Loli and Yesterday

Forever hungry.

2011-12-21T00:19:00.001-08:00

I meant to post this here several weeks ago but apparently accidentally posted it to my friends' fanart blog. 8|

....this is not fanart.
This is a fox.

Animation Reel!

2011-11-18T14:40:00.001-08:00

I'm not too fond of making these, since I really prefer design and story to animation, but here it is!

BREAKIN' DAWN!!

2011-11-05T00:47:00.000-07:00

So. We got assigned to do a book cover in illustration class.

WARNING: This is a very dangerous assignment to give to a litnerd. After days agonizing over the perfect classic book I could make a compelling, symbolic, and deeply meaningful cover for, I tripped over my own geekout and fell flat on my face. Then my roommate jokingly convinced me to do Twilight so I made this dumb thing!

Also, this dumb thing.
Frankenstein is one of my favorite stories, as if it were not already obvious from how many different ways I adapt that dumb story!

2011-10-16T10:34:00.000-07:00

"skeleton dog meets regular fox"

"hobo magical girl"

New illustration assignments based on textures.

Incorporating textures into images is actually really hard for me! XD

More boooooards

2011-10-12T11:29:00.000-07:00

Almost forgot!

I uploaded part three of that silly long Jekyll and Hyde and Frankenstein story:

The Cliffs of Insanity, part III

2011-10-12T11:09:00.000-07:00

Just finished a first attempt at a color script for the film!

An illustration assignment using a long thin panel, conveniently appropriated for film work!

Another quick assignment, working from the ending of The Golden Compass.

I also ended up doing a couple sketches of Megalow, an aging magical girl. Unfortunately it would appear that magical sparkle powers don't translate quite so well to real world skills--she's ended up homeless in New York City, carting around her collections of anime memorabilia in her very own shopping cart.

"What else have I been drawing, besides schoolwork?"
"Oh. A bunch of sloppy sketches of Haruki and friends."

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2011-09-28T23:21:00.000-07:00

Okay! So I'm behind! I haven't posted everything I've done in the past couple weeks!

Here's just some quick beat boards I did today because I had them on hand!

In this incarnation, Haruki Nakamura is a reformed supervillain who is trying to get on with his life*, sans-magic, but weird shit just keeps getting in the way.

*as a powerful junior executive of a major entertainment company. He was never going to be a complete goody-two-shoes.

2011-09-15T14:57:00.000-07:00

A lot of what I've been doing is working on this story . . . drawn out in storyboards . . . about Dr. Jekyll and Dr. Frankenstein hiking together through the Alps. But I really don't know how to post that here, so you get links!

The Cliffs of Insanity (part 1)
and here we have (part 2)

I think I liked this one better as a thumbnail. :B

---------------------------------

And aside from that it's mostly commissions?
I'm never ever sure where I should put these?

Finally I am trying to learn needlefelt! I have no idea how to photograph things, is all I have to say.

I'll be special and I'll be rare

2011-08-13T10:26:00.000-07:00

Inevitably, my favorite thing from last week was done in about twenty minutes.

More film drawings!

Some commissions! I am rarely confident at all about how these turn out. While I'm working on them I'm usually decently confident that they're good, but as soon as I've turned them into whoever they're for, I lose any idea of whether I like them or not.

A line-y Hyde....
Recently I feel like I'm jumping around little variations of styles without really getting to the bottom of any one of them.

And a two-page werewolf!

A light snack

2011-07-28T14:05:00.000-07:00

Apparently this was the week of drawing characters I don't really draw that much!
Robert the werewolf!

Skeleton dog with no name as of yet! Potential film character (secondary).

Miss Lucy from my Jekyll and Hyde story! A shameless freeloader and professional moocher.

I remember, I dismember

2011-07-20T22:56:00.000-07:00

Guhhhhh art blocked! They always seem to set in just when I'm finally starting to have free time to draw.

if you keep tearing out the sutures

2011-07-18T19:01:00.001-07:00

Drawing warm-ups! I haven't done figure drawing in forever and . . . does this actually count as figure drawing? Whatever D:

I tend to get very frustrated during figure drawing class. I took a class in it consistently through highschool and developed certain "ruts" that I fall into. I feel like I get stuck drawing the same proportions, solving problems in the same way. It's hard to kick myself into looking at shape and gesture when I'm drawing a figure model! So usually, the more skin the model is showing, the harder time I have caricaturing her well XD;

who made it july anyway??

2011-07-03T13:20:00.001-07:00

Oh gracious! It's been just about two months since I uploaded here. What is wrong with me?? I may already be coming down with a sort of pre-graduation paralysis: whereas I never had much difficulty making a portfolio or designing a website before, the prospect that things might actually be at stake now is giving me terrible worries!

What's in this dump, then? A commission for a friend (and another one of Ten and Eleven, there), and a good grouping of Jekyll and Hyde sketches, one of Jekyll cosy in his chemistry lab and two of poor baby Jekyll from a prologue to Jekyll and Hyde that I keep thinking about.

Para is finished!

2011-05-01T09:00:00.001-07:00

It really is, and it kind of makes me sad XD

Here have some stills >>; Once this is really over I need to start learning how to draw things that aren't these two characters.

