For my final in Principles of Screen Design I had to do a 30 to 60 second animation that was a non-literal self portrait. I had a specific idea bouncing around my head for a while, so I took the opportunity to use it.

The narrative illustrates the migraines and visual disturbances I deal with on a day to day basis. My migraines are triggered and not spontaneous, so it’s a matter of avoiding what causes them. However, I’m still incredibly sensitive to bright lights and have terrible afterimages from pretty much everything.

We had to do a six to ten panel storyboard to pitch our idea. I’m a sap for complements so I did a purple and yellow color scheme and played a lot with contrast. In the end I wasn’t really able to animate it exactly like I envisioned (and I changed the colors around) but I like both on their own merits.

Anyway, the wispy light is supposed to represent an aura (as evident to the title I suppose) and the monstery animal is me.

The animation itself was done entirely in Flash since I have absolutely no idea how to use any other program. I’m still pretty proud of it considering I found ways around Flash’s nearly nonexistent camera and figured out how to do crossfades and such. It took a looong long time but I’m happy with it.

(click to enlarge)

My second project for principles of screen design. We had to take a fairytale or folktale and put a twist on it. I ended up choosing an urban legend and passing it off as a folktale (whatever, close enough).

The tale I chose was The Vanishing Hitchhiker. These storyboards were more of an illustrated story concept instead of storyboarding for animation, so direction and dialogue isn’t included. I’m hoping it’s easy enough to follow.

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The story is following a truck driver that’s been on a long haul in the dead of winter. In the fourth panel where he’s introduced, he looks exhausted and is sipping on a cup of coffee. He’s taken by surprise when he sees a young girl walking through the snow on the side of the road. She’s barefoot and in nothing but a tattered nightgown. He offers her a ride home and his jacket to warm up, but she simple tells him her address and goes quiet.

In panel 14 there’s been a short passage of time; the sun is rising and he tells the girl that they’re almost there. He looks over and notices that there isn’t anyone in the passenger seat. He convinces himself that he’s not gotten much sleep the last couple nights and might be a little delirious.

Panel 18 he reaches the city limits of the town the girl had mentioned. He passes the road she supposedly lived off of and decides to go down it out of curiosity. He finds the house number and stands bewildered in front of the burnt down foundation.

He goes up the walkway to the front door, his hand reached out for the door. He stops when he notices the jacket he had given the girl is hanging from the door handle. Panel 26 is a reverse view from inside the house, looking down on the driver as he backs away slowly. The camera pans to the right to reveal a photo of the girl sitting on the dresser.

My first big project for my principles of screen design class was a five second animation. It was a huge learning experience since I’ve never animated anything before (except for maybe someone blinking) and hadn’t touched Flash in a good five years.

This was the result. The only real specifications were to make it at least five seconds and loop it.

When I presented it, the soundtrack was Sigur Ros’ “Hoppípolla” but I removed the music when I uploaded it.

My first assignment for my visual storytelling class. We all had to thumbnail the same script written by B. Clay Moore.

click thumbnail to full view

Dialogue below cut:
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This is actually something I’ve not bothered to upload much of before, pretty much anywhere. It’s my first maquette that I did for my character design and storyboarding for animation class last quarter. It’s Chupa from the little cryptids story I did: Here There Be Monsters.

This was a lot of fun to make, and it definitely was a big learning experience. He’s sculpted from wire and foil underneath super sculpey. Some details, like his tusks, ears, and claws, were sculpted out of steel epoxy putty. The paint was just cheap craft acrylics on top of a a couple coats of matte black spray paint.

He came out a lot bumpier than pictured (Photoshop does wonders) but it was little things that showed up after applying the spray paint. Just specks, mostly around his face. However, he is pretty lumpy elsewhere. I ended up finding it very difficult to get such smooth shapes.

I don’t post a lot of stuff outside of school work and the little human work that I do (oops). I originally set out to NOT post a lot of furry stuff here but that’s kiiind of the majority of what I do so whatever. Anyway, here’s a few of the badges I did over the summer.

