Smith

back in action

2010-05-02T16:36:00.000-07:00

I'm back up and running and decided to practice using Corel Painter again. This is what I came up with.

thank god for that "human anatomy for illustrators" class, or this would have been very hard.

puter problems

2010-04-19T16:11:00.000-07:00

woo!

Now that I got the new parts put together and the OS installed I spent all morning installing all the software that I lost in the process.

Within a few minutes I'll finally be able to continue my (digital) artwork.

HEYYY

2010-04-11T17:39:00.001-07:00

I havnt been posting lately! Flooding and power surges have damaged my computer... rather then buy a new one I spent a long time (trial and error) and figure out what part to replace.

My setup should be up and running within a few days and I hope to finally be posting new stuff again.

rAtATaTatAtata!

2010-03-02T19:51:00.000-08:00

Here's the airplane I was thinking of drawing up. I'm really liking the way these came out... I might draw up a couple more.

In the meantime I'm learning DreamWeaver... I finally have hosting for my website but I think it needs an overhaul, I'm hoping to have my site up and running by next week.

tAnK

2010-02-28T14:43:00.001-08:00

Okay, so I continued with the same style as my earlier sketch. Next time I'll draw up what an airplane would look like.

quick sketch

2010-02-26T18:29:00.001-08:00

the History channel seems to be mostly about ww2... well here's a little character of a soldier... I might make a couple more sketches in the same style. I'm interested in adapting this style into drawing a tank or airplane, might come out interesting.

character concept

2010-02-12T15:58:00.000-08:00

I had a strange dream last night and it inspired me to draw this.

I try to do something different with the coloring in each drawing/concept I do, helps keep me on my toes.

Conan the Babarian-esque? I definitely think so.

DAAAAMMMNNN

2010-02-11T17:02:00.000-08:00

he's got class, he's got swagger, he's got an unfortunate color palette... he's got it all!

call the exterminator

2010-02-08T20:13:00.001-08:00

Well, I liked my first fly animation so much that I made another one.

This time around I took care into making it even more fly like.

enjoy.

fly?

2010-01-21T16:38:00.000-08:00

I felt like animating a fly or two, thought I'd post it up for the world to see.

puterz

2009-12-26T16:36:00.000-08:00

just practicing drawing with corel painter, this is the second time I've ever used the program and I'm starting to like it.

another character concept

2009-10-22T18:31:00.000-07:00

Here is another "almost finalized" character concept.

the whole idea with this one is essentially an extremely wealthy aristocratic werewolf. blaah that was a tongue twister!

hellloooooooooooo

2009-10-02T17:00:00.000-07:00

just drew this up and thought it was funny

colorz

2009-09-20T10:22:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple more concepts, this time with color!

This first image here was drawn with pencil and paper, scanned in, then colored in photoshop.
The second image was drawn entirely in flash.

sum moar

2009-09-19T12:51:00.000-07:00

Me and a few friends have been working on a short animation for the web, it's going to be anime... not my preferred style but its 3 votes against one, haha

this is just a quick concept sketch.

long time no see

2009-09-14T16:36:00.001-07:00

I'm back baby !

here's a little concept sketcherdoodle, more to come soon

Update at Last!

2009-05-15T01:24:00.000-07:00

Well, its been a while so I thought I'd show some new stuff from my 2D portfolio.

Here are a bunch of characters I drew up, the concept for this are elementary school kids. I thought it was alright and might have some potential later when I develop the characters and concept more.

This is a background and some animation frames I made for my Montage/Reel.
More updates will be coming soon!!! Also I'm going to have my website up and running by next week!

POSTER!

2009-04-21T00:34:00.000-07:00

Well, I've been working on a poster for my Degree Project. Here's a mock up of what I was thinking.

I tried to make it ridiculous and keep the same feel of what I want my DP to be.

hmmm... maybe its too cheesy?

missing pieces

2009-04-17T14:55:00.000-07:00

I've been animating like crazy, so much so that sleep and eating right have taken a backseat. However I've made enough progress on my Degree Project that its actually starting to look like a cohesive animation rather then a bunch of random sequences. With enough determination and sacrifices to my original storyboard, I think I'll be able to get it "finished enough" in the next week or two.

my internet has been going in and out for the past few weeks, so I haven't been updating as much as I'd like. But here's a little sequence people seem to like.

