Prepare to grit your teeth.

I've got more phone pictures; didn't make it to the scanner today. My parents stopped by and we went out to dinner, so you guys will have to deal with my beautiful photography.

I've got to fix that hanging boat when I do the final drawing of the first one, it's starting to drive me crazy. And the angle on the boat over the helicopter is bothering me too, so I'll have to fix that too.

The second one is Jim Royal's dock-house/home. I've just found a huge stash of photos in my old stock folder from Lake Lure that are perfect so I've just been flipping through them and pulling out all the things I like and adding them on.

By the end of the day tomorrow, I SHOULD have the finished drawings/scans... that or I'll have wasted my day entirely.

Nothing new but...

Take this amazing livestream drawing I did a month or two back. I like the colors, but Link is looking pretty odd, you have to admit. But you guys can take it, yeah? We're all strong men on the inside at this blog, am I right? 

I would love to give you guys something new, but I spent most of today working on some top secret art that I can't post, so I don't have anything other than this oldie for you all. 

But, this super secret thing is coming out soon and then you guys can check it out since it's really awesome. 

I'll hopefully have some of my exciting new classwork ready to post tomorrow. Scans hopefully, so you all won't have to grind your teeth like you do when looking at my phone pictures. 

Till then!

Terrible Batgirl and Thumbnails

We did a drawing of Batgirl in my character design class today. The professor's daughter loves Batgirl so he had us all draw one for her. Mine is kind of awful, especially compared to all the epic jumping/flying/landing/fighting Batgirls drawn by my classmates. It's also kind of covered with white out (there was this HIDEOUS tangent that I couldn't live with, so I made it worse by whiting it out) but you can't tell so much in this picture since I upped the contrast to kingdom come.

I never draw Batgirl, so cut me a little slack?

Anyways, in that class we're also making some environments for the character we made the five-sided turn around with. So, of course, this is more art focused on my short story comic. It's titled 'Till Death if you guys haven't noticed yet, and it's basically about a Sea Princess who can't ascend to her throne till she's married a King or Prince. It's important that she becomes Queen because she needs to overthrow an evil adviser that assumed the throne after her father's death. It's pretty basic. It's supposed to be an Adventure/Comedy, just something short and fun. 

If you can tell what's going on in these thumbnails at all, I salute you. Somehow professors can read these pretty well; must be one of those super powers they have, I guess. This is only about half of my thumbnails, but I'm not posting the others. They're really awful compositionally and even harder to read than these.

The circled one will be the image I use for my final drawing, plus the window frame from the one the arrow is pointing to.  

If you don't have a clue what's going on, these are backgrounds from the scene where Dorian jumps Jim Royal. In it, he's working in his boat-making studio late at night, and she sneaks in before attacking Jim and threatening him to marry her or else. Sounds like a great couple, right? 

Anyways, I'll keep you guys posted! Crits and suggestions always welcome!

PS. We touched on 4 and 5-point perspective in my Environments class, but I don't think we'll be going in depth, which is a real shame. It's almost never used, I realize, but it would've been such a cool project if we'd been able to do one with them. 

Helichopper Clubhouse

This is another drawing I've been working on for that short story I was telling you guys about. This is the hangout of the main character Dorian Rhodes, the warrior princess of the sea. It's a grounded helicopter on a small island where she and her possy built a club house on top and around it.

This is a really terrible photograph, but it's enough for you all to get the idea. In this I'm working out the structure, but I'll be light-boxing it to clean it up a lot before the end.

It's based off a HH60-Jayhawk, but I've dropped a few elements from it. The Jawhawk is super-long and it's a little unnecessary for my story.

I might post a little synopsis for the story later once I get the big details hashed out. I'm in the middle of paring it down to a reasonable number of pages. It's funny how big little stories end up being.

I made a huge effort not doing some sort of corny Schwarzenegger quote in the title, so I think you guys should give me props for that. 

Need coffee.

Well, last night was rough, but finished what I needed to get done. When I come home I'll be taking a nap... then getting up again for another long night. Such is life here.

Since I really don't have much else to post, I'll show you guys the project I finished. It's not my best work by any measure, but I do like the basic design. I'll probably tweak it some more before I'm really satisfied. Doesn't she kind of look like a pug?

She's from a short story I've been tinkering with on and off. I'm kind of using my current assignments to flesh out the world/characters more. I'll be posting some of the settings/environment pictures soon, once I get them to a halfway decent stage.

For once I lucked out; one of my assignments due tomorrow got pushed back. It would've been a mad rush had it not been. Time around here is weird. One minute you've got two days to work on something, and then you look up at the clock and the deadline is four hours away.

Anyways, I hope you all are doing well! I'll keep you guys updated whether you like it or not.

Building!

Posting some homework from my Props and Environments class today. The first drawing is of the Chicago Theatre in a post-apocalyptic setting, and the second is of the Artemis Temple in Jerash.

Nothing very special, but I plan on finishing the Chicago one. There are so many mistakes that I want to fix.

More Cats

Another little cat study. The more I try to place cat skeletons into cat bodies, the more confusing it gets. Their legs are so strange. No animation today, busy with homework and other things.

Study of the Day:

Here's something else I did while trying to figure out Corel Painter a couple of weeks ago. Just found it and realized I never posted it anywhere.

Nothing special, but it was an fun exercise. It's based on a photo by Kxhara on Deviantart.

Second Cuppa

Some more cat studies today. Cats have such weird bone structures. Something really odd is happening in the back legs of my animation study, but I'll try watching some videos of cats running and try to figure out what's going so wrong.

Studies of the Day:

First Cup O' Cocoa

Bit early to feel like Christmas, but I'm feeling those winter vibes. It's probably this unseasonably cool weather we've been experiencing here in Savannah that's causing it. But it feels like Christmas none the less, and it makes me want a nice warm cup of hot chocolate.

That's the best explanation you'll be getting for my blog's title.

I'll be posting my art here whenever I can. It'll be a miss-mash of finished work, sketches, and wips, just whatever I have lying around. And just for those people out there who care about the intimate details of my day-to-day life (I can count you guys on my hand), I'll be posting every now and then about what's going on in the real world. 

As I start this blog, I am a junior in college, studying at Savannah College of Art and Design. Things are rolling pretty smoothly at the moment; classes are surprisingly manageable and my social life is something that isn't completely dead (a shock, considering the past two years of having nearly none). There are a lot of exciting things that are happening this quarter, so I'm pretty pumped for the coming weeks. I think I'll get to learn 4-point and 5-point perspective in my Environments class! My mind is going to be blown. Not to mention all the cool things I'm learning in Digital Coloring and Character Design. 

Study of the Day: 

Based off photos taken by Eadweard Mybridge. 

Trying to figure out how animals run. It's hard enough just understanding how people run. I plan to do a tighter study of this sometime in the future. My cat anatomy really leaves a lot to be desired, but I learned a ton about the moving parts from this study. 

That's all for now, folks!