For those who aren’t familiar, badges are worn at conventions. People commission me to draw their characters and they wear them around. Personally, I don’t like to because I’ve nearly lost too many. I feel anxious just wearing the normal con badge. But whatever, to each their own!

But yeah, during AnthroCon in June, someone asked me to draw a badge like it was a comic panel. I really liked the idea, so I did a few others as well!

It’s been pretty dry here over the summer. I was out of school from late May to just a week ago. I’ve mainly been focusing on commission/freelance  in that time (for lack of any other job) and haven’t done a whole lot of personal stuff, be it comics, character design, anything.

So hopefully I’ll have a lot more to put here in the near future. Figured I’d first catch up with what I’ve done…These pages are pretty old news. They were part of my final for my materials and techniques class spring quarter. Admittedly, I’m posting the pencils because the inks are truly embarrassing. While I was pretty excited to work on them after the penciling stage, I guess I just got burnt out and went downhill.

On the up side, I am really proud of the cover art. I inked it in Manga Studio, and the difficulties I had getting the program to work is a whole story in and of itself (Long story short: don’t use the trial version and expect to save your work). I colored it in Photoshop, which is much more my comfort zone. I haven’t done something quite like this before, and it was a lot of fun.

And the moral of the story is: Rats are adorable.

In regards to my last post, I had to do a stand-alone scene for my concept in 40 storyboards (or more, but I did 41 and am just fine with that).

Click next to toggle through the storyboards.

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Someone pointed out that “dialogue” is spelled wrong on my storyboards, but I used a template my professor provided us with. Oh well, not changing it.

Been working my butt off on an original concept for character design as part of my final. I used my monsters I had been doodling a while back and it was nice to actually bring them to life in some way.

For my main protagonist I used the chupacabra, simply named Chupa. I think his turn-around seems a bit off; it was the first time I’d drawn him in a while and simplifying him so much for animation posed to be a challenge at first. I got used to it later on and definitely enjoyed it, though.

His design was intended to look like a boar. I didn’t want to stay true to most chupacabra renditions, since most of them just look like green Greys with spikes. I did give him a reptilian tail to help associate him more with it, but in the end he’s just a legend! And most people think of el chupacabra as a coyote anyways.

Besides the point. The main plot-line of the story is that Chupa is a lonely little cryptid from the Southwest. He hears through the grapevine that there’s an underground monster society on the east coast in good ol’ New York City. He sets out with nothing but a brochure only to find himself lost in the pine barrens of New Jersey, where he meets none other than the Jersey devil.

Dev is much more accurate to what people have cited as the Jersey devil to be, but I pushed his appearance to look goat-like, especially in silhouette. I wanted to joke around with the fact that chupacabras eat goats and Jersey devils look like goats.

He’s also about half Chupa’s size, if that. He acts like he’s such a big-shot when really he’s not been taken seriously in years. Most sightings of him are written off as hoaxes and he spends most of his days hidden away in the pine barrens.

Either way, Chupa needs someone who knows their way around and Dev just needs somebody. They team up and make their way to New York.

Taking materials and techniques this quarter, and as such have been doing pages for the first time since intro to SEQA, which is good! I feel like I’m still really slow with pages, but at the same time I’m supposed to be experimenting and pushing my limits with these. So hopefully I’ll find a comfortable middle-ground amongst all this and get a better feel for what works with me.

I still have three pages and a cover to do but I figured I’d upload the two stories I’ve done so far:

(left to right, top to bottom. click the thumbnail to enlarge the image)

Both times our only prompt was to create a conflict that’s resolved by a third character. The first two pages were done (for the most part) using nib. I used Faber-Castell pitt pens a little, but that was mostly for mass black areas and some background elements.

The other set of pages were done with brush and ink. We were required to do at least one wash and use half-tones somewhere in the pages. I don’t particularly enjoy inking with an actual brush (I fancy brush pens, usually hard tip ones) so I found myself doing a lot of washes to compensate for (or distract from) the lineart. I ended up going for a more painterly style and really quite like the result.