Ow....

2011-03-21T10:10:00.000-07:00

Oh dear, crunchtime headache >< I can't pretend this is a coherent update at all, but these are two random backgrounds (well, one background and one layout sketch) from this year's film.

Statues!

2011-03-01T13:04:00.000-08:00

I don't think I uploaded these! No new work because of film season, but here's the maquettes I finished this semester. The fellow with the umbrella is the first sculpture I've ever done in sculpey :P

This film and I are breaking up

2010-12-12T13:56:00.000-08:00

I just wanna make these layouts read DX

Plus: some designs

Yeaaaah I'm going to France soon.

Pastel boxes

2010-11-20T20:24:00.001-08:00

M'emo doggie!

Drawing Avalanche

2010-11-18T09:56:00.000-08:00

Okay I am finally going to try to post here XD I post everywhere BUT here!

And I still don't have everything. 8| Will post tomorrow. Would like to have things vaguely updated by CTN!

I did some dancing doodles--the other ones are totally not done but I went ahead and colored this one because it seems like all my film stuff so far is so damn monochrome. 8|

I am in a sculpture class and I MADE something! Please ignore unkempt me.

M'EMO IS SO HAPPY
This is the human form of the gargoyle from my first-year film.
His story takes place in the Georgian era actually, but if he dressed in modern-day garb he would probably wear crazy T-shirts and no underwear.

More recent sketches, lots of general film character poses.

Inspirational image for my main film character-- in another aspect of her story, she is a runaway bride. :x
Listening to "Marry Me" by Emilie Autumn

First attempt at getting Rachel's cluttered room!

*as a general note: wow, WOW, I have no control of arm length in half of these drawings, I don't know what happened.

Second or third attempt! She kept getting weirder.

This was a doodle that got out of hand. XD I am fond of the linework but I never quite got the coloring down . . .

Old sketches from the summer, mostly from the film!

First attempt at drawing my second film character. He is friendly-ish.

A random commission!

sore ga himitsu! All my roommates were watching Slayers.

SPARKLY VAMPIRES

2010-10-22T12:31:00.001-07:00

I haven't updated here in forever~

Have some Al Hirschfeldt, Ronald Searle, and Shrek style (or at least, attempts at the style) vampires :O

Embarrassing!

2010-09-27T19:18:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted here in months, ne!

I kept intending to post something that would sum up the internship over the summer but I've been a spot busy D:

And now I have to learn FRENCH.

Film WIP stuff

2010-06-23T08:28:00.000-07:00

Film process dump!

It feels so long since I've worked on this 8| (I guess it's been about two months.... which in film time IS pretty long....)

Currently up at the Pixar internship-- not going to write anything about that probably until the end of summer though :P IM me if you want to hear about it.

If I tried to draw an attractive Hyde.....

2010-05-26T12:07:00.000-07:00

.....he would look something like this.

Pretty nervous about going up to Emoryville!

Freaky Scary

2010-05-23T20:06:00.001-07:00

Big end-of-year post time!

So it's the end of my second year at Calarts. I'm halfway done with college--that's freaky-scary. (Anyone who knows what movie that little phrase is from gets a cookie.)

Incidentally this is the little poster-y image I used for my film. 8| I made a bunch of little cards of it for the Producer's Show and job fair. I never went to check to see if anyone took any at the show (there's a big reception afterwards and tons of important people packed in together with a ton of students in a small space = uncomfortable awkward time!) and I plum forgot to put any out at the job fair. Grrr! I spent most of that morning freaking out as to whether my computer was facing the right direction for enough people to see my film. I ended up actually having a good response overall, which I imagine means I had the monitor facing the right way.

(A commission, me trying to do the style of Japanese brushwork I did last summer.)

A lot of freaky scary things happened this week. Despite being rejected from it two weeks before, I got the Pixar internship in Story after the job fair. I'm going up there on the 5th, a little bit terrified.

THEN I was chosen as the student who gets to go to Gobelins school of animation in Paris for the spring semester. 8| Totally surreal!

As it were these incredibly fortunate things were coupled with some pretty nasty icky gross personal life events. The less severe but still awfully saddening one being that my little pet mouse Hiccup died.

Okay so ummmm end of year things:
1. I'm pretty sure I learned the most from layout class.
2. Anyone familiar with our class's animation teacher drama knows how crazy it was. Second-year traditional animation has been the Defense Against the Dark Arts of Calarts. It seems we've finally hit upon someone awesome, and I seriously hope she doesn't leave :\
3. Story class: character arcs character arcs hahahahahahahahaha *shoots self*
4. Pro-tools was a lot easier to learn on my own. 8| Those giant microphones we had to use got on my nerves.
5. Lotsa fun freshies this year!
6. I barely used my cube at all, lol. I have a desktop computer and my film was all digital this year, so I worked at home.
7. How To Train Your Dragon <3
8. Acting for Animators was . . . interesting . . . Same goes for Directing for Animators.

NIGHT PARADE

2010-05-02T20:12:00.000-07:00

Night Parade from Sabrina Cotugno on Vimeo.

My second-year film. :)

I got into the Producer's Show, I'm very happy!!

