Batman's birthday party

Cranked this one out for a friend's b-day.  I experimented a little with custom Photoshop brushes trying to make it look less digital.  I think I still prefer ArtRage to PS for that kind of style, but maybe I just haven't found the right brush settings yet.  I realized when I printed this one that the brush texture looks more like a printer error than canvas.  This is one of those strange situations where the "natural media" is more apparent in its digital form.  Ah well.

Someday I should learn to draw with some kind of vector-based software such as Illustrator, for those times when I want to get crisp lines and shapes.  I suppose this could have been one of those times... but clean art takes a surprisingly long time. :P

Searching for the ever-elusive electronic sketchbook

I've been waiting a long time for someone to make the perfect tablet that I can take on the road, one that could actually replace a good old-fashioned sketchbook.  I know artists are quite a niche market, but surely there are enough of us out there that there's some demand for this sort of thing?  WACOM and Adobe seem to do alright for themselves by catering to us creative types.

Here's my tablet wishlist:

• Pressure-sensitive stylus, ideally with buttons/eraser
• Bright screen (for use outdoors)
• Lightweight
• Decent battery life
• Can run Photoshop/ArtRage/etc. without lagging too badly
• Some kind of keyboard, integrated or attachable
• Decent hard drive size or expandable storage via SD card, etc.
• Fully functional desktop-style OS

I've been getting by with a Toshiba Portege M400 for a few years.  The pen is decent, and I believe it uses actual WACOM drivers from back when they were touting their "Penabled" tech.  The laptop itself, however, is not really the ideal portable sketchbook.  It's nearly 5 pounds, the old battery dies after about an hour, it runs hot and the screen is pretty dim.  I can sit on a couch and use it while it's plugged in, and that's been useful, but I'd really love to get a snazzy new tablet that I could take to the zoo and do some animal drawing.  Now that the general public is starting to incorporate them into their daily lives, companies are tripping over themselves to come up with new models and meet demand.  It's a good time to start shopping around for my dream machine.

But while reviews for these new gadgets have been plentiful, I've been hard-pressed to find ones that are geared towards the needs of the artist.  I've spent hours scouring the internet just trying to figure out which devices have pressure-sensitive touchscreens!  Why is this so difficult to find?  We need more artists like Jeffrey at SolidSmack who take the time to give us the info that we want.  Thanks Jeffrey :)

In the meantime, in case anybody else is also in the market for a new toy, here's a roundup of the models I'm considering that most closely meet all the items on my wishlist:

Sony Vaio Duo 11

Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet 2

Lenovo ThinkPad X230

Samsung ATIV Smart PC 500T

Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro 700T

Microsoft Surface Pro

Asus VivoTab

Asus EEE Slate B121

All of them are fairly light and have pressure-sensitive pen capability, although the digitizer tech varies.  A few of them use N-Trig, which I hear is pretty decent given the right hardware, though I haven't gotten to try it out yet.  The Samsung models use the proprietary S-Pen tech, which I haven't been too fond of.  I assume the Surface will have its own tech as well.  And the two Asus models use WACOM.  

The Vaio and ThinkPad X230 both have keyboards attached, which adds to their bulk and weight, but also makes it so there's less pieces to worry about losing.  I'm leaning more towards the dockable or detachable keyboards rather than integrated or separate Bluetooth ones.  The VivoTab's keyboard in particular seems enticing because it adds extra battery life when attached.

The ThinkPad X230 and EEE Slate run Windows 7, while the rest are on Windows 8, in case that's pertinent to anybody.

Price points vary based on hard drive size, RAM, processor, and other factors, so the range runs from around $750 up to $1200.  If that's too steep for you, there are always older devices available on eBay, which is how I came to own my Toshiba.  Buying used tech tends to come with some risk, though - old batteries that don't hold a good charge, chewed up cables, broken USB ports, etc.  But for the starving artist, little inconveniences are worth putting up with; you can't really beat a touchscreen computer for 200 bucks.

If you have any more recommendations, please leave a comment!

A rather involved birthday present

My mom turned 60 this year and I spent the better part of 2 months on a gift for her that I'd had in mind for a while.  A long time ago she wrote a children's story and I've wanted to illustrate it.  So what better incentive to get off my lazy butt and draw?  Of course, my timing could have been better... crunch at Sony is wearing me down.  But it was nice to come home, even late at night, and do something different.  Here's the first page I took through layout into color:

Mom's always been fond of Little Golden books, and has quite a large collection of them.  I went with a simple design and soft pastel palette, similar to many of the stories from the 1950s.  Also managed to track down the font they used to use!  I'm no good with watercolors though, which was a typical medium back then.  I used a rather odd combination of media to get this book done - Maya for image composition, traditional pencil/paper for cleanup and character design, Photoshop for page layout, and Artrage to simulate pencil/pastel in the final color pass.

Why not just use actual colored pencils/pastels, you may ask?  I do enjoy coloring with real art supplies, but I have a few reasons for going digital: for one thing, I have several sets of supplies and still can't find any pencils or sticks with a decent flesh tone.  What's up with that?  Rather than spending a lot of money at Utrecht trying to find all the hues that I need, I can draw in the computer and get whatever darn color I want.  I'm also rather fond of layers and the undo button, and as I'm on a tight production schedule, I don't have time to make mistakes on paper that necessitate starting over.  As an extra plus, I'm saving trees!

ArtRage is a bit tricky to get the hang of, but once you get used to it, it's rather fun.  The brushes react whatever canvas you've chosen, and the color blending works pretty well.  It's really all about finding the right brush settings for your particular art style.  I didn't like the default oil paint tool and was tempted to dismiss it all together, but the right brush helped me really enjoy painting the cover for the book.  I definitely want to paint more in the future.

