Moth-Eatn Productions

98, 99, ...

2010-09-27T11:14:00.000-07:00

Well, the time's finally come. I'm being set apart as a missionary tonight. So no more blogging till at least April 2012. Ironically, this is my 99th post. I found that strangely appropriate, since this whole pre-mission wait has felt like a slow count to 100, which now I am finally about to finish.

But for all of you who would like to keep in contact, you can write me at:

Sister Chelsea Ann Stebar
MTC Mailbox # 336
ITA-ROM 1201
2005 N 900 E
Provo, UT 84604-1793

And if you'd like to receive the weekly emails I'll be sending home from the mission, please just send a note with your name and email address to stebarstudio@hotmail.com and we'll get you added to the list.

Thanks everyone! See ya in 2012!

Shiatori X-9

2010-09-24T21:08:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday, I went to AWA (Anime Weekend Atlanta) with my friend, Erin. Now, neither of us are really huge anime fans or anything. I'm actually kind of scared of super-anime-kids. I don't understand them. But we thought it would be fun to go observe the craziness of a couple thousand wild fans reveling in their fantasies. And it was.

So I painted myself up like an Avatar. Which took all morning. And Erin wore a completely random anime-esque fox costume of no particular existing character. But just to shake the confidence of some nerds who believed themselves to be the ultimate authority on all things anime, we made up an elaborate lie about how Erin was dressed up as the title character from an obscure series called "Shiatori X-9" which is about a clan of winged fox warriors, but Shiatori is born without wings, so she makes herself little wings out of cardboard and the series follows her attempts to prove herself as a warrior despite her natural disadvantage.

You should have seen those kids' faces when we explained this to them, adding that only truly dedicated fans knew about this obscure anime gem...

And then I went home and designed Shiatori based on Erin's costume. Cause this show should totally exist.

Down to the Wire

2010-09-16T08:16:00.001-07:00

My art life has taken sort of a backseat since this whole mission call thing happened...

Some of these things I intend to color one day, but seeing as how I'm down to less than two weeks before I report to the Missionary Training Center, I don't know if that will actually happen before 2012. So for now, here's the roughs.

This dude ran a fantastic little shop in Little Five Points in Atlanta called "Earth Tones" where he sold homemade leather-work and knitted clothes. This caricature doesn't even begin to capture his eccentricity.

My sister, Hannah, with her new giant Skullcandy headphones

Hannah's guinea pig, Meeko

Hogle Zoo trip with Michelle way back in July

On The Cliff By The Sea

2010-08-26T06:04:00.000-07:00

Claire and I should have been in Ponyo. We would have been adorable.

Celebrities and Stuff

2010-08-24T08:03:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted in forever. This whole mission-call-to-Rome thing has been pretty distracting...

So in an attempt to get myself drawing again, I drew Adam Young of Owl City. Cause I love him.

And Korean pop star, Rain, as Graffiti on my sister's Facebook wall.

And also Paddy.

Self

2010-06-18T13:02:00.000-07:00

I may or may not be in love with drawing my own hair.

The Call

2010-05-27T00:10:00.000-07:00

No art this time. I just wanted to let you all know that the fateful letter arrived and I've been called to serve as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints IN ROME, ITALY. I report to the Missionary Training Center on September 29th where I will be learning Italian. My mission will last for 18 months. I'm so excited and humbled by this opportunity. I can't wait to get out there and serve the people of Italy!

Na'vi Sisters

2010-05-07T14:51:00.000-07:00

I drew my younger sisters and I as Na'vi. Cause I'm a nerd like that.

Mine was done first, so it sucks the most.

Summer Begins

2010-05-07T14:41:00.000-07:00

Haven't posted sketches in a long time.

Ghost Hunters

Commissions

2010-05-01T14:51:00.000-07:00

I am now open for commissions for the summer. Click here for more details.

Animation Demo Reel

2010-04-28T21:11:00.000-07:00

Animation Demo Reel 2010 from Chelsea Stebar on Vimeo.

Portfolio Blog

2010-04-07T04:39:00.000-07:00

I finally got my portfolio blog all finished, so feel free to check it out.
Click here!

Glow-Stick

2010-03-14T20:21:00.000-07:00

Fat and Happy

2010-03-13T00:35:00.000-08:00

Darl Larsen is a stud

2010-03-12T01:12:00.001-08:00

Haven't posted any sketchbook stuff in a while...

Clarence

2010-02-15T13:14:00.000-08:00

The main character in our film, who I had the great privilege to design. Many thanks to Brandon, our director, for giving me this opportunity.

The final painting

My initial designs were a lot more cartoony (for both Paddy and Clarence). I wanted to play with a different style and I had been studying Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs a lot at the time...

Then he went on a sort of Jack Skellington kick...

Before finally coming back and finding his place in a more realistic world...

My Sister and I

2010-02-14T13:48:00.001-08:00

We are twins. Only three years apart.

Trunk Monkey

2010-02-06T00:37:00.000-08:00

Advertising presentation boards for our Advanced Storyboarding class.

Paddy Concepts

2010-01-21T22:19:00.000-08:00

Designs I've been doing for the villain in our film

This one's for the 2D dream sequence

This is the New Year

2010-01-13T12:47:00.000-08:00

Here, have some stuff.

A drawing from my first assignment in Ryan Woodward's Advanced Storyboarding class, which I decided to paint up some.

Stuff from the break... Turns out, there are kids and old people outside Provo.

I am an animation girl.

Also, this notebook is yellow.

Gesture Drawing

2010-01-07T18:01:00.000-08:00

Some of my better drawings from this last semester in Ryan Woodward's Gesture Drawing class.

Some fellow students:

Sean Pando

Michelle Weaver

Joe Creswell

And some silliness...

Not-White Guy Wins

2009-12-31T08:45:00.000-08:00

Sketches from the end of the semester

This top one is probably my favorite drawing from this sketchbook so far. Way to go, not-white guy. Thanks for being an awesome character.

My markers are drying out.

This guy was pretty darn awesome too. Claire, Stephanie, and I found him chilling outside a coffee shop, reading a newspaper. Classic.

