Hey cozins! I'll be at the LBCE artist alley this Saturday, May 11th. Stop by table 5002 to chat and survey my selection of fine prints and postcards.

See you there!

Hey cozins, want to let you know that I now have a real Tumblr. If that's your kinda thing, come join me.

The arts will be mirrored there and here on DA, so there's no need to follow both. Just pick your platform of interest.

Cozins, thank you all for a fantastic show! It was great to see you and chat with you about animation and art and life in general. LBCC was a total success, I can't wait to do it again. ^__^

Eligible American cozins, please take the 5 minutes out of your day to register, and come out to vote in November. It is by far the best bang for your time "buck." The 1-2 hours you'll spend on the voting process is good for 4 years! That's a bargain.

www.ourtime.org

I'll be at AM2 this weekend, cozins, in the company of great artists. Come find us sprawled over tables E7 and E8, Saturday and Sunday.

I'll have some prints and postcards, including leftover stuff from my etsy days. This time I got fancy tho - I got this and this printed on a paper with shimmer. They turned out fantastic, hope you'll stop by and check 'em out in person!

You don't need a badge to get into the Artist Alley, it's totally free to get in and look around. In fact almost every event at the con is free!

Kickstarter - L'Ecorché: Classical Anatomy app for Artists

Yesssssss! Artistic cozins, have you heard about this thing? Have you seen this thing? Don't you WANT this thing?

I am so psyched about this project, and I can't wait to get my hands on the app. I'll always love my anatomy books and even my sad, half-baked ecorche, but this thing is in 3D. I will literally be able to turn the figure any way I want, get any angle, without having three different books falling off my lap just to reference the tricep or sumthn at that one angle. You know how it goes. >_<

This project is now up on Kickstarter. Please consider donating, if you want the future on your computer. Oh did I mention these fools are gonna charge around $10 for the finished app?? It's the most useful thing I foresee happening in 2012. Just look at the video on the Kickstarter page, and look at all this cutting edge technology and mad skillz being utilized to make our lives easier. The future has (almost) arrived!

Cozins, do you like adventure? And do you like space? How about animated adventures IN space? XD If you said yes, you should check out Green Lantern. (6 min trailer this way)

This is what I've been working on for the past 15 months – doing storyboards for the show. Pretty humbling for a first full-time project! ^__^ This is where I delved into the mysteries of storyboarding under the guidance of my director, Rick Morales. It is pretty amazing being a part of the Circle of (Animation) Life – working with a great team to create something cool and enjoyable (we certainly hope!). And just as we're finishing up the season finale, the show is about to air. Full circle, indeed.

The show looks so very pretty, our voice cast is amazing (I dare you not to like Kilowog!), and the music is pretty epic, too. It premiers this Friday, 11-11-11! Check it out, cozins, 7 pm on Cartoon Network.


P.S.: it is nothing like the movie. XD

a question for all of you lovely ladies who create in visual mediums: how do you refer to yourselves? "Artist," "painter," "designer," etc.? Do you use any feminine equivalents? ARE there any?

The only feminine forms of common creative professions I can think of is "actress" and "seamstress". <:

Cozins, it's time to help those in need once again. I'm auctioning off an original piece of art - the recent Batgirl a la retro piece that I transferred into watercolors. All proceeds from this sale will be donated to Japan earthquake relief. If your own situation allows, I hope you'll consider bidding.

I figure this approach is a win / win / win scenario. Our fellow humans in need get help, you get an original piece of art, and I got to play with watercolors over the weekend. ^___^

The auction ends this Saturday, March 20th @ 7:45pm PDT. [link]

For all you cozins having fun on Tumblr, I have an academic question: how do you guys talk to each other?

The other day a friend and I conducted an hour-long experiment, only to figure out that there is NO way to have a discussion on that site. You can't comment unless you're friends w/ someone, and even if a friend comments on your post, *there is no way to reply back to them.* At all. The system literally won't let you say anything in return, and it boggles the mind.

There is the 3rd party app that enables real commenting, but no one bothers to install it. So how do you do it, cozins? Is Tumblr really just a very convenient system of smoke signals?

Inquiring mind wants to know.

