Plein Air Painting

Today was a nice day to go outside and paint. Usually it rains in Portland during any season that is not summer, so you take the warm none wet days when you can get them.
 Since it was nice out I decided to go out and do a quick little Plein Air Painting. I have not done one of these since last summer, so I'm a little rusty. At the same time I haven't used any oils for just as long, since I have been spending the winter getting better at Water Colors. Oil Paints is what I like to think of as "Warm Climate" paints, since It requires either a well ventilated area to use or the outdoors. And since I don't like to be cold the only time I go out to paint is during the spring and summer. Water colors are more of an everyday paint for me, same goes for Acrylics since neither of these require ventilation or fresh air to use safely.
So I spent 3 hours outside and did only one Painting from my front yard. I could tell that I am a little rusty at doing this since it took some time to get anywhere with it at first, and then half ways through i had to remind myself that, "A course it doesn't look right, your standing to close. Take a step back and get some perspective on the scene as a whole". And so thats what i did. once I did this the painting and hard to find core colors started to fall into place. So over all it turned out pretty good. And i even finished the painting too; this is something I am bad at doing some times. I get either bored by the painting towards the end and just want to move on or dislike the progress i have made and just want to start anew.
I will point out that Lee White was correct with replacing my use of Titanium White with Zinc White as a white to mix with other colors. If you mix Titanium White with any other color it tends to make the color look chalky, whereas, the use of Zinc White does not. I don't know why my teacher who taught me how to paint with oil paints did not know this, since she required us to use only Titanium White.

So here is the final result, this was taken with my phone camera, I'll have to wait til it is dry to scan this on my Epson later. When I do this I'll post the better Image here.

Designing Flash Characters and ASIFA.

This past weekend I went to my first ASIFA Event here in Portland, Oregon. We meet downtown Saturday morning and had a bagel breakfest and chatted a little before the main event. ASIFA Portland had a few speakers come for their second annual unconference, one of which was a woman who worked for RACC. This was the main discussion that I went to. RACC holds these yearly grants that they hand out to artist so that those artist can get  their purposed projects done. There are a few specifications that an artist has to meet in order to receive a grant from RACC. The first is that they must write up and hand in a proposal for the project, the breakdown of what the money will be used for, and they have to have something to show as a finished product at the end of the year. if they like your proposal then they give you half the money up front and the other half at the end when the project is completed.
Now, I don't have any projects currently that I need funding for.The knowledge that this is available; however, is great for if I do at some point down the line need money for a project. The only bad thing for those who might be reading this is that this is a Oregon thing. However, I don't doubt that other cities and states have this type of thing available as well. You'll just have to look into it.
The other discussion I sat in was on how to promote yourself. However, I hand to leave before the end of the discussion, because I had to meet up with my wife and Daughter to go to another event that day. It did not look like they were going to get very far with that discussion anyway, since when I left they had something like 10 mins left and were still discussion the use of a Blog as a self promotion tool and how it differs from a personal website. The Unconference lasted until about 2:30 pm and had several other discussions going on.

The other thing that I have been working on these past few weeks is character designing for Flash. When I do this I create everything in Adobe Illustrator and then import that whole ai file into flash. From here the different parts are turned into symbols and saved into a main Flash file. I make any minor adjustments that you cannot do in Illustrator in Flash before I am done, such as remove lines that don't need to be in certain areas like the arms and forearms.
With this Knight character I had to remove the lines that separated the Chest from the Lower Body so that the two pieces looked to be one whole piece.

The next piece I hope to do is a dragon to go with this character.

Tentacle Monster

Here is a little 2 second sneak peak at something I am working on. Enjoy.

Always Learning Something New.

I will tell you what, once you become a CG animator it no longer about worrying about make sure you keep up on your animating skills. Nope, its all about keeping up with the new software version that they came out with that year so you can do your bloody job. I mean you'll still be practicing your skills, but your focus will be on learning all the new stuff more so than on the animation as a whole. Traditional Animators in the past had it easy. They didn't have to worry about needing to learn how to use a new pencil every year, they just picked the pencil up and started to draw.

Anyway, I have to now learn to use several different CG animation software. Luckily, they say that if you can learn Maya you can use any of the other software. It comes down to learning all the buttons and going throw the motions- which takes time. Time in which I wish i could use doing something else, like paint.

