Bubbles!

I've been sort of self teaching myself Photoshop for quite a while now and texture has always been a hard one for me. One thing I've always wanted to learn was how to create bubbles. This is where I have to give credit to several helpful Pinterest posts. Creating one to look like an elephant however was simply trial, error, and a whole lot of layers. I thought it might be fun to have a Dumbo theme but most of the time on this project went into creating the bubbles. A lot of them are pretty over exaggerated in color but "clear elephants on parade" just doesn't have a good ring to it.

Cartoonification

Cartoonification is a small series I've been working on involving taking an animal, drawing them realistically (or at least in my style), and then turning them into a caricature. If I were to revisit this idea, I think I would try to exaggerate the final drawing a bit more. Something a little closer to how the hippo turned out.

The Starstruck Duck

Page 1 of the Starstruck Duck. This story is recreated from Don Rosa's comic by the same name that was never completed. What I did was take his sketches and tried to draw them in his style. First I draw what I want in my sketchbook, scan them onto my computer and finish everything else of photoshop. Again only these pictures are mine, the story belongs to Don Rosa.

 Here is one of the original pages that I had to work off of.

My finished drawing for the first page. Don Rosa's detailed style when it comes to his finished products are a hard replication, but I wanted to remain as faithful as I could to the original source.

I had the wonderful opportunity to meet Don Rosa at a comic fest in San Jose a couple years ago. He's a really sweet guy and ended up signing my copy of his magnum opus, The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck for me. 

Mean Girls: The Later Years

Mean Girls: The Later Years is something I've been wanting to work on for a while now. It revolves around the idea that our grandmothers aren't always what they seem, they can be rude, loud, and mean. I wasn't planning on bringing any characters from the movie into these stories, it's just a working title I have. I also don't want the story to rely too heavily on what already exists and instead try to come up with my own stories. The bottom picture is of course a classic line from the film but also something that happened to my Grandma at her retirement home. Her and my other Grandma's stories are a big inspiration for me. I'm planning on exploring more of these characters in the future. 

Identity Crisis Animatic

Two years after my original "Identity Crisis" I'm finally able to show how I originally envisioned it. I've been storyboarding for a little while now but editing isn't exactly my forte. Of course there are a few changes I might make, but compared to the original animation I feel this flows a little better. I was also able to add the character of the otter which was missing in the original.

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.