Interterm!

Tomorrow is the last day of interterm, so I thought it'd be apt to talk about the work I've done in my four-week class. Unlike last interterm when I took Precalculus, a course that's obviously not for my major, this time I took a class on digital illustration techniques. It's essentially a crash course in the Photoshop techniques most commonly used by digital artists. As a beginner in Photoshop, I learned a lot of new things in the class and I'm happy I took it.

Here are some of my work that I think turned out pretty well:

This is an assignment on displacement mapping. I thought I'd combine two of my most favorite things in the world: art and cats. The painting is by impressionist Pierre Bonnard and it's actually a really interesting piece of art. It's a painting of Bonnard's cat whom he called "Nood", thus the painting was entitled Nood Bathing when he finished it in 1937.

This next one was probably the most fun to make. The assignment was to swap two different faces and put them in the same background. I chose two amazing yet very different characters, Michael Scott and Daenerys Targaryen, because don't you think it'd be insane if they were put it in the same world? I mean can you imagine how many seconds it'll take for Daenerys to set Michael's obnoxious mouth on fire? 

And here's my first stab at making a logo in Photoshop. I always appreciate a classic and well-designed logo when I see one, but I've never seriously studied graphic design. This was just a small assignment on using the intimidating pen tool to create clean shapes and typography. Most of the class made a personal logo, but I opted to make one for a fictional candy house.

This isn't actually how my logo looked like at first. I made this wonky looking chocolate bar as my initial design, but I realized it's kind of confusing, because people instinctively think the top is the chocolate and the bottom is the wrapper, because that's how chocolate bars are commonly portrayed. After spending some time tweaking it, I decided to just start a new one, just to refresh my mind. And voila, I came up with a candy house that looks cuter and better. 

Lastly, here's my favorite project all month. It's the one I got the best feedback on and also the one I feel most great about. The assignment was to create a 1930's travel poster. I spent a significant amount of time looking up actual posters to get the colors and the layout right.

That's about it for interterm. Spring semester starts next week and I'm really excited! I'm going to take a class on production design and also design theory, along with four other art classes (including another figure drawing class), and I'm just so excited and eager to make more art! 

Read, Sketch, Live

Since last summer ended, I haven't been reading many books that aren't for my classes or aren't about drawing and animation techniques. It's not only embarrassing (as an ex-English major), but also truly saddening. I used to pride myself on being that kid who gladly spends more time reading books than checking notifications on Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr and all the craziness that is the Internet. Well, those reading days are long gone. I enjoy the Internet very much and I should say I still read a lot when I'm online, from blog posts to news articles to never-ending rants about social justice on Tumblr, but I don't really get inspired by these things as much as I am by novels and poems. And I need inspiration now more than ever, because too often, I find myself not knowing what to draw or paint or do a storyboard of. So today I took a little time off my usual Netflix and Tumblr routine (which, by the way, I don't recommend to anyone who wants to feel alive)  and biked around town, got some new books to read, found a spot near one of the fountains on campus and sat there to read and sketch. It was wonderful being outside for a change and feeling the wind on my face. I really need to do this more often.

Here's a quick afternoon sketch I did from where I sat this afternoon. I was in front of my university's pretty library and was reading Little Women.

Adventures in Flash

Last semester was the busiest, craziest yet most exciting four months of my life. It was the time of many firsts: my first semester as a Digital Arts major (I switched from English after my freshman year), my first time getting a paid job (as a Precalculus tutor! Who knew I secretly enjoy math?), my first time drawing and completing an original storyboard, and my first time working on an animated short.

I volunteered to help a fellow student with his senior thesis film, because he's making his film using 2D animation--a medium that I've always adored and wanted to explore. The problem was he was making the film entirely in Flash and I've never used Flash before. Actually at that point I didn't really know how to use any software except for the very basic tools in Photoshop. I told him I was interested in creating background art, but I can only sketch traditionally or in Photoshop. Fortunately he said it wasn't a big deal. So then he asked me to sketch a basement for his protagonist, an inventor who accidentally gets teleported to prehistoric times and gets into trouble with some cavemen. Here's a wide shot I got from the director and used as a reference:

 He asked if I could improve the layout and also design more furniture and other props. So I sketched some and came up with these:

I have to admit, these suck (as you can so obviously tell from how small I made them on this page).






And that was pretty much all the work I did for the film last semester. It's not much, but I gave myself a pat on the back for going out of my comfort zone, talking to someone new and signing up for more than what was required of me. Anyway, I got in touch with the director last week and told him I'm still very interested in helping out. I've learned quite a lot from my Photoshop class and this gave me a little more confidence.





So he told me wanted this scene
to take place at dusk instead of in broad daylight. I was excited to get to work. I looked at multiple reference photos, including the ones he sent me, and studied the colors as much as I could. I came up with a pretty solid color study of a dusk sky.