And here's fellow animation student Jared Merrill, looking like a celebrity. lol

It seems I have a Sam Worthington look-alike in my ward...

Character Design Final

2009-12-17T23:07:00.001-08:00

Reference joke lol.

Krepe

2009-12-14T22:40:00.000-08:00

Finally! Here at last is the final product of the past semester's work in Barry Zundel's 3D Animation class. This took over 80 hours total to model, texture, rig, and animate. Good times in the 3D Lab...

His name is Krepe (pronounced like "creep"). He's been around for a long time. Here's the first drawing I ever made of him...back in 2004. When I was 15. He had a tail back then.

Aaaaah, memories...

Emulation Week Two

2009-12-06T15:04:00.001-08:00

Yet more emulation for Character Design...

First, is an emulation of Nicolas Marlet, character designer for Kung Fu Panda.

And second, an emulation of Mattias Adolfsson, a freelance illustrator from Sweden.

And then there was sketchbooking...

Jon Foster came and gave a lecture on campus the other day.

Cheeks Emulation

2009-12-01T21:22:00.000-08:00

This was the first week of our Emulation assignment in Character Design and I decided (like several other people, apparently) to emulate Sean "Cheeks" Galloway, since his style is super appealing and totally not how I usually do things.

Hey look, it's me. I wear red shoes.

And then we have some sketches from the last week. Hoorah. Yeah, Toaster the Bear was brown when I originally painted him.

Little baby Claire to whom I am somehow related.

Beasts and Demons

2009-11-24T12:18:00.001-08:00

Week two of the animal assignment in Character Design

Toaster the Stinky Bear

The sketchbook theme for this last week was "demonic." I just started a new sketchbook, my third of the semester, and its binding is on the short side, so it's a really wide format, which is an interesting compositional challenge. And it's filled with watercolor paper, which makes me very very happy.

A yearbook page from Demon High

Concepts and Sketches

2009-11-20T19:24:00.000-08:00

A couple of quick concept paintings I put together yesterday for my senior film story pitch.

And here are a bunch of developmental sketches for my previously posted animal designs

Drawing from photos

Stephanie's boyfriend, Stu, conveniently has a pet squirrel. His name is Boss and he is psycho. So we took a day to go up to American Fork and draw him as he rampaged angrily around his pen.

Drawing from photos again

Playing with shapes. Turns out, owls are crazy fun to draw.

Animals, Week One

2009-11-18T18:52:00.000-08:00

The first batch of animals for character design.

Reworking

2009-11-11T21:50:00.000-08:00

Our assignment for Character Design this last week was to take one of our villains and one of our heroes and rework them. The challenge was to incorporate elements of story and personality into the characters as well as appealing design. So I reworked my non-stereotypical males, since I felt they had the most potential for interesting story and also happened to be the two my classmates liked the least, thus having the most room for improvement. Plus, I really wanted to take another stab at anime, since I hated my last attempt so much. I like this new one much better.

Villains

2009-11-04T22:07:00.000-08:00

More from the Heroes & Villains assignment in Character Design. I really tried to break out and experiment with some new styles on these ones.

Stereotypical Villains:

Non-stereotypical Villains:

Heroes

2009-11-04T21:45:00.000-08:00

More Character Design homework. I freaking love that class.

Stereotypical Heroes:

Non-stereotypical Heroes:

Monster Week

2009-11-04T21:40:00.000-08:00

The sketch theme for this last week in Gesture Drawing was (rather appropriately) monsters. I believe every week should be monster week. Happy Halloween everyone.

These I blame on Michelle. I asked her for fun animal combinations and she said "a fat rabbit anaconda and a dolphin kangaroo."

Self Caricatures

2009-10-20T20:00:00.000-07:00

Another assignment for Character Design, we had to draw ourselves as five different personalities: fancy free, vain, easily irritable, quiet killer, silent leader. It was SO MUCH FUN. :D

Frodo Face

2009-10-08T20:45:00.000-07:00

A quick celebrity caricature for Character Design. If you couldn't tell who it is without looking at the title, then I fail.

Silhouettes Refined

2009-10-05T23:21:00.001-07:00

The final products of our three-week silhouettes assignment! Yay! Week one was the simple silhouettes. During week two, we went over them with white out to test a good variety of designs. And week three was dedicated to refining our designs into these finished line drawings.

Click 'em to full-view or we won't be friends anymore.

Silhouettes

2009-09-25T10:22:00.000-07:00

The silhouette assignment for Character Design - our 4 themes were spacemen, witches, female construction workers, and butlers.

Some recent sketchbook pages, still learning how to use that Pitt Pen.

Shapes & Natural Design

2009-09-14T17:43:00.001-07:00

Another assignment for Character Design - take a random fun shape and make a character out of it. I did this one twice cause it was fun.

For this one, we were to study elements of nature (rocks, trees, and clouds) in our sketchbooks, then design a character incorporating two of those elements. So I made an elk/boar/thing out of tree and cloud.

French Maid & Country Boy

2009-09-14T17:39:00.000-07:00

Our first assignment for Character Design and Visual Development.

New Semester, New Sketchbook

2009-09-14T17:26:00.000-07:00

Since I got back to school, I've been sketchbooking more than I ever have in my life - about 35 pages a week so far. It's been very good for me. And at the suggestion of Ryan Woodward, I've abandoned using pencil for sketching, so I'm making friends with my Pitt Pens, Microns, Prismacolors, and Sharpies. These are just a couple of my recent pages, all drawn from life, except for the bird-mask guy.

Water in the Well

2009-08-22T11:48:00.000-07:00

As Scott Peterson would say...

posemaniacs.com

Went to Detroit for the Woodward Dream Cruise - reestablished that I do indeed suck at drawing cars

Let's Go Sit Under a Tree and Talk About Our Feelings

2009-07-14T08:31:00.000-07:00

Been having a lot of fun with the calligraphy markers lately...

Calligraphy markers and gouache - back on campus

Angry animals! Angst!

Weak signals

Summer Sketchin

2009-06-18T15:14:00.001-07:00

Since it's summer and I don't have classes to constantly encourage me to draw, I've made up a rule for myself that I'm not allowed to go to bed at night unless I've drawn something that day. So I've ended up sketching in bed most nights before I go to sleep. But it's kept me drawing everyday. And since it's been so long since my last post, I'm just gonna share a couple of the better pages I've done recently.