And you'll need your mind for later on

2010-04-04T20:57:00.000-07:00

MORE LAYOUTS. These are actually reworkings of shots I finished ages ago but am deciding to redo, because the original ones were a bit sloppy.

ARE THOSE YELLOW EYES TOO SILLY I DON'T KNOW. I'll fix it in After Effects.

Hyde break

2010-03-25T14:53:00.000-07:00

Okay, I was a good animator today and worked through the morning, so I get to take a break and draw a silly picture of Hyde listening to "Where is My Mind?"

I would really prefer to be watching Fight Club right now. Oh well, back to work 8D

(This is possibly the girliest Hyde I have ever drawn)

2010-03-23T14:34:00.000-07:00

I've been spazzing out all semester about how my story portfolio doesn't have anything really funny in it (normal funny, as opposed to "wow that owl is really being eaten alive that is funny" funny). I also don't have anything that could really be considered "rough". These.... aren't really rough either, but I resisted the urge to tone the crap out of everything.

ADELE IS MY PET MOUSE. SHE LIKES TO BURROW. I SWEAR THESE BOARDS LOOK BETTER IN AN ANIMATIC WHEN THEY'RE NOT LAID OUT SIDE BY SIDE LIKE THIS.

....I just realized that ALL of my storyboarding projects involve a small creature running away from a big one. Uh oh.

Layoutpalooza

2010-03-15T12:53:00.000-07:00

As I get less and less confident in my grasp on storytelling, I compensate by making COLORFUL LAYOUTS.

The idea is to give everyone who passes through the Mac labs the idea that I must be making a good film because I'm using so many CoLoRs, and then to disappoint them majestically at the open show when they find out that actually the film as a whole is completely incoherent.

My boss made fun of me, saying that I must not have spent enough time on story if I have so much time to color my film (which I....don't, really). This is actually the opposite of true. I had a much firmer grasp of what the story was when it was simple than when I tried to screw around with it all first semester and ended up with something confusing and overly complicated.

I'm so bored of animating this shot

2010-02-24T16:57:00.000-08:00

Five minute doodles drawn while listening to Regina Spektor~

LONG WEEK OF LONG

2010-02-05T18:11:00.000-08:00

I woke up tired, isn't it awful when that happens??

My method for creating backgrounds: draw a questionable layout, attempt to fix the composition later, cover most of it up with magical bubble lights.

Mysteriously I got a LOT of sketching done in a very short time on Tuesday.
I had a brief period of actually knowing how to draw Lucy, which impressed me. That girl has huge hips. She is also brash and angry almost all the time, and yet she's probably one of the least aggressive women that Dr. Jekyll has ever become entangled with. As in she's not very likely to beat him up when she gets bored of him.

I like the kittystretch!Hyde!! Mrrrrr..... (I made other attempts to draw him cat-like but ran up against the limits of my drawing ability.)

Lucy shouts a lot, which is really the only way to get Hyde to listen to you. I drew this mostly because the gesture popped into my head but also because I wanted to draw that huge bustle sticking out in the back.

Tarot fail!

2010-01-27T09:57:00.000-08:00

I have vague aspirations to make the lamest Tarot deck ever.
That's probably going to last only until I realize that I don't want to work with that portrait-y aspect ratio anymore.

Man as soon as I start animating EVERYTHING ELSE looks instantly more fun.

Little comic pages

2010-01-13T18:52:00.000-08:00

Two unrelated comic pages that have to do with Frankenstein. :3
I hope blogger doesn't shrink them--if so, I'll upload them to deviantArt...

Frankenstein has devoted a fair amount of energy in his life to NOT running into Henry Jekyll. :| They have a history.

Frankenstein and Hyde go on a stroll through the London rooftops. :3

ATTACK OF SECOND SEMESTER

2010-01-12T14:30:00.000-08:00

A thumbnail for one of the backgrounds for my film. I liked the layout sorta?

I'm trying to do some comic pages to work on my composition skills and whatnot. :< God I hope the final product won't suck!

Aaaagh I'm not ready for it to be film season alreadyyyy.

More Frankenstein

2010-01-03T13:22:00.000-08:00

As usual, the simplest drawing ideas are the only ones that get finished....

Edward gets in the way

2009-12-22T15:20:00.000-08:00

Can't stop thinking about Frankenstein!! It's terrible.
I just came up with the white-streaked idea for his hair. I think it's pretty cute. :3

A laboratory made for dangerous electrical equipment is just about the ideal playground for our Edward Hyde. (I guess Frankenstein is bringing some kind of ladybug back to life?)

No more character design homework....

2009-12-21T22:23:00.000-08:00

This was the last assignment!
I think my computer coloring style is getting too polished-looking again. :\

I started work on a background for my film and I started to get nervous. What if I don't have enough time to finish everything???

I calmed down by drawing Frankenstein. I gave him a cute nose. :3

Underwater dinosaur

2009-12-08T14:12:00.000-08:00

Sharks used to be my favorite animal, when I was in kindergarten.
All I would draw was sharks.
I'm sure I used to know their anatomy really well (no skeleton, just cartilage!)
They definitely didn't have mouths that look like this....

I always thought sharks were so cute.

