New Guitar Day!

Finally a post! But it's not art related... at least not directly.

Okay so I ordered this back in May as a birthday present for myself, and it finally arrived a few days ago! It's a Jackson DKA7.

Great guitar, plays like butter after I set it up, the Dimarzio D-Activators are great in the alder body. The neck is a lovely unfinished maple, which when combined with the Alder body and DActivators has a really nice aggressive "snap" to it. Which amounts to great articulation and note definition, even on my dropped G# 7th string.

Anyway the "artistic" side of things come in the form of me learning to use my "new" camera which hasn't been that active since purchase. Anyway I think they came out all right, especially since investing in a tripod. Tripods are the 3 legged gods of stable photography...I worship them.

Hope to do a video soon too. On to the pics!

Gift Card Millionaire

I recently did a small animation through Mind's Eye Creative called Gift Card Millionaire. Now that it's live I can share some of the pre prod work as well as the animation itself. Fun little story and I always love doing traditional animation.

The Animation itself:

Character Design and stuff:

Noah Bradley Part 2!

Okay since work really got in the way of the my last attempt at the Noah Bradley Art Course that recently finished, I'm attempting to redo it with a friend of mine. However this time around, we are customizing it to our schedule, basically all the assignments are the same, but we are making 2 week deadlines instead of 1 week. Hopefully this will allow for work and learning!

Anyway, so since this is week 1, here are 41 value studies. Tomorrow will be focus on a full master studies, then next week will be colour studies and another master study. Learning is great! I also found that these went very quickly the second time around, owed in part to this brush, which is my go to brush now.

A run cycle

Also a quick run cycle that you cant see in the main animation. :)

Finally Finished my Animation Clip!

So after quite a bit of animating in between work, being sick, as well as neglecting my sketching/ painting I've finally "finished" animating my little email signature. It's not 100% there (nothing I do ever is) but it's all the time I can afford to put towards it right now as work is getting to be quite a handful. I might come back and revise it a bit later when I have the time. :)

Anyway please see below, I've made it a gif :)

Animated Signature for email

I've been toying lately with the idea of having a gif as an animated signature for my gmail address. So I made up a character and did storyboards yesterday, and today I finished the keys. I'm posting the keys gif so that I can test it on my email address so far.

Been having a lot of fun doing it, and it gives me a chance to do traditional again, which has been a lost love of mine lately.

Something Phishy Reel Updated

Just updated Kelly and my Something Phishy Showreel with a few shots we did recently.

All animation belongs to Popcorn Training.
Music: Overland Blues - The Yoshida Brothers
(We do not own or hold rights to the Animation or Music)

More Photo Studies

I got briefly addicted to Monster Hunter on my 3ds, which caused me to stray a bit from my drawing/ painting initiative. But I have stopped playing and done a few photo studies and have since learned I need to work on painting portraits. I have trouble with the values within the face, so I might do some value studies from photos/ masters.

The paintings of the girls didn't come out as nicely as I wanted, but any experience is good
experience!

 

Lacey & Seymour

Since learning how to use Toon Boom Harmony's Deformation tools, I just had to make a character to really test it with. So here are Lacey and her panda hat Seymour.

I've only managed to have the time to do 3 views so far, and I haven't started rigging just yet. More on that as it develops. :)

Imaginefx Sketch Competition

Just saw this competition today, and decided to do a quick entry for it. I hope posting this doesn't clash with the rules...

After staring at it now I'm not really happy with it, proportions are a bit wonky and I'd like to go back to this at a later date and fix up the face and stuff, but hell, these days as long as I'm drawing I'm happy. :) So I count this as a win either way.

NEED TO WORK ON FIGURE DRAWING!

A quick test using Toon Boom Harmony

Not my usual style of animation. This is more motion graphics in my opinion, but it was still fun to do none the less. I can't yet mention what this is for, however it is just a rough test and the final product would obviously be more polished. :)

Sketch of the Day

Doing some random Imagination sketches for the sake of getting the juices flowing.

Guitar Design Competition

I recently submitted some designs for a guitar contest in SUSTAIN Magazine.

It was recently published in their magazine, to my great excitement :) Check them out if you are into luthiery @ http://www.fellowluthiers.com/

The contest basically goes, if you design it, and you win, they MAKE IT FOR YOU! So how could I resist.

Sketch of the Day

Had an idea for an animation the other day which somehow led to these two characters. I wanted the main one's eyes to be kinda "rapey" hence my tentative title, Rape Skunk. They are dirty hobo's who go around drinking and being creepy while dancing to random songs that catch my interest.

I just cleaned, inked and very roughly coloured this to try and get the idea going. I've had so many animation ideas lately, I just have to try and get one off the drawing board.

Sketch of the Day

Can't sleep... Therefore DRAW!

Photograph Studies

Found time today to do some painting, so I thought I'd do some of my HUGE backlog of Noah Bradley work. So here are some paintings I did this evening with a decidedly Japanese flavour :)

A little bit of the Kahl!