Blatantly Kory Hubbell-inspired samurai dude....
I saw Nocturna a couple of weeks ago and it got me drawing chubby kids with triangular mouths.
Seeing what kind of textures I could get out of a calligraphy marker...
Gesture drawing during a hockey game
Kris Allen
Sam Worthington (plays Marcus Wright in Terminator Salvation) and Ken Leung (plays Miles Straume on Lost)
And if Moth were a goddess in Okami...

True Story

2009-05-15T12:11:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, there was a girl, here represented by a lion, who returned home to Atlanta after two long, hard semesters at Brigham Young University. For the first week or so of her time at home, she shared a room with her sister Hannah, here represented by a Pinweasel, who happened to be terrified of these enormous, preposterously long-legged mosquito-like insects that swarmed around their backyard each night. Well, one particular night, as this college girl lay in bed before the lights had been turned out, partially blind without her contacts, she noticed a peculiar shadow bouncing around the ceiling. She pointed it out to Hannah, who turned to look at it just as it swooped down towards them, its long, hair-like legs dragging behind it in the most menacing fashion. ...So Hannah jumped on this girl's head.Once off of her head, Hannah then proceeded to beat it furiously with her Pikachu pillow.

The next day, this girl went to a class at Georgia Tech with her older brother, Brian. That's him, needing a shave.
In this class, there were multitudes of Asians and close to zero females.

Later, there was a brief spell of angst, unrelated to the previously mentioned events.
And a leopard.

The end.

Trip Like Tony

2009-05-07T08:33:00.000-07:00

I occasionally enjoy being all scribbly and using trippy colors like Tony Papesh.

Also, my sister Hannah dropped my cell phone into spaghetti sauce.
I can't reach y'all from over here. (Claire, Stephanie, me.)

Commissions 2009

2009-05-02T14:56:00.000-07:00

Now that I'm back home for the summer, I'm opening up for commissions again. More information on my DeviantART.

Also, I drew this thing.

Mount Dondeleigh

2009-04-29T06:42:00.000-07:00

Now that school's over and I'm back home, I finally have time to post my finals.

These eight images were my final project for Kelly's Illusion of Life class. I chose the Concept Design assignment, and therefore had to create four characters and four environments for an original story.

My story takes place at a mysterious new desert amusement park called Mount Dondeleigh. Most people don't realize this, but Mount Dondeleigh only has one ride. Perched atop this enormous pinnacle of rock in the desert, the ride consists of a ski-lift-like seat which carries you out over the expansive desert. What at first seems like a bit of a let-down soon proves itself to be technologically revolutionary as the environment around you shifts and changes into snowy mountains, tropical rainforests, windy grasslands, and the like.The park was founded by and named after Mr. Dondeleigh, who created it to show the world the new technology he had invented as well as the new species he had engineered. But not all of his creations are as harmless as he makes them out to be, which is why Dondeleigh is also the villain of the story.
Carved into the imposing front gates of the park is a mural intended to portray some of the magical environments you are promised to encounter inside.
This is the main character, Cait. Cait is on her way to visit Mount Dondeleigh with her family. Initially, she was excited to go, but was soon disappointed when she found out that her sister, Jessica, was also coming.
Jessica is the older, prettier, and more popular one in the family. She's been away at college for the past two years, which Cait has greatly appreciated, but now that she's accompanying her family on their vacation, the two sisters will have to tolerate one another again.
Behind the massive front gates of the park, there is a courtyard where Dondeleigh has had a statue of himself constructed in the center of a fountain.
Noah, the love interest of the story, works at Mount Dondeleigh tending the greenhouses. He meets Cait and her family at the park and does what he can to make sure they're comfortable throughout their stay. And though they don't know it at first, he is actually Mr. Dondeleigh's son.
The greenhouses where Noah works at Mount Dondeleigh contain many of the plants and creatures used to create the idyllic and seemingly magical environments visitors encounter on The Ride.

So that's that. Now on to the research sketches!

Most of these are charicatures of real people, including two of my sisters and some of you.

The Watermelon Tree 2

2009-04-14T10:24:00.000-07:00

My final project for Intro to 3D Animation:

The 2D original:

I'll Do What I Want

2009-04-12T21:11:00.001-07:00

I'll post real sketchbook pages and animations and such later. I just wanted y'all to know that I stayed up late last night drawing just for fun. It had nothing to do with school, requests, exchanges, or anything. And it felt fantastic. Black paper makes me happy.

Look, Claire, it's Seely!

The Commissioner and Her Colleagues

2009-03-15T14:37:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted sketches in quite some time. So I've got a lot of them to show now.

Look, it's Commissioner (Claire) Gordon!

This is just for Jesse and his wife, Lauren, who were kind enough to let Stephanie, Claire, and I invade their home, use their power tools, and feel the wrath of their watch duck. Yeah. I know, right?
Oh, and some crazy from the internet went and got one of my old drawings from 2005 carved into their flesh. Not sure whether to be flattered or just weirded out....

Dynamics and Blend Shapes

2009-03-14T18:19:00.000-07:00

These are my most recent assignments for Intro to 3D Animation. The first one, Dynamics, is really pretty cheesy and lame, but I got a taste of particle effects and I guess that's really all that matters. The second one though, the Blend Shapes assignment, I rather like.

And thank you, Ezra, for teaching me how to post the Facebook videos. Much better than Blogger video.

Specific Questions

2009-02-15T13:37:00.000-08:00

I applied for Pixar's summer undergraduate internship this last week. I've got an interview with them on Wednesday. I'm all sorts of excited and all sorts of nervous all at the same time.

Also, on an only somewhat unrelated note, God seems to be trying to tell me something lately. I tend to only jot down the things that really stand out to me during church, and there seems to be a trend in those things lately...

Trendy Slang

2009-02-07T12:21:00.000-08:00

I forgot to post this one earlier.

Mostly, I think this is a chunk of fail. He moves way too much. But seeing as how it was my first attempt at lip-sync, and I think the mouth movement turned out pretty well, I guess it wasn't a total waste.

