Stuck Behind A Table

Today was the last day of portfolio's. Some really amazing one's came in today, I was impressed.

I'm tired; I spent three days running around without sitting down, and I was doing the same today, and my manager was giving me a hard time and that, on top of everything going on in Orangeville, how much I miss my family, the monthly hemorrhage, lack of sleep- I couldn't handle it and I hid in a stairwell and cried; and then I got stuck behind a table for the rest of the day. So I drew pictures.

Lot's of pictures.

I'm going to really miss my teachers next year. Thurman rescued me some vegetarian pizza for lunch while I was in the bathroom trying to get rid of the red on my face, Enzo saved a seat for me at lunch, Michel caught me when I was upset and tried to cheer me up, DQ and Mario both stopped to ask if I was alright...

It was really an amazing way to spend the week, and I would, despite the disaster of a day I had before lunch, love to do so again next year.

However, I don't regret it being over, as I am exhausted beyond belief and look forward to sleeping in tomorrow.

Yeeeeah, sleepin' in. Fun times.

5:30

Annie

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

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.

Annie-Mation

Today, I have nothing except this link.

Personal Portfolio made for Digital Media Class.

Which you should totally click on and follow around and comment because I spent hours on it and it's really nifty.

Before you decide to take a look, the contacts tab doesn't work. What it's supposed to do, is it's supposed to open up as a separate email window, that goes to my sheridan email. However, SWF files apparently don't support that feature.

That's all right though, because PDF files support that feature!

But PDF files don't support page transitions, and without them, my entire portfolio looks like crap.

I'll be asking my teacher about that, because everything I read says that PDF's can indeed support page transitions, and if I could just get that one aspect working, I wouldn't need a SWF file, I could use the PDF. It also means I could include bookmarks, which is good.

I also wanted my splash page to open with a quick slideshow, with a flashing of four separate images, each one of my characters, and then fading to the "Annie-Mation" window, with a blinking cursor beside it.

InDesign isn't capable of making slideshows, or supporting animated gifs.

It's like trying to paint with a toothpick, there's so much I want to do but the program just won't support it.

I was up until four in the morning working on this; and then my room mate texted me at eight thirty asking if she could borrow my jam. The weekend world doesn't exist before nine, please don't do that on a day when I don't have class.

Other than that, I've got my biggest concern for next week out of the way! Now all I have left is a 400 word report, 2 billboard designs and a drawing of Bernini's David with some muscles and bones.

Hooray! I think I'm going to eat some dinner.

Annie

6:47

Getting into the Swing of it

Adjusting to having all the time in the world again. Figuratively, of course.

Felt like updating my blog today. So Thursday was our second monthly ATC meeting!
How'd it go? Well, I thought it went over really well. Got the dvd's up and working, turn out was GREAT, lots of fun activities, lots of snacks, and fun fun art was exchanged.

To the left I have some quick and pretty bad scans of the atc's I made (my pale blue and yellow just disappeared in the middle one there), for the themes Supernatural, Aliens, Persephone and Zombies.

Zombies are infuriatingly popular, it seems.

In return I got a handful of Indiana Jones cards, one of which made me laugh till I cried. That's right, it was that awesome. Couldn't have asked for anything more amazing.

So another thing, I wanted to post the life drawings I hauled ass to create for my portfolio.

These are my collection of 30 second poses I decided to include in my portfolio, with my room mate as acting judge.

Apparently, these are really good for thirty seconds, because they include a full figure.

Before I went to extra life on a weekend, I hadn't done thirty second poses since last year. I assumed I wasn't going to be able to get a full figure in, and I was spooked. After all, I have a hard enough time getting a decent figure drawing in two minutes, how the hell was I going to manage with only thirty seconds?

Fairly well, apparently. I enjoyed myself highly, and think thirty seconds are probably my favourites, once I get ten or fifteen poses in. I think the bottom three are from the same session, while the top two are from the day before and the day after, respectively.