Project: Learn how to draw good

2009-11-26T21:37:00.000-08:00

In an effort to work a little bit on drawing less flat, graphic stuff, I was copying poses from the 1920 Jekyll and Hyde with John Barrymore.

I'm trying to get more of a range of expression into my Jekyll design. :|

I said no! please don't exist

2009-11-21T19:46:00.001-08:00

At this time I would like to call out the school printer on its scheming schemes to make the colors on my storyboards look atrocious. They are. Not to say they look brilliant on the computer screen, but when printed out they look like they were painted using only primary blue and maybe some bright magenta. :(

I don't think I've ever posted boards here before! Well I finally got to posting them on my portfolio site:

So here they are :O

I went to the CTN Expo today! Conventions tire me out so much. 8| I'm not really built to be in big crowds each day, and I'm terrible at approaching people at booths at all, much less to shove portfolios rudely in their faces. If Reyna hadn't been there to shout down a retreating story artist, no way would I have talked to anyone at all. XD Although even without trotting around the showroom I got to swap portfolios with a lot of my classmates. :3 Having a bunch of Calarts people there made the atmosphere less scary for me....

But I did manage to get my confidence up enough to show my portfolio around! I got some good critique and surprisingly I felt my design portfolio got more critique than my story portfolio ffffffftwhut? D:

I'm gonna go ahead and attribute the lack of soul-searing criticism on my boards to beginner's luck. :| Granted, the only consistent critique I got for design was, "well, for our studio you'll want to have more characters with volume and less flat, graphic ones". I was like "ffffffffff I was TRYING for the past few months to work on that" and then I remembered that my largest design project for the summer was my Japanese sumi-e designs, which is like the flattest thing I've ever drawn, and I was like "oh".

The dumb thing is I don't think of my style as a terribly flat/graphic style. D: But I dunno, we had a great design lecture on Wednesday that focused on character design with an emphasis on strong draftsmanship so I dunno MAYBE I can work on improving that next.

Because hell knows my attempts to draw Icarus show off my shortcomings in draftsmanship. :|

Frankenstein's knitting club

2009-11-18T15:38:00.000-08:00

A cute idea turned into a weird looking layout. D:

I think my problem with Mr. Hyde is that I'm too obsessed with how cool a character is to draw him properly. I end up doodling poses without putting any real thought into them, and then I have to make up the rest of the picture to fit.

BURD

2009-11-15T01:46:00.000-08:00

Over the summer I had a brief sprint of designing a whole lot of birds, and I ran into a sort of wall where I just couldn't think up any more shapes--not that the ones I designed were so outstanding in shapes that they used up all the possibilities.....

But anyway, I was not terribly happy to get assigned birds for class, but I'm relatively satisfied with how these turned out. I'm not sure if I've improved much since the summer--I'm still having hella problems drawing owls. I don't know what it is with them. They come out looking all stiff when I try to draw them.

Knit knit knit

2009-11-12T18:44:00.000-08:00

Somebody visiting this blog must think I only draw in black and white doodles, making sketches primarily of a certain scraggly old guy, again and again.

This is not true.

I have actually been working on some drawings such as this:

but today
because it is Thursday
and life drawing is Thursday
and that zaps energy
today
I drew a certain scraggly old guy

He believes in a beauty

2009-11-04T21:37:00.000-08:00

Quick Dionysus character design (as a girl). Dionysus is a girl because our model for figure drawing this week was a girl and I was being lazy. *cough*

Bjork's song "Venus as a Boy" is like my favorite song right now and I DON'T KNOW WHY. Maybe it's because I'm sick, but the odd mixing of Greek/Roman stuff and Indian sounding music is pretty right now.

DEAD OWL

2009-10-30T12:52:00.000-07:00

Hey I'm posting the layout I did for my film this week and it's not in color because I suck and I didn't have time to finish it so that sucks.

That owl just went down. 8|
That owl is dead.
Mallory helped me make it look dead! (She draws dead things a lot.)

Unfortunately in making it look dead I'm afraid that it might have adopted a really weird silhouette. D: *confused*

I know we suffer for fashion, or whatever

2009-10-26T14:04:00.001-07:00

I would be posting things from my film but I'm angry at Haruki (my main character) because he won't animate well not because his design won't work because his design is simple as hell but because I'm lame and can't translate what I see in my head onto paper (or Flash or whatever) and it looks like sucking!

So here's the lineup from my Jekyll and Hyde story, because that's apparently all I end up posting here. I would love to draw some scenes from the J+H roleplay I'm doing now, only my brain is too distracted by how much I suck at animation for me to think about that.

So in conclusion:

AGH ANIMATION. I don't GET it and the more that teacher tries to explain it to us (in that condescending way) the LESS I UNDERSTAND IT.

Aside from that, I have no outstanding complaints about this year. Madly busy, but it's mostly self-inflicted. Sewing my halloween costume this week on top of story homework, so let's hope I don't totally fail, eh?

DEAR GOLLY GOLASHAS

2009-09-20T22:39:00.000-07:00

(Iiiiiicarus. Yes this doodle is pretty much the only thing I can think of to post right now.)

Oh hell, a lot to report. . . .