Cozins, it is finally, finally time for Young Justice premiere! I really hope you check it out this Friday, 7/6C on CN.

6-min preview here: [link]


This series is full of awesome, and will only get progressively more awesome. Brandon Vietti and Greg Weisman are at the helm. It's directed by the tag team of Jay Oliva , Michael Chang , Sam Liu and Chris Berkley. Character designs by the one, the only (accept no substitutions), Phil Bourassa , and backed by a great crew of talented guys.

So this Friday, load up on the leftover tryptophan and have a good time. WOOO!! ^_^/

...comes around full circle! (eeeh, you know what I mean.)

I came onto my very fist animation project last September, and it is finally out! Superman/Batman: Apocalypse


Come look at Superman's pretty pretty eyes and chiseled good looks! Gawk at the most awesome chick fight EVER! Big Barda in all her awesomeness! Catty Supergirl! (I suppose that's a draw) No-nonsense Wonder Woman being bossy and assertive!

Oh yeah, and Batman's in it too.


As the old adage goes: the better the sales the better the chances of WB making more of these. Hope you enjoy!

I prefer not to dwell on the past, cozins. Especially when it comes to art. Especially when the art skills of the past pale in comparison to my current ones. But, I think it's important to acknowledge where I come from, and to give a nod to how far I've come since.

So I went back to last summer, and compiled one of my very first storyboards into an animatic. I was enrolled in Jay Oliva's storyboarding class at Concept Design Academy. The assignment was to pick any two characters from Avatar and stage a fight sequence in the duel format - one on one, hand to hand, no weapons or powers. The sequence had to include basic elements of an action scene:

- establish spacial relationship between opponents
- showcase the threat & hero's reaction
- execute first action, followed by the choreography as one character attacks, the other reacts
- the peril
- and resolution of a fight.


The point of a storyboard is to coherently illustrate the action in the scene, not necessarily to draw a pretty picture. Still, compared to what I know now this makes me cringe. ^_^* But considering that it was my first time drawing an action board - hey, not too bad!


EXT link to YouTube



A million points to whomever can name my sources of "inspiration." LOL

Rec me some good sci-fi, cozins! Holidays are coming up and I plan to do some major aggressive lounging. I am itching for something fun and cool to read. Something along the lines of Ender's Game, maybe? (Which is not "fun," per se, but is still totally cool.) I read the entire series last year and thoroughly enjoyed having my mind blown for an entire month. Good times...

If "mind blowing" is a tall order, I'll gladly settle for Good. If it's got a sense of humor all the better.




As a fun aside and a completely unrelated story:

Last week I discovered the Topless Robot site, through their extremely entertaining and very informative "Why Transformers 2 Sucked" FAQ. When telling a friend about it, I slipped and called the site "Topless Chicken." What? Topless Chicken?! Intriguing, but no. I corrected myself and went on with the story.

Fast forward a week later. I am in bed, about to fall asleep... when it dawns on me!


(Topless + Robot) - (Robot + Chicken) = Topless + (Robot - Robot) + Chicken = Topless + Chicken = Topless Chicken!!

HA!

(Didja like how I used algebra to explain it? That's putting the ole' education to good use.)

You know that feeling of slight disbelief whenever you accomplish something despite yourself? Like, when you set out to do a drawing and it comes out exactly like it's in your head, on first try - and you sit back and just gaze at it in wonderment and awe? And maybe want to pinch yourself a little? Or do a little victory dance?

That's kind of what happened to my life this summer.

I headed out to sunny California with a Plan and a car full of stuff. I enrolled in summer courses at the Concept Design Academy and for 2 months I worked my patootie off. (College seems like child's play, now. Or just irrelevant.) I engrossed myself in the mysteries of storyboarding. I discovered a field that is finally challenging in all the right ways and appealing for all the right reasons. I finally had an instructor to teach me anatomy. That may not be a big deal in and of itself, but I've been self-taught up till now, so having a teacher was absolutely dreamy and inspiring. Someday I'd like to write up the experience. I learned so much about art and about me. All in all it's been a wonderful, terrible, challenging and indescribable summer.