These are slightly longer poses, where I could start adding more refined lines and stuff. The reason I went to extra life was to pick up a bunch of five minute poses, but I came out with a lot of successful shorter poses that were decent enough to compile on their own pages and show off.

The first one was an "Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeh," for a possibility to use on my full pages, but I wound up going back on Sunday (and missing the first period of the hockey game) for a final round, and it's a really good thing too.

These are the final drawings I wound up using in my portfolio, each of them having come from my last session. My favourite is the middle one, where the model was sitting with her back to me.
It was a pretty stressful weekend, but I was really proud with the results. Thursday I recycled about ten pounds of newsprint, all full of life drawings, and flipping through them I realized, "Hey, these aren't all that bad!" Guess I'm getting better after all. Ironically, throughout the entire weekend of drawing, my wrists didn't hurt at all. My arms on the other hand, were sore to the touch, and so was my back.

I'm really glad DQ went through everything... I don't think I would have been happy with my initial portfolio anyways.

Worked really hard to bring this portfolio together, I really hope it pays off this year.

VICTORY!

That's right! I've finally finished my portfolio!

It was a team effort between me and my character Tina.

She's not very thrilled to have been involved.

Seriously speaking, I owe a lot to my room mate and my 2D design teacher from last year.

I started this thing in January, finished it, took it around, overhauled everything, drew it again, had a melt down when I realized I had no life drawings that would be any use in my portfolio, went to life drawing three hours each on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, sent them off to my room mate, got her opinions, collected twelve of them together, photographed them, collaged them together, printed them off. Paid my portfolio fees, applied to a back up I really don't want to have to rely on, printed off everything else, ran off title pages, table of contents, organized everything, taped my proof of purchase to the cover of my plastic portfolio...

And I'm super relieved. My instinctive reaction to stress or relief is to normally to bawl (much to my embarrassment) so of course, I must mock myself for this. Wish me luck, I'll know towards the end of March if I still have parents or not.

Wooo!!! I'm so hyper.

Canada won the gold in hockey vs the USA!!! We ordered a pizza at the end of the third, and it showed up only minutes after we won the gold. So we got a free soda from the pizza boy.

I never liked hockey before this year.

A Pretty Water Colour

Painted back in December, I never got the chance to post because it's 11x14 and too large to fit in my scanner.

Eventually I took it to school and borrowed one of the schools larger scanners to properly fit it (there were some issues with plate/paper contact, hence blurry areas) but.. here it is!

I'm not in a very talkative mood, I'm having a bit of a freak out over my portfolio as I realized... I have no life drawings to go in. So, tomorrow, saturday, and sunday, I'm going in to schools extra life sessions. I don't need a lot, just three really good drawings. So hopefully, I can fix this... problem.

I was never any good at life drawing...

Anyways, off to actually finish the layout I want to swap out.

"Hello, baby!"

Yeah, I markered over my red lines. Cause I'm cool like that.

Drew and coloured this today as a break from my portfolio work, which is really driving me insane. Not in the sense that I feel like I won't finish (though I guess there's a touch of that) just in the sense of.. "I'm really tired of working on this and want it to be done already,". I still need to redo my layout and finish up my composition, and touch up my hands...

But at the very least, I completely redid my rotation (just a couple things here and there to fix) and my action poses, and my expression sheet.

Woo hoo!

My drawing for today consists of Ainmire and Kara, both traditionally drawn, inked, and rendered. I love my markers. They make me happy. In a very bad way as well as a very good one.

Ainmire hates pet names so much. So of course, Kara never misses a chance to call him one.

I miss drawing these guys, especially Ainmire. I love the relationship they have and they way they act around each other; it makes me smile. Ainmire will never grow accustomed to having a girl who won't leave him be. Not to say he doesn't CARE for Kara, as he does, he's just awkward around people in general. Especially people who actually want something to do with him. Poor baby.

Heh heh, baby...

I'm a jerk.

