Lunch time sketching

Flannel wearing lumberjack hipster with boots! I sketched my coworker today because he's always so stylish and such a character! People in NYC are definitely a lot more polished and stylish here vs. the West Coast where everyone is always dressed down and wearing a t-shirt. I really appreciate New York fashion with its clean lines and polished looks. I'm not a slave to fashion but I really like it when people look put together, it shows me that they took the time to make themselves presentable and want to make a good impression on the world. After all, sometimes you only get to make one good impression-- usually that's what most people remember anyway.

One Big Blog Dumpage...

What I've been working on the last few weeks and my initial sketches and thumbnails, color studies before I did the final painting in Photoshop. It could use more tweaking but for now this is fine. I will probably be working on this during the summer time and getting my work polished before submitting my portfolio.

Before I do a final black and white drawing, I draw smaller thumbnails to work out the composition and to make sure all the foreground, middle-ground, and perspective are all working together. You don't want to invest too much time and effort on a concept that may not work, so drawing the smaller thumbnails either 2x3s or 3x5s will help with quickly coming up with concepts. If one doesn't work, you can do a few more from a different view to get a more dynamic scene. For this establishing shot, I probably re drew the thumbnails more than twice. Then I drew the black and white rendering in col-erase Tuscan Prismacolor animation pencils (so that it doesn't smear or you can use graphite, whatever your preference) on a 9x12 drawing pad Strathmore 400 series. You want to use better paper so that when you are doing the shading and values, its easier to render. The actual drawing is 7x10 and after I scanned it I desaturated the color in Photoshop to get a more penciled look. Then I was ready to paint.

Final Character Rendering: Sacha North.

This is my finished 3D character rendering of my character design for the thesis book I'm working on. I have to say that I had such a fun time doing this! To concept a character, imagining their personality, designing the clothes and the movements are what I truly love doing the most. This is the protagonist of my thesis story "Neo New York", character's name is Sacha North. As you can already tell its got a Native American Indian look and feel to it. I'll post more of the Visual Development soon.... Below you can see the finalized sketch I started with before I painted this in Photoshop. You'll notice the differences as I've changed the design of the feathers and skirt shapes in the finalized versions. The original skirt shape just didn't make any sense and I thought it didn't fit with the character, then i found a reference photo and it made all the difference =).

Vampire Girl

I've been experimenting with new brushes that a friend of mine sent me a link to, download here. This is a past post on a sketch I did a few months ago but never got around to coloring, I've been trying to experiment with a few different brushes this semester and color schemes. Hopefully after this spring semester I'll be able to sketch more ideas with this Vampire character, creating characters is what I love the most! I'm also taking a digital background painting for animation class online this semester which I am learning a lot from! I'm so lucky to be studying under Ken Spirduso who worked on the backgrounds for Brother Bear, he is an amazing artist and instructor! I'll be super busy from here on out as the semester is getting busier (last two semesters of grad school) and I am working on my thesis concept art book everyday like a crazy person!

Thesis Character - Sacha North

Working on these character poses all last week. I finally settled on a style for my thesis character. I did reference a lot of Stephen Silver's work, I love his character designs and I recently bought his character design app! Which is totally worth it to get inspiration from, he freakin rocks.

Anyway, I had a ton of fun drawing these! As you can see this character is fun, energetic, and quite the adventurer. My thesis story has a lot to do with Native American Spirituality fused with the future. Its titled "Neo New York" Will have more to tell soon!

Oh Homer.

This is a class assignment I did last week. New semester, more drawings! I am proud to say that I am 4 classes shy of obtaining my MFA in Visual Development for Animation! Oh yeah! Soon school will be nothing but a faded memory...

I'm taking a directed studies class... which means I can cater the assignments to working on my thesis and drawings!  I'm taking Visual Elements of Story again so I can develop my artwork further. It really is a good class and a pre-requisite course for the Visual Development Artist.