Dialog

I was going to do the March 11second club contest, but March was a really busy time for me and as such i put aside 5 days at the end of the month to animate the whole 11 seconds. Unfortunately, I should have given myself more time and only got four seconds done. So i cleaned these 4 seconds up and here they are.

Robber Bridegroom Part 3

Here we have the Beat Boards for the Robber Bridegroom story.

THE YOUNG GIRL WAVES TO HER FATHER AS SHE HEADS OFF TO COLLECT BERRIES IN A

NEARBY MEADOW.

A RICHLY DRESSED YOUNG MAN SHOWS UP TO THE MILLER’S HOME IN ORDER TO ASK

FOR HIS DAUGHTER’S HAND IN MARRIAGE.

WHILE THE STRANGER IS TALKING TO THE MILLER, A SHADOW PASSES OVER THE MILLER’S DAUGHTER AND CAUSES HER TO FEEL A CHILL DEEP IN HER HEART.

WHEN THE MILLER’S DAUGHTER RETURNS, SHE IS SURPRISED TO SEE A STRANGER IN

HER HOME AND IN HER SHOCK DROPS THE BASKET OF BERRIES. THE CHILL DEEPENS

IN HER HEART.

THE MILLER HAS AGREED TO THE MARRIAGE PROPOSAL. THE MILLER’S DAUGHTER

TAKES THIS NEWS WITH A SAD FACE, THE GROOM ASSUMES IT IS BECAUSE OF HER

NOT KNOWING HIM AND INVITES HER TO VISIT HIS HOME FOR SUNDAY DINNER.

THE BRIDE DECIDES TO TAKE HER GROOM UP ON HIS OFFER AND FOLLOWS THE PATH

HE TOLD HER TO HIS HOME. THE PATH SOON BECOMES UN MAINTAINED AND THE TREES SEEM TO TRY TO HOLD HER BACK, BUT SHE MOVES ONWARD.

 THE BRIDE COMES OUT OF THE FOREST AND FINDS AN OLD NEGLECTED DARK HOUSE.

INSIDE SHE FINDS THE ONLY OCCUPANT, AN OLD WOMAN. THE OLD WOMAN TELLS HER THAT EVIL MEN LIVE IN THIS HOUSE. THAT THESE EVIL MEN MARRY WOMAN OF THE VILLAGES AND THEN BRING BACK HERE TO EAT THEM.

 THE OLD WOMAN EXPLAINS THAT THE BRIDE SHOULD HIDE, BECAUSE THE EVIL MEN WILL SOON RETURN.

WHEN THE MEN RETURN, WE SEE THE GROOM AND HIS MEN THROW A DEAD WOMAN ON A NEARBY TABLE AND BEGIN TO HACK THE BODY INTO SMALLER PARTS.

DURING THIS PROCESS, THE WOMANS FINGER GETS LOPED OFF AND FLIES INTO

WHERE SHE IS HIDDEN INTO THE BRIDE’S LAP. SHE HOLDS BACK A CRY IN FEAR OF BEING FOUND.

WHEN THE BRIDE RETURNS HOME AFTER SNEAKING AWAY FROM THE HOUSE SHE

TELLS HER FATHER WHAT SHE SAW AND HEARD. HE IS IN DISMAY AT THE FATE HE

HAD ALMOST COSIGNED HIS DAUGHTER TO.

THE MILLER ALLOWS THE WEDDING PROCEED AS PLANNED BY THE GROOM,

BUT BEFORE THE CEREMONY BEGINS THE GROOM IS ARRESTED. THE BRIDE TELLS

EVERYONE IN THE VILLAGE ABOUT THE HORRORS THAT SHE HAD WITNESSED IN

THE ABANDONED HOUSE. THE GROOM AND HIS MEN ARE ROUNDED

UP AND SOON HANGED.

The End

Robber Bridegroom Part 2

As i had stated previously, I was working on the beat boards to the Brother's Grimm Fairy Tale "The Robber Bridegroom". Here are the character designs that I worked up for this story. There are four characters in this story that are important, The Bride: the miller's Daughter, the Miller, The Robber Bridegroom, and The Old Woman.

The Bride

The Miller

The Robber Bridegroom

The Old Woman

Next time I'll post the beatboards for the story.