Winding Down

Yup, it's that time of year again. The time of year that involves a lot of "Holy crap, that's due THIS week?! How am I going to finish everything in time?!"

In other words, it's the end of the year.

I'm taking a break from watching Sherlock Holmes for the fourth or fifth time to post a couple drawings I made earlier today.

Today I didn't have anything to do; I woke up at seven to participate in a critique, and I hung around at school to show some sketches and prove to my teacher that I did actually do preemptive work for my InDesign portfolio project.

I was in a very rotten mood by the time I finally got let out of digital class, but I'm feeling much better now. Had something to eat, had some juice, and now I'm relaxing watching a movie.

To the drawings! The top drawing is again, a slightly older Suka, who I felt like drawing today. I'm not sure why. Below that, I figured after drawing a not so happy Suka picture, I should draw a happy one! Which led me to draw the younger version of Suka. I didn't like this one too much, I drew her eye too high in her face, and I messed up her lips-- but that's what happens when you draw in ballpoint! Ah, but it's so much fun. The bottom image is Tinette, of course, which I drew because Chelsea was drawing Tina in my sketchbook for me. I like this one, except the under drawing I changed makes her hand look like some sort of claw, instead of a hand.. but oh well.

Tomorrow, two more assignments, a little gallery on friday, and that's it, visual and creative arts is behind me forever! And I can start working. And then after work, I can start animation!

I am going to return to my movie now.

Annie

7:11

It's a Brand New Day

And the sun is high, all the angels sing, because you're gonna die.

I have to stop starting my blog posts with whatever random thought is in my head.

Guess what? I've finally got a design for my character Eli that I'm actually happy with.

I've tried for so long, because when everything started way back when, he was just a demon, very generic. He looked generic, the most badass thing I could come up with was a bunch of unnecessary belts and an upside down cross earring. I was so cool.

I later redesigned him with the same basic clothes, only I chopped off all his hair and added heeled boots. Cause you know, nothing says bad ass like a pair of heeled boots.

From that point on, I've been staggering my way through designs and rejecting each of them. At first I just took the original design and ditched it totally, trying to come up with something else. I came up with a very tall, very thin blue guy with a tail, messy hair, and what was supposed to be tusks protruding from his lower jaw and growing up through the skin.

It didn't hold. My second design was just me taking the original, original, years and years old drawing I'd found, and trying to redraw it completely. I liked it, I developed a massive nose for him, as well as giving him back his long flowy white hair.

As writing went on, I stopped liking it. The design was still to generic, there wasn't enough to be afraid of, and he was too human. Sure, I CALLED him a demon, but what difference did that make?

And so, the third character redesign was rejected. Last night while at home, I decided it was time to try again.

I'd been playing with this idea for a while, the idea of rocks and rocky protrusions from his entire body, making him stronger, more invincible, and hopefully scarier. At first, I thought Eli could be some sort of rock gollum; the only problem with that idea is that gollums are normally created by a master to serve the masters purpose. They aren't very intelligent, and are basicly the equivalent of a moving potato sack.

Eli is incredibly intelligent, so that idea wouldn't work. But the idea of being a mash up between a human life form, and a rock, stuck with me. I'd tried it multiple times before, but the only success I had was in making Eli look like a teenager with a horrible bad case of acne, or small pox.

Last night, just doodling at home in ballpoint, I came up with this.

I liked it! Granted, he was naked, and I had no idea what I was supposed to give him as a costume, that didn't matter, because I'd come up with a basic character design that I actually liked, after pretty much five years worth of work.

Oooo.

I cut his hair from the original design (it was down to his ass) and I trimmed up his limbs. Though I wanted him to seem scarier by covering him in rocks and protrusions, I still wanted him to look like he could be beaten in a fight, so as to be deceptive.

I failed, I've been informed Eli looks like he could kick Alan's ass.

Oh well, I still made him very girly, and was horrified when my brother stepped up to inform me, "You should give him a rock junk".