Waterproof

2009-02-05T13:25:00.000-08:00

I animated again.

How to be Howe

2009-01-29T11:08:00.000-08:00

I'm one of those people that collects "Art of" film books. But I keep telling myself that I'm not allowed to buy anymore until I've read all of the ones I already have. So that's what I've been doing lately. I recently finished reading The Art of The Fellowship of the Ring. That book makes me want to be John Howe when I grow up. Only prettier.And this is just a bit of silliness expressing the determination Stephanie and I have to one day get Claire out of her house again. Haha.

Veebot

2009-01-27T10:03:00.000-08:00

My first 3D animation is done! This was our first assignment of the new semester, so it's all done by keyframing, no rigs.

I know my computer has issues playing these dumb blogger videos, so if yours does too, you can see it bigger (and probably smoother) here.

Floating Heads

2009-01-24T10:26:00.000-08:00

My new Figure Drawing Teacher, Scott Peterson, insists that we don't draw with tiny, precise little pencils in our sketchbooks. But he didn't say anything about colored pencils. And meanwhile, I have been making rather good friends with my markers.

It's sad how rare and exciting it is around here to have the chance to draw someone who isn't white.

I've been trying to challenge myself with the calligraphy markers lately by drawing these sort of straight value-based portraits without sketching anything out first.

Agent Sapien

2009-01-13T18:45:00.000-08:00

The other shoe has dropped, Anthony.

Calorath

2009-01-09T14:50:00.001-08:00

It's finally done!

Check out the detail shots on my DeviantART here, here, and here.

Closing 2008

2009-01-09T14:42:00.000-08:00

So here are the final sketches of 2008. Now on to 2009! Who knows what epic adventures await!

Anthro Sketch Exchange submission for December
This sketch I sent in a letter to my older sister who is serving her mission in Taichung, Taiwan. Moth is going international!

Studies for my Storyboarding final and assorted beasts, including Moth as a Kung Fu Panda character.

Every good sketchbook needs to have at least one Iron Man or Abe Sapien drawing in it.

Revelation 5

2008-12-17T15:04:00.000-08:00

My final project for Storyboarding

Sorry if it doesn't quite make sense. There is one line of dialogue, but it's not recorded.

Finish It

2008-12-09T21:12:00.000-08:00

My bug is finally done! Hooray! I'm so thrilled that I don't have to worry about that anymore. And I'm actually decently pleased with how it turned out, which is always a plus.

Also due in the morning is this storyboarding exercise for which I had to board a scene from a live-action movie. I chose The Fountain, one of my most favorite movies. It's fantastically trippy and deep and beautiful. I love it love it love it.

The Beginning of Another Sketch Adventure

2008-12-07T21:18:00.001-08:00

I finished up my brown paper sketchbook. Now I've got a pretty little string-bound one with a Chinese ink painting on the cover. I rather like it. And the string-binding is nice because the pages lay open flat so I can draw right across the two pages without much trouble. So here are the first three pages of this new book. I've been trying to break out more and try new media and play with color. I'm rather liking it so far.

Maestro, Bean, Lowery

2008-11-15T12:47:00.000-08:00

We've started a new project in Storyboarding, and this time we got to choose our groups and make up our own story. I'm in a group with Stephanie Marshall, Claire Gordon, and Jack Hattori. It is going to be awesome. Jack came up with this story idea about a young girl during the Italian Renaissance who creates a Da Vinci style glider and flies with it. These are some of the concept sketches I did. This man, Maestro, is the one who repeatedly tries to discourage the girl, Valeria, from trying to fly because she's too young and it's too dangerous.
And I went to the Bean Museum again to try to get a better grip on how lions look from more unusual angles.

During my Bible as Literature class the other day, I decided to try something new and draw with my calligraphy pens, focusing exclusively on value. It was really fun. I definitely need to try out new stuff more often.

Dave Lowery gave a presentation here yesterday. It was pretty awesome. He's been in the film industry forever. He's worked on everything from Willow to Jurassic Park to Indiana Jones to Shrek to Iron Man. You can see him pitching his storyboards on the special features of the Shrek DVD. He's currently working on Iron Man 2. And his face just begged to be caricatured.

Of Roos and Sticks and Silly Wacks

2008-11-11T22:20:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I posted some plain old sketchbook stuff, so...here you go.

The following is not a good drawing. I am only posting it for Claire.
That is Claire (the roo), Stephanie (the snow leopard), and me (the lion of course). We are wack-jobs. Straight up crazies.This I drew just before Halloween. So yeah. That's why it's creepy.
Sketching in church and playing with ideas for the insect assignment in 3D Graphics.
Turns out stick bugs are preposterously fun to draw. Look, it's a walking stick with a walking stick. Ha ha ha ha...ha......
And that is the preposterously long list of movies Claire, Stephanie, and I still need to watch.
Oh, and at the bottom there, I was trying to show Claire what the Mouth of Sauron looks like. Preposterous.
I'm currently in the process of modeling the frog-bug.
This is me and my roommate, Pando. And this is basically how our relationship goes.
I need to play with different media in my sketchbook more often.

Not the best post ever. Better sketches will come soon, I swear.

Heath!

2008-11-02T18:45:00.000-08:00

Dude. Halloween was so awesome this year. My costume was SO MUCH FUN. I scared small children and impressed lots of teenagers. And hardly anyone recognized me at our Stake dance. It was fantastic.

A Silent Guardian, A Watchful Protector

2008-10-30T18:32:00.000-07:00

A Dark Knight.

I'm working on a group presentation in Biology about bats. So I painted this for our opening slide (and so I could do less research).

It Has Whiskers Now

2008-10-24T11:53:00.000-07:00

I'm still working on this, by the way. Two months later.

Badger Badger Badger Mushroom

2008-10-23T17:02:00.001-07:00

My first ever 3D model, the infamous teapot assignment.

Prince Hyacinth Designs

2008-10-18T00:01:00.001-07:00

My designs for the fairy tale we're working with in Storyboarding. It's about a Prince who is cursed with a preposterously long nose. ...Yeah. It's French. Nuff said.