Mom loved the present, which is exactly what I hoped for!  But what I hadn't expected was the interest from other people at the birthday party as well.  She and I are now wondering whether it's worth trying to self-publish through something like lulu.com or Amazon.  We'll see...

How important is the face?

I just saw this interesting article on NPR about human facial expressions and how they can be misleading if taken out of context of the body pose:

http://www.npr.org/2012/11/30/166184008/victory-or-defeat-emotions-arent-all-in-the-face

Check out this picture from the article:

Can you tell who is happy and who is upset?

As an animator I spend a lot of time tweaking a character's facial rig controls into something resembling the emotion I want to portray, but I wonder, just how important is it, compared to getting the body motion working?  It may seem a little backwards, since I've been told that people look at the eyes and face of a person more than everything else.  There have even been studies done that track where an audience is looking during any particular shot of a movie:


Lots of focus on the face, though obviously in this scene there isn't a whole lot of action going on.  I'd be curious to find another example with a lot of full body motion happening.

Still, I suppose the main point is, getting a strong pose may be MORE important than getting the facial expression working.  The audience may not be directly focusing on the curve of the spine or the position of the legs and arms, but they "feel" the pose subconsciously and know when something is off, even if they can't quite put their finger on it.

Of course, that's not to say that the face is not important at all.  It all works together.  But just think of some examples of characters where the face is very simplified or missing all together, and you can still make out their emotions: WALL-E, Luxo Jr., Aladdin's magic carpet, Jack Skellington (no pupils), Gromit (no mouth).

Instant feelings

I've been chuckling over various Tumblrs and blog posts lately, the ones that just collect a bunch of random animated GIFs to represent how the author reacted to certain things (news, a celebrity faux pas, a silly forum comment, etc.). I find them fascinating because they are able to convey a feeling in just a few seconds. I want to start studying GIFs more and analyze what it is about particular snippets of videos that capture the essence of an emotion.

Here's a good one to start:

It features a change of emotion; he starts out pretty neutral, perhaps even a bit bored. His eyebrows are relaxed, his eyelids drooping over his pupils, and his mouth hanging slightly open.  Then in an instant you see his brows furrow and lower, his eyes open and dart to the left, then back to focus on the speaker.  His whole head tilts a bit in disbelief before freezing in position, facing slightly away from the other guy.  Definitely a "WTF?" moment.

There's a lot going on in such a deceptively simple gesture, but breaking it down helps me understand how and a bit of why it works.  Unfortunately it also kind of makes it less funny, which I find troublesome.  What if I need to animate a funny scene?  If I break stuff down to the point that I no longer find it humorous, how will I know whether it's working or not?

30-Day Drawing Challenge: Day 8

Day 8 is "favorite animated character." I could rattle off my top 20 list easily, but in terms of which character had the most profound influence on me as a budding animator, I'd have to go with Timon.

When The Lion King came out, I was 13 years old and I'd already known for about 10 of them that I wanted to be an animator.  Something about Timon's squashy/stretchy body and face really appealed to me, and when I got my hands on the VHS, I popped it into my parents' VCR and frame-by-framed every scene he was in, trying to master his hand poses, facial expressions, line of action, and attitude in my trusty sketchbook.

Looking back on it now, Timon was probably one of the easier characters to draw.  Maybe I should have challenged myself more.  I tried drawing Simba and Rafiki a few times, but kept coming back to Timon.  Of course had I kept up my drawing, maybe I would have gotten good enough to draw any character I wanted!  Sadly I'm still not at that level of skill necessary to keep characters on model, do turnarounds,  come up with appealing poses, draw from imagination, etc. etc.

When I took an class at the Animation Guild in Burbank, I realized just how much I have to learn if I ever want to become a decent 2D animator.  I struggled with every class assignment and was never satisfied with any of my pieces.  What would my 13-year-old self say to me if she saw where I was today?

This evening, I popped in The Lion King and sketched out frames from a Timon scene in my sketchbook, just like old times.  It's never too late to get back into it!

30-Day Drawing Challenge: Day 7

Day 7 is our favorite word.  This one conjures up so many different and wonderful images in my brain...

Adventure on the Atari 2600 was one of the very first video games I ever played.  The graphics were so rudimentary that we couldn't really tell what some things were without the instruction book.  Keys and castles were easy enough, but... was that a dragon or a duck? Do you kill him with... an arrow?

Seriously, for about 25 years I'd been picking up the sword the wrong way.  You can kill the dragon with either end of it, so I just figured it was an arrow since that's what it looked like to me when I was 5 years old. I don't see how that's any more nonsensical than a plumber eating mushrooms and stomping on turtles.  I just had to incorporate that silliness into my artwork. :)

The graphics may have been simple, but for me, it truly was an adventure.  It had mazes, secret passages, hidden rooms, terrifying enemies popping out of nowhere, keys to unlock castle gates, and shiny treasure to discover.  To this day I still love to play it.  I've discovered new games in the interim, one of which inspired the top half of my picture.  Sword & Sworcery gave me that same sense of wonder as I took control of the Scythian and got lost in the mountains of Mingi Taw.

Of course, I love going on real adventures too!  I have fond memories of growing up and going camping, tidepooling, fishing, and travelling to all sorts of places with my family.  Nowadays it's a little harder since I don't get summer vacation anymore.  But Tommy and I try to take at least one vacation somewhere new each year.

Ultimately, to me, the very word evokes the discovery of something new, of stepping outside one's comfort zone and being open to experience something that could change your life.  It involves risk, sometimes small, sometimes large.  I generally prefer the smaller risks.  One can have adventures without being reckless, after all :)