Tribal Fairy

Morning Sketch

Here's a warm up sketch I did this morning. I wish this reflected my life. In the mornings, I pop out of bed and head straight to the computer. I'm too much of a workaholic. I need some more lazy time. ;)

I just found some cool Photoshop brushes! I think it was installed when I installed my new Cintiq. Here's a closeup to see the texture:

Steampunk Piggy: Fly to the Sky!

I'm giving this whole Threadless thing another go. Please vote for my design! People are really harsh on that site and vote 0's on everyone else's designs to knock down competition. ($2,000 for shirts that get printed. I would use that for rent and food or a Cintiq for work. People are cut throat on that site!) Please vote a 5. I need all the help I can get. Thanks! ♥

Score this design: "Fly to the Sky!," to help it get printed on Threadless!

*UPDATE: Please vote for Catherine's as well! Thanks!

Monster Infestation!

Yes, it's that time of the year again, and we have a monster infestation! Catherine and I made these a few years ago and still love them. For more photos, you can check out the original blog post HERE. This year we have a better camera and the photo turned out great! I love October, I love the fall, fall clothes, changing leaves, hot tea, apple crisp..... :)

Animation Process

I am always surprised by how most people know little to nothing about the process of animation. FINALLY I am writing a blog post about animation. This is a very short explanation for non-animators. A lot of thinking and tweaking goes into every step, but this is just a quick summary.

My twin sister and business partner, Catherine, and I recently did a rush job for a commercial. We were asked to animate these penguins for a three second product shot, and we had very little time. They had never been animated before, so first we had to create a model sheet based off the penguins on the boxes in the grocery store.

Then we sketched several different poses for each character to get the final poses on the box. We had to clean them up and color them to send for approval. We actually sent them two sets of poses and this is the one they really liked.

Next we thumbnailed out the animation. I don't have an example to show you, but I can describe it. Basically thumbnails mean a series of small sketches to get ideas out. This planning process is used in almost any visual art project. Once the idea is nailed down, we start rough animation. Rough animation starts with a pose test which means timing out the poses. Then animate it- flesh it out, adding more drawings. Animation is normally done at 24 frames per second. This means that there usually are 12-24 drawings per second. 12 if it's held on twos or 24 if it is on ones. Normally with rough animation, there are a lot of passes over it (redo, redo, ooops, fix that, and that, change this....) to keep changing things and making it stronger and stronger. For this commercial, we did not have that luxury. 

Below shows the process of one of the penguins from the first rough pencil test to a revised animation test. The clip at the bottom has all three penguins throughout the stages of animation. The client thought that the first test was too graceful and we added scrambling to it as requested. Ideally, we would have loved to have 12-24 more frames to work with. It's a bit quick, so don't blink! After the animation was approved, we had to draw in the details. 

Once the drawings were on model and fairly clean, we hired two coworkers to do final lines for us while we finished up the other drawings. After we scanned in the final lines, we fixed any lines that needed fixing. (Sometimes the lines get vectorized kind of wonky.) We went through and placed in the pupils and eyebrows for many of the drawings. Eyes usually are a trouble area which have to be perfect. Below is an example of the inking and coloring. After we colored the animation, we had to animate the shadows. 

It was a fun, fast job, and we had very happy clients! What a great feeling!

Ren Fair Girl With Cat

Wow! I just realized that yesterday was the 6 year anniversary of this blog! That's over 300 blog posts! Wow. I can't believe how fast the years have been flying past! Busy, busy!

I figured I should post something for this, so here is a sketch inspired by our trip to the Bristol Renaissance Faire last month. I'm sure I will have plenty of other Ren Fair inspired sketches to come. I sure took plenty of reference photos!

I think I am also going to be putting a blog post together about the process of animation. Or at least I'll show the different stages we went through on the penguin animation. I'm surprised that most people have no idea how animation is done. Hopefully I'll have time to do a post soon. I've been busy with work, friends, family, and a personal project. Nice to be busy I guess....

Wonder Woman Sketch

Fly Little Pig, FLY!

I'm Flying!

I was quite frustrated last week, and went out for a walk in the middle of the afternoon. I saw this family walking my way. They all smiled at me and the kids chirped "Hi! Hi! Hi!" Then the little girl yelled, "I'm flying!" That really made my day. :)

Been swamped! Quick Update!

My twin sister/business partner, Catherine Satrun, and I have been very busy with work lately. To keep up with work demands, we have upgraded to Toon Boom Harmony and are very excited to explore all the possibilities! For anyone unfamiliar with this software, it is the highest end animation software available for hand drawn and "Flash" style animation. The new tools are mind blowing. I love it! I can't wait to dive in and do some "puppet" animation. We have done a bit of it at work, but not home for our personal projects yet.

I would like to share two work examples which I used this software. In the bird animation, I did the final line work on these. Doing cleanup and final lines directly onto a Cinitq in Harmony provides the best quality possible. In this age of giant HD television screens, it is essential for the commercial business. This is what clients want these days. I still prefer animation to be hand drawn, but when it needs to be cleaned up, it's best to work in the computer. When hand drawn final lines are scanned, the program vectorizes them and can interpret them oddly, not giving the best quality. If there is time in the schedule, usually those lines often have to be touched up after it is scanned, especially in the area around the eyes.

The second example shows an end product shot Catherine and I did for a rush job. The client decided last minute to have animation in the end shot, and also needed a new product illustration. We were hired on to do it in ten days. These characters have never been animated before, as far as we know, and we also had to create the model sheets. Then there were acting/animation revisions as well, trying to figure out how these characters would behave. (We did hire help to get final lines done on paper for us to scan.) I am going to write up a whole blog post on the process of creating this shot. When most people hear three seconds of animation, they naturally think it would only take a day or two. For hand drawn animation, this is most definitely not the case! Most of the animation was done on "ones," but we ran out of time and a tiny bit of it was on "twos." I'm super swamped with work at the moment, but will scan in my roughs and get examples together for a new blog post as soon as I can. (Whenever I have a free evening.... some day soon, I hope!)

Edit: The follow up post is HERE.

Jellyfish

I have been very swamped nonstop, so I haven't had any time to draw for myself in quite a while. (I can't even recall the last time I had a day to totally relax.) To make up for lack of new posts, I just wanted to share this jellyfish picture I took about a month ago at the jellyfish exhibit at the Shedd. They are amazing creatures to watch and I would love to animate them someday. If you are in the Chicago area, I would recommend checking out this small, but very nice exhibit before it leaves. :)