[stuffAEAmade]'s diary

1129095  Link to this entry 
Written about Friday 2011-01-21
Written: (5053 days ago)

Wow, it has been a while.

I will just leave these here. They are quite fun and helpful.

http://www.pixelovely.com/tools/gesture.html
http://websitetips.com/colortools/sitepro/

1126479  Link to this entry 
Written about Tuesday 2010-11-23
Written: (5113 days ago)

I finally filled up my first life drawing sketchbook. It took over a year, although 2/3 I filled in the past three months. And the best part is the honest-to-goodness IMPROVEMENT I saw flipping back through it. I looked at some of my old sketchbooks last weekend, and there was less improvement in all of them combined than my life drawing sketchbook.

I've got another sketchbook I started in September that I want to fill up before my last final this semester. I'm halfway through it. Tomorrow I'm planning on going to a basketball game and sketching. Athletes are good for gestures, spectators for somewhat more detailed sketches.

Rough Pilgrim pages are still going up on my DA, check it out if you're interested. http://aeacomics.deviantart.com/gallery/#NaNoMangO

1125624  Link to this entry 
Written about Wednesday 2010-11-03
Written: (5133 days ago)

Figure drawing professor wants me to stylize less (totally understandable since I'm still struggling with proportions and anatomy)
Animation professor wants me to stylize more (understandable because I don't exaggerate things as much as I could)

So I drew a moe moe desu~ Rae face with biiiig eyes. Haha. And then Bleach Rae, chibi Rae, Disney Rae, Final Fantasy Rae, normal Rae, and Rae twisting Gareth's arm behind his back. Still, that's all pretty close to comfort zone for me. Gotta try something different.


PS doing Artist Alley at a con in the middle of the semester was not the brightest idea I've ever had. I'll be at Anime Nebraskon this weekend, the 5th-7th. Come say hi if you're gonna be there!

PPS Oh, and it's November so that means NaNoMango time. I've got a folder for it set up on my DA (http://aeacomics.deviantart.com/gallery/#NaNoMangO) if you want to see.

PPPS Remember to do your life drawing today (and everyday)!! 8D

1125103  Link to this entry 
Written about Sunday 2010-10-24
Written: (5143 days ago)

It makes me go D: when my classmates look at me like I'm insane for drawing from life outside of class.

D: D: D:

1124325  Link to this entry 
Written about Sunday 2010-10-10
Written: (5157 days ago)

Watch it. It's adorable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qCbiCxBd2M

by three students from Taiwan University of Arts.

1123899  Link to this entry 
Written about Saturday 2010-10-02
Written: (5164 days ago)

<img0*200:stuff/khac_namine_small.jpg> <img0*200:stuff/khac_darkriku_small.jpg> <img0*200:stuff/khac_shadow_small.jpg>

Long overdo art I owe people!

1123500  Link to this entry 
Written about Saturday 2010-09-25
Written: (5171 days ago)

I was thinking, before all this crazy flooding, about being in art classes and my peers and teachers and all of that. Since I turned 23 this week, and 13 was about when I got into comics.

And I really wish that 10 years ago someone had said to me, "Hey kid, you're awful. Stop trying to stylize things you don't understand and learn how to draw them from life first."

I would've thrown a fit, but I think I would have started to do more life drawing earlier. When all you get are compliments, it's easy to get a big ego and plateau out. When you don't understand how the thing you're stylizing looks in reality, it usually comes out looking wrong.

Anyway that's what happened to me for a long time, and I think that's a mindset that a lot of my classmates still have. 


But then again, those same students make going to class hilarious every single day. It's their style, and anyone who dares question it is just jealous.


P.S. Life drawing. DO IT!

1123483  Link to this entry 
Written about Saturday 2010-09-25
Written: (5172 days ago)

Forget the rainboots, I need a pair of goddamn hip waders.

At 8:30am Thursday there was just a little bit of water, the usual flooding we've had all summer. Four hours later it was everywhere. The creek must have started rising 2+ feet per hour. My friend and I watched the water come up SIX INCHES in about 20 minutes. They were using boats to get people, pets, and belongings out. My mom managed to flag down a guy with a truck who was willing to drive her through the water so she could grab our cats and a few other things. It was a scary afternoon, watching debris float by and not knowing if our home was flooded or not.

