Doodle a day feb-march

I really need to start uploading my stuff more often.

1 shot prompts

So I'm taking another online storyboard class and first assignment was 1 image. I ended up choosing my earlier work (since I wanted some critique work on it) but during the week I was asking people on Tumblr for prompt suggestions and here's what they've offered for me.

Swimming, Flabbergasted

Studying, Scared

Putting Makeup on, Conflicted

Plummeting, Delighted

Acri'amol History

Need to get back to the groove of coming up with compositions, and realized I could probably do a series out of my dark lord Acri'amol's evolution throughout history. So far I've only come up with two stories, one set somewhere in what would be considered the Mongolian Plains...

(Not too keen with this draft, kinda want to show more the underbelly and height difference)

...and then the finale before he got sealed away.

At the least I should push for 6, and at best maybe 8-10 stories. 

Catching up on online storyboard class

Feeling a bit flustered-since it's almost saturday and I'm still not done figuring out screen directions and what not with the story we're boarding this week.

Story wise it's a pretty fun and exciting script involving an alien, an officer, and running for their dear lives.

-Update-
Gaaaah WTH- I imploded for no reason because my brain farted on me and I thought we were supposed to submit roughs this weekend!

Bleh.

Laundry day, and had a bit of cry. 8I

This is...therapeutic?

Palette provided by Extend Graphics.

In some ways I'm kind of enjoying these doodles a day now, just using this exercise just to be creatively loose, since I've been on a rocky relationship with art for awhile now: I can't seem to go near her without this overwhelming sense of dread and expectation.

Oh well. One step at a time, one step at a time.

Workouts and stuffage.

Hmm..let's see...

Did a lot of note taking on my online storyboard class' Portfolio workshop video, and got my class dvds from the mail today!

Also had to talk to a friend and set up a sushi eat out and movie later this Saturday to see the Avengers. Now I'll finally see what the hype is all about.

Did some swimming today and felt like an old lady after 25 mins of laps, my sis is nagging me to do more workouts.

But mah prooojects~~ D8

O right-my cousin's taken up my offer of working for her to pay for my online class, so I'll be working two months' time to get some money back. Cripes I better get to work on my aunt's commission to pay for an airplane ticket to LA for the Con happening this July.

bleh

Bad, bad day. >_> Couldn't do my color doodle of the day, or any of the things I really wanted to do because of it. Spent the wee hours of the morning just doodling Necromancer ideas and designs with a friend.

work work work

Let's see:

Morning online storyboard class wasn't so bad- but it turns out that I've already missed one class and workshop so I somehow must find time to catch up on the videos, do the homework while I juggle helping my ma and aunt with their school projects and my own personal projects. GWAH D8

Had a sisterly bonding time of just sis making me sort through my old clothes that I still had since high school XD.

Then there was laundry to do and then a mad, angry rummaging of the room when I realized I couldn't find my FF5-6 game anywhere, which sucks cause I'm already getting bored just playing FF13 and want a different story.

Speaking of stories- finally hunkered down and started pondering over the plot bits of my old collab script with a friend-it's unfortunately gonna have to be rewritten again, but I hope it means simplifying stuff better but being easier to explain things away. @_@ Don't fail me now, storyboard story-making classes! Anyhoo, got so busy doing ma's work and this story pondering totaly missed my doodle dailies so here's my friend's characters the Palmer sisters.

Where does the time go!?

I'm beginning to wonder that out alot. It's like I wake up, do some chores, eat, check dailies, and then scan some stuff and work on helping ma out. 8|

Welp-where am I going to find time to just plonk down and grind hours for either tweaking comic stories or just the school's weekly animation exercises!?

The highlight of the day I guess is that my aunt spontaneously just called me and treated me out to a steak dinner- apparently my ma didn't like me not having anything to eat* while she and my sis where in SF so called my aunt to feed me. Oh well.


*By not having to eat meaning nothing readily available and cooked for me. Which isn't horrific since 1) tons of leftovers 2) I can cook, but ma is being ma, haha. She don't want none of her kiddies left out of anything when it comes to food.

Tomorrow's first online workshop class- 80 must try and wake up early!

WHOOPS

Apparently I already did a doodle today-which was like 12 am in the morning, and today I did two more because I didn't like how the first color scheme worked out. Oh bother. D8

Nothing special much happened today but I signed up for an online storyboard class and had to drop plans to join a comic anthology. 8| As much as I would have loved to have tried to be back of a published thing, I don't have the mindset to think about a whole new story/comic. I've got other projects to worry about.

Doodle of the day

I forgot to mention from the previous posts- I've been getting my palettes from this site. I think, while I'm still trying to sort my brain out, this should let me try and flex my creativity outside of my stories and aspirations and expectations just let me fiddle with colors.

Didn't do much today except do more school related stuff for ma and watch a butt load of documentaries like Modern Marvels of China's Great Wall, Las Vegas, Pompeii, and then a bit of Beethoven. It's nice binging on historical info, I just wish I knew how to implement this love for history into my art.

