of The Year version with all of the DLC.

This version is a little better than the last, the face is a little more accurate, but I couldn't bring myself to make it horsey enough to be on-model.










Just a quick sketch with a pencil-esque Photoshop brush. I like fooling around with textured brushes like this, but always end up just using the default round hard brush when I actually sit down to do any work.






I haven't posted any photos in a long time, that's partly because I haven't really taken any. I'm not really a "landscape" type of person, but I was out for the weekend in Vulcan State Forest and took some snaps.

The first shot is from the first morning with a 24mm 2.8f lens and the second is from the second morning with a 50mm 1.4f

I haven't really used the 24mm much; I almost always take photos in low light and the 50mm 1.4f is much more suited to that. The 24mm 2.8f is a decent lens, the build quality is a little iffy, but a great thing I found over the weekend is that almost everything 2 metres and beyond is in focus when set to infinity which is not the case with the 50mm where even taking landscapes requires minute focus adjustments. 




Watching: Bernie by Richard Linklater, The Company Men by John Wells, Phantom of the Paradise by Brian DePalma, Boardwalk Empire Season 2
Reading: It by Stephen King, B.P.R.D Hell on Earth: New World by Mignola, Arcudi & Guy Davis, Fatale: Death Chases Me by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, Spera by Josh Tierney and Assorted Artists
Listening to: Now Now - Threads, The Deep Dark Woods - The Place I Left Behind

Guitars, Guns & Greenery

Resting on my laurels again. The guitar is a mashup of a Jaguar and a Rickenbacker 330. I call it a Jaggenbacker.

- Short scale rosewood neck with triangle fret markers
- Semi-hollow body with cat’s eye f-hole
- Rickenbacker toaster neck pickup & Jaguar bridge pickup
- Mustang bridge
- Jaguar vibrato
- I'm not sure what the switches on the upper bout would do, some sort of high pass filters? Built-in boost? Jazz circuit?

The guitar is plugged into an amp I named Rita because it's a "little red head" (haw haw haw).

I'm not too crash hot about the design for the siren in Borderlands 2. The hair is cool, and I like the contours of the body suit, but I don't like the long-ish face or the wetsuit & cargo pants look.

This started out in my sketchbook, but I redrew the head from scratch in Photoshop and as a result the hair isn't quite right and the face isn't as thin and long as it should.

Looking at it now, it seems like a big step back in quality, but I was quite happy with it when I was doing the linework.

I've been trying to write some stories to turn into short comics and I toyed with the idea of setting a story in the world of Day of the Triffids.

The design isn't accurate to the description in the book, but based on the drawing on the cover of an old edition.    






Watching: Dawn of the Dead & Day of the Dead by George Romero, Hugo 3d by Martin Scorsese, Boardwalk Empire by Terence Winter & Tim Van Patten, Moneyball by Bennett Miller
Reading: Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner, The Dark Half by Stephen King
Listening to: Jack White - Blunderbuss