1/25/2014

When I was studying animation, the more rendered drawing style wasn't something I got to explore as much; it's impractical to animate highly rendered figures with soft lines and shaded forms, so I had to adapt to drawing with clean lines, and exaggerate proportions, attempting to create well-balanced designs that had that elusive element: appeal. Honestly, I never had any confidence about my work in that style, which is one of the many reasons I abandoned my artistic ambitions  in favor of production.

At CalAcademy the other day, I was participating in a demo of an educational program designed for students, in which we had to analyze and sketch a specimen, as a scientist would sketch something quickly--to record basic details in their field notes. I had so much fun drawing my skeleton specimen, that I brought the picture home to put on our fridge, like a proud schoolkid.

Skull of unidentified African mammal, 1/10/14 - Graphite on Paper

I realized how much I miss creating art, and that--since I'm not drawing for animation anymore--there's no reason to chain myself to the traditional principles that made it such a chore for me; though having learned them I can apply those concepts to [hopefully] continue improving my skills.

So here's me, back to sketching for the sake of sketching--and exploring a theme that will surely be recurrent as I move forward... ;)

Corgi, 1/25/14 - Col Erase on Watercolor Paper

Thanks for reading!
-S

Taco Noms

I really like tacos. Really.

Photo credit goes to Bryan W,

Corgi Pup

Kris made me draw a dog.

Art blast from the past!

I just did a Google search of my name and found some artwork of mine from years gone by, it was printed in a school district report:

(I think it is a testament to my brilliant drafting skills that they listed me as a second grader, when I know I was actually still in first grade when I drew this...)

Finding this old picture was a sweet reminder that my love of art and technology was apparent even at age 7. I am so thrilled to have found my niche in animation production, and to be able to say that everything I'm doing now still involves being surrounded by what fascinated me as a child.

Toothless and I flying over an X-wing.

I felt like doing a really crappy doodle about something really awesome.

My first adventure in CG Lighting!

Today I played with CG lighting for the first time ever! One of my productions, The Lattice, is getting textures together for our environments. We wanted to see what an out of the box metallic texture could do, so I dove in and messed with a mental ray node for myself. Under the guidance of the almighty Ed Janne (one of the film's directors), I tweaked around for about 10 minutes and came up with this little render:

It's actually pretty close to what we were looking for--we want to rough it up and get in a little more painterly "grit", but yeah... cool! It's always fun to try new things :)

Credit where credit's due:
Corridor Design: Ed Janne
Model: Ian Saterdalen, Lyz Holder
Lighting Concept: João Ribeiro

Waterslide Confession...

Inspired by my friend Patti's recent dream. She's not actually getting married, but she had a dream about divulging such an announcement to me in this manner, and it sounded like fun!