I was so horrified I had to leave the room and laugh till I cried.

SO, this is Eli, incredibly simple costume to balance out the ridiculous amount of line work I need to put into his character.

This is also the guy who takes an unhealthy interest in my protagonist.

Oh no!

Annie

9:23

Happy Birthday Little Bro!!

Something a little different from what I normally post. Today is my younger brother's sixteenth birthday; To celebrate, my mom suggested I make him one of my.. "Wonderful trading cards" (groan).

It was pretty fun, actually, after I realized I had no idea what my brother looked like, because his face is always hidden under a mountain of hair.

Very long mountains of hair.

Ignore the fact that I made him a humpback and didn't bother to adjust my scan so the colours are absurdly bright.

THIS, is probably one of the most accurate caricatures I've ever drawn; seeing as I'm crap at drawing anybody real except me, cause I draw me all the time. Prisma colour markers on bristol board!

I was in one of the most foul moods (again) today, and I don't really have a good excuse for it. Came home and napped for a few hours, and woke up feeling much better. Tomorrow morning my mom is going to pick me up from the school and take me home, we're going to have birthday dinner, and I'll be back Saturday sometime.

Hooray, I get to see my family. Who I'm going to be seeing the week after next anyways, but hey, birthdays are important.

Oh and yes, my head still brutally hurts; Its been migrating around my skull for the past few days, from behind close to my neck, to burning behind my right eye, to sitting and stabbing me in the face from the left, and then back to festering behind my right eye.

I wish I could afford to look into some of the techniques my doctor suggested, but really-- I can't keep living with this, it's gotten worse this past year, and I just want them to stop.

On the upside.. CHELSEA DESIGNED ME A DRAGON!!! His name is currently Greggor, and he resembles a boar. Being my favourite animal, that is an AWESOME idea.

I love my dragon, and when she finalizes the design, I want to make a plush version of it!

Annie

10:06

Alan is the Magic Man!

AND the dinosaur man!

Apparently I don't know anything about my characters, because I was trying to figure out what Alan's last name was. And I was going through name generator sites trying to come up with a name.

When I remembered, "Oh wait, he's the adoptive son of Booster and Jem. THEIR surname is Grant. So clearly, he'd have the same last name as his adoptive parents!"

Holy crap, my characters name is Alan Grant.

THAT IS SO BLOODY AWESOME I CAN'T BELIEVE IT!

Also, he apparently can use magic. Not really, but Andrea thought it would be funny, so I indulged her.

I was too busy feeling awesome for inadvertently naming my character after Dr. Grant from Jurassic park.

I'm so hyper tonight, hahaha. So much energy; Tomorrow, I finish my sculpture in class! I'm so excited.

Very short post tonight.

Annie

10:55

The Final Product

I haven't been drawing much these past few days.

Actually, that's a lie, but everything I've been working on is a private project I don't want to show anybody at this point in time.

Maybe one day.

I'm making this post to post (to post to post to post) the contents of my portfolio for animation this year. One of my class mates was asking if she could see it, so she had something to compare to, but I'd given the hard copy of my portfolio to my mother, as she wanted to keep it.

In the following list of hyperlinks you will find scaled down images of everything I put in, with little comments from yours truly!

First up! The life drawing section.

Three accurate observations of the nude figure.

Set One
Set Two
Three
Four
Five

I clearly went above and beyond what they asked for-- but I'm also pretty certain it was a good idea to show I had strengths in different cuts of time.

Two accurate observations of an animal figure.

Set One
Set Two

Again I went above and over; I didn't have any strong observational animals that could fill an entire page, so I took the best from my trip to the royal winter fair and collaged them on two sheets of paper.

Two accurate observations of a hand, one anticipating an action, one carrying out the action.

Anticipating
Carrying Out

I re-did these a few dozen times and kept handing them off to my room mate to tell me if I snapped any fingers off. Which I did, and had to fix.

Character Design section!