Ah, I dropped by the school today on the hopes that I could see DQ again and show him my new character rotation and show I took his advice to heart as well as to see if he noticed anything abnormally out of place, but; Due to the fact that I couldn't find him in the directory to call or email, I couldn't tell him ahead of time I wanted to show up, so I was showing up the same time I did last weeks in the hope I'd run into him, and he wasn't there.

Bummer.

So, dejected, I went back to my locker to collect my stuff and walk home, when I ran into Liz. I guess I didn't look that great, because she invited me to join her for coffee, which I gratefully accepted. It was fun, seeing as I haven't had a sit down-go out for coffee-talk thing since last time I was in Orangeville.

Sometimes, I'm homesick. Most of the time I couldn't give a damn.

I can't win.

SECOND character rotation attempt for my animation portfolio. I really can't win, I've started to realize this. I am much happier with this version than the first, because it has all the attitude that I originally wanted in my rotation (before I went with something simple and static) as well as? CURVES.

What is Tina without curves?

An angry skinny chick.

You can check out my much much larger rotation here.

I took DQ's advice to heart and I started from scratch all over again. During the entire process of this piece, all I had going through my head was *sproing* *sproing* *sproing* and the visualization of a giant spring working up and down throughout the entire body.
I discarded two other poses while I was working, because they weren't consistent enough to suit my purposes.

You can take a look at my older, unsuccessful rotation here. You'll notice lovely lovely Tinette has gained some weight, but in all the right ways. She's also gotten taller from my last rotation, which will make my friend Leah happy.

So the BIGGEST inconsistencies I see are during the switch from profile to 3/4 back view, Tinette's eyes drop, as does her nose. She's suddenly looking a bit further down than she was previously, only to be recovered in the next rotation. SO I NEED TO FIX THAT. Another inconsistency I noticed, and noticed while I was working, is that while in her front and 3/4 rotation, her second finger is along the hem of her pants. However, in the profile rotation... Her hand is further up on her hip than previous. The thing is, I'm not totally sure how to fix that, as the hem is consistent from one jump to the other, so is the hand. They just.. don't line up consistently, and I don't know what to do about it.

So that's another thing I need to work on!

I was also doing a lot of staring at the foot placement. As the rotation moves from pose to pose, the feet don't stay rooted in the same position, which would occur naturally, right?

I hope so. It looks natural, and it feels right, but at the same time I'm like.. IS that right? I hope so.

Tomorrow after school I'm going to return to DQs office and wait for him like I did last week. Hopefully he won't mind taking another look, as he invited me to ask him if I had any questions, and I'd like to show him I took his advice to heart and made (impressive) changes to (so far) the character portion of my portfolio. I still plan to take the rest of the advice he gave me to heart as well, and still have a lot of work to do in less than two weeks.

Oh Lord, please lend me strength. Or I will keel over and die.

*panic*

~Annie

11:26

Artist Frustrations...

Yesterday after class, I went to visit a third year animation teacher known as DQ.

He sat down with me, and patiently, on his own clock, for about forty five minutes, and went through my portfolio, one page at a time.

He offered me a lot of helpful advice, and now I want to redo everything in my portfolio.

I've never in my life been so torn between relief and frustration.

I was told, that as an animator, he liked my art. He liked my style, the visual appeal, my design (I still have no idea wtf that means), my clean up... He liked my art, which was incredibly inspiring and relieving, as everything I drew just for me he liked. All of my spare sketches and especially the one I posted the other day complaining about my bad posture, he liked.

But, the art in my portfolio, my rotation, my character design.. Was stiff, and lifeless. "Body parts stacked on top of each other," "all the pieces are there, but it's like they're not interacting together,". Tinette's design consisted of a lot of sharp points that I have to "watch out for, cause they're difficult to animate," and my drawings were, "Borderline illustrative,"

When I got home... I wanted to throw my portfolio in the air in frustration and tear into it and just.. eat it, really. Two of these I drew right after getting home, the first and the last. I wasn't quite in a drawing mood and was having a bit of an.. "I'm very shaken," funk. They didn't turn out all that amazing, but the one I added today, the middle one, turned out much better.