This week was mayhem! An unexpected drama during cube signups (and Joseph and my anniversary) luckily wielded a good result--Reyna and I got cube 36 (please visit us because we spend a lot of time painting it!)

Then there was SO MUCH MORE drama with the Freshmen cube sign-up . . . the upside of which was that I finally had those freshies in a captive area and could meet Sam and Mallory (whom I'd talked to before online) and also got to meet some other cool freshies. 83 I hope I manage to stay in touch with them because Lord knows how I tend to accidentally disappear into my hidey hole once the year gets underway.

Now. . . . as for classes.

I think I'm gonna have to drop Maki's. :\ I don't want to, since I want to improve my character design, but I took it already last semester, and the time spent in class tends to exhaust/depress me (some of those model sheets.....). Besides, I can always take it next semester. I'm considering just bugging one of a billion people I know into telling me their homework assignments so I can do them on the side.

BUT I don't feel comfortable doing that until I know what the heck is going on with Directing for Animators. Is it cancelled?? Is it not cancelled?? Dear God adjusting to new schedules freaks me out. I'm not sure if I should go searching out a replacement class but ack there's just another hassle.

I had a spaz attack this weekend because I was trying to do this thing where I would wait to do homework until I had time in my cube, but I started freaking out over the idea of not having homework finished.

So I saddled down and finished all my homework today at my computer because I am a nerd. 8| Also I had nothing else to do. Dear God I had nothing else to do, except perhaps spamming the boyfriend with increasingly whiny nervous text messages.

In lighter news, one of my layout class goals is to somehow design a layout for the first song in The Broken Bride: "I crashed before the birth of Christ, pterodactyls swarming. . . ."

.......back to this Icarus drawing for a moment. I pretty much reference Malcolm Tucker for expressions because his brand of nasty-mean-evil is not common among my characters. :x Other problems in this drawing: wtf hand and lol proportions, as usual.

Dream~

2009-09-09T21:57:00.000-07:00

Just moved into my new place . . . not used to sleeping in new rooms, am feeling a bit homesick. D: Transition periods treat me badly, and I'm lucky if I can scratch out even little comfort doodles.

I DID feel better for a bit helping the boyfriend unpack and clean for his new apartment, so I did a cleaning!Awais doodle. :3
Awais reminds me of a rarely seen character of mine--Ookami (ironically HER name is wolf TOO wtf) She's Haruki's servant who is always in a state of distress. No one knows much about her.

Byyyyy your genetics~

2009-09-04T22:07:00.001-07:00

Hey I'm working on a website update!
PLEASE CHECK IT OUT PLEASE

Hey I've just realized that the FIRST page of my portfolio includes a character lounging around in a pool of blood. 8| It's really the only gory thing in there at all, but does anyone know if this counts as:
1) display of originality
2) instant turn-off for the sort of people who would look at this portfolio?

I'm not entirely pleased with how the icons are interacting with the layout background. I feel like they should curve more around the circle thing, but I'm not sure how to code that without, like, make a new div layer for each line of images, which would be annoying.

I'm such a lazy web designer. XD I refuse to do anything that isn't completely easy.

Anyway these were some designs for the Japanese project that I liked and I don't think I posted it before.
I was just drawing a character who's supposed to be skinny enough that clothes sort of drape over and fall all over him, and I kept making the excuse, "But I'm not used to drawing clothes that don't fit!" and then I remembered I'd drawn THIS earlier this summer, which is the extreme of that--demons disguising themselves as beautiful women dissolve into smoke, leaving their kimono in a heap.

wants to read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

2009-09-04T12:02:00.000-07:00

I think whenever I try to design Victorian clothes with high collars, it turns out Regency. Are your clothes choking you to death? You may be in a Jane Austen novel.

And now for some ridiculous song-inspired pictures

2009-09-02T08:51:00.000-07:00

Because school is starting so I need to actually finish up all the random crap ideas I had over summer. D: Here's a Jekyll inspired by a Venetian plague doctor's mask....

And Hyde being terribly delirious on "yay! someone else's blood" vibes. Oh man that blood was fun to draw but it so looked like how I would normally draw my drippies. D: *not terribly creative with effects*

Soooo I like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs song Zero. It sounds like it's making fun of someone.

School talk and ghost girls

2009-08-28T14:23:00.000-07:00

I was in San Fran on Wednesday and got to hang out with Reyna, Addie, Josh.... and we happened to run into Kei in Japantown. :3 It was pretty much exceedingly fun! I haven't been to that Nihonmachi in almost ten years, so already it has a somewhat nostalgic look to me.

Off-subject briefly: This is Riverside, a former Lady of Questionable Morals who finally retired..... after being shot through a bit in the heart. As a ghost, she's taken up residence in Soho, collecting bizarre and exotic trinkets for her hobby. She's also the tiniest bit addicted to a lovely formula that gives her the sensation of a beating heart (one thing she's missed about being alive..... she doesn't miss much else) which she purchases from our beloved Dr. Jekyll. :3

Inspired by Paris Hilton's character in Repo! The Genetic Opera. I think it's the most awesome thing ever that Paris is in that movie/thing.

Ahem, anyway....

