Chamomile Witch

A little witch inspired by Japanese mori (forest) girls, with a penchant for chamomile tea!

Family Funtimes

Once upon a time, many moons ago, a little tangerine-haired girl clad in a cruddy green sweater popped up in my head, dancing to a song by the band Blonde Redhead. That last detail isn't so important to her character, but she stuck around for years later.  

Here rambunctious Angie is living it up at the carnival with her parents. One day I'll conquer my distaste for backgrounds. Look, they're standing on a patch of ground! That's one step up from floating in an aimless white abyss.

Medusa

Before I was drenched in freelance work this past summer, I DREW.  For fun.  Sometimes.  A little!

Sketch Dailies over at the Twitters produces prompts daily (who'da figured) and many moons ago, one of their prompts was Medusa.  They can really help dig you out of an art funk or if you're plain bored or out of ideas, they usually come up with great topics!

I like to think that Medusa knew how to keep her hair on point.  She could wrangle those snakes into cute updo styles!  Hmmmm that gives me some ideas....

Monkey King!

Of course I forgot his tail!

Giraffe-fashionistas!

I love animals!  I loooooooove-ish fashion, but being a lazy bum I'm not totally up n up on current trends (besides easy comfy ones like big baggy sweater, leggings, boots, DONE).  So, in this little animal world I'm developing I came up with a giraffe who's all about colorful outfits and is ~totes~ trendy!  Well, in my universe this is 'trendy'.  I just put random stuff together and hope stylists with actual taste don't run away screaming in a fit.

If there's anyone still sticking around blogspot, kudos to you!  I haven't given up on it despite the death of Google Reader (oh, Reader...why...I thought we had something special), though maybe it's a futile effort reviving this little blog.

If you're looking for a good GR replacement, I recommend Feedly!  It's similar in functionality to Reader AND it has a cute little mascot.  Really that was the selling point for me :)

Bunbuns!

Wowza!  I've managed two complete posts in one year!  A personal best!

I'll try to do better next year.  There are a few stories that I'm pretty keen on developing, one of which involves this little fellow below.  He's still fairly early in development, thus the sketchines, and he hasn't got a name yet, so we'll just call him Mr. Bunbun for now.  He works as a librarian/archivist at a library that's affiliated with a law firm.  He'd be more fond of his job if he could burrow beneath mountainous stacks of books to read than tend to fussy customers.  He tries his best to be meticulous about his job, but he's a very small rabbit in a very big library packed with very large books.

I am the best blogger....

...in all the land. My annual posts are all the rage with the kids these days.

Ahhhh I'm not making much sense right now.  You just caught me at the tail end of 2 days of AMAAAAAZING lectures of story and animation at the Pixar Masterclass in Chicago!  If you can shell out the money for tuition (and airfare if necessary) it will change how you tell and think about storytelling, acting, and human behavior.  Pretty lofty words for a 2 day lecture, but seriously.  Four years of schooling packed into an 8 hour day each.  It was intense.  It was gold!

I "whipped" up and revamped a few character studies the past few days in preparation for the class.  They seem so weak and BLAH now, after all that we covered, that I just want to trash them and apply everything that I've learned. Well ok that's too drastic; there are some salvageable bits in them.  But a TON to improve!  And there's no better feeling in the world than to have fresh eyes and actually know what you need to fix!  That you've got a road map as a guide to communicating better (through art anyway, words are still derpy) instead of just fluffy artsy fartsy "It's your art maannnnnn, create and you'll find your way!".  It wasn't just philosophy and theories, the Pixar artists gave you tools to strengthen your own style and ways of working.

Mmmmm my love for animation has been rekindled.  It's pretty daunting to dust off the pencil and light table and tackle animating again, but the itch is driving me up the wall!  I've gotta do SOMEthing, even a crappy walk cycle or a bouncing ball.  I think I'll take on the witch girl and go from there...