The Wrath

2008-10-06T21:32:00.000-07:00

Here be my work for the multi-panel comic assignment in Storyboarding. I got on the good wall, which made me feel warm and fuzzy inside. And I avoided "the wrath", as Jake put it, which is kind of ironic, seeing as how my comic was all about wrath.

Also, I got this awesome comic book called "Off Road" from the library the other day. Sean Murphy's style is so fantastic. So I decided to sit down and copy some of the panels to see if I could glean some of his magic.
Then I attempted to apply the Sean Murphy style to Abe Sapien, which was loads of fun. Oh, and Anthony should recognize the monster...
I also had the opportunity to attend the Saturday morning session of General Conference, which was a great experience. It's a cool feeling being in the same room as the prophet. Conference, as a whole, was so good. There were too many awesome talks for me to pick a favorite. It really was a great weekend. And I got totally drenched walking around Salt Lake in a dress in the rain. So that was fun.

Storyboarding and Such

2008-09-28T21:05:00.000-07:00

Here are my first two assignments for Storyboarding. The first was to design a character and have them walk through a door in a way that communicates their character. So I used Blank.
And here are the boards.
The second assignment was a single panel comic. There were almost no criteria for this assignment. It was very broad. So I decided to make mine angsty instead of funny.
And here are the sketches for both assignments. And a bear.

Oh, and I colored this.
And drew all these things.
Stephanie stretches funny.
I've been kinda into bears lately.
And magical Pronghorn... of destiny.
And there were sheep down in Mapleton on the way to the Animation party. So we had to pull over and draw them. That's Claire with her hips all skewed funny.

The Hogle Zoo

2008-09-21T14:15:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Claire, Stephanie, Pando, and I had a magical sketch adventure. (Aren't you just so proud of us, Anthony?) With the help of some direction by Jake, we were able to find the Barnes and Noble where they sell spiffing recycled paper sketchbooks. I may never settle for a normal sketchbook again. And what better way to start off a new sketchbook than with a thrilling day at the zoo? Hooray! It was so much fun.

It was a fabulous day indeed. Expect more of this in the future.

The Sketch Dump Continues

2008-09-21T13:51:00.000-07:00

School started.

My New Testament and Bible as Literature professor, Brother Swift. And a waffle giraffe.
Our storyboarding textbook makes repeated references to the magical land of "screen world," which it defines as the apparent space within a screen. It then defines a screen as any blocked off surface upon which a picture is displayed, meaning that posters, sketchbook pages, and photographs are screens as well as TVs and computers. So Stephanie and I reasoned that if you put your hands up and create a box with your fingers like it shows on the cover of our textbook, that you are, in a way, creating a portal into screen world. The concept is truly magical.

My new look.
And these are my sketches from Regional Conference. One of the speakers, President Monson's daugher, Sister Dibb, was far too happy to be there. But it was still a great meeting.

Every time I go to Bio 100, I just stare at my professor's teeth. It's very distracting.
My first ever attempt at drawing Iron Man. I'm gonna have to try again.
Some of my designs (all except the Iron Man) for the infamous teapot assignment in Intro to 3D Graphics.

Abraham

Phew...

Nightwatch and Watchmen

2008-08-27T16:46:00.000-07:00

Here's another fairly quick commission I churned out yesterday - an arctic fox character named Nightwatch.And in other news, I've been reading Watchmen lately. I was intrigued by the trailer for the upcoming movie version they showed before The Dark Knight. It looks like one of those movies which will either be an incredible triumph or a terrible disaster. In any case, I want to see it so I can decide for myself. I just hope it doesn't get rated R. But I downloaded the original graphic novel from the internet and have been reading the first couple of chapters. So far it's really interesting. I don't have a whole lot of experience with comic books, but this one definitely seems to be very well-done. The writing is good and the drawings have a cool cinematic feel to them. And there's all sorts of layers of symbolism and emotional turmoil. Fun stuff. I'll have to read the rest of it to see if it really is as good as it seems. In any case, it's more believable than the first issues of Iron Man...

Approximately 13,419 Hairs So Far

2008-08-26T05:42:00.000-07:00

This commission is going to kick my butt. But it is also going to look all manner of awesome.

Anthropomorphicism

2008-08-22T07:21:00.000-07:00

I'm back from Michigan now, after 13 and a half hours of driving and a couple days of catching up on sleep. So I'm gonna start off today with a couple sketchbook pages from my stay in Detroit.
Dachshunds run in the family.
This was my contribution to the Anthro Sketch Exchange on LiveJournal for this month.
And this is a commission I just finished. Definitely not the sort of thing I'd draw just for kicks, but it does feel good to get paid to draw.
And here's my sketch for my next commission, which will be much more elaborate, time-consuming, and expensive. So hooray.
Ya know, contrary to popular belief, I've never considered myself "an anthro artist." Apparently, the majority of my followers online seem to think otherwise, since all the requests and commissions I've ever gotten over the internet have been for animal people. I've always thought the whole concept of anthros was weird, and still do. I enjoy drawing humanized cartoon animals, like the kind you see in Dreamworks movies and such, and werewolves are always an interesting artistic subject, but realistic furry people with animal heads on them have always been a little freaky in my book. But wouldn't ya know, I do one all-out anthro piece in a fit of angst about a year ago, and the fan base goes wild. Now it seems the online community has discovered that I have some talent in blending human and animal qualities and has dubbed me an official member of the anthropomorphic community. I'm still not sure how I feel about that.

Caldwells

2008-08-13T18:18:00.001-07:00

My most recent portrait commission, the three Caldwell kids from my ward here. I managed to finish and deliver it just in time to pack for my trip to Michigan. So now I'm back in the city where I was born, staying at my grandparents' house. So no sketchbook pages for now. I'm still drawing plenty, but my scanner's a couple hundred miles away at the moment. P.S. I'm still open for commissions, so if you happen to know anyone who may be interested, don't hesitate to send 'em my way.

Guillermo and Doug

2008-08-06T21:26:00.000-07:00

Abe Sapien El Fauno

Guillermo del Toro and Doug Jones were made for each other.

