Illustration Friday/Art Catchup

I'm really appreciating Illustration Friday. It's something with a deadline but it's pleasurable and lacks the stress of normal 'work'. It encourages you to try and draw different things (I think), and is nice to see everyone elses interpretation on the same theme. I can definitely recommend if you haven't started joining in yet, and you're looking to improve your drawing skills, that you should. The only way you get better at something is by constantly doing it and challenging yourself.
In other news my tumblr is going amazingly well considering I've been on there for, well, not long. I will continue to update this blog, mostly because it gives me a lot more scope to write a reasonable amount. But, possibly not with the frequency of my tumblr.
So here's a catch up of various things.

Illustration Friday: 'Vanity'

Work has suddenly got busy, which is nice but it means less time for all my extra-curricular activities. My blogs, Lang-8, comic, animation and everything else gets neglected as all I want to do is get home, lie on the couch and drink tea. But since my fiance and his mate are Spelunky addicts, it's sort of forcing me to do things. And damn, now it's too late for tea.

Pocahontas

I tried drawing her the other day and everything just looked awful. I was animating all day and it got to about 5 and I thought no, that's enough, I need to do something else. So Pocahontas it was. I got the video as an Easter present years ago so it's sort of seasonal too.

Troll run

Well, I say run. It's more of a... series of jumps. I was trying to convey that he's quite heavy and not that dextrous. Troll smash!

Illustration Friday: Natural

This started off as just me trying to paint a background quickly, but then the theme for this week came up and I thought it was rather apt.

I haven't got the balance of light/dark entirely right, or the flow of the elements, but I rather like the colours.

Running

This one I'm a little sketchy on. I wanted her hair 'wafting' but the technically correct waft was way too flicky and made it look odd. I went for more a swing. Her legs are really clicky and I've decided the way I rigged them was not the best. So I'm going to try something else tomorrow and see if that comes out a little smoother.

Waving

So I made and rigged my little character from the other day with Illustrator and After Effects. Did a little animation with her to see if it was working the way I imagined, and decided to make a gif for your enjoyment! She's waving just for you.

Website Update

Good day to you, people of blogger land. I have been slowly making various transitions. One of them is that you can now find me on Tumblr, where it turns out it's much easier and faster to get an audience. That doesn't mean I won't be posting here at all, in fact I tend to write a bit more info on my blogger entries as there is the space to do so.

I've also just updated my main website, www.joannemclelland.co.uk, to be a bit more cross platform friendly. It's made using a website maker, which was a slight pride hit as over the years I've taught myself a bit of html and css for the purpose of making my website.
My main problem was always updating image galleries. The simple viewer I had been using was a pain to go all the way back through and re-export. And also, seeing as I'm never really planning on being a web designer, my time is probably better spent drawing and animating.

So there you have it. A blog entirely without pictures, although I'll try to put something up later.

Koala cuteness

Designed a couple of vector poses for a competition, but then decided he was uber cute and I was going to do some more drawings for fun.

Illustration Friday 'Zodiac'

Here's my first go at the theme, obvs went for my star sign. Mixed poppy colours with a sort of Greek pottery theme. Might have another go on a more general 'Zodiac' theme later in the week but I'm happy with this for now.

Character Designs

I went along to a talk last night where they were asking for pitches for character driven animations. I felt a bit lost at the time, as the guys were right there and I had not an idea in my brain. So, slightly hungover today, sat and squeezed my eyes shut until I began thinking of things. Doodled up these two, slapped a bit of colour on, to satisfy my green hair fetish.

It's business time

Decided to try do some characters. I had little conversations with each of these guys as I was drawing them. I told the guy on the bottom left he needed to buy a bigger collar size, he wasn't fooling anyone and it was probably uncomfortable. I tried to get away from the guy on the bottom right as fast as possible.

Pushed the colours because brighter is better.

Totoro

Because he's guaranteed to brighten your day.

Yuki-onna

Been trying to design the 'snow demon/witch' for the comic. I really love the Heian era court costume that involves a lot of layers, but it's sort of made her more classy than scary. But then, she's also supposed to be 'bewitching' so maybe not too scary? I dunno.

Illustration Friday: Survival

I remember this from somewhere on the internet, so decided to give it a pop! I was torn between Sigourney Weaver and Arnie as ultimate action hero survivalists, but I figured I don't draw men that often. Maybe I will go more philosophical on another theme, but for now... 'Get to da choppa!!'

3D Chair of Inevitable Confusion

I decided I should learn a 3D package properly so in my off week I have dived into Cinema4D. Today's mission was making something with HyperNURBS from the tutorial. It's a thing of... mediocrity. And quite a few wrong bits as the tutorial contradicts itself. But... I learned things! And that's what's important.

Shubba

A quick little shiba inu for this evening.

Raphael

I finished page 18 of my comic tonight (I know, production has slowed). To celebrate I allowed myself a drawing session of my second favourite Turtle. Well, I don't know, sometimes it's Michelangelo, sometimes it's Raphael! I like Raphael's sass. Just seen the trailer for the new film, but I'm not really impressed. As Tom commented, looks like Transformers with Turtles. Where's the quirkyness? They're goddamn ninja turtles.
Anyway here's the sketch and the coloured version.

Snowstorm on a sunny day

Not really, but that's what I've been doing this afternoon for page 17, YES 17, of my comic. I can only tell you how excited I am to eventually hit 25 and know I'm halfway there. This is only a small couple of panels, but I'm heading out this afternoon so might not get time to finish the whole page.

Dancing

Doodle time! Tried to make the lighting a little interesting. And I love girls with peacock blue hair, it's hawt.

Page 13

I thought I'd show you what I'm working on since I'm not doing many random drawings at the minute. Here's page 13 in progress (of my comic), a section where he's making his way to a person's house in the woods.

Tidy up and fixes will be done on them all once I've finished, but just trying to get the whole thing coloured right now.

Portrait

I tried doing a portrait of this person a while ago, but I did my normal problem of hacking away at it too long and it was just too overcooked. I think I limited this one to under 2 hours, perhaps even just 1.5 hours. So... feels a bit better, I think.

Maybe too dark on the eyes, still maybe going for a bit too realistic. But whenever I try to stylize always looks quite misshapen. Maybe I should get someone to teach me how to do caricatures.

Comic

So last year I decided to start doing a comic, and having a fairly quiet January I actually managed to get somewhere with it. I've coloured the first handful of pages, so here's a character drawing and a page to keep things interesting and remind myself to find the time to keep going.