Marker Painting!

I've started to get back into coloring in traditional media and I really wanted to try "marker painting". I've been told several times that my more intricate pictures I've colored with markers over the years looked like watercolor, so I thought I'd experiment with rendering a picture with just makers.

I feel like eventually I should show a walk through process, but I guess there will be time for that later if I decide to continue working in this technique... Which I probably will... :)

I really like the look of it, but I'm still trying to get comfortable with it and take risks. It's a learning process I'm more than happy and willing to go through.



This is my character Leo-Rey, "The Last Golden Monkey" from the jungle planet, Oasis. Being the last golden monkey, he's adopted... By an Alligator. He also has a pet cobra. His earlier character design appears in my 2010 animation, "DTV".

I recently redesigned Leo-Rey and made a progress sheet for him.



The first one was done the year I graduated from high school, the second was done a year before I graduated from college, and the last was done a year after college. The one from 2010 wasn’t so much an update of my style, as it was me purposefully drawing the same character, in the same style from 2006.

Now, when I draw Leo-Rey in this more “cartoony” style, I want to showcase his more animated and hyper personality that I don’t feel I was getting across in the way I originally drew him. I’m going to mess around with his design until I’m more pleased with it, but I like the direction he’s going in.

Also, I recently created another marker painting for my mother's birthday.

Princess Aoi is a character I made for my mom's birthday last year that worked themselves into the continuity of a story with my other characters. Princess Aoi is a pixie and she is the Princess of Seifa-utaki forest.

Aoi's battle outfit is a combination of Japanese and Spartan style armor, as well as a couple of others. Even though Aoi lives in Japan, her armor is a bit of a hodgepodge...

I'm not entirely happy with this... There are a lot of mistakes... I feel that things got a little too muddled together and the highlights & shadows are sort of off, but as long as my mom's happy with it, I guess that's all that counts. :)

Funny thing though... I drew the leaf on Aoi's helmet the way I did because, truthfully, I wanted it to look all "swirly and pretty". However, I realized after I finished this picture that it's shaped like an "S". My mom's name is Sandra... ♥

Happy Accidents FTW.
  
I will say that with my first Princess Aoi picture that was created last year around the same time just a few posts down from this one, I really need to start picking up the pace with my updates. Well, I am making new film, so hopefully more news on that soon! 

Hatsu Timeline: 2007-2011

I think between all the confusion and craziness running around during my graduation this past May I totally forgot to post this. It's my final project for my Graphic Novel class. I felt that curriculum of the class could have benefited from a little more structure, but I can't complain to much... I got to learn much more about the art of comics, while still earning academic credits. Couldn't ask for a better class :)

Anyway, my final consisted of making a summary, character sheets, and a comicbook page. I thought I'd use my character Hatsu Moto, the mini forest emp, since she's been present throughout my time in college.

2007:
Hatsu is a relatively recent character. She was created during a watercolor drawing practice assignment during my first semester of college:



2008:
I was finally able to get my hands on my own copy of Photoshop CS3! I was so excited that I thought I'd try my hand at digital drawing.

This was my first completed digital drawing in Photoshop ever. Not to great, but it was a start.



Later that year, I completed my Animation 2 college course by creating a faux animated opening title sequence called, "The Days Of Hatsu Moto" :)



2009:
2009 was the year I tried my hand at digitally coloring a full animation for my Animation 3 college course. The animation was never finished because that kind of digital coloring took way too long to complete for each individual frame. However, Hatsu, and several of my other original characters are featured in it.



2010:
Hatsu is one of several of my original characters to be featured as a guest in my degree project talk show animation, "DTV". She was only featured for a few seconds, but so far she seems to get the best viewer reaction than any other character in the animation. She is voiced by me.




2011:
Finally, for one of my last classes in college, The Grapic Novel, we had to make a summary, character sheets, and a comicbook page. So, I thought, "why not use Hatsu?"

Summary:

The Days Of Hatsu Moto takes place in present day Los Angeles. The story chronicles the life of a mini forest imp named Hatsu Moto and her quest to save a man’s soul from his own ill-deeds and crude personality, which has been prophesied will lead to is death 3 years from now.

Hatsu plays the literal conscience to Rodney, the man who she’s supposed to “save”. She does this by accompanying Rodney where ever he goes and by putting him through many seemingly ridiculous tests, much to his dismay.

Despite her tiny size (she’s only 5 inches tall), Hatsu is very resourceful, and having magical powers doesn’t hurt either. Rodney initially despises Hatsu’s presence and finds her constantly chipper attitude and high-pitched voice extremely annoying. However, he very slowly starts to warm up to her.

Character Sheets:



Comic Page:



--
And that's about it... Hatsu's history since '07 :)

I felt happy doing this because it made me feel so sentimental. As a character, Hatsu was born during my first year of college, in one of my first courses. For those who don't know, Hatsu means "first" in Japanese (初). Throughout my college years Hatsu Moto has been a resource for me to use to push myself to try new things. And while all those things may not have worked, I still learned so much from doing them and I'm a better artist/person for it.

So thank you Hatsu, my little forest imp :) <3

"Phi-Phi on the TV" Complete-ish...

Well it's done... It's not perfect but it's as done as it's gonna get for a while...:P

Final Animation:


Original animatic with first recording:


I had to rerecord the audio of me speaking because my teacher's said the first reading was kind of dull and and didn't really showcase my personality. So to remedy this me and one of my teachers did a test rerecording wherein he (gently) punched me in the leg repeatedly to get a more... "enthusiastic" reaction out of me. It worked so he told me to get someone else to do something like that when I did the new recording. So I got my mom to do it and she threw books, tape, towels and water at me through the whole duration of rerecording. You can hear it a little in the animation.

The soundtrack itself is not really a 100% in my opinion because I didn't have time to properly clean-up the new audio and I didn't get the updated musical score from my composer on time. So I had to speed up the original music he gave me, (which was timed to the first recording), and match it the new recording. It works... sort of.

I originally wanted to line and color my animation work in flash then shadow it in Photoshop, but my teacher pointed out that I really didn't have the luxury of time to do that so he suggested
I settle on a more simple coloring.












We went back and looked at the style tests I did in 2009 for my first Degree Project and both decided that "number 5" would be a reasonable choice.




Now that's it's done, I need to enter it in as many festivals as possible and start looking for a job... Crap.

Blair Character Sheet: Final

Well... It's done...



I really shouldn't have spent so much time on this, as I am really killed for time... :P

Anyway, I hope my teacher likes it somewhat... that way I won't cry...

I'll be putting up the animation "So some Guy walks in a bar" (where Blair is from) hopefully soon, so you can see her in action.

He asked for a simple character sheet........

Why do I do this to myself!?!?!?

My Character Animation teacher asked for a simple character sheet and I go for the complicated color in Flash route...

...when I KNOW I am not the most computer savvy person when it comes to digital coloring... I mean that's why I'm taking digital illustration courses next semester...

Anyway here's my Work In Progress... Looks rather crappy......