I would have downloaded better suited fonts... But I can't say I care all that much about this little doodle to do so.

So, at the same time that I'm happy and honoured that DQ liked my art and took time out of his busy work schedule to look at my art and give me his honest opinion, and not only that, he LIKED my art; I'm frustrated to no end with my portfolio.

Today was the premiere of our Artist Trading Card club; and it was great. A lot more people than we expected showed up, our snacks were eaten heartily, we watched a lot of movies, met a few new people, and all made ATC name cards for ourselves, as well as picked our themes for the coming months.

My themes are Persephone, Supernatural, Aliens and... oh yeah, Zombies. So exciting... I'm totally drawing a Sabriel zombie. I like Garth Nix zombies. Well no, they sort of scare me senseless, but I do quite like them.

I'm also doing a personal one on one trade with my friend Ksenia, who is going to paint Suka for me, while I am going to make her a postcard following the theme "Spring". I'm excited. It was wonderful to see her again, she's such a sweetheart and I missed her dearly. I'll be bringing her over for tea some tuesday when things aren't too busy... Which on Tuesdays they typically aren't.

She gave me this beautiful silver ring as a gift, and I was so shocked when it actually fit my finger (rings never fit my fingers); and I'm going to try and wear it as much as I'm able. I'm not much of a ring person due to the fact that I can never fit them over my fat knuckles... Ksenia even mentioned it wasn't much my style, but sometimes occasions (like a date) call for such things. Seeing as I'm not planning on going on dates any time soon... I shall make use of it as a ring so much as I can!

I still have homework to do, so I must go and throw together three stamp designs. Adieu.

~Annie

11:21

Blast it, I missed 11:11 again.

I Have Bad Posture

Business class was boring and productive as usual.

Probably one of the first classes I've had since graduating that made me miss high school. My business leadership course was AWESOME and I had the best teacher ever.

Plus he was a volunteer firefighter, short, and good looking.

I liked him.

Anyways, from a class that was all about team building exercises, fundraisers, and learning about management, to a class where we sit and watch slide shows every week, it really makes me want to beat my face in with a clipboard.

Instead I just drew myself with bad posture in my clipboard. I realized it the other day, that I'm always sitting with my knees up close and my shoulders slouched. I'm going to have major back problems one day.

I'm almost finished my portfolio! In fact, the only thing left is to collect critiques and.. INK LIKE A MOFO. Which is the easy part, really...

Heading back out to see John Parker again tomorrow, who is going to arrange a meeting between myself and this mysterious, infamous, DQ....

Fun times!

~Annie

11:39

A page full of annoying doodles.

Actually, spending four hours drawing my friends and classmates and my own hands was actually a hell of a lot of fun. I've always loved hands, and how amazingly expressive they can be.

Up until last year, I thought I was pretty good at drawing hands, but my portfolio score set me straight.

So here, I present the hands portion of my homework. Drawings of five hands and three feet. I won't be posting the feet.

Like I said, I've always loved hands, and they never cease to amaze me. They are severely taken for granted on a daily basis. My favourite hand is the one on the top right, even though the third finger has a fat tip, and the first finger has a fat base, I liked it best. And that one is my hand! Haha. The hand to the left of it is my classmate Kristen's hand, the one below that mine, and the last two my room mate Leah's. Her hands aren't that knobby lookin', I exaggerated her knuckles for fun.

I stayed up late last night to finish these things and to mount them properly on mayfair. Wow, did I regret that. I also had to finish up my 2D design work, which was an excersize in typography. We had to take a quote off a page given, and we had to make an expressive sentence, experimenting with fonts. My chosen quote was the following...

One of the critiques I got in class struck me as just rude, when a class mate commented that she would have "Chosen a much better font that that" for "Danger".

TOO BAD, I LIKE IT.

I have to make very few changes to this before I print it off; but on the whole the teacher liked it.