Talking came along to the subject of Calarts (well, it would, wouldn't it?) and so of course I've been thinking about returning to school and How I Spent My Summer Vacation--most notably What I Drew On My Summer Vacation.

I haven't really gotten the impression that the school is trying to mold me into some sort of industry standard--but then again, I did come from a Catholic girls' school, where the assumption is that, if you're not being molded into something prim and polite, you aren't getting your money's worth.

The only thing is that I HAVE noticed over the summer that I'm constantly asking myself, "Is this worth drawing? Will this look good in my portfolio? Is this what the studios want to see?" It's really annoying, although I'm hoping it's largely due to what I've perceived as the Second-Year "I hate everything I draw" Syndrome. I guess the question is whether the atmosphere at Calarts has anything to do with it. If it does, then I really didn't feel it while actually at school--I generally thought the message of "we want to encourage personal style" was pretty well-enforced (failing that, people sure SAID it enough). I think the feeling began mostly after portfolio day, when you end up being sorted into "design", "story", or "animation" and you end up making new works with one of those three categories in mind.

My big problem is in design, as I have a much bigger ego about my character designs (er, not in general, but I'm pretty protective of the ones for my four major storylines) than I do about the way I make storyboards or the way I animate (especially how I animate, which is basically "do whatever"). I have a couple industry character design idols (I'm still busy staring at Shane and Shannon's Coraline arts) and in general I tend to prefer character designs made for animation. . . . but it gets to the point where, if I design something that would not be intended for animation, I doubt whether it's any good at all. I feel like I'm wasting my time.

I'm pretty sure that these funny insecurities aren't so much the school's fault as the industry. Um. And more than that, it's the trouble that I don't seem to have quite the ability to overcome whatever "pressures" are out there. Art and animation and story are pretty much my life, but I haven't gotten down to what I really enjoy about it. I just..... do.

Going to the Special hell

2009-08-22T23:54:00.001-07:00

Qui's new persona-character Vincent, whom I promptly stole and turned into some kind of bishounen.

Small arts

2009-08-20T16:15:00.001-07:00

It looks like the major events of summer are all over. Nothing to do but wait for school to start, ne?

Anyway, here's Beatrice Bee (she goes by Bee), ordinary human sent to Hell by mistake. She disguises herself as a demon in order to get home. :P

Some fun sketches from an RP I'm doing (yay!). My Jekyll/Hyde playing opposite her Icarus (previously drawn a few posts below). I'm not sure if information regarding Icarus is considered spoileriffic, so I won't say much. :x

Omg realistic drawing is hard. D:

2009-08-12T11:12:00.000-07:00

Some Japanese monsters from Hell and I SWEAR that severed head looked better designed before I put it on the stake. *fume* These spirits seem to be called "ox-head" and "horse-head" (for.... obvious reasons) but damned if I can figure out what they're FOR. My understanding of Japanese demons is that every once in a while, someone would go:
"Hey, we haven't made enough creepy-looking crap lately. How about a guy with a mop for a head?"
And they make up the story afterward.

I'm not terribly attached to the colored versions. Since obviously it's the linework that ought to be the focus here, I'm wondering if I should really color them at all.

The demon lady's portrait

2009-08-08T15:56:00.000-07:00

Trying to nail down the look of Ms. M, a powerful hell-demon of the House of Greed. (She's a long-standing character except that I recently made her female because she got boring as a guy.) Recently, though, she got in a mysterious accident that seems to have taken a lot of her memory and a good chunk of her mind as well. Now she cooks.

I was talking with an incoming freshman who has a lot of really great fully-rendered images..... and I felt bad that I didn't have any. :( So here's my attempt at it! Backlighting EVERYWHERE.

I'm not dead!

2009-08-07T16:28:00.001-07:00

Although it would appear that someone is.
Mr. Hyde is a cute serial killer. :3 Yes you is. YES you is!

Summer blues

2009-07-23T12:42:00.000-07:00

This was a small commission and I think it marks really the first thing that's been decent since I got back from Italy because well, the girl it was meant for liked it. XD Actually I like it too, as I am prone to do of anything new, but he does look a lot like Muntz, doesn't he? I really like Muntz (one of my favorite Pixar villains, I think), but I don't like the prospect that every skinny old guy I draw is likely to turn out looking like him. D:

Well, here's a kind of fat old guy?
A preview from the Japanese music video I'm working on, although really I'm beginning to lose confidence a little.... :x The idea was that I would focus on the design aspect and have more of a "moving image" rather than real animation. That's because the whole thing is 4 minutes long--originally it was a relatively small segment of animation and the rest was footage, but the situation has shifted rather out of my favor in that department. :x

I'm doubting my ability to do a proper job in the time allotted, and I'm wondering if it's going to pay off in the end. This leads to all kinds of troublesome contemplations.... am I wasting my summer? What am I supposed to be doing with summer, actually? What do most people do with summer? Why can't I think of anything better to draw (seriously)? To make matters worse I'm supposed to be seeing Thief and the Cobbler (Recobbled) with a friend this weekend, which is not exactly a movie that tells you, "Hard work will pay off in the end." (Well, not the movie itself, but the drama surrounding it.)

A nasty week.....