Character Designing

2008-08-03T21:30:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to get the hang of drawing more interesting characters lately. I sometimes feel like a lot of my drawings sit on an uncomfortable middle-ground between realism and stylization, not really fitting into either category. So for the past little while, I've been working on pushing the stylization, exaggerating shapes more, and generally just making more appealing characters. Please give me some feedback, since I'm not really sure yet how this whole character-design thing is supposed to work. At least let me know if I'm going in the right direction.

So first off is an extra-beefy lion I drew a few days ago and decided to color tonight. I'm actually really pleased with this one.

I drew this raptor when I went to work with my dad this last week, using a statue of a roadrunner in the same pose as reference. My dad had been given the statue by some university clients of a school whose mascot was the roadrunner, and I thought it looked rather dinosaur...ish.
And this has nothing to do with character design, but is just so everyone will know that I have the coolest Iron Man action figure ever.
You know you're jealous.

The End of Another Sketchbook

2008-07-29T10:45:00.000-07:00

I successfully filled up another sketchbook. Which is a good sign of bad-habit-breaking for me. Back in the day, I used to always partially fill my sketchbooks, then I'd get a new one and just switch over. So I always had bunches of half-full sketchbooks lying around. But I've been doing pretty well with actually finishing them lately, and finishing them more quickly, drawing more often. So yeah. Better.

And I've started drawing my dogs a lot.
Here's the bishopric of my home ward here. Yeah, that's my dad in the middle.

McKinley sleeps funny, with his face all squished and his ears flopped up and his paws curled under. He's just a weird dog. And I love him. But as far as drawing goes, I like the top-right one of Hunter best. He's usually easier to draw, since he spends so much time lying around the house doing nothing.

I always feel obligated to draw something impressive and climactic on the last page of a sketchbook. But of course, as I sat on my bed musing about what sort of awesome drawing I could put on that fateful page, I started doodling my stuffed animals without really meaning to.
Anticlimax!

Exile

2008-07-14T19:43:00.000-07:00

As it says on my DeviantART, "I originally started sketching this picture this morning with the intent of experimenting a bit in Flash, and it was turning out really well, but after about an hour, my computer froze up without letting me save. And my lovely work vanished. I was most displeased. But after a prolonged period of angry brooding in which I browsed through custom content for the Sims 2, I decided I'd try again. And though the original magic of my first sketch is now lost to the carnivorous appetite of my laptop and its perpetual hibernation habits, I am decently satisfied with the final product of my experimentation."

Hooray. I also realized that this is my first serious lion picture of 2008. I mean, I sketch them all the time and draw silly cartoons of my fursona, Moth, but this is the first time this year I've done an all-out, shaded, realistic study of my most favorite feline. And as usual, no reference was used. I've drawn lions enough times that I just do it from memory nowadays.

Final Fantasy Infection

2008-07-12T07:20:00.000-07:00

Being home has wrought noticeable changes on my thought processes. And therefore my sketchbook. My productive skill-building life drawings are becoming more sparse, which I guess is understandable since I see the same people within my own house everyday instead of the multitude of unfamiliar faces I'm accustomed to seeing at school. And to make things even worse, my little sister, Hannah, has rekindled my old Final Fantasy fandom, thus infecting my sketchbook with useless fan drawings. I am ashamed. ...But apparently, I still like them enough to post them.

This first page at least was semi-productive. But then Hannah and I started drawing back and forth during church this last Sunday. She drew herself (Pinweasel) and I drew my lion persona, Moth, and later the dragon. Even this is tainted with the Final Fantasy-ness. Hannah totally made an inside joke in my sketchbook...about Cloud.
But these here have nothing to do with Final Fantasy. Yay. This is Rachel's pirate cat, Hobsen Brinepelt. He is grumpy and I like him.
But then we go right back to the fan art.
That one in the bottom-left corner was drawn by Hannah.

I do rather like the robot though. And my giraffe.
Hopefully my next post will be a little more original.

Flash Training and The Fourth

2008-07-05T16:26:00.001-07:00

So, I think I'm finally getting the hang of this Flash nonsense. Here's what I've managed to make so far. I know the animation's not the best, but I've never used Flash to animate before and I've never actually animated a four-legged animal either, except of course for that rat for Kelly's film, but that was an entirely different style. So all things considered, I'm decently satisfied with it as a rough.

And this is what I did after watching the tutorial on how to do clean-up work.
And of course, Happy 4th of July to everyone.
This is a shot from our local firework show. They shoot them off over the lake here and huge crowds form along the banks. Lots of people take boats out and watch from the water. Makes for good pictures.

Finally Home

2008-06-28T21:34:00.000-07:00

Well it's been over two weeks since my last entry and my entire lifestyle has pretty much changed since then. Spring Term is over, I managed two A's and an A-, and I'm finally back home in good ol' Georgia. It's been really nice to just relax at home with my family after six months of being away. I ended up getting quite the awesome surprise when my younger sister, Hannah, showed up at my door in Provo with my mom to help me move out. I had had no idea that she was coming. So we had a lot of fun touring around campus and generally just acting like crazies. But now we're back home. We still act like crazies, and she's been dragging me along on her biking adventures in an attempt to make up for my lack of walking to and from campus every day. It was pretty painful at first, but it's gradually getting better. We went out riding in the evening today instead of the morning, and it was actually really exciting. It wasn't ridiculously hot, which was nice, and we got to ride this dirt road through the forest at twilight when all the fireflies were coming out. And our timing was fortunate enough that we were standing on the old graffiti-covered wooden bridge when a train passed right beneath our feet. The wind coming off the cars nearly blew my helmet off.

In other news, I've started working for Flash Potatoes remotely. (Well, technically, I haven't quite started yet. I'm still training, but...still.) It's pretty awesome. I was fully expecting that I'd have to come home and get some lame, poorly-paying day job for the summer, just like everyone else. But instead I get to work from home, doing what I want to do. So my work doesn't cut into my home-time, and my lack of a car doesn't frustrate my work. Hooray. (But I have no idea how to make a Flash file work here on Blogger, so if someone would be so kind as to inform me how to upload a Flash movie, I would greatly appreciate it.)