I want to get everything I want animated done within the next five days. That will give me time to step back and see where all the missing pieces of my DP are.

Therapy

2009-04-12T13:20:00.001-07:00

Animating random little things can be therapeutic... especially after a whole day of animating... counter intuitive isn't it?

Almost

2009-04-04T21:31:00.000-07:00

The semester is coming closer and closer to an end, but work has been piling up higher and higher... its hard finding time just to get everything done AND have time to work on DP... hopefully another busy but unproductive week like this one doesn't happen again this semester.

I'm trying my best to keep this from happening to me

WHY ME !?!?!?!?!?

2009-03-30T06:37:00.000-07:00

So right now I'm in my Digital Illustration class trying to load my homework from my portable drive. AND IT DOESN'T WORK!

Normally I wouldn't care, so what if my portable drive breaks and I need to pass in something late. But today isn't a normal day, after this class I'm going to a BIG CRITIQUE WITH THE ENTIRE ANIMATION CLASS!

I have to show everything I have for my degree project... but today I wont have anything... Of all the days of the year my thumb drive had to break today (and it was brand new and very expensive, its only 3 months old)... I feel like an idiot, everyone will think I have nothing and that I'm just some slacker.

Worst of all, during our last big critique I had compiled everything I had in Final Cut and it somehow had a bug in which whenever I went to export all the video edits I made would jump around to random places, it almost jeopardized the critique but luckily I could just play the video through final cut itself. But still, it made me look like an idiot. And now, with my broken thumbdrive, I'll look like an idiot all over again.

I think I'm cursed.

Maybe my thumbdrive will spontaneously start working again right before my critique.

*** UPDATE ***

It turns out my thumb drive actually works!!! it just happens that part of it was corrupted, and so when I tried to load my digital illustration homework it would lock up. LUCKILY my degree project files were unaffected and appear to be able to open and work fine.

Yellowstone

2009-03-25T23:33:00.000-07:00

For my environmental science class we were asked to make a PSA poster for Yellowstone. Just thought I'd throw it up here since its art related.

BRANDZ

2009-03-18T02:35:00.000-07:00

Today I've been working on my Degree Project some more and comming up with more branding idea's as well as fleshing out my older idea.

This is a DVD cover version of the other brand I posted earlier.

Here are some business card ideas that I liked but probably wont end up pushing further.
and my favorite ...

I have a couple more business cards made out, when I finally choose one I'll post it up!

Degree Project n' things

2009-03-16T21:41:00.000-07:00

I'm deep into my Degree Project but yet there is still so much more to go, as you can see below it is very animation heavy. I need to triple my production speed if I want to finish this on time!

Below is a mini character sheet of this vampire I drew a few weeks ago while riding on the train. I took the time to color him in and arrange the different poses that I like. I still have loads more characters sitting in my sketchbook waiting to be colored. Of course I'll post them as I get more colored.

Oops, almost forgot this last vampire pose.

sketchbook colored

2009-03-09T12:25:00.000-07:00

Here's something that I colored from my sketch book. I think I want to go back into this at some point and flesh the idea out more, but for now its as is.
I might do a recolor of this too. The inspiration of this is a high school reunion, I've had this idea brewing, which is a BAD THING because I should be thinking of my DEGREE PROJECT (thesis animation). I think I like designing characters and coming up with the concepts more then anything else.

Back to animating!

the colors!!! part 3

2009-03-09T00:56:00.000-07:00

I've decided that I need more work on my color. The only way I know how to get any better is just practice! So every day I'm going to color at least one of my characters that I have in my sketchbook.
Here is a new set of characters I colored, I tried to keep it as different from my other work as possible. I tried to paint a background for them in "ArtRage" and failed miserably. I definitely need to work on making backgrounds, its something I'm not used to and it would definitely help with my DP.

Speaking of my DP.... its time I throw down some serious production time!

branding

2009-03-01T20:38:00.000-08:00

So I came up with this brand for myself, took me a lot longer then I thought it would (partially because of files getting corrupt and having to start over) but it turned out quite well and I really like it. I'm still debating if whether or not I should add some color, if I do Im thinking of highlighter colors, like pink, green, and yellow. Also I'm considering adding somthing to the top left of the image but I'm not sure what its going to be yet.