2009-07-11T21:56:00.000-07:00

I got WICKED ILL the last few days. . . . I was fine, and then this cough started, and it's been downhill from there. . . .

I hadn't had the energy to draw at all. :( It's awful. Plus, just coming back from vacation, I had a lot of time to stew over what I'm not very good at. A lack of confidence seems to have driven back my design sense into the STONE AGE. . . . I finally drew a little today, but I couldn't hit anything on the nose, like "Ah! That's how I want it to look!"

But I did TRY. . . . A VAMPIRE!!
Oh btw, it's a creepy old vampire. :P And little Former, a much younger vampire, in cute bat form!!

I was rethinking an old character I had.... an old, very traditional vampire named Mr. Wilson who is like a mentor to little Former, who is so awkward he can't get close enough to a human to suck their blood. Wilson's new incarnation is an old classy charmer . . . however, on this first pass I'm getting a bit too much gayness. 8|

This iiiis the moment . . . when I collapse from exhaustion

2009-06-19T22:06:00.000-07:00

Loads of things! Here's the last ten drawings from the artslam character challenge. :3 I was Jekyll and Hyde, obviously.

Updates on LIFE: I just finished a two-week design job (EEE!) and have gotten invited back to do work later in the summer. :D

I'm going to ITALY on a 10-day family vacation! BRB, ITALY.

MAKIN' UP A SONG ABOUT COOOORALIIIINE

1st year retrospective : D

2009-05-15T22:35:00.000-07:00

My first-year film. :D I was lucky enough to have it included in the Producer's Show--actually a record number of freshmen got in this year. Watching the show is very surreal, though. The open show is very loud, which has the charm of removing the awkward to some extent--in the Producer's Show, a string of animations can go by with only a lukewarm applause at the end of each one, especially if you're lagging into the second half. I got intensely flustered about my position between three senior films and went spinning off somewhere and couldn't focus.

With that Show ended, the year is basically over. The only thing to do in Character Animation is to creep through abandoned cubes and go through the motions of trying to enjoy all the performances and shows you said you were going to go to once you were done with your film.

Here's some things I think I know:
1. As soon as you get to Calarts, the astounding achievement of having gotten into Calarts becomes immediately unimpressive.
2. Color and Design is a weird class. I'm still not sure I learned anything except how to follow strict instructions.
3. Story by Robert McKee was actually worth reading, but Story for Animators isn't so much worth taking.
4. Storyboarding is mysterious. So is storyboarding class.
5. Sometimes a bad rig happens.
6. Figure drawing is pretty creativity expression time, not learning time (unless you force yourself to learn).
7. BIGGEST REGRET: being stuck with the cafeteria food!! It's not awful, but the monotony of taste makes it absolutely unbearable.
8. Some people have REALLY GREAT music libraries.
9. If you went to CSSSA, the weather in the first three weeks and the last weeks of school will be very disorienting. It feels and smells much like CSSSA.
10. Interaction with other departments is optional.
11. Love Sushi has the cheapest, best sushi in possibly the whole world.
12. Getting out of critical studies classes is a good thing.
13. People are nice but it takes a long time to figure that out. It takes me a long time to figure that out.

Fake inkwork

2009-04-27T12:25:00.000-07:00

Films done! Now to plan other films 8D
Some designs for a music video project. They're not done yet, lawl.

Apparently my mom ran into Ben Balistreri at the LA book fair without knowing it. @_@ She was saying, "So I ran into this guy at the comics section. He'd written this comic. He went to Calarts apparently...." And she bought the book and it was Seaweed and when I saw it I was like, "OMG YOU MET THAT GUY"

I missed his lecture at Calarts this year. D: Maybe he'll come back sometime.

Chickens!

2009-04-10T23:58:00.000-07:00

A character design assignment I dreaded! Chickens, possibly the only animal I fear drawing more than squirrels. Why? Because they're viewed so typically in American animation as being "cartoony" that it's hard to come up with something that isn't cliche failure. :\ They're funny, but so overdone. Plus I was way too tired to do anything non-film related and sketched these out during my Maya class.

....and surprisingly I like them. : D Then, inevitably, whenever I draw anything I'm proud of for that class, no one shows up. 8|

In other news I am SO SICK OF AFTER EFFECTS. No matter how long I work on it there's always more to do. I have zero faith in my film right about now. :\

Superheroes!

2009-03-18T22:29:00.001-07:00

An odd assignment about superheroes living in an apartment building. Used the opportunity to work on some designs I already had going. :P

On the top is Haruki, an 11-year-old supervillain I've had for a few years. I'm trying to rework his design to make his powers more specific--replacing his ability to control "small things" is a small army of magical bugs. He's the Bug Prince. :) When he has his costume on I'm still going for an attitude akin to the Digimon Kaizer (squeal!!)

On the bottom is a character I just started trying to draw (although she's been present in Haruki's world since the beginning). Apparently the term for her is "octomom" or something like that--one of those ungodly large families with 20 kids who have all those reality TV shows recently. Those families are always white and composed of vapid, average children--thus, these ones have no faces at all.

