Character Designs

I've been meaning to throw these up since the Summer semester ended; but I was busy moving to my sweet new place in the Marina district and having an amazing time visiting Walt Disney Animation Studios in Burbank, CA!!! My friend Akin was an intern there this summer, and he was really awesome to invite us, so go check out the fabulous stuff on his website!

Meet Maaren

This is my rough sketch of my newest character design, Maaren the Wombat. Maaren likes snacks and her favorite number is 5.

Watercolors at the Presidio--NOW with Photos!!!

July 11th was SketchCrawl 23 here in San Francisco! A sketch crawl is when a group of artists get together and draw/paint in the same area for a day, meeting up at a planned time and destination to end the day passing around each others' sketchbooks and socializing. We went to the Presidio, and I had no idea how wonderful it is there! Now I am even more excited that I'll be living in the Marina district this fall.

Here's a photo of the gang by Ronnie Del Carmen:


I sketched with a fine-point sharpie (usually drawing over a rough HB-pencil sketch)--the permanent marker gave a nice dark line and allowed me to paint my colors over the lines without worrying about the ink bleeding.

I started painting some flowers to experiment with color.


Then I tried scenery. Down the hill from the Starbucks we met at was this lovely park, with my favorite kind of trees--Weeping Willows! As you can see from the swaying branches, it was a windy day.


I really enjoyed working on this one, it's a doorway of 'Building 38' in the Presidio. As I was roughing out the architecture, this frisky little pup showed up and scampered all over, so I sat him up on the steps.

...and check it out, Ronnie snapped this shot of me when I was working on the drawing!!!

(Another shot by Ronnie: me, Carlos and Fabian hanging out with Claude the puppy!)


I had a great time playing with my new portable watercolor set--can't wait to use it again!

SF Zoo & The Pimowahk!

This summer has been CRAZY! I'm taking 2 classes on campus, plus getting involved with the school's budding new VFX/Animation Production group, plus working as an RA in a building full of 160 pre-college students (high school girls...aged 15-18) has me running around quite a bit. But it's all going pretty great and the time is flying by. I have been especially enjoying my Character Design class--the 2-to-4-minute poses, and focus on pushing shapes and design are exactly what I need to work on, and my most recent assignment was to design a fantasy creature.

I made it out to the SF Zoo last weekend which was a great chance to seek inspiration, here are my animal skecthes:

The most exciting was seeing the Hawk, a handler had it out on his arm for us to see up close and personal--she weighs 10lbs, which is HUGE, and he kept throwing her bits of rabbit to snack on... yummy!

So for my own design I had to pick 3 real animals and combine them into one fantasy creature, I chose features from a Pig, a Mouse and a Hawk to create The PIMOWAHK! I'm continuing to re-work the design based on my instructor's critiques, so here are a few iterations I've gone through along the way...

First concept:

I dont have #2 on me at the moment, but it was similar to the image below, only with a more average-sized body. Tanya (my instructor) challenged me to play with size variety in the different parts of the body... so I did this as the Third version:

then I tried to loosen it up and get more cartoony... Version Four:


Ongoing process... more to come of character design, and the SF Skecth crawl is at the Presidio this Saturday! I'm gonna try doing some watercolors there with my nifty new compact travel palette... exciting!

Rosie Probert (clothed figure final)

"One voice of all he remembers most dearly as his dream
buckets down. Lazy early Rosie with the flaxen thatch,
whom he shared with Tom-Fred the donkeyman and many
another seaman, cleasrly and near to him speaks from the
bedroom of her dust. In that gulf and haven, fleets by the
dozen have anchored for the little heaven of the night;
but she speaks to Captain napping Cat alone."
--from Under Milk Wood, by Dylan Thomas


This saucy little lady is Rosie Probert from Dylan Thomas' play, Under Milk Wood. I am a real nerd for interesting word combinations and poetic phrases, and Thomas' mastery of language blows my mind. Just humor me a bit longer and read the opening line:

"It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless
and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched,
courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the
sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboatbobbing sea."

Pure poetry! I fell in love with this play with my high school drama club, and performed the part of Rosie Probert, so it was a lot of fun to revisit that role and bring her to life in a new way. Between this clothed figure class and my perspective drawing class, my illustration skills have advanced by leaps and bounds... this assignment was a great high note to end my work for the semester!

Beginning Finals Week

My first semester at AAU was last fall, and it was so chock-full of Awesomeness that I thought it couldn't be topped. I completed my first hand-drawn animated short and was relatively proud of the result. I met animation legends like Bill Plympton, Eric Goldberg and Richard Williams; who were all unbelievably generous in sharing their wealth of experience and god-like wisdom. I went home for Christmas and felt I had returned from some bizzare, Jodie-Foster-Contact encounter which may or may not have been real... Then came the Spring Semester.

I don't even know where to begin--it has been so amazing, and I have gained so much from the multitude of experiences and adventures I've had in these short months, that attempting to reflect on it all has instigated sensory overload, and I think I need to go lie down.

Oh, and here's my perspective final so far--I'm adding shadows, reflection and value today, and it's due tomorrow--I figured I should post it now as a line drawing, in case I mess it up in the next step:


Spring Cleaning in the Seven Dwarves' Cottage, Pencil on Paper, 14"x18"

This has been quite a long post, I couldnt help from getting end-of-another-chapter sentimental before I dive into my work for the last big push. It has been such a great seemster, and I must credit the people around me--you awesome-talented-generous-crazy people who make my life so freaking cool. Thanks.

In the spirit of progress: some stuff from my skecthbook

I know so many talented people that I always hesitate to show where I'm at with my drawing skills, but attending Sketch Crawl 22 a few weeks ago was the kick in the butt that I needed to just chill out and do it...(I recommend checking out that sketch crawl link; people posted great work, and you may see someone you know in the photos that 'Biscuit Maker' put up!) I have to keep drawing constantly and be willing to share, because it motivates me to work so much harder!