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. :)
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!)
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. :)
Here's an old sketch I doodled in the car on a road trip over a month ago. I have been super busy, so there will be a lack of new drawings for a while. Work is going very well, and I'm very happy to be busy at the moment. More later....
By the way, I am LOVING animating with the Blackwing pencil! I'll post drawings and animation once the commercial airs.
After hearing about Blackwing pencils for half my life, I have FINALLY bought some recently and am in love with them! Blackwings were these really awesome pencils that animators adored, and then they were suddenly discontinued in 1998! *gasp!* For many years I heard stories about how wonderful they were, and finally in 2010 another manufacturer decided to make a version as close as possible to the original. Then in 2011, they made one even closer to the original, which is the one pictured above. There is also another kind of Blackwing pencils with a white eraser. I haven't seen or tried them. You can check it out here: Blackwing Pencil
The Blackwing 602 are truly beautiful pencils, and the lead just glides across the paper like velvet. You have to have a light, delicate touch to avoid getting too dark with the lines. Let the pencil "kiss the paper." :) Unless you're a storyboard artist and are going for fast, bold sketches. But beware, it can smudge quite a bit, especially if you use it in a sketchbook. It is also great for tapering lines from thick to thin.
If you would like to try it out, you can buy a pack at Amazon or Pencils.com for $20. If you would like an original, I'm sorry to say that a pack of vintage pencils sells for over $100 on eBay! :o
I love revisiting old pieces, and am quite happy to have gone back to this one. This turned out quite nice compared to the original. I am also making a physical art piece out of this. (just need a new exacto blade) Fingers crossed that it will turn out! more later....
This is one of the hottest summers I can remember. We have three days in a row of 100+ degrees and I get uncomfortable with just 80 degrees. Just as I was finishing this drawing, a small storm quickly blew through here, so I added rain. I think it's a nice touch. Hopefully it cools down. Otherwise I'll be dreaming of snow again tonight. ;)