And now here I am - a storyboard revisionist at WB Animation. Yeah. I think in my head I'm still just sitting back and letting it all sink in. I am SO excited about everything to be learned that I want to do a little dance. Or maybe pinch myself. ^_^

I feel like I've been pedaling all week without getting anywhere, so yesterday was designated as my official "Do Nothing Day." (In an effort to do nothing and get some rest.) So what happened? I woke up at 7 (unheard of!), and cleaned the entire place. XD

In two weeks, CreativeTechs is kicking off a free, 10-week, worldwide Photoshop course.

Jason Hoppe, an Adobe Certified Instructor, has designed a comprehensive course that covers Photoshop CS4 in detail. If you’ve been meaning to improve your Photoshop skills, now is the perfect opportunity:

Week 1, Feb 26 - Interface, Tools, and Shortcuts
Week 2, Mar 5 - Photoshop Layers
Week 3, Mar 12 - Selections
Week 4, Mar 19 - Advanced Selections
Week 5, Mar 26 - Masks
Week 6, Apr 2 - Pen Tool / Shape Layers
Week 7, Apr 9 - Drawing Tools / Brushes
Week 8, Apr 16 - Retouching
Week 9, Apr 23 - Color Correction pt 1
Week 10, Apr 29 - Color Correction pt 2

More info & registration: [link]


CreativeTechs is a local tech support agency in Seattle. I've attended two of their workshops before, as well as a Photoshop course, and they were simply fantastic! I cannot recommend it enough. You'll be amazed at the stuff that was right in front of your nose the entire time. ^_^ And don't think it's for CS4 only, cozins -- 90% of the info applies to earlier versions of PS as well!



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» hand-made ACEOs, prints, postcards and bookmarks available through my Etsy shop. www.east27.etsy.com

Hey cousins,

Last month I got to contribute the album design for Child's Play CD 2008, a collection of "nerdy" music benefiting the Child's Play charity.

This project was so much fun to do, I'm really proud of how it came out. 100% of the proceeds go directly to Child's Play charity, so if you or a friend enjoy nerdy music, check it out! Good fun for a good cause. The music itself is 100% awesome--you can sample all of the tracks at the OneUps website. The album is available through the Penny Arcade store.

Images: Album cover + extra



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» hand-made ACEOs, prints, postcards and bookmarks available through my Etsy shop. www.east27.etsy.com

first things first: CONGRATULATIONS my American cousins!! Thanks to everyone who got out yesterday and cast their vote. I am simply psyched about President elect Bobama, and am crossing off the days till Bush & co are finally, finally outta here.

On topic: I've been in a sharing sort of mood lately, and wrote up a couple of tutorials.

Color adjusting in Photoshop [link]
Restore an old print to its former brilliance

and

How to make an eco-friendly book cover [link]
Make an eco-aesthetic cover for your favorite paperback in 5 minutes, without glue or tape


Hope you'll find these useful. ^_^



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» hand-made ACEOs, prints, postcards and bookmarks available through my Etsy shop. [link]

What fantastic news, now artists all over the world have a day to call their own and to celebrate, well, being themselves. ^_^ October 25th has been chosen to honor artists worldwide. (Which also happens to be Picassos' birthday.)

Here's to you, deviants! To your collective mass of simply staggering talent and creativity. Thanks for inspiring me for so many years.


As the official website says:

Picasso was instrumental in bringing art to the masses more than any other artist up to that time. He is the iconic artist personified.

Now more than ever it is important to focus on art and culture. Mainstream television, globalization and the internet are wiring everyone down to the lowest common denominator. True living requires attunement to our common humanity which is accessed through inspiration and the arts. By giving our attention to artists, we have the opportunity for one day to focus on what is eternal and timeless in our civilization. Just as Remembrance Day is important for reflection, Oct. 25th can give us a reason to participate in the arts personally.

Alyson Stanfield of Art Biz Blog has some great suggestions on how you can celebrate this day. More information is available on the website www.internationalartistday.com.


****


Artist cousins,
On Oct 30th Graphic Artists Guild is hosting a workshop about the do's and don'ts of finding and using an artist representative. Might be of interest to some of you. (Info via Colleen Doran's blog.)



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» ACEOs, prints, postcards and bookmarks available through my Etsy shop. [link]