Friday the cops let us back in. Luckily the apartment complex was specifically landscaped so the buildings are above the floodplain. They became little islands when the water finally crested. The mobile home park across the street looks like it's been completely destroyed, and several other homes flooded.

Water's down about a foot now. I want to go look around and take some more pictures.


Flash floods: don't fuck with 'em. Get what you absolutely need and get out.

1122435  Link to this entry 
Written about Monday 2010-09-06
Written: (5191 days ago)

Bought rainboots because of the crazy wet summer we've been having here. Something like 1-3 inches of rain per week, all summer, along with a bunch of intense thunderstorms. Wettest summer in 118 years as of a month ago. Anyway, they came in handy when I had to get my car out of rising floodwater at 2 AM the next morning.

Still researching for Pilgrim! Learning some interesting things :)

1121731  Link to this entry 
Written about Wednesday 2010-08-25
Written: (5203 days ago)

Whoa back to school next week. Crazy.

I dreamed about a man walking through a forest. He came to a tree and plucked a fruit from its branches. Then the tree reached down and ripped out a clump of his hair. He had a sword and was about to strike the tree, but thought better of it, apologized to the tree, and went on his way.

I've also been doing some general research to lay proper groundwork for Pilgrim. Now I've got a better sense of what I want to try and model the different countries on, and I'm almost ready for more specific research.

1119797  Link to this entry 
Written about Monday 2010-07-19
Written: (5239 days ago)

con in less than five days, ffffff.

Just got back from seeing relatives, think I might have picked up some illness from the cousins' little kidnicks. One aunt/uncle have 10 grandkids, all girls; another have 3, all boys, with another (gender unknown) on the way.

1119093  Link to this entry 
Written about Wednesday 2010-07-07
Written: (5252 days ago)

Chapter 1 needs editing, chapter 2 is half written after about an hour. There was a lot of groundwork to lay in the beginning, but I wonder if it's too much. Might need to spread that out a bit, so it doesn't turn into walls of text and talking heads.

Need more research on the historical time frame I'm basing their little continent on. I think I'm calling the country to the west Port because of all the natural bays and harbors. It's capital, Port of Crowns, is near the ocean on one of the harbors. It isn't a big country, but it does a lot of trade and has many colonies.
The country to the east is still nameless and having problems with two warring minorities after one tried to form their own country. The ruling majority thought it would putter out quickly, but several years later it's become an all out war.
The country to the east of the east is full of ambitious bastards who want to create an empire.
The country that the story starts in needs a name, but the capital is named Sonia after the first Queen. They do not recognize the little country to the north in the barren foothills. It used to be their land, but they were fine with a minority group struggling to live there until gold was discovered. They've been fighting on and off for 100 years, and the gold is pretty much gone now. Port got most of it, since they share a small stretch of border.
Little north country needs a name and capital. They used to be obscenely rich, not so much now.
North of most of those countries is a mountain range, with an arid steppe/grasslands beyond it. Bands of nomads live there. Farther north than that is supposedly an ancient forest with gigantic trees. But that's not terribly important to this story, and the "civilized" peoples thing the nomads are crazy anyway.

Yay worldbuilding!

1118868  Link to this entry 
Written about Friday 2010-07-02
Written: (5257 days ago)

One and maybe a quarter of a scene to go for Pilgrim chapter 1 script. My scripts are pretty much just the dialogue with a few notes flung in, yet still somehow take ages to write. Thumbs will be done this weekend, maybe?


Ah hah, oh the students in this art program. "I think X artwork is the best in this chapter because *insert a laundry list of subjective reasons with nary a mention of a single design principle or visual element.*"

Head, meet desk. I get the feeling we will become close friends in the next year and a half.

1118831  Link to this entry 
Written about Thursday 2010-07-01
Written: (5258 days ago)

Whoa, hah. Failed NaNo big time. I ought to know better by now than to try and fly by the seat of my pants, I always fall flat on my ass. I sketched 18 pages, then scrapped half of it, so what I posted a few weeks back is the stuff I'm keeping, with some fixes.

BUT! Pilgrim seems to be heading in a good direction, so hopefully things will start moving more smoothly. More and more excess is getting trimmed out, and it's interesting to see in what areas I'm reverting back to REALLY old bits of plot. Tentative restart is probably going to get pushed back a bit. Need more research.