I think it's incredibly fun to experiment with colors, especially when you can just pick and mix all the colors you want without worrying about actual paint drying up or running out.

I sent my color test to the director and he told me he liked the top right and the bottom left the most, so he sent me this--a combination of the two.

With my colors ready, I bravely opened Flash CC on my computer to edit the file the director gave me. I spent hours trying to figure out how to edit shapes, especially the clouds I painted. I can't lie, it was intimidating and frustrating working in Flash for the first time, because I wasted a lot of time figuring out how to select this or convert that, instead of just simply painting.


Hours later, I finally got the background to look like I wanted it to.

I'm sure for most of you artists out there won't think much about this because it looks simple, but I'm proud of how it came out. I think it's pretty good for a first try!

Here's what it looks like with the characters and the fire:

So this was my first adventure in Flash and I'm actually looking forward to having more. My goal is to design all the backgrounds in the film, so wish me luck!

TV and Michael Scott

I was never really a big fan of television and TV series; sure I'd watch some How I Met Your Mother or The Big Bang Theory when I was bored, but I wouldn't call myself a big fan of these shows. So when one of my roommates last year--by some voodoo or miracle--got me into Supernatural, I was astonished by how big of a fan girl I was capable of being. I quickly became obsessed with the show and its amazing(ly good-looking) cast, and before I knew it, I watched seven seasons within two months (or something like that). I loved the show for Sam and Dean's relationship, but I stopped watching  it halfway through the seventh season because I honestly didn't care about the leviathans. Anyway, this isn't a review of Supernatural so I'll leave it at that.

After my Supernatural phase, this year, my new roommate introduced me to The Office. She's a huge fan of the show and we get a long extremely well, so I figured maybe I'd like the show too. And I did. I got into it pretty fast; I couldn't stop watching it not only for the jokes but for characters like Jim and Pam, and of course, the great Michael Scott. My roommate and I always talk about how Michael would be so unbearably obnoxious in real life, but in the show he's just hilarious and actually endearing sometimes. His character just works well. So when I finally got to "Goodbye, Michael"  in season seven, I couldn't help but cry me eyes out. I felt like I knew this man and how much he loved the people in his office.

When I finally stopped crying, I figured it would be fun to draw something for Michael Scott, because why not? So I spent an hour in Photoshop playing with new dry brushes and voila:

It was inspired by my favorite of Michael's hilarious malapropisms and also by a certain cat who cannot be pleased. Steve Carell just does this look sometimes that reminds me of Grumpy Cat so much.

I haven't really done a lot of painting in Photoshop, so I'm still getting around using brushes and layers and other features. Hopefully I'll get more and more comfortable as I go along.

New Start, New Art

So today I decided to start an art blog, because why not? It's interterm (the month between winter break and Spring semester) so I only have one class for two more weeks, which means I have way too much time on my hands. More importantly, I want to challenge myself to write about art--both mine and those of the artists that inspire me. I want to talk about my sketches and the people, places, and experiences that I try to capture with ink and paper. Also I just really want to get back to writing coherent sentences again, because I realized all I've been writing on my current (Tumblr) blog are "what even" or "i just can't" or "OMG I DIE. TOO MUCH CUTE" under photos of cute kittens and hedgehogs.

Since this is my first blog post, I guess I'll talk about my first project of the year (which I technically started in December, but whatever). A few days after winter break started, I challenged myself to draw at least one thing every day until Spring semester starts at the end of January. I had 45 days before that time, so  in my head I thought, 'This is the most fantastic challenge ever! By the end of January I'll have 45 wonderful little sketches that I can use for my portfolio!'. But reality set in and by the 20th day, I failed the challenge. (In my defense though, I did almost five sketches each day, just saying). I'm still getting over my embarrassing defeat and while I'm at it, I might as well share some of my favorite sketches from the challenge.

This one was one of my first sketches. It's of my grandpa, done while we were waiting for our order at a small Filipino diner.

The next three were all done on the same day--the day I went with my grandparents to a casino and waited at the food court as they played for a solid four hours. There were a lot of interesting folks there, so the wait wasn't actually all that bad

This one was my first digital sketch during the challenge. I was reading Rad Sechrist's how-to blog when I saw an assignment that seemed like fun. The goal was to draw simple and random shapes and then draw characters within those shapes. It was so much fun and it made me realize how important it is to have clear silhouettes especially in character design.

The next two are from my "giraffe days" during which I was so obsessed with giraffes that I started writing a story about a little girl and her adventures with her giraffe best friend. Fun times. Haha.

 Lastly, I experimented with simple (and very rough) animation in Photoshop. And I also learned how to make GIFs (I'm one of the cool kids now! Woohoo!).

I guess that's it for today! I'm hoping to make some friends here and I'm definitely ready to get inspired by amazing artists and writers!