Identity Crisis

This was the first short film made in college. It was done during my first year and was made through simple hand drawn animation. I prefer to work with traditional animation because I feel that I can showcase emotion more than I can with say Flash or Maya. Of course that means things can become off model pretty quickly and as this film was made within the span of about a month it shows. The story of a platypus trying to find out who he is has been a character popping in and out of sketchbooks since high school. Originally I had a whole story board fleshed out consisting of more interesting camera shots, but due to time and material restraints I found myself cutting it down to a single shot of him walking across his marshy home. My next project will be returning to the story of Identity Crisis, this time giving it a little more TLC. Hopefully I will have a finished animatic by mid December complete with a soundtrack.

Animal Sketches

Of course it's always fun to draw cartoon animals, but once again I like to place an emphasis on anatomy. You can see that I usually like to stick with dogs, I find that cats have so much extra skin an fur covering their bodies that it's hard to see the protruding muscles and bones. I also like to look for examples of animals and people in poses that are appealing as an artist. It may be hard to see but all of these animals started as strong underdrawing consisting of simple shapes, each one with their own line of action. 

Horse of a Different Color

Another experimental piece, line work, marker and watercolor, together at last! This turned out to be quite a collage of mediums but I wanted to see how my Prismacolor markers would look agains a painted backdrop. I thought that acrylic might be a bit too much for the eyes to take in so I went with watercolor. Unfortunately I only had water color pencils, not my favorite way to use the medium. Horses are one of the most difficult animals to draw, and as I said in an earlier post, understand anatomy first or at least use some kind of reference photo. This piece however really just started out as a sketch, even the paper that was used was from a scrap pile, maybe 2 ft by 6 in. I'm not exactly sure, the piece belongs to someone else now. The color and design for the horses was partially inspired by the Beatles Yellow Submarine movie.

Nudes

To anyone hoping to improve their technique, I like to suggest figure drawing. By studying anatomy through drawing, you can start to render your own figures without the use of a model. I like to think that you cannot draw a cartoon cat without first understanding how it's body works, then you can go back and make exaggerations to it's form. If I'm beginning a figure drawing session, I like to start off with quick 1-2 min poses, then work my way up to half hour poses. These drawings were done during  much longer sit downs. If you don't have a live model there are a lot of great websites that offer class-like sessions.

Home Made Projection Box

And now for something completely different...

It can be fun to work with large scale projects, but when trying to create something based off a photograph, proportions can become a little wonky and can affect the overall outcome. I ran into this problem during college and living in a small dorm, I didn't have a lot of options as to how I could fix this. At home I would have used my Dad's projector but of course I didn't have anything like that, so I decided I would make my own. All I used was a box, a lamp, a sandwich bag, and black paint. I looked at a few tutorials online but I made most of this up. Basically light goes through one side of the box, and shines against the bag with my drawing on it, then ta da! projection success! 

The projector box, that window is where the drawing was placed

You can see I used a special lamp that went through a much smaller opening

The final projection. Of course not my best work in terms of drawing but I just needed a guide. later I set this up over the large paper I was working on and made a quick sketch. I was sad to take it apart at the end of the semester but it was so easy to make, I know I'll definitely be making one of these again.

Hand Spectrum

Random body part floating in space, check. Said body part placed in very center of canvas, check. Every single color under the sun being used, check. This painting is just a mesh of cliches that are usually frowned upon in art class, but I just went with it anyway. This was made during my junior year of high school, when I first started getting used to handling acrylic. This painting was actually a remake of something I had made at least a year before, which was probably only 9xll'' or something around that size. 

Fire Water

Usually when I start off a painting I will have some idea of what I'm doing, like some reference pics, or sketches, but this was made with no plan whatsoever. I started of just slapping some paint on my palette and applying every color at once with an oversized brush. Then I went back with a much smaller brush bringing out the brightest hue I could. Then darker colors were put in to create depth. The sky was actually the last part I did. I call the piece fire water because it reminds me of how paint reacts when dripping alcohol on it. You might notice the face hiding in the "mountain", I wanted to get rid of it at first but I'm leaving it. This was a fairly small scale painting, about 34x18 inches. I would love to try something like this again, this time purposefully adding in figures.

Hands & Feet

I can't say this enough to people wanting to improve their art, practice practice practice! Whatever it is you want to do it requires patience and time, you don't just master a skill overnight. Once you tackle true anatomy then your style can take over, but first there needs to be an understanding of the body works. You can always look at your own hands or a friend's, however I prefer a picture. That way your limbs won't tire or eventually lose their pose. Last thing don't worry about being perfect, it's hard to see but there are in fact under drawings, I just like to draw really light at first.

Resting Tiger

You might have seen an image similar to this circling the web, this painting is from a photo I found online. I have worked with oil before but this was my first big piece, about 2 by 3 feet. I found oil to be much less forgiving than oil, however the ability to blend paint that was laid down hours before was certainly a blessing when working on a larger scale. Next up with oil I want to be able to handle detail a little better.

The Unicorn Hunt

One of my newer creations, once again using acrylics. This painting was made purely to try new techniques, including gel gloss, sponges, as well as retardant. I actually like how quickly acrylic dries so I usually only use retardant on large scale paintings. My inspiration came from medieval tapestries and the art of Eyvind Earle. You probably know him from his work on Disney's Sleeping Beauty. The whole painting just turned into a collage of me throwing things onto the canvas and seeing what worked. The hardest part was deciding what should and shouldn't be flat as it's not meant to look realistic but there still needs to be appeal.

Trinkets

This is probably when I first started to really get a hold of acrylics and how to use them and is probably one of my favorites, so far anyway. This canvas was actually not gessoed because I had bought it black. It was also my first big still life, based on childhood knick-knacks.

Old vs New

I think sometimes all artists need to take a step back and see how far they have come. We look at a new finished piece and nitpick every detail that annoys us, I know I do. Plus it can be just plain fun to see how much we've improved. 

I had created this during the end of high school and had given it away for an auction so all the pics I have are a little fuzzy. The theme was Portland so naturally Voodoo Doughnuts fit right in. At the time this was probably the painting I was most proud of. Maybe because it wasn't in my house under the bed I didn't have to stare at it and become annoyed.

A work in progress but definitely an improvement. Even now though I plan on completely reworking most of the writing, it nags at me every time I step into the room. Then I still have the brick wall and metal workings to add. Photography isn't my thing so I have a bit of a glare on the canvas. There I go again just complaining about everything I can find, inside I really am happy at how this is turning out.  Both of these paintings were done on stretched canvas in acrylic, both canvas' came pre gessoed but the bottom I added another layer myself. About a three year difference between the two. 

Hey There, Hi There, Ho There

Welcome everyone to my blog Off the Paige. First a little about myself...

I'm an aspiring animator and painter, currently attending the California College of the Arts. Much of my inspiration comes from Disney, Warner Bros. and Don Bluth. Thank you for visiting my blog and feel free to post any questions you have.