Also, I went to the midnight showing of Wall-E. It was pretty much amazing. How they managed to pull so much emotion out of robots who barely speak....man. Brilliant.

Now on to the art stuff!

These are the stamps Stephanie and I made for the Museum of Peoples and Cultures. They're having this activity for kids called Passport where each kid gets a little passport and they go around to these stations, each of which teaches about a different culture. When they're finished with a station, they get a stamp in their passport. So these stamps represent the main exhibit (with the same Kachina doll I painted for the poster), the Great Basin, Mesoamerican, Ouelessebougou, Asian, and Polynesian. And now moving on to a bunch of sketchbook pages. I realize you guys already saw this page, but...it's got snow leopards on it now.
My bishopric, BYU 94th Ward
Random guy sitting across the aisle from Hannah and me on the plane home, a stretchy cat-thing, and Littlefoot. We watched The Land Before Time on my laptop during our flight and holy cow, Littlefoot has the most prolonged mourning period ever. He's basically emo for half the movie.
Reliving my childhood with some thrilling Pokemon fan art.
Hannah's feet, a duck, and my fantastically adorable dog, McKinley. He is big and fluffy and I love him to death.
Hannah (represented by the cat-otter-creature, Pinweasel) was cooking the other day and somehow managed to get too many pots going at once.

And here's my last shot of the semester for Kelly's red-head movie. Yay rat.

Classmates and a Crocodile

2008-06-13T15:07:00.000-07:00

Funny story. I got an email today from an animation studio here in Provo called Flash Potatoes. They want to give me a job. Apparently, they heard about me from Jake Wyatt (Thanks, Jake). So that's pretty exciting. Of course, I'm going home for summer, but hopefully we'll be able to work something out for fall. It would be pretty awesome if I could get a job animating. What better way to make money than to do what I love doing, right?

Other than that, my life has been pretty boring lately. I go to class (where I draw people instead of taking notes), I come home and read, and I animate hunchbacks and rats.

So here are some folks from my American Heritage lecture. I'm not terribly fond of most of this page, but I do like the girl with the pointy chin.

This one I like much better. The top two are students from my LDS History class, and the guy on the bottom is our teacher, Brother Fluhman, who is made of awesome.

Yay ducks. Man, sketching at the duck pond is harder than I thought. Those things never stop moving. Fortunately, I was able to find a mama duck sitting on her eggs. She was nice and still, though she didn't seem to appreciate my being so close to her nest. She kept spreading out her tail and hissing every time I moved.

Random folks from the ward, waiting around for our ride to Heber for our camp-out. ...And a donkey.

More people from LDS History...

I totally saw that crocodile in the clouds while I was lying on the floor in my apartment, staring at the sky through the window.

Hoorah American Heritage...bleck.

I thoroughly enjoy the Converse All-Stars. And then below that, I was playing with an idea of what Kim would look like as a cat.

This bird-thing was inspired by the shiny white highlight on the clock in the room where I have LDS History. I seem to be getting ideas from a lot of random places lately....

My American Heritage TA, Will.

Kung Fu Panda

2008-06-03T22:54:00.000-07:00

I went to a special preview showing of Kung Fu Panda this evening. It was awesome. It was actually a really great movie - better than I expected. It was very funny and original and had some good messages behind it. Jack Black really did an awesome job of making Po feel really natural while keeping him funny and likable. And I did like the message about believing in your own potential and abilities. Overall, it was a really fun movie to watch and I had a good time going up to Sandy with my friends, aunt, and cousins.

So now for the art update!
This is a speedpainting I did the other day while my roommates and I were going over our American Heritage reading. It was mostly just an exercise in color theory and impressionism. I ended up making it into a get-well card for my sick Grammy.

And then we have some more random sketchbook pages. Below are some students in my LDS History class along with an exciting robotic bird-type-thing. I like the guy with the tall hair, but he cut it all off a few days later.

And then there's Stitch, Tarzan, and a rat I'm currently animating for Kelly's film.

Speaking of which, here's my most recent shot of Igor.

Winter 2008 Animations

2008-05-27T21:13:00.000-07:00

So here are the five animations I did this last semester while taking Special Projects Animation with Kelly Loosli.

This first one is just a simple box lift exercise to get me back into the swing of animating things. The assignment was just to convey a sense of weight.

These next two are for a film Kelly is working on. I'm mostly animating this guy, Igor. He's the classic henchman of the mad scientist who runs around doing the scientist's bidding, usually wearing himself out and putting himself in danger.

These last two were open assignments. I was to animate my own character doing whatever I wanted. So I decided to do Pinweasel, the critter persona of my sister, Hannah. This first one is the shot I ended up submitting with my application to the Animation program.

The Friday Crowd

2008-05-24T14:49:00.000-07:00

Since I don't have school on Fridays and I haven't been doing well with drawing people lately, I decided to take a sketchbook day yesterday. I really need to get better about drawing people more often. I'm not terribly good at it right now, so it's kinda discouraging, but I'm gonna push through it. Eventually, I'll figure out what the heck I'm doing.
Random people in The Terrace

The one in ink on the bottom-right was my favorite of the day. I felt like I was struggling a lot today, but this guy really turned out just how I wanted him to.

There were a bunch of really shady-looking characters playing cards in The Terrace. It made me laugh. The things that classify as rebellious here....

The interior of the office in the Brimhall building where they write the Daily Universe.

There was some strange Fathers and Sons activity going on when I passed through Helaman Halls walking home and I couldn't pass up the chance to draw a bunch of middle-aged men and little boys. Plus, there was a cute lil girl too. Then there was this one girl walking around looking really angry with life.

Collaboration, Computers, and Culture

2008-05-22T18:15:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I posted anything on my blog here, so I've got a couple of different things I've done lately that I haven't yet shared.This first one is actually a collaboration between Hannah and I. And yes, those are Digimon. We're geeks like that. First, she drew herself with traditional media on the right, then she scanned it and emailed it to me. Then I went in and digitally added myself on the left side with Photoshop.

This is Croc, the hero of an old video game called "Croc: Legend of the Gobbos." I recently downloaded this game and started playing it on my computer. Naturally, I remembered why I liked it so much, so I decided to draw a picture about it. So here's Croc with the king of the Gobbos.