My first portrait painting ever! I've recently decided to delve into painting faces and the like. Thought I'd start with the Kahl himself. Everyone loves a bit of Kahl Drogo.

Seeing as this is my first, I have found that I have a lot to learn, but I'll get there :)

Random Still Lives

Random Sketch of the Day

Did some drawing as part of my sketch of the day routine I've been doing lately. I liked how this came out so here it is. My plan was to have a sassy girl eating noodles, none of these really are what I was thinking, but they came out okay :)

More Colour Studies

Due to work lately, my Noah Bradley work has declined significantly...

HOWEVER I am now getting back on track and making sure I put more time into it. Can't get better if you don't work hard right?

Here are some more colour studies from the masters.

Bosto Kingtee 19ma

Hi All

New gadget day! I recently purchased this Wacom alternative drawing tablet from Bosto. (Check out their website) And what struck me is that they had a South African dedicated website. So after contacting them and asking a few questions they later offered me a demo unit at a reduced price which I immediately picked up!

Unfortunately this model is the slightly older version ( which I didn't kno at the time...) and has a few issues here and there regarding using Toonboom and Photoshop at the same time. I hear that the later model has no such issues and the kind people at Bosto are seeing what they can do for me in terms of fixing my problem. However my experience so far with the unit has been positive. I will hopefully do a review of this unit once I have word whether or not my unit will be fixed. At the moment my opinion is somewhat hear and there as it doesn't do what I need it to do. (Be able to use toonboom and photoshop without having to reinstall drivers over and over again.)

All thw rok I post from here on out will mostly likely be done using the Bosto, so perhaps that will give you some indication of how useful it is :)

Anyway I only have one pic at the moment, due to poor lighting and a dirty ass table, please excuse the dust, but I will be snapping a few more later.

So far it has it's little quirks, but the unit is pretty much WIN for the price I got it at. If you have any questions feel free to mail me.

Week 1: Master Study 1 John Atkinson Grimshaw - Silver Moonlight

Was planning on getting this 100% and spending a few days on it, but I think I've learned all I can from it. It's a bit rough here and there, but overall I like it. :) Was great fun.

Here's a comparison. Not exact, but I think I got the vibe at least.

Week 1: Colour Studies

First 10 colour studies. Man these take me 20-30 mins each... I do learn a lot though. In my mind that's what counts. 50? Not gonna happen... My aim is for 20 :)

Popcorn Training Launch

So the other day Kelly and I attended Popcorn Training's Launch event at Cinema Nouveau at the Waterfont. Kelly and I have done most of the animation they use as well as comics, illustrations and overall design. It was really great to see our work up on the big screen and also to see how many people turned up.

We are super grateful to Anna and Claire for all they have done and letting us be a part of their dream company :)

Unfortunately, I forgot my nice camera and had to use the phone :(

Week 1: First 16 Composition/ Value studies.

I've had to juggle work and do these and unfortunately there is NO way I can get through all of the initial assignment... HOWEVER I am learning a LOT and actually sitting and painting for a change, which was the whole point in me doing this in the first place.

So Week 1 is master studies and these are my first couple of comp/ value studies. I picked mainly Golden Age illustrators because I LOVE their work. Pleasantly surprised that Noah suggested these anyway. Love me some  N. C Wyeth and Frank Frazetta. ( although he really isn't golden age )

Octi Shirt

Did this ages ago. But putting it up none the less :)

Noah Bradley Art Camp!

Okay so I've signed up for Noah Bradley's 12 week art course!

Even though I'm working like crazy, and it means a good few late nights, I feel it's a real step forward in terms of me progressing as an artist. In many respects I feels that most of us as artists in South Africa ( me included ) suffer from a lack of motivation due to us having a complete lack of enthusiasm due to the current state of our industry.

What I need is structured course with deadlines and assignments to get my ass in gear and start actually taking pride in my work as well as forcing me to take my own artistic future seriously. Hopefully this course will be a fresh start :)

So expect a ton of art coming soon.

First real digital painting in Photoshop?

I hardly ever used to use photoshop, but have since been VERY keen to learn. Now this isn't the best, but it was spontaneous and fun. Hopefully I'll look back at this one day and laugh.

2 iPad Sketches

Drew the girl in Sketchbook Pro and the Forest in Procreate on my iPad.

Awesome Birthday!!!

Had a great Birthday today! My girlfriend surprised me by inviting a bunch of friends and we had a great time at Fuji Yumi. Can't say I'm impressed by what I ordered but it was great just being with everyone.

Wish I had a Birthday sketch, but it's late...

Castle Yetis

A rough Design a did for the spring leap Castle Lite comp that I didn't finish due to having to much work on my plate. I liked the rough though.
  

Something Phishy: Part 3

Here is a short reel of some of the animation we've done for Something Phishy :) This doesn't include some of the later work we've done. That's for a later video ;)

Here is the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSD1gd9kbLo

Something Phishy: Part 2

Here are some title cards and covers from Something Phishy. These again are owned my Popcorn Training.