1117775  Link to this entry 
Written about Thursday 2010-06-10
Written: (5279 days ago)

Caught a cold, bleh. But running a light fever always seems to get the gears clanking, so I dreamt up another idea for a potential comic. Dunno if it's any good yet. Thumbnailed 25 pages of it, while it was still vivid in my mind. I guess I will dub it "Dude who fights jaguars" and file it away with "Girl who talks to birds"

Need to work on Pilgrim thumbs.

1117012  Link to this entry 
Written about Wednesday 2010-05-26
Written: (5294 days ago)

Wow, it's been a while since I made a wiki.

NaNoMangO

Now my wisdom teeth meds are knocking me out, so I need to get to bed.

1116983  Link to this entry 
Written about Tuesday 2010-05-25
Written: (5294 days ago)

Damn, the animation class I was going to take this summer was canceled because there weren't enough students enrolled. Now I'm going to have to switch around my fall schedule.

At least this will give me more time to get the first chapter of Pilgrim ready for SogenCon at the end of July. My goal is to get it all finished and either print them on a copy machine (wasn't too hard last time), or have the local print shop do it, depending on what they quote me. I just bought a long-arm stapler, so I can assemble them myself. The size of the minis should be about 5x8"

Remember, NaNoMangO is in June! 30 penciled pages, 15 inked, or 10 finished! You can always shoot for more.
Here's the livejournal community http://community.livejournal.com/nanomango/ (they have memes)
I'm following along with a bunch of others on GaiaOnline

1116673  Link to this entry 
Written about Thursday 2010-05-20
Written: (5300 days ago)
Next in thread: 1116722

Pilgrim chapter 1 thumbs are FINALLY done :D 30 pages long, provided I don't alter anything. And I'm about halfway through the script for chapter 2. A bunch of characters got trimmed out for sake of simplicity, but it turns out a lot of it was my problem with trying to shoehorn things in just because.
And the crits I was getting often mentioned how slow the pacing was, so I wanted to speed things up. 30 pages per chapter, at least 2 chapters per year is the goal. While I'm still in school, anyway.

Well, tomorrow morning I get all my wisdom teeth removed, so I think I'll marathon Lord of the Rings and keep plugging away at the chapter 2 thumbs.

1116582  Link to this entry 
Written about Wednesday 2010-05-19
Written: (5301 days ago)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYDquzEPLsw

Made by animation students at a school in France. I love well done 2D animation. <3

1116377  Link to this entry 
Written about Saturday 2010-05-15
Written: (5305 days ago)

Yikes, I wish I knew what I did to my left shoulder to make it ache so bad. I thought it would get better after a few days, but it only seems to be getting worse. I must be sleeping funny or something. Pain killers, then back to art I suppose.

Nearly done scripting Pilgrim chapter 1, then I just need to finish up thumbs and start sketching. Gonna start inking those volunteer pages I picked up and put in a movie. I've been checking out old Don Bluth / Disney / etc animated films from the library. Very nostalgic.
Gotta pick between Who Framed Roger Rabbit and The Iron Giant. Hmmmmmm...

1115940  Link to this entry 
Written about Friday 2010-05-07
Written: (5313 days ago)

And the semester is done.
I've concluded that half of my classmates are full of shit and how much they hate an instructor is directly proportional to how awesome of a teacher they are.
The standards were damn low, that was disappointing, and half the "fine art" pieces that got into the Student Juried Show were obviously copied from photographs. They were bad copies, too. I mean, really bad. I've seen better from middle school age kids.

I just, argh. The mind boggles.
3D Design was awesome though, I hope I can fit in another course by that instructor. Here is hoping the next semester, with a fresh batch of instructors, is better.


And now it is time for delicious comic making. I think I've had a breakthrough at last with the story for Pilgrim, and just need to pump out the thumbnails now. I'm doing 5 pages for a volunteer comic book project while I wait for my bristol board to arrive. Half penciled in 2 days, definitely booting me out of my comfort zone. First time drawing from someone else's script, too.

PS, NaNoMangO is in June. 30 days, 30 penciled comic pages. I'm gonna do my best!
I also really, really want to practice painting on the computer or with watercolors or something. I've been reading up on color theory.

 The logged in version 

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