Five Point Character Rotation (If you follow me, you've seen this already)
Expression Sheet, angry, neutral, happy, sad and shocked (Let it be known, I hate these)

Two action poses

Pose One
Pose Two

Story boarding! A four panel story board depicting a character finding a box, examining the box, trying to open the box, and reacting to the open box.

Adam the Child

My teacher suggested the age old joke of a boxing glove on a spring; I quite enjoyed drawing these.

Composition! Showing household objects resembling a sphere, cylinder, rectangle and cone in a space and then reacting to a particular event.

Before said event
After said event

I enjoyed drawing this, again getting a lot of suggestions of fun tidbits to hide in the second composition. It wasn't so bad once I let loose and just got creative with it.

Layout section! First a drawing of a character sitting or standing inside a space, then a drawing of that space from the characters point of view.

Character in space This, I reused from last year and just fine tuned a lot of the line work.
Characters POV THIS... I needed so much help on it wasn't even funny. Thank you to my room mate, who saved my life because I was drowning.

Five Personal Artworks

Really only has one box on the entire score sheet: "Creativity" But maybe that one mark could make or break it, I don't know.

Digital Painting 1
Digital Painting 2
Digital Painting 3
Water Colour Painting
Sketch Page 1
Sketch Page 2

I went ahead and included a bunch of sketches on one page and submitted it as a piece. They really like the red lines, a lot. They show a lot of thought and structure, so my teacher told me to make sure I included a lot of those, because the final, painted image? Doesn't impress as much as the work that went into it.

So, through the process of my portfolio I went to a main cluster of four people... My 2D design teacher, a third year animation teacher who agreed to meet with me, and my two room mates Sarah and Leah. I also got a lot of help from Chelsea, who kept me sane during the two weeks I was home alone working. I redid everything three or four times, but it got me a passing score.

Woo!

Annie

9:51

Frazzled!

I wanted to draw Ninja today. I wasn't sure how I wanted to draw Ninja. So I started drawing. this is what came out.

Ninja's very happy to hear the exciting news about animation.

I'm sort of failing at this "BE ENTHUSED!!" Drawing thing. In the last one, my back pain was ending my happy dance, and in this one I look horrified to be tackle glomped. Though I suppose in real life I would be.

This is far more fun to draw than something congratulatory! And it is congratulatory. Just in a very unorthodox manner.

I didn't realize that ALL of my room mates were headed home today. For whatever reason, I thought Leah and Andrea would be here until tomorrow, but alas, such is not so.

Everyone's gone home for the long weekend-- apparently some families actually do stuff on Easter, though in my family it never really got further than a chocolate bunny. I figured I'd stick around, do some painting, some house work, and relax.

Empty houses are creepy-- I keep thinking noises from my neighbor are in my house, haha! I'm so jumpy.

I rode the bus with Sarah down to the Via rail station, where we waited for the train, and my ipod's "solitaire" app became the coolest thing. I waved her off as the train pulled out of the station (I didn't see her, so I doubt she saw me) and then I waited a further forty minutes singing to myself for the bus to arrive.

I rode home, practically ran from my stop to the house, locked the doors and made sure the house was empty.

For the next three days, the girls get to be mine! Which is fantastic, except for the fact that Blimey is sick.. and I'm so terrified something is going to go wrong while Sarah isn't here. I couldn't do anything to help Archie, and I'm afraid the same thing is going to happen this weekend, due to the fact that my luck sort of really bites.

However; I'm being diligent (I thought that was spelt with two 'L's) with her medications, I know how to get to the veterinary clinic, and I know what to do in case of emergency.

That so doesn't help me calm down any. SO YES... Annie is the rat care taker this weekend! And I'm insanely paranoid about it!

Annie Hughes

11:43

DO THE HAPPY DANCE!!!

Today, I heard the good word.

I got accepted into Sheridan's Bachelor of Applied Arts, Animation.

FINALLY!!!

