Come with me to the Ghibli Museum!

I made a video for my youtube channel about my visit to the Ghibli Museum this past March.

Carmy from The Bear drawing - SAG-AFTRA / Writers Guild on strike

I love Carmy, I love The Bear, I love drawing. Looking forward to watching more Jeremy Allen White on The Bear. Currently he is on strike with SAG-AFTRA while the Writers Guild is also on strike.

Here is a link with some ways to help support the actors and writers, even just discussing it online is a help.

same link written out:

https://mashable.com/article/how-to-support-wga-writer-strike#:~:text=Share%20your%20support%2C%20vocally%20or%20in%2Dkind&text=Join%20the%20SAG%2DAFTRA%20movement,for%20the%20guild's%20contract%20negotiation.

2001: A Space Odyssey film study Part 2

I wondered why I was having such a hard time drawing compositions correctly into the thumbnails in my last film study page of 2001: A Space Odyssey. I realised that I was using the wrong aspect ratio! I've fixed up my thumbnails here to match the film.

That is a good lesson to use the right aspect when studying a film. Without the correct ratio, you can't properly place object and compositions. I did thumbnails until the jaguar finishes off a hominid. I like those tapirs.

First Film Study!

This is my first time doing a thumbnail film study! It's only page one. My next mission is to DRAW FASTER and get two of these done in the same amount of time it took me to do this one.

Big thank you to Travis Marks for his Film Studies for Storyboard Artists Guide. I found it while searching for some tips on starting a film study. I emailed Travis who is super nice. He asks that you make a donation to Inner-City Arts and then send him the receipt. He'll then share with you the guide. What a cool way to raise money for a cause you support and share knowledge with other artists.

I found an article titled The 100 Best Movies of All Time (and while that's subjective) they're all great and I decided to just start studying from the top of the list. So here we have my first page of studies from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Take a Deep Breath...

Here is a small taste of a big scene I've been working on! It's been so addictive to work on this. I hate doing a bunch of work and having to go do life for a few days only to come back to a scene and not really remember what I was doing. So I skipped out on life for a few days to finish up this little section of animation.

The Happiest Day of Her Life?

It is a DANCE PARTY over here because I have just finished some full color animation for Pickled!


I decided a long time ago that I wasn't going to all out fully hand animate every shot in my short because let's face it, that will take me the rest of my life to finish by myself. So I'm using Harmony rigs for a few shots and some shots will have minor amounts of animation. The big juicy acting and storytelling shots will be fully hand animated for sure, but this one is done with a rig. It was actually a lot of fun to animate something fast and simple for a change. However the mouth, which is the focus of the shot, is hand animated. So this is a small taste of what Pickled will be like.

The neutral bride! Pencil test for scene 4.

Progress on Poster Painting

Here's the progress I made this week! I'm wondering how much further I should go... if I should add some light? I keep pulling back and trying to keep it simple.

Adding Colour

I had some fun making this rough colour study of my short film poster on top of the updated line art. I wasn't too happy with my last line pass so redrew the whole thing. Her skin looks just a bit too cadaverous doesn't it? I mean, she is dead, but only recently so. I will fix up all my colour choices. As well, I think the blood dripping off the knife currently looks like the knife is floating in the air, so I'm going to adjust it a bit to make it look like everything is lying on the floor.

I will probably go with a "cartoony" sort of shading, or at least something that isn't too fancy.

Film Poster Work in Progress

I've had a concept in mind for a film poster for Pickled for a long long time and am finally working on it. I need more art for my social media platforms and I want to start promoting Pickled more soon. I'd also really love to get my official Pickled website and my company websites up. (Those are pickledfilm.com and mingothings.ca respectively.) I've been listening to an amazing podcast recently called "Being Boss" by Kathleen Shannon and Emily Thompson. One of the things they discuss is how consistency is really important for any brand and I totally agree. I'd like to get my poster done and maybe a few more pieces that can grace the front pages of my Facebook, Instagram and all the place I share Pickled online.

Here are some of my rough concepts for the Pickled poster:

My first colour concept test.

This second version is more simple shapes. I really love boiling down an image to it's essence.

My first attempt at painting this poster. I'm going to repaint it however as I feel the drawing needs some work and the painting really needs some work.

This is the first little scribble I did to get my idea on paper.

Scene 10 - Progress Update

I've been polishing up this shot for a little while and was happy enough with it to put it on a demo reel. It's not %100 done yet but it's almost there! Although then I need to decide on clean up and colour...