Tale #35 - The Tale of Several Stories (Pixar, Hummingbirds, and books)

Hi, all!

Anyways, today's post comes with a story or two. So here's the stories:

Story #1:

I did a little shopping this weekend with a giftcard I got from a friend. With it, I went to Chapters (AKA: A Canadianized Barns & Noble if you get my drift) and picked up a really nifty book. It was called "Developing Digital Short Films" by Sherri Sheridon. It makes for a really great beginner's guide to story telling and all out referance for experianced writters. While the artwork inside is really nothing special, the text however, was really good. So I'm glad I picked this up. I seriously recomend this book to you. You won't be disappointed.

Story #2:

Also on the weekend, I noticed that we had some hummingbirds comming to one of my hummingbird feeders I set up. Now usually, they're quite rare to my area; but this weekend, there were lots of them. So I decided to set my camera and tripod up to see if I can get a shot of them. So I pretty much camped myself out at about 5 feet away from the feeder to see if I could catch them on digital-film. One of the things I did to avoid scaring them away was to stand extremely still and to stay down wind a little bit. I held the same position for 45 minutes until I was rewarded with one stopping by the feeder. I had my camera on sports photography mode and jammed the shutter release down with my thumb in hopes of getting lots of shots. So what I'm going to do is actually post one of these shots I took. FYI, I never did any image corrections to this one (which I'm going to do later) so that's why it still looks quite dark and stuff:



What I liked about this one is that you can actually see the feathers in his wings which is just super cool. But the story continues! Just after I shot this one, the hummingbird saw me and my camera sitting there and decided to come along to check me out. I could see it in my periferal vision hovering there looking me over before in moved in to full vision and was pretty much eyeing me and getting closer. It got about 18 inches away from my head ready to land on me before it took off! It was just amazing! I could hear its' wings and it sounded like one of those giant water beetles that we get around here. But it was the most amazing thing to have something like that happen.

However, this photography adventure did have a downside to it. The bugs (who normally just ignore me and want nothing to do with me) must have been super bored or desperate that evening because they pretty much ate me alive. Good lord! They got me everywhere and I do mean EVERYWHERE. So as you can imagine, I'm extremely itchy right about now. I had to coat myself in various combinations of anti-itch creams plus allergy tabs just to keep the itching down to tolerable levels. I couldn't believe how bad they were! I guess it was because I wasn't moving around and was standing extremely still that made me such an easy target. So I pretty much learned my lesson here - when doing nature photography of any sort, bring lots and lots of bug spray.... even if bugs normally ignore you.

Story #3:

As you know, I do freelance work quite often to try and keep my "in" on the industry. So I go from client to client doing different media jobs. From time to time, it can also get a little slow and a little rough. So my most recent client is actually my best friend. I know it sounds a little off, but he always gets my back when I'm in a bad spot. This time, it's with my freelancing. So he gets me to create various media projects for a course he runs for the local University. So he's seen a lot of my work. He's also seen even the stuff that I don't post up here (If I tried posting EVERYTHING I've done, that would take a VERY long time!) So he's very familiar with it. Anyways, just the other day, he supprised me with a few things. The first thing was that he said that what he was going to do on my birthday (Sept. 19th) is that on that day, we're going to start building our own computer from scratch. This is one of those things I always wanted to do but never had the money for. He said that he'd be setting aside 1,000$ CAN for me to get the parts I need to build it. As you can imagine, I was pretty happy about this.

But that wasn't the only thing he said that day. The other thing really caught me off guard. He said that I had extremely awesome skills and that I should apply to a position at Pixar. At that point, I just froze. In my mind, I wondered in that moment if I heard that right. Surely, Pixar would be a great place to work because I would be collaborating with other storytellers and other artists everyday which is something I always wanted to be around (and something my city doesn't have. Yeah... we really don't have much in the ways of artists or storytellers here.) I mean being around and working with other people who shair a similar thought process that I do, I'd be very happy. For once could I speak to someone (beyond my best friend and my imediate family) who could actually understand what I said and what I was getting at. I wouldn't want to work there just because of the name or anything like that (Although, that doesn't mean to say that I don't like their films because I actually do. But that's not the point here). I'd like to work there because of the people.... the other storytellers and to be able to collaborate with them on a daily basis. But I usually hit myself with a dose of reality here. I usually don't think that I would even stand a chance of getting in. Yeah.... sure, I'm always trying to improve my skills and I've always got room to improve no matter how good I could ever get. But I didn't think it was possible for me. It seems like an impossible dream. One I would reach for and always have my hand brush passed it as it glided out of reach. But when my best friend told me that day, I guess it made me think that I may have a remote chance.

But the question here is this: Based on what you've all seen me produce here so far (bearing in mind I have other stuff that you don't see), do I actually stand a chance of getting in? Do I really? Can someone tell me?

Anyways, I forgot how I replied to that one. But still, it seriously caught me off guard.



Well.... on to the daily sketches:



Remember that ad-poster I was working on and had the art-block on? Well... I was thinking of putting a cleaned up version of this sketch in there, but I'm not sure. Anyways, I decided to add a little background and colour to this one just to make it look better.



And here's the details of that sketch. I wanted to show off the details of her face because it's hard to see from a distance. So here's a close up of her face.