After weeks of stressing out and losing my mind, months of work on my portfolio, panic attacks, giving up whatever semblance I have to a social life, having my work picked at and reviewed and handed back to me for change---

IT'S FINALLY OVER!

Last week I thought the results were coming out. I was panicked, stressed, and so afraid I was going to get rejected again. I was avoiding thinking about it, but it was always a heavy looming presence in the back of my mind. They day finally came around, I checked OASIS to find--- nothing. I went to admissions to ask what the deal was.

The deal was, "Later this week, or next week." Shoot. So when this Monday rolled around, I checked OASIS again, only to find there was still no update. This was getting ridiculous, I have plans depending on my acceptance to my applied courses, and it wasn't fair to keep stringing me along. After all, there were about half the applicants this year than there was two years ago, yet the results were taking longer to come out. I decided I wasn't going to settle for a second, "Next week or later this week," (which I got) and went straight to the head of the Animation department.

I was told the same story, and I expressed my concerns about being forced to wait for so long, when there's so much banking on the results from Sheridan. She told me the same thing-- that they hadn't even started to input scores yet, and I would have to wait until next week.

By next week, I wouldn't have any nerves left.

I returned home, angry, bitter, knowing that if I didn't have my heart so set on the program at Sheridan, I would have left and never brought my business back.

And then I had to write a huge essay.

So write I did! Until two in the morning. And then I crawled into bed, and had trouble falling asleep because of my back. I woke up at seven, and was exhausted. I left the house tired, sore, and in one of the most foul moods I have ever woken up in.

I got to school, and remembered I still had to staple my essay together before I could hand it in. So, taking Chelsea with me, I head to the learning commons. The stupid stapler is empty. Alright, no problem, there's another stapler on the other side of the learning commons. As I'm crossing the learning commons, I hear my name. Confused, I turn about.

It's Allison! A girl applying to the same program I am.

"I got in!"

"Heh?"

OASIS updated this morning. With a sickening lurch to my stomach, I ask if I can borrow her computer, so I don't have to wait twenty minutes for a different one to start up and boot me in. I go to OASIS, and I log Allison out, and log myself in. At first, my heart plummeted, as I saw "Under Consideration," but Chelsea gasped and pointed to the program under the computer animation status I was reading.

Firm Admit.

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAH!!!! I was so unbelievably thrilled I got excited and hugged all in the vicinity, I texted my room mates, and I jumped around a bit. I'm quite sure I started everyone in the LC. I then ran (well.. I sped shuffled) to my classroom, handed in my essay and bolted. I had to find my teachers and let them know; I had to share the good news with the people who supported me. I would have done a happy dance, but as I attempted to skip my way down the hall, my back abruptly interjected with a painful: "CUT THAT SHIT OUT!!" so there was a lot of shuffling around and squealing with Chelsea.

I tried to hunt down my other animation friends, but the only other person I could find was Sue, who I told my news in excitement as we exchanged mystery gifts on our pokewalkers.

I then went to class and watched a movie.

AND I BOUGHT SHERLOCK HOLMES ON DVD! It's totally my reward for animation and I wasn't already planning on buying it, really.

So, for today starting in the worst of moods ever.. I am a happy person today.

Tis the Season for Floofy Dresses

And Gradients, apparently.

So anyways, I drew something-- I can't remember what, but Chelsea asked me, "I wonder what Tina would look like in a dress... I've seen her in a skirt, but not a dress,"

Today, because Chelsea was down the hall making a huge ruckus as she was working on her flash homework, I figured, Okay, I may as well draw something.

I was avoiding doing anything art or school related, because it's stressing me out this week, but I haven't had any headaches today (At all, it's almost scary), so I guessed I was safe to do something a little more relaxing. To the right, on request, I present Tinette, all done up in a summer dress.

Which was startling and weird to look at when I finished. She looks pretty, and Chels said to me that she actually looks approachable, and she might go up and speak to Tinette if she was dressed like this.

Apparently the costume makes the character, hm?

Annie

7:21

Still no word on animation. I hate the bastards in admissions.