Giselle On the Brain (D)

Once in 2009 I did these sketches after watching Enchanted (do ignore the off-model bits):

Then a few years later I did this working the idea a little more (along with another one here):

And then to round it all out I ended up polishing it up and adding a few more to end up with this.

The idea was all her costumes from the movie in the beautiful style of the animated prologue.  After introducing our kids to parts of the movie (after they've been listening to the soundtrack for a year) these were in my head all weekend and finally escaped.

Moana of Moto Nui -- Now With More Maui! (D)

I saw Moana!  I loved it.  I think I'll like it even better when I see it again.  Anyway, unlike the last few Disney animated movies, I was actually inspired to do some fanart for this one before seeing it:

She's so cute.

And so fierce.

16-year-old me would be shocked that I didn't see it on opening day but he would be pleased at opening day splash-of-color sketches.

 And then of course I did some Sunday Sketches after actually seeing it.

That Maui is tricky.  He took three fails before I was more or less okay with him.

Away away.

(Incidentally, I finally saw Finding Dory on the same day and found it thoroughly, and ironically, totally forgettable.)

UPDATE 6 February 2017:

I did one for Maui too.  Our kids love his song, which has grown on me (though some of the lyrics still seem lazy), and his design has grown on me too (probably helped by doing these studies). The shapes! The tattoos... And a great subject for Manhair Monday, which is interesting because early design sketches show him as bald, surely inspired by The Rock.

Pixar Is Back (D)

After seeing this last night, I just had to:

Sleeping Beast (D)

A few years ago I did a sketch that J thought would make a funny little animation. Well, today I finally made her vision a reality by doing my first personal animation in quite a long time (and our first animation post in even longer). It was fun, even if it's pretty simple. Secondary action study FTW!

Here's the original sketch for fun and reference:

Belle, Beast and Objects (Oh, My?) [2012]

Sunday Sketches -- Frozen and Feathers (D & J)

Time for some BRAND new and totally fresh Sunday Sketches, hot off the presses pens as of yesterday.

Last week we went to see the latest from Disney animation, Frozen.  While I'm sure I'll forever wish it were hand-drawn animation, as it was originally planned to be, when I finally saw it most of my misgivings gave way to enjoying it a lot overall, as basically predicted.  It's not perfect, but it's pretty good.  I have not been able to get the music out of my head for days (though I would still would have loved to hear what Alan Menken would have done with this story...).  Anyway, the next time I picked up pen and sketchbook, this was the inevitable result:

You can probably tell by sizing and placement who I consider to be the star, ha ha.  Also, there are some issues with costuming and off-model elements, but I was operating on having only seen it once.

I'm still not on board with Olaf.  There's something about his design that just bugs me... and also his voice.  So, that explains the various redesign concepts on the bottom right.  (C'mooon, Disney... those took me all of two minutes, and I'm just me.)

And now, for something completely different from J, a dude with a rooster tail:

Just because.

Merida and Mum, Take 2 (D)

As a sort of P.S., by "popular" demand, here is the preceding set of sketches colored!  I tried a couple of new techniques with this to make it look not quite as polished as usual, just for fun and to try something a little different.  That hair:  It's crazy.

Like I said:  Cheeeange yerr feeeat!

Sunday Sketches -- Merida and Mum (D)

When I first saw Brave, I thought it was pretty, but it didn't really amaze me or anything, though I thought I would probably like it better the second time. So then when it was released on DVD and we watched it again, I realized I had thought right. It's still not my favorite Pixar movie, but I liked it a lot more the second time (and Merida had grown on me a little more earlier on, and didn't seem like SUCH a brat for almost the entire movie this time, ha ha). So then not yesterday but the Sunday before I did some sketches of Merida and her dear mum, Kenai Elinor.

That foreshortened piece with the bow and arrow isn't fantastic or anything, but it turns out that angle and pose can be challenging to achieve (truth be told, that was my second take at it...  thanks for letting me erase my sketchy attempts that I drew over anyway, Photoshop).

Cheeeange yerr feeeat!

Art Trade: Kitties in Clothes and Sad Pandas

Today we present an art trade!

One day we were watching Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and when Mrs. Weasley uttered that immortal line (responding to Ginny's question as to where her jumper was), "Yes, dear, it was on the cat!", we as usual wondered what it could mean...  Was the cat actually wearing Ginny's jumper?  Was the cat lying underneath it?  And since when do the Weasleys have a cat anyway??  Or was her jumper sitting on some other object known to the family as "the cat"?  In any case, I told J she should illustrate what was going on there, and this is what she came up with:

It's so happy and dancing!  And what a fashionable jumper.  The animation was an afterthought, but a stroke of genius.

And then one day J was feeling a little blue, and said she felt like a sad panda, and then she asked me to illustrate that.  And I did!  And it looks like this:

Poor sad panda.

Sometimes it's nice to give each other ideas for interesting and unusual arts.

P.S.  Here's a tiny and pixelish version of the Weasley kitty:

A Ball That Bounces

And now for something completely different...

As many of you know, my study in college was animation, and my emphasis was traditional, hand-drawn animation.  I took the required 3D animation classes, but they were just never my thing.  I would just rather use my hands and draw all day than model and troubleshoot every frame.  It's been over five years since I graduated from college, and my current employment unfortunately doesn't allow for a whole lot of animation in the traditional sense, but I do have a little bit of downtime when I work on improving my skills on the graphics programs.  One day I decided it had been way too long since I did some animation, so I decided to go WAY back to the VERY basics, and dug into my memories of Intro to Animation to do one of the classic animation exercises:  The bouncing ball.  This is a very common practice for animation students, and gives a chance to work on the principles of squash & stretch and timing, and allows for some creativity as to what the ball is made of, how and how much it bounces, etc.  For this one I went pretty simple and made it pretty squishy. (What's it made of, you ask?  Um, goo.)  While I usually used paper and pencil in the past, my current resources include Flash and a nice tablet, so that's what I used for this project.

So there you have it!  My classmates might feel some proxy shame that I'm proud enough of a recently-produced bouncy ball project to publish it online, but I was just pretty excited to be animating anything at all again, and while it's rough, I think it's fun and a little bit of a different post for the blog.  And now I feel kind of inspired to do more (and more complex) animation!  Basic human figures, you're not too far off...

(By the way, this is just one sequence of bouncing that works best on a loop, but I have looped it a few times in the video so you can see its movement more smoothly without having to restart it.)