I have til the end of the year to complete my thesis. Woohoooooo! This Homer assignment was necessary to do to make sure we have the experience and practice for following structure when constructing a character. In animation there is a style guide or style sheet for the characters that you follow for drawing consistency and because in reality whether you are working for a studio or on a feature film, there always several people working on a character.

I'm really excited this semester to really get cranking on my drawings and to really see what I come up with. Its going to be a busy Spring semester for me as I also work a 9-5 job! Everyday I'm hustlin!! That's the New York City energy, gotta love it.

I may be M.I.A. for a while, just a heads up. =p But I will try to post more updates.


xo
Diane

Jessica

Graphite on illustration board. I recently made this available as a print, iPhone cases, and various other products on my Society6 store. As the name implies, lately I've just been inspired to draw female sensuality and really what makes us women attractive. I know this is an attractive drawing, but women are so much more than a pretty face. We have depth and dimension to our being... capable of more than just love and compassion but we are strong and independent... and the list goes on! So if you're interested in owning a print of this artwork, follow the link here -> Society6

Week ending.

This pretty much sums up the end of my work week! So dramatic! Haha. Waiting for the L train sucked and some assole pulled the emergency break so we were stuck underground for 20 mins. Sheesh. Hauling my big clunky purse and big art bag full of blank canvases and paints from Utrecht, I have a Landscape painting class online this fall so look out for my attempts at Landscape painting! Ok maybe this is an exaggeration, but this was really my outfit on Friday! I love this burgundy skirt, my fave! Have a nice weekend ya'll!

Paranorman

I love drawing Fanart! I also took my 10 year old to go see this movie a few weeks ago when it came out, very cute movie! I've been obsessively drawing before I got to bed, its my ritual =) I've surprised myself this week, I've been drawing everyday, when it hits it hits!

Brooklyn Hipsterette

Fall is here!

Fall is here! Yay! I've been experimenting with different colors lately and just really very excited that the weather is finally changing =)

Big Booty

More Sacha North Character Explorations

Good news, I passed my Thesis Review at the Academy of Art University! I'm now approved for my project concept that I presented last week to a panel of instructors at the school. My panel included Charles Keagle, David Netherey, and Phillip Morris who've all at one point either worked for Disney, Pixar and ILM, they are a great group of instructors with a lot of knowledge and suggestions that they imparted during our discussion. It was such a great experience being able to present my ideas and getting approved to proceed with working on it. I'm so happy that I have literally 6 classes left, which means this fall, next spring, and I can finish next summer. I am excited! Here are more color explorations I did for my main thesis character.

Get your own Boba Tea! Captain underpants doesn't share!

Here's an illustration I did for a Character Design class last spring semester while I still lived in San Francisco. I added a quick little sketch of a background and some color today in photoshop while using my trusty little wacom tablet! So handy! lol.

No you can't have any of my boba tea, get your own you hairy monster! lol.

Let's play in the rain!

Today's illustration is from an old sketch I did in my Character Design class at the Academy of Art last spring. Since the drawing I did had very clean lines, I was able to place it into illustrator and do an automatic trace, which came out really clean, but I also had to clean up a few crooked lines. But it was an easy clean up and then  I was able to just fill in the shapes with color. And Voila! Enjoy!

Characters from last spring semester

Some character designs I did for a class in a simplistic and fun style. I really enjoyed doing this style!

Another Sketch from Comic-con

Oh hi.

Just a little sketch I did this afternoon. I love it when girls wear the long and loose t-shirts. Very cute and sexy =)

Getting to know Alice Character Development

This is a character study I did in my visual development class this semester. I'm fairly happy with how this character turned out. We were given generic themes such as Alice in wonderland(which I picked) and others such as Jack and the beanstalk and Robin Hood. I opted for a more hunter/adventurer type of Alice character and I designed her a little older in her teens.  Sort of that age between leaving childhood and entering into the world of adulthood. Anyway, there were a lot of studies I did for this class, including scene development and character expressions and turnarounds. I really enjoy the process of development, I get to explore different styles and options. It's a lot of fun! I think you can see this character is really cute and fun, and you can see it through her expressions.  =)

More Chip Gestures and Expressions