So I still need to come up with two other ideas, eventually I'll pick one and adapt them into a dvd cover, business card, and a post card.

the colors part 2!!!!!

2009-02-26T20:10:00.000-08:00

So today I've been working on my "brand" and it's been hard summarizing everything in a few images. Other then that, I've been working on my 2D portfolio, specifically trying to make character designs and using COLOR!!! I do not have enough color pieces, why not start now eh? Here's a couple little characters I drew up and colored.

I've never drawn anything in this style or this clean... or even anything colored! But I'm pretty satisfied with it and hope to get more finished colored character designs posted soon.

the colors!

2009-02-25T12:12:00.000-08:00

I've been sick part of yesterday and all of today, so I thought I'd post a color concept from my DP.

This is one of three variations that I worked on, hopefully my Degree Project will resemble this when I'm done. My earlier renditions of this were more conservative in their coloring and I've been really trying to push it further. One of the biggest problems I was having has been figuring out how to color outer space! I didn't want to resort to coloring all of space black with a few stars in it. After mucking around with a dozen ideas I've settled on this one.

I'll have to start coming up with a "brand" for myself soon, I'll have a few of my ideas posted up here in the next few days or so.

time to post

2009-02-24T22:48:00.000-08:00

Well I've been pushing through my last semester at school and find myself working more on short portfolio pieces and less on my degree project animation. I really need to start finding more time to work on my degree project without sacrificing time on my portfolio animations.

As for some of my side projects here is frame from a cool fight scene I'm working on. I've been working on this an hour or so here and there and its still no where near done, but I plan to finish it and have it in my montage by next week.

Below is a frame from another animation I'm working on. I'm trying to animate a zombie walking towards the screen. I'm using this program "pencil" that's still in beta and unfortunately there was a bug and several of my frames were deleted, which set me back a few hours....

On top of these animations I've been working on my 2D portfolio. Basically what I've been doing was coloring some of the drawings that I've made. If I can get a few more color pieces my 2D portfolio will be looking more solid.

*update*-------

I only managed to animate about 12 key frames for each animation, but with deadlines coming up I didn't have time to finish so both are on hiatus until I graduate.

P.S.

To whom it may concern, zombies are an extremely common subject in media, from illustrations to novels to movies to animations. What I have posted is just one frame of an animation, in no way can one possibly guess the content of my animation without seeing it in its entirety, and in no way does it resemble or even use any other works for reference. I created it from my imagination one day to see what I could do and possibly use it for my montage, it would have been only about 2 - 3 seconds long.

I enjoy reading comments, but only when they are relevant to what I post or can be seen as constructive criticism. Any concerns beyond that feel free to personally shoot me an email.

I have been seriously inspired

2009-02-11T20:36:00.000-08:00

My friend sent me this video tonight... and I fell totally in love with this animation. I love the brilliance and simplicity of this. I think everyone should see this.

here is the animator's site.

http://www.kirstenlepore.com/

Well, in news related to my work, I am now very close to starting full blown production on my DP. For now I have only made animation tests, animatics, some final animation, and LOTS of story boarding. I also did some more revised color work to try and get a feel for what my DP should look like. I'll get some of the color concepts posted up here soon.

codec hunt

2009-02-10T18:00:00.000-08:00

Let this be a lesson to everyone... make sure you have the right codecs before doing anything...

Captain's Log

2009-02-06T12:09:00.000-08:00

Smashed my head last night on the underside of a kitchen cabinet. There is now a big bloody red "V" on the top of my head. Perhaps as a result of the injury I had a dream that I was an actor. I was playing a lowly henchman in a new action flick with Arnold Schwarzenegger. In one particular scene he kills me and two other henchmen. One was impaled, another shot multiple times, and I was set on fire. Now in the script I was supposed to die but instead I shot Arnold's sidekick. The director loved it and added it into the movie.

Its been a full day and now the "V" turned into an unshapely purple bump.

Injuries aside, I'm working on a few pencil tests for my portfolio, its nice to just make something with no strings attached. There are a lot of little things in my sketchbook that I've been wanting to animate, now's my chance.

Get set,

2009-02-03T17:51:00.000-08:00