Even though we were critiquing, my brain was far from present in class. I spent the day picking random annoying poses and drawing them!

Life is good. Anyways, a bunch of posed doodles, from reaching up on a shelf, to reaching under a dresser, to.. Uhm... Bending over with hands on knees (it was supposed to be bending over to touch toes, but I failed) sleeping, and I guess this is sort of... landing... No idea.

I heard news that the next move in the strike is to-- well, strike.

Which would be lousy and lame, but what can you do?

REBEEEEL!!! YOU CAN'T HOLD BACK ART, EVEN IF YOU CLOSE DOOOOWN!

Maaaan, this is going to cut into my summer wages...

I have been busy!

Yes, I actually have.

Been working away at my portfolio!

Yet again!

For the second year running!

Why?

Animation.

If you didn't know that, you clearly don't know me.

So anyways, here, I present my character Tinette, all dressed up in her not so fancy pants gear, and set up in a .gif file so you can watch her rotate in all her not so fancy pants glory!

I have no idea if it will work from here, you're probably going to have to click it in order to see the five poses.

I've also finished my action poses, my room drawings, my composition drawings, my observational hand drawings, my life drawings, and my animal drawings. All that I have left, is my expression sheet, which is almost finished, and my storyboard, which is in the planning stages somewhere.

Meaning it's not close to being finished, but once I buckle down! I'm considering Wednesday, as I have a four hour break between classes and I'm apparently sticking around school to work on portfolio shiz with Leah and Kristen. And THAT way, I can collect opinions!

I'm considering having a naked lady coming out of the box. That would be amusing. For me to draw, I don't know about the boy.

Now then, I think it's time to take a break from portfolio related work! For the time being, I'm at a standstill. I want to ink work I've finished, but I know that isn't a very smart idea because I plan to show my work to teachers, and there's no point coming to them with something that is already finished and then ask what I need to change. You see? I'll draw some expressions later, but for now, I think I'll do some nerd related writing. Hooray!

Annie

7:57

Cornered!

Okay, so Uhm.. I think it's a pretty damn safe bet to say I didn't get into animation.

Couple days have passed, and now I don't feel like such a loser!

Still don't feel all that hot, but whatever, I'll deal. And I'm dealing. And my friends are awesome and supportive and amazing and uh.. not letting me feel like a loser =P

SHOCKINGLY;

I am still capable of drawing.

Which surprised the hell out of me, considering last year when I got my rejections, I was unable to draw for well over three months. I do remember that very clearly.

ARTWORKS tralalalalala *uploads*


And here we have it. I actually like it, even thought the anatomy is very wrong x3 Okay well the anatomy isn't even that bad, it's just a bit skewed on the right shoulder there..

So the story behind the art! I'd had a nice lovely hot shower, and while I was in the shower.. the sun set. What a surprise. I walk back to my room and sit on the computer as I brush out my hair. I don't bother to turn on the lights, cause.. well E-Vain is kinda bright. So I'm talking to Sarah, and telling her about this pill bug I was oh-so-lucky to step on when I got out of my shower. I'm chatting, blahblahblah, when, I notice this thing in the top left corner of my screen. I pay it a little mind, and realize it has multiple little pointy legs and is doing that creepy thing spiders do when they climb back up a string of webbing.

Spiders are cool, don't get me wrong, I like the creepy crawly nasty buggers, cause.. Well they eat the OTHER creepy crawly nasty buggers I really don't like. For the most part, when I see a spider, I leave the dude alone. On my computer, nothing but a black silhouette in a dark room?

Yeaaaa-ha-ha-haaaaah.... No. I gave a really odd strangled scream and pushed back from my computer and staggered to my feet, throwing my brush off my lap and somewhere across the room, tripping over my chair, finally managing to turn on my lamp and spin back to my computer.. and the bastards gone.

GREAT.

Guess where he was hiding? He was hiding in the little golden christmas bow I'd stuck on my moniter in December and never bothered to take off.

Jerk.

So I'm standing there, wondering how the heck I'm going to kill this thing, when my brother comes up, presumably curious as to why I screamed and caused such a ruckus. I tell him to get the spray, and I get a piece of paper, the idea that we were going to douse the ribbon in spray, and the spider would fall out in all that wonderful shrivelled curled glory that IS a dead spider, and I could throw it away.

Didn't work so well. The spray was apparently broken, so I was like.. okay, cool, I'll just reach over, detach the tape that is holding the ribbon onto my screen, and then we can stomp the shit out of it. I detach the ribbon, it falls on the paper, and the thing scurries out, and beelines it directly for me.

Gave the funny high pitched, "Oh, oh oh!", did a funny dance move, waved my free hand like a dofus before i realize that I'm still holding the thing and dropped the paper. The spider was then on my floor, so I promptly clambered away from it, right up onto my dresser, where I perched and yelled at my brother to "KILL IT, KILL IT, NO NOT THAT WAY, KILL IT!!!"

Eventually, after a lot of frightened squeaks on my end, spider became a damp splot under a piece of tissue paper on my floor.

Squish-dead.

Tada, story behind the art!

Fun fact, the ribbon the bastard was hiding in detached itself from my screen as I was sitting here typing. Heart skipped a couple beats, breath caught in my lungs, and I managed again, "Oh--!" and some frantic hand waving before it clicked that it was nothing more than ribbon.

Jerk spider!!!

I love boars

So, today was yet another crappy day >< It's just a spiraling chain of events, I'm telling you. Thought I was feeling better yesterday, being all productive like at the shop, then I woke up, came to school..

And some assface swiped my pencil case.

I'm not totally broken up about it, more pissed than anything (I was at the point where things ceased to be upsetting and just got frustrating), but I lost a bunch of time wandering around the LC looking for it, ran to security asked there, went all over the place, and no dice. Turns out honour isn't as prominent in college as I thought it would be.

Anyways, I considered going up to Andreas, but I was like.. where's the point? So I proceeded to go to first period, and.. sit in the hallway for some stretch of time.

Sarah showed up, and handed me this http://www.illustratedatcs.com/forum/gallery/index.php?n=11400, that she made for me to cheer me up.. and it even says on the back "Made just for Annie," and it worked. I was looking at it periodically through the day, because I damn well love boars and it made me feel really happy that she'd gone through all the effort of making it for me, specifically to cheer me up. I still feel happy thinking about it x3

And then Andrea showed up, who I explained why I hadn't come to see her that morning, and she hands me one of her gouache comics.. the one from christmas where she THOUGHT she asked me to close the door in proper english, but really just mumbled nonsensically at me where the only word I could understand was "Yes!" And I had a good chuckle over that. She also pulled this spiderman notepad dealer that she had brought back to toronto from home, once again.. just for me.

So those personal surprise presents this morning made the day that much more manageable with me having gone and lost all my stuff.

Anyways.. the artwork of the day.. I got this idea the moment I used the word "Piglet" in the RP Sarah and I run together. Ain doesn't like PEOPLE, but animals are a different story. It was kinda neat how I was working on this in the LC (where my pencil case got nabbed), realized I didn't know what to do with his arms, and went to class, where Sarah handed me the baby (Baeddan) boar ATC, and the little connection i drew there made me happy too.

Ainmire is now left handed (because I keep screwing up when i draw him), his scars are now the result of a run in with a Chupacabra (yeah.. screw you bear), Baeddan is seven years old, and Ainmire raised him from an itty bitty piglet when he was sixteen. Hence the reason the two get along so well!

Naaaaw, boar piggies...

Anyways, I was supposed to be working on my post >< But I think I'm actually going to do what I promised and go to bed early tonight...

Guess what I did today?

Finished my portfolio! That's what! Hahahahahahaha

I'm going to warm you now, If you're expecting a blog that makes sense, don't read this, because I am INCREDIBLY hyper and will suffer for it tomorrow.

So I hate these... but I love them XD I hate them because they are so LAME and so action for the sake of action drawings >< Look at the bottom one, what is he doing? Can you guess? HE'S JUMPING OVER A WALL AND REACHING FOR SOMETHING THAT ONLY HE CAN SEE 8D

But I love them because I enjoyed drawing them and they came out well =3

Ainmire totally hates my guts now, but I let him punch someone in the face, so he's forgiven me just the tiniest bit.

I'm still wondering what the HELL happened to Laurent XD he seems to have vanished...

GOODNESS hyper.

BUT I AM DONE. Animal life drawings (No, I'm not happy with them, but they will suffice) my two hand drawings, my character rotation, my expression sheet, my two action poses, my storyboard, my composition drawings, my room drawings (I wish I had the time to redo those for line weights like I initially planned), and of course, my five original artworks. Two of which are miniature digital paintings centered on the page, One which is six sketches collaged together on one piece of paper, one which is three ATC's set up on the same page, and the last which is one of my design pieces. OH MY GOODNESS I FEEL SO LIBERATED.

All that I have left to do is to pick out another life drawing I am proud of (I may include some extra's in my portfolio) get those scanned in at the printing center (and if they do not do stuff like that, then I will figure out something otherwise) print EVERYTHING off, print up my title page, and make it all nice and hand-in-able, and.. Hand it in.

And that is it!!! I have completed it, it is finished!

I was having doubts Friday, but I've decided not to worry about it, that I am going to let things happen as they will, and if I DON'T get in, and I do wind up in Advertising.. I've more or less decided unless I have some hidden passion for advertising, I'm going to try again next year.

Wish me the best! *runs in a circle* Goodbye for now!

I hated today

I waste far too much time. Alright so, just some expressions I reworked, mostly for line variety, but these are better in terms of execution too.

I've been up too late, my eyes are stinging.

I must've drawn up four rotation sketches today, and I was getting so BLASTED frustrated, I wound up throwing them all out, and deciding I am going to use the wonderful invention of the lightbox, and just rework my old rotation as opposed to killing myself over a brand new one.

God, today was a waste =[ I knew I had work to do, but nothing was working, at all. Now I have to do even MORE tomorrow, and uh.. crud, my sisters coming home for a visit. Aaaaah she's going to haaate me

Oh well! School first!

First art post 09!

Okay so technically it is not, but it is my first art post HERE of 09.

So weeee!! i was playing around with my new red pencil thinger (even though my dad bought me like.. every colour of the rainbow, including green) and i doodled.. Suka, again. So much as i love her, i really need some more ideas to doodle X3

So i wanted to try out this colouring technique my friend showed me yesterday, which skips the whole inking step and you just colour the original sketch, which i thought was rather nifty.

So.. i want to try and draw something every day (cause that totally wasn't my goal in the first place) so here i am with my first doodle. And hey, i coloured it! Much happier with my painting style now than i was last year, guess i was just trying too hard. too many shades and colours and eeeeewyness. Went back to school yesterday, and man did it feel good X3 after a month at home with my family, that really was great to see my friends again, because i missed them a lot. It was actually rather depressing that after a month away from them, i finally get to see them, and then just a few short hours later, I'm on the Go, heading back.. home.

I feel traaaaapped here!

Gotta move out @_@ for real. Not that i don't love my family, but.. this town just seems so stifling.

Anyways, got some portfolio stuff to do, a script to attempt to write, so.. I'm out!

Falling behind

Okay so.. It totally hasn't been a week since i last posted a blog XD but whatever.

So, I'm feeling a little.. behind here. So i got done a lot of what i planned to do over the Christmas break, but here I am, tomorrow marking the halfway point of our final week off.. and i still need to complete

two animal life drawings, one imaginative composition, and one composition from observation.

And then i still have stuff i want to touch up.

And the original artworks.

Sooo I'm a wee bit frazzled, but hey! I can do this!