Nightsurfing doodle

Trying to get back to the whole doodle a day thing to get back to learning color composition.
The last days have been uneventful but been feeling more and more depressed over art skills and such, but after talking with a very good friend, the feeling eased up a bit.

Pixar Internship Results and Reaction

Well. I finally got word back from Pixar. I got rejected. No surprises there. 

Didn't stop me from my expressing how I feel and having fun with it. 

So besides this reaction, I'm hoping to spend the summer doing the following:

1) Watching something informative everyday- netflix documentary or online advice, something.

2) Finishing something 'artistic'- like the comic gag above or even better, I need to speed up my drawing skills and eventually my coloring but I need to crank out more stuff. 

But first I've got files to sort out.

Struggle

This week was doing an 8 panel sequence depicting 'Struggle'-could mean inner or outer struggle, in my case I opted for outer struggle in the cliffhanger sense.

Critiques for the sequence boiled down to 'Do Not crop the important bits of the shot'. This was applicable to panel 2 with the dude hanging on for dear life, and also with my panel 6- where I completely lost the hanging dude as I was trying to emphasize the other one pulling him up. The positive thing I got from my entry was that from the first panel- the hands holding on to each other,was a nice opening shot and an attention grabber.

13 Assassins and Bus Stop Beats

Comedy comes from Character

Mark Kennedy articulates something that was bugging me about my Senior Project class for awhile now: Comedy comes from Character. I've done a couple of doodles out of the croc for a bit and his whole being just boiled to the one doodle on the lower left:

Im still debating how wacky I want my story to be to have that in the short.

He's just a bit of no-nonsense, cool kind of croc who knows want he wants and frankly he 1) doesn't like the dude or his attitude and 2) is gonna make sure he can't cross the river. The girl kind of shares that same attitude which is why they sort of click with one another.

The dude on the other hand-is a mystery to me. So unless I know my opponent everything is up in the air.

For now I'm just basing my drawings on one of our Filipino Heroes Lapu-Lapu, as he is the 'maniliest' filipino dude design i've come across in terms of looks. We'll see how this plays out.

The Adventures of Captain Conroy, Storyboard 101 and Breaking Away

So last week Mark Andrews narrated to us this sci-fi space adventure he and a friend of his was working on, and our assignment was to illustrate one scene that struck with us.

Since this was a week ago and I barely remembered most of the details, I decided to go with the beginning, when the Captain and his motley assortment of aliens were held at gunpoint by spider-men with big guns and he was coolly relaying all his achievements in his nigh-immortal lifetime.



This being my first critique encounter with Mark Andrews, the only thing that held me back from crying like a little baby (from being the second person critiqued on and the class laughing at the work) was the fact he pretty much treated everyone the same way.

That and he drew out all these awesome alternative shots. A lot of which, as someone who drew comics and knows the importance of composition, makes me wonder 'Why didn't I think of this?'

What's the point of the moment, and how best to relay that point in the simplest and clearest way possible. My shot was a mess in that the lighting and tones were everywhere and nothing really popped. Conroy looks more angry than cool in the face of weapons (which you can baaaaarely see in upper left corner).

I also jotted some thoughts on the movie of the week, Breaking Away. The movie bored me to tears about this small town kid who wanted to be an Italian bike racer. It felt shoddy being one of two people who didn't like the movie and having to articulate my why's and being told I was thinking 'Dated'- taking the movie expectations of today with it's fast pacing to back to the 1970s.

I still didn't like it- maybe cause I couldn't relate or felt little empathy for the main dude. I just saw Mr. Smith goes to Washington last Saturday with friends and that's an older film and also slow movie but I felt more for the character there than Breaking Away.

Senior Project Pitch

After a winter's break of dead ends, and moping and ponderings,
my sister and I  finally hit* a simplistic scenario that I hope will all work out in the end:

Dude wants to cross a river, crocodile's in the way.

I made the pitch to two teachers and they seem pleased with the idea of it-I'm happy with it myself.

*By hit I mean I started out with a story about a dude trying to meet with a girl but her dad doesn't let guys in the house and dude has to be all sneaky like and sis didn't like it and said 'simplify' it further and I got all BAAWW and she had to cheer me on and then randomly suggested maybe it should be 'just a dude meeting a girl but there's a croc in the way!' and then I thought more about it and it just evolved into 'screw the girl- I just want to see the dude vs croc!' and that is how awesomeness is born.

Poses are Fun

So our class assignment was to create a whole bunch of poses.

It was an overtly vague prompt so I just did what I always do which was doodle my characters interacting with one another. GGK was the first and easiest set to do mostly because I haven't drawn them for a very long time, compared with Necromancer and Silhouette where I think I used up all the usual kinds of interactions between themselves. XD

Even though I worried a bit, I found out soon enough I pretty much went overboard with this one compared to my other classmates. My teacher gave me a lot of good notes about why my poses worked and not, and I jotted it down for reference.

Makes me uber glad I got into comic making first.