The lady travels around with her children to megachurches across the nation, talking about the evils of birth control and caffeine. Oh, and whenever she needs a new kid but can't get pregnant for whatever reason, she invites a hapless neiborhood child over and brainwashes them with daytime television until their faces fall off.

I haven't come up with a look for her face yet. I'm thinking a mix between Ann Coulter and Jennifer Aniston.

I came up with all this during the week so she's quite subject to change. :\

TOO MUCH J+H

2009-03-13T09:52:00.001-07:00

Yeah, just too much. This totals 10 color images for this week's assignment.

In case you're interested, the blue image at the bottom left is a film idea in which Hyde discovers a little shining "soul" escaping from a girl he just killed. He chases it, for it is shiny.

Jekyll and Hyde (part 1)

2009-03-11T18:50:00.000-07:00

Sooooo late for class but here are two of my Jekyll and Hyde designs for class!!

Skeletons!

2009-03-05T00:47:00.001-08:00

Another character design assignment--skeletons! I decided to do skeletal designs of some of my characters . . . not an accurate skeleton per se, but one that reflects their personalities. On top, little Grendel and big Grendel. On the bottom, a random flapper girl, M'emo, Jekyll, Chance, and then Hyde.

Yeti and Monkeys

2009-03-03T16:12:00.000-08:00

I tried doing designs on paper since those look cool when other people do it, but I really don't like how these turned out. D: So that explains the monkeys . . . I did more but those were HORRID, these are the only vaguely okay ones.

The yeti were from the previous week. It's one of those assignments where the options are so many that it's hard to really explore enough to come up with an original design. . . . I like the one at the bottom right.

Chance Again

2009-03-03T15:56:00.000-08:00

I'm not liking how my digital things are coming out lately.
It looks a little too simplistic, doesn't it?

Figure drawing post. . . .

2009-02-19T18:24:00.001-08:00

Today was reaaaallly slow for figure drawings. . . . by the end of the day I managed these two, but otherwise I was just feeling completely tired and depressed from the week. Not sure why. D: A harsh character design critique right before hand didn't help, I think.

A lot of the time I end up sitting behind the model since there's nowhere else to sit. >( I get so many back poses. . . . so this time I added an extra face. :O

My thought is that she could fit into my demon-verse as a half-witch (the mask face), half succubus. Witches are only awkwardly accepted in Hell, so the merging of the two would be some awful sign of demonic blood thinning. Lol. When the regular face is asleep, the witch-mask can control the body, but it has to do everything backwards--walking, gesturing, etc. I thought it would be fun to animate.

Dodgerrrrrrrrrrr

2009-02-09T18:36:00.000-08:00

For a workshop on character design we got to draw characters from Oliver Twist. Glee! The Artful Dodger is my favorite character in all the land, so I was happy. The idea here is that Dodger beat up a lot of weak little rich kids and stole their clothes. He sewed on the badges of various boys' private schools like badges of honor: "I beat up some kid from this school and this school and this school. . . ." He has a hat for his hat.
I wanted to do the thing where people resemble animals or the like. The only one I got in was Fagin, who's supposed to be a bit lizard-like. His coattails are his "tail".

Character Design! Zomg!

2009-01-30T21:35:00.001-08:00

So they kicked us first-years out of Stephen Silver's class. :\ We can't even sit in. Lol.
But! They let us actually enroll in Maki's class--which is cool but kind of really painful. So far I've left that class completely exhausted.
I think we're being joined by some fancy third-years, which makes it even more exhausting. This is like "who wants to be verbally abused for three hours??" class (though I'm sure that prospect would have most of my classmates scrambling to get in).

When I refer to people as first-years and third-years, I feel like I'm at Hogwarts. If Hogwarts were designed in the '50s and could double as a hospital.

Jekyll is sad D:

2009-01-22T17:43:00.000-08:00

Working on expressions :D
The poor thing. He's always got something to angst about.
(But then, his noble sadness is a main attraction point for the ladies, so he doesn't need THAT much sympathy. . . .)

And sign-ups are over.

2009-01-09T19:18:00.001-08:00

....I get the impression I should have signed up for more animation-y classes. I was so busy avoiding critical studies that I forgot. . . . Oh well, the class I most wanted to take is during my story development class anyway. :\

This is a drawing of Chance, the priest from my first year film. :3 I didn't think of doing anything with an incense holder until after I had the story pretty much set (what kind of Catholic AM I? Incense holders are the coolest part of mass.....) but it's been occupying my mind all of break. . .

It's a Hyde 8|

2008-12-24T21:20:00.000-08:00

It's Mr. Hyde. :3 He's a little bit cat-like, desu nya.

....I should probably do something to make this blog not floating on the Internet with no connection to anything else.

2008-12-19T11:51:00.000-08:00

(I guess this is part of a series of "Christmas presents" for friends.... little black and white cards of various characters. This is a friend's version of Dr. Jekyll.... he's distressed about something. He's always distressed about something.)

Okay . . . hah hah . . . I don't really know what I'm doing. 8) A lot of people in my class seem to have these blogspot things, so I suppose I should too? Um! For the most part I'm on deviantArt:
http://otherwise.deviantart.com

But I suppose I'll have to start updating here, too.... oh, also I have a portfolio website I really need to update.