Archive for the 'Life' Category

Page 24 of 35

Art Class: Day 7

7_01.jpg7_02.jpg7_03.jpg

We got to work more on our comics today in the morning class. Specifically, we had to finish transfering (and by “transfer” I mean “redraw”) our comics from our sketchbooks onto bristol paper, which is much higher-quality paper. The comic pages above are scans from my sketchbook, so they’re a lot messier than they actually are on the bristol paper. I’d scan what I have on the better paper, but they’re pretty much just the same thing, and I’d rather just wait until we’re done inking and scan them all at once.

We also worked with oil pastels on bristol paper, and she taught us a technique where we had to go over most of the paper with one color, and then draw stuff in pencil over it. The oil pastel on the paper kinda reduced the friction, so it felt odd when drawing on it in pencil because my lines would go further than expected. Then we had to use a darker version of the color (I forgot the technical term, but it’s like… if you start with yellow, you use orange) to do shading and stuff, and a lighter color for highlights. Then we used some bold color for clothing (in my case, blue), and then we made cross-hatching patterns with the pointy end of a thumbtack. I think it ended up looking pretty nice.


And here’s the progress I made today on the animation. I basically finished the cat and mouse running, the turning around, and the sunglasses guy holding up his gun. The last thing is supposed to be him shooting his gun, but I didn’t really get to finish with that, so it just looks like he’s moving it up.

Art Class: Day 6

6_01.jpg6_02.jpg6_03.jpg6_04.jpg

We finished watching the rest of Persepolis in the morning class today. It was good. Then we spent the rest of class time working on our comics. The first image up there is the third page, and it was actually something I did yesterday (because it was our weekend homework to do a third page). I drew another two pages in class, and I really like the fifth page (which is the third one up there) for some reason. Probably because the random enemy pirate character that I just made up on the spot actually turned out pretty nicely. And we have Unnamed Character from a different angle; an angle which I don’t think I’ve ever done before. The fourth image up there is actually from the afternoon class. It was from a drawing activity where we each got a different set of cards (one was a mouth, one was a set of eyes) and we had to draw our characters with that face. These aren’t really faces I use very often (or at all), so they sort of look weird.


I made this yesterday when I was bored. The cat’s running animation isn’t really that great, because I had a hard time visualizing how its running animation would look like due to its short legs. Other than that, I think it turned out nicely, especially for something I just decided to do for no reason.


And here’s what we did in the afternoon animation class today. We made animatics, which are basically like storyboards with the pictures put on an timeline. After setting up a few important keyframes, we went and animated some of the stuff in between them, which you can see in the example above. All of our animations share a common theme, which is to have a mouse enter at the beginning and exit at the end.

My story basically goes like this: there’s a cat chasing a mouse, and they run up a tree. Unnamed Character is like “oh noes” when she sees the cat in the tree, so she goes into an imagination sequence where she tries to save the cat but is stopped by a government agent for whatever reason. The agent shoots at Unnamed Character, and she does a matrix dodge and flies into the tree and saves the cat. Then the mouse exits. It’s clearly not done yet, but I guess I’ll be posting what I have at the end of each day.

Art Class: Day 5 (And Suwako Jump)

In the morning class today, we we spent some time learning how to use scratchboards. Scratchboards are pretty cool, except I bought one of those really expensive ones (they were the only ones I could find), so I didn’t really experiment much on it in fear of messing up, especially since I only had one. Then, we watched part of the movie Persepolis. It’s really well-animated and uses black and white effectively. I guess we’ll be finishing the rest of the movie on Monday. Anyway, there’s not much I can actually scan today.


Later on during the afternoon class, we finished making jumping animations. I started on a Suwako jumping animation because it was suggested by someone in the previous blog entry. Then I drew a fancy background with lily pads and water and ripple effects. After we finished with those, we went over walk cycles, and I attempted (and failed) to make a successful walking animation.

Art Class: Day 4

04_01.jpg04_02.jpg04_03.jpg

Today in the morning class, we had a guest speaker who talked to us about some important plot elements: antagonists, inciting incidents, resolutions, and guiding ideas. It was interesting because I never really consider these things when I make daily flashes; I just make them. I kinda find it easier to just make them without thinking of these things, but that’s probably more suited for things that are made quickly and often, as opposed to longer works that take a lot more time to make. Then we got to work on our comics and stuff. I redrew the first page so Unnamed Character is at school instead of on a random street.

In the afternoon class, we worked on some morphs. I did CatBread, and when I finished, I made UnnamedBox. Then we learned about squash and stretch! We spent the last few minutes animating something jumping, so I made a jumping cat. I don’t know why I keep drawing cats.

Art Class: Day 3 (And Hina Spin)


Here’s some stuff I did in class. In the morning class, we were supposed to draw something bad happening to our character, and later we had to draw the problem being resolved somehow. Unnamed Character avoided death-by-car because she fell to the ground after dodging a bullet from an imaginary pirate. Then we did some figure drawing, and I had to stand in one spot for like ten minutes while people drew me. The person posing next to me got to sit in a chair, but I guess that’s fine, since she sort of offered me the seat before we began. Anyway, for homework, we had to sketch out the first page for a possible comic.

In the afternoon class, we went over some more flash basics, and went over character rotation. Since I had already animated Unnamed Character spinning, I decided to animate Hina, based on some of the comments from yesterday. I colored it even though we weren’t really supposed to, but it didn’t take that long. I’m getting more used to using “those circles with the lines through them” now, but I kinda notice that sometimes it makes character heads a lot wider than they would normally be, which kinda reminds me of Hidamari Sketch (although my whole art style is basically inspired by Hidamari, so that’s not very unusual to me). Anyhow, I might use this animation again later if I can think of something to use it for.

Continue reading ‘Art Class: Day 3 (And Hina Spin)’