This is my contribution to the Anthro Sketch Exchange for the month of May. I got assigned this adorable bunny character, NQN. She was a lot of fun to draw, especially after drawing rabbits at the Bean Museum to better familiarize myself with what they really look like.

And this is indirectly for American Heritage, you could say. See, I have to do ten hours of service in the community for American Heritage, so Stephanie, Pando, and I have volunteered to work two hours a week at the Museum of Peoples and Cultures just south of campus. By a stroke of good fortune, I got set up doing design work for the advertising department. So I've been designing the new poster for the museum. I painted this picture in Photoshop to go at the bottom of the poster; hopefully it will be a good eye-catcher. It's one of the "Kachina dolls" they have on display right now.

So that's what I've been doing lately, as far as art goes. Other than this stuff, I've just been working on another animation for Kelly's red-head movie. I'll have to figure out how to post some animations here later. But this is all for now. :)

Bean Museum IV and V

2008-05-09T17:58:00.001-07:00

Only having school three days a week during this Spring Term has allowed a lot of free time for Bean Museum trips. And every time I go back, I enjoy it more and become more confident in my drawings. I'm loving it. :) Stephanie and I are gradually becoming addicted to that place.

Bean Museum III

2008-05-03T09:00:00.000-07:00

I went to the Bean Museum with Stephanie again yesterday. We spent the whole time in the basement, the scary part. Most of the museum is very well-kept and comfortable, with the animals carefully arranged and plenty of seating much appreciated by us sketching types. But the basement is very different. It's a cavernous sort of hallway that loops around the base of the building in a wide square. Its poorly lit white walls are covered with glass cases full of very blatantly dead animals. While some are stuffed and posed to look more natural, many of them have not yet reached that stage. The majority of the shelves are covered with birds lying on their backs, their feet tied, and stuffing in their eyes. It's like something out of a horror movie or what you'd expect to see in a witch's pantry. Bats laying flat with their wings spread out, rats with their limbs tied up, snakes and toads floating in glass jars... It's certainly not the most welcoming place. But they do have a lot of really cool birds and stuff, so we just stuck to drawing the ones that looked at least somewhat living.

Affinity

2008-04-27T16:12:00.001-07:00

It's finally done and finally scanned. I'm very very happy about how this turned out. It ended up taking me a total of 30 and a half hours over four days. I pulled an all-nighter at one point, worked for 10 and a half hours in one day, and went to sleep at 5 am. It's about 25 x 19 inches. Here's the description I put with it on DeviantART:

"She wasn't sure what it was...whether it was the elegance of their figures, or the grace of their movements, or the power of their limbs. Perhaps it was the flexing of their paws as they walked or the bobbing of their tails or the way their manes flowed over their necks. She wasn't sure what it was...Maybe it was those golden eyes and the intensity with which their gazes met...She couldn't describe it. But whatever it was, it drove her to this life and she could not resist it...

-----------------------------------------

My final project for my Figure Drawing class. Props to my three awesome friends/models who were willing to climb all over Rock Canyon Park like wild animals for me. I don't know that many people have friends who'd be willing to do that for the sake of art.

(Prismacolor pencil on "camel" Ingre paper - 30 hours...over 4 days. So not healthy.)"

General Conference Weekend

2008-04-06T16:55:00.001-07:00

This weekend, I watched the broadcast of the 178th Annual General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. While watching, I sketched out these caricatures of nine members of the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles who addressed us. I've never considered myself much good at caricatures, but I think these turned out rather well. I think Monson and Perry are my favorites.

These are a couple of studies and sketches I've been doing lately to more firmly establish my ideas for the piece I'll be doing for my Figure Drawing final project. This is, I think, one of my more intriguing characters. I tend to gravitate back to her when I'm feeling more introspective. Hopefully, the final piece will turn out well. Three of my friends and I went up to Rock Canyon Park yesterday, where I took a bunch of pictures of them crouching and crawling on the rocks for reference. Now I just need to go back to the Bean Museum and take more pictures of lion hair and find some good pictures online of some lion skulls and I should be ready to go. I'm pretty excited about this picture.

This character has appeared previously in these two pieces from 2007: "Hero" and "Maybe I'm a Lion".

Bean Museum

2008-04-03T20:55:00.001-07:00

My teacher never showed up for Figure Drawing today, so Stephanie and I took the chance to do some sketching at the Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum. It was pretty awesome. Especially since I really didn't feel like figure drawing today...and I'm tired of our substitute teacher....and I was in a super-wildlife mood after watching Planet Earth last night...and they have a special lion exhibit up right now. :D It made me happy.

Likeshine

2008-03-26T16:28:00.001-07:00

This last month, I joined the Anthro Sketch Exchange community on LiveJournal. Basically, the idea is that a bunch of artists sign up for a certain month's exchange by posting a description and reference images of their original anthropomorphic or animal character(s). Then, at the beginning of each month, the names of those who signed up are mixed up and randomly redistributed. So each participant gets assigned someone else's character to draw. This is my first time doing it and I had a lot of fun. It's a great challenge, trying to adapt someone else's creation into your own style. This time, I was assigned Likeshine, a bright green martial eagle/cheetah gryphon. Likeshine is a very well-known character and artist in the world of online fantasy and animal art, so I was slightly intimidated, but really excited by the assignment to draw her. I sketched this out during my Archaeology class, during which I was obviously paying avid attention, and colored it in Photoshop CS3 when I should have been working on my research paper for Physical Science. I am the best college student ever. But I am pleased with the result of my procrastination. She's so pretty and shiny.

Cats

2008-03-23T13:30:00.000-07:00

I recently got the DVD of the musical Cats and watched it for the first time in years. I used to watch it all the time as a kid, so I had a lot of fun reminiscing about my childhood back home. I was on such a Cats high afterwards that I had to vent it off with some art. It's been a while since I did any straight-up digital art. I've been so busy with sketches for school and animations that I haven't had a lot of time to exercise my tablet. It feels good to just break out and do some personal art every once in a while. Ya know, the stuff that doesn't conform to an assignment or a deadline, but is done just because you want to do it.