I’ve been interested in doing pinups for a while now, but have held off for a few reasons. The first is my lack of confidence in drawing the human form. The nature of a pinup has more of the figure revealed which brings into focus my issues on drawing the human form. I’ve also hesitated because of this site. I’ve been unsure if I wanted to post images of nude figures, with an erotic overtone, on this blog.

If I imagine doing a study of a master painting in which the figures are completely nude, I’d post it here with no hesitation. I have no issues posting images of zombies with flesh hanging off. I think part of my hesitation has to do with issues of sex and how it’s viewed in the greater social arena of the United States. Mainstream culture seems fine with violence and artistic nudity, but not is otherwise sexually oppressed. I have a very open mind, but I think I’ve been subtly influenced by that trend.

The other side of my hesitation comes from a lack of clarity in regards to my target audience. I have an interest in cute things and have considered illustrating children’s books. That interest makes me hesitate putting ‘questionable’ content here. Once again I take note of some of the works I’ve already put up here that I might consider questionable for a younger audience, but didn’t have the same hesitation in posting.

I still haven’t decided how I want to deal with this subject. If I want to fully post such material here, or partially censor it as I’m going to try and do with this post, or if I want to create a blog elsewhere for such content.

Anyhow, onto the art. I really felt inspired to do fanart of my Death Knight, her name is Ashemadre. She seemed all sexy and badass, so I decided to combine my interest in pinups with the inspiration of my character. I wanted to simplify the drawing to make it as stress-free as possible. That mainly involved hiding the arms and legs within the clothing. I knew that was the easy way out, but I was okay with that for this drawing.

As I’m back-posting this to the appropriate date, I have the opportunity to include an updated version and a critique I received from an artist I admire, Paul Richards.

The work in progress I did for my daily image:

Working on it more a couple days later:

And you can see the critique here. Thanks Paul! His comments were very helpful and I plant to revisit this painting again.

Some of that was due to time constraints. I wasn’t sure exactly how to approach those sections or exactly how I wanted him to walk. I’d jump to the next section so I could keep the action moving and then I’d approach the walks later.

The timing definitely still needs work, but I like the overall feel. There are some areas where I wanted to have a pause and I just didn’t space out the drawings enough for that to come through (such as when he first checks on the dog. His hand is supposed to hover above the dog for a moment and then he quickly taps it).

So far this is my favorite part of 2d animation, the really rough figuring things out stage. I only have 13 more days until this is due and I imagine I’ll only be in the lab for a handful of said days. Lots to do! I’m hoping to make it in on Sunday, Monday and maybe Tuesday as well. But of course I need to put time into my other projects as well. I’m looking forward to finishing up this semester and having time for my own projects, but I’m having fun.

Today I felt the excitement again and jumped on in. I have some sections I need to refine and polish, but overall I felt something needed to be done about the timing. Where I had left off, both jumps felt the same as far as the beats are concerned. There was variation in height and action, but I felt they didn’t have enough contrast. I started playing with the timing of the first jump to see how it would feel. I really slowed things down going into the jump and then went back to “real time” as he comes out of the apex of the jump.

I really think it’s an improvement. Now when I watch it, I think both jumps stand out. Slowing down the timing of the first jump is going to give me a nice opportunity to play up his expressions in that section (now that you can see them!).

To do:

• Work on the first pose and anticipation. Possibly a transition A to B pose of him getting ready to move (cracking knuckles, stretching sorta thing).
• Fix the intro/outro of the second jump. The timing feels off a bit.
• Work on the last “hop”. Doesn’t feel right yet.
• Refine expressions and hand poses.
• Offset keyframes after everything else is done!

Here’s where I left off:
wushu midterm

Adjusting the timing of the first jump:
wushu refinement 01

Hmm, a bit of funkyness with PodPress. I’ll have to get that sorted out.

I didn’t get any homework done today, but during the workshop I did start a painting. I’ve been hoping to use the wacom workshop as a chance to do some quick speed paintings, but today was the first time I was able to (previously I had too much homework). I was flipping through one of my art books before the workshop and was digging the forest images.

Here’s what I have after two hours. I have lots of ideas on how I want to proceed with it, but regardless I want to keep it loose. At the moment though, mainly I think because of the linework, I think the house stands out a bit.

The top one is from the Cloud World universe, the bottom image doesn’t have a home yet. It almost looks like it could be underwater, though that wasn’t what I had in mind. I’m thinking it’s a jungle area with a lot of plant growth and a dense atmosphere.

I based the comic off of a story, Skyships and Tech Chips, by Tim set in the Cloud World universe.

I focused on one small section of the story to make it easier on my self. It was an interesting exercise, taking someones written material and creative ideas and making my own interpretation. I have a lot of other projects I’m working on right now, so for the moment this one is set aside, but I do hope to revisit and finish it.

I turned in my animation project on Monday and got some nice feedback. It’s still far from finished, I unfortunately got way distracted by Lord of the Rings Online. I like where it’s going though and I’ll be finishing it up over the next week. In fact I’ll be working to have all the animations I did over this semester polished by June 30th, the deadline to submit demo reels for the Fall ’08 Pixar Class.

[display_podcast]

The premise for this animation is a businessman sits down at a park bench to eat his lunch, when he notices a group of pigeons watching him. He gets nervous and transfers to another bench, for a moment feeling safe, until he realizes there are even more birds in that area.

I have the first section blocked out, I need to add in the second bench section and then refine all the keys (as well as adding the pigeons and lunch box).

[display_podcast]

So far I’ve just been blocking out the run cycle, this is my first time to attempt one. I spent a good 5 or so hours on the first 7 frames of animation. It took a long time for me to work out the pacing and to get a good idea how far each cycle would go (distance). I needed that information to block out the rest of the steps leading up to the ledge. I feel happy with where it’s at right now and I’ve since moved on to blocking out the rest of the animation. I took a break and did a little scene building as well.