Anyways, see you all later!

Tale #34 - The Tale of Digital Sketches

Hi, all!

Anyways, I don't have much freelance work to do right now which resulted in a little down time. So what did I do with it? Well firstly, I revisited an old sketch from Tale #26 - The Tale of Sketch Dumps and decided to try colouring it. In the end, I got a coolish looking vectored result. I have no idea if I wanna shade it or not. That's still up in the air.

Here's the digitally coloured sketch:



And here's the original:



Now moving on to my next sketch, this one has a small story:



The idea for this one came from Bill Pressing's Blog where he was talking about someone commisioning him to draw his Rex Steele character (no relation to Kam Steele what so ever. I picked "Steele" as a last name before I even saw Rex Steele. It's just a weird couincidence.) But so far, no one's clamed the commision. So here enters the quirky idea in my head of drawing a Rex-chibi to "guilt" the commisionee. So far, the only one I sorta "guilted" with it was Bill himself. I'm guessing if it worked on him, it'll work on everyone else. Huzzah! Another goofy plan with artwork to match by me! XD Well.... in any event, it was certainly fun to draw.

Other than today's daily sketches, I really don't have much else going right now. It's quiet.... and 56k-styled slow. So if anyone has any requests they want me to draw, I'll definately get to them. The rules for requests are on the side of the blog-page along with all the other tiny details.

Anyways, see you all later!

Tale #33 - The Tale of Inspresso and Other Silly Words

Hi, all!

Anyways, one speed sketch today with a story. First, the sketch:


Now the story:

Today, I invented a new silly word called "inspresso." Why? Well... I was talking about the Spline Doctors' Spline Cast earlier when they asked everyone for feedback and I made the oddball analogy of each Spline Cast being like expresso - A shot of inspriation with every listen. Dunno how I got expresso out of all this beyond the fact that I just like putting odd and cool ideas together and find silly ways of saying "You/this is awesome." So then I went ahead and called it "Inspresso" at the end as being my new way of saying "it was awesome." To demonstrate my silly word in use, I put it in sketch form as you see above.

Which brings me to my next silly word sketch:


....Homestyle awesomesauce. Seems to come in a multitude of varieties including the homestyle (as seen here), with jalapino pepers, Texan, Canadian, barbecue and other oddball assortment of flavour combinations. Long and short of it, just my way of saying "You/this is awesome."

There are probably those of you out there who don't appreicate my creative use of the English (and Canadian French) language and think I'm a little crazy. So here's what I have to say: It's fun to be just a little crazy and silly. Or to do something silly every so often. Life's too short to be serious all the time. So lighten up and have fun inventing silly words and things before the Oxford dictionary police hunt you down. XD

Oh! And if we didn't invent silly things, we would never have this:



I rest my case! (Oh! And the Wii = loads of fun stuff!)

See? Silly = Fun along with nice shots of creativity. It's really just a major brain/thinking-creativly excersize which is why I like doing it.

So if you have any silly invented words, have fun with them and try to sketch them out if you can. Having fun with the sillies is a great brain-game! XD


Anyways, see you all later!

Tale #32 - The Tale of Posters and Art Blocks

Hi, all!

Anyways, here's a look at what my tutor-ad looks like:



Okay. You really have to click on the image to see all the fine details of it. But what I'm doing is sorta a parody of a movie poster with vectorized flashyness. What I was going to do was one of those cheesey-vector movie explosions with a character running out of the center. I wanted to do action and something crazy because it'll grab attention more. It's just trying to get the explosion and the characters to look right which is driving me insane. So I'm playing around with this quite a fair bit.



This is also another work in progress I'm doing with a bike. In case you're wondering about what I use to draw on-screen, I DON'T use a tablit or a Cinque. Not that I can't use a tablit, it's just that a lot of this stuff has to be specially ordered in my city if they decide to carry them. Quite often times, they don't. As it is right now, only ONE store in my city just started carrying the tablit PC version of my HP Pavilion and it's seriously out of my price range (Yes.... I'm still quite poor. No thanks in part to that car accident in December. It was my first accident and it was super expensive!) So I have to make best with what I have. You see, if you let technology become your limitations, you can't get anywhere with that. All you'd be doing is saying "I wish I had that so I don't suck anymore." And that does no one any good at all. Especially if you're a super creative person otherwise. But what you can and should do is make the best with what you have and squeeze whatever you can out of it which is exactly what I do. Where I live, you kinda have to. So I'll use anything and try anything to turn out a great end product. So NEVER EVER let the technology limit you. Even cheap technology can turn out something awesome. But it all depends on how you use it and how much you are in control. The technology isn't the one controlling you or your art. You're the one controlling it.

So what do I actually use to draw on-screen? A super small, short-corded, laptop mouse. Yep. You heard that right! Just a cheap laptop mouse! Supprised that I don't use a tablit? Not that I can't draw with one either, but a laptop mouse is the best I can get right now. Over the years, I've taught myself to be able to draw digital artwork on well... everything and make it come out as though I were using a tablit. I can use anything from laptop mice to laptop touch pads to Wiimotes using GlovePIE to well.... everything. And that WIP bike you're seeing is actual proof that you can use a mouse and still get tablit-quality artwork out of it.