Merry Christmas!

I didn't get to see some relatives I wanted to see for Christmas this year but, hopefully I'll see them next year. No worries.

On a different note, I haven't forgotten about my Jem and the Holograms movie rant. I've found more information about the production of the movie. I need to do more research.

I'll try to post art soon. : )

Jem and the Holograms Movie Rant Coming Soon

This rant is looong overdue seeing as I actually paid to see the Jem and the Holograms movie on November 4th. I'm not sure how I want to structure this. Whatever structure I'd like to use, I plan for at least three posts. Each having something to do with how this movie was marketed, how the movie was structured, and interviews of people envolved with the film and fans who were asked to send in videos and letters. And of course, I want to talk about the original Jem and the Holograms cartoon that this movie was supposed be based on. So, I'll wait until later this weekend to start posting about my thoughts concerning this film.

Jamie Hewlett Interview

I like to surround myself with people who are honest with me about who am I am and what I'm about.


 https://youtu.be/_BSQQvNCqzI

The ego is a very dangerous thing and should be kept in a box under the bed ~ Jamie Hewlett. One of my favorite comic book artists. Many years ago, I first saw Tank Girl and was instantly enamored with her and her world. Since my tween years I've been into European comics via Heavy Metal Magazine so, Judge Dredd and Tank Girl were very interesting to me.

Trying to find the moment where you're lost in your work is 'being in the zone.' He let himself get interrupted too much. My problem is I've not been disciplined enough to get those things finished.

"ATTENTION ARTISTS" - REBLOGGED AS PER REQUEST

Copyright law is about to change...
For more than a year Congress has been holding hearings for the drafting of a brand new US Copyright Act. At its heart is the return of Orphan Works.

What does this mean for artists? it means it will make it easier for infringers to steal artists works and harder for people who are making or trying to make a living out of art more difficult. This will effect every artist and all the artwork they have created, are creating, and will be created. Corporates, Big businesses, and publishers want this to pass to make money out off artists works without paying us artists for past, current, and future artwork.

The Canadian Government has already expressed interest in following suit and adapting their laws to match this proposal if this bill passes.

- Basic Facts About The Law Being Proposed -
“The Next Great Copyright Act” would replace all existing copyright law.

- It would void our Constitutional right to the exclusive control of our work.

-It would “privilege” the public’s right to use our work.

- It would “pressure” you to register your work with commercial registries. - It would “orphan” unregistered work.

- It would make orphaned work available for commercial infringement by “good faith” infringers. - It would allow others to alter your work and copyright these “derivative works” in their own names.

- It would affect all visual art: drawings, paintings, sketches, photos, etc.; past, present and future; published and unpublished; domestic and foreign.

Ways to stop this or preventing these changes from happening....

Share, reblog this post, spread it for other artists to take notice and action. - You can submit a letter on how this law can be an issue for you as an artist in the U.S.

> > > DEADLINE IS THIS THURSDAY: JULY 23, 2015 < < <

Non-U.S. artists can email their letters to the attention of:
Catherine Rowland
Senior Advisor to the Register of Copyrights
U.S. Copyright Office
crowland@loc.gov

I wish had read a lot sooner than today. 

The following blog is where I read this.
http://floobynooby.blogspot.com/2015/07/attention-artists.html

MY SHORT-FILM STORYBOARDS

These are some very rough boards I've been working on recently. Adobe Flash has been giving me some prompts informing me that it can not save my file. Somehow it actually does save the file and I can go back to using it as usual. The first panel of the third page is all wrong. I have to re-draw it. I've got a better idea. I'll adjust the camera left to end at that shot. That way the problem is solved in a much easier fashion.

Instead of continuing these boards in Flash, I will start over in Photoshop. I may start  on that tomorrow. The whole reason for drawing them in Flash in the first place is I feel more comfortable drawing in Flash than Photoshop. Yeah, I know PS is great for this kind of thing but, Flash gives me nice black lines throughout an entire stroke. PS has come a long way since I first started using it during version 6. For instance, the brush engine is a lot nicer. At any rate, there are pros and cons for using both programs to create stroryboards. I might list them some other time.

Recently, I downloaded Toon Boom Storyboard Pro from Toon Boom's website. So far it looks pretty good. I've got some online training to get up to speed on it. So, by the end of the week I should have a working knowledge of it. When I have more personal time, I'd like to create storyboard of a fight, a couple of quite moments and, some dramatic moments to use in my professional portfolio.

To a Close Friend,

MS, I have not heard from you  in a while. You asked me to create two paintings for you. I haven't forgotten. I gave you my word I would paint them for you. And, that's what I plan to do. After you read this hit me up sometime.

Eric : )

SCENE BREAK DOWNS

SCENE BREAK DOWNS

Eric R. Watson

Some Very Important Notes To Keep In Mind Before Storyboarding.

• ·         Go through the script. See what the story is about.

• ·         What’s the journey the character goes through? And, how can I put that on screen?

• ·         How can I bring out the inner qualities of a character?

• ·         How can I bring out what this person is feeling?

• ·         How can I interpret those things into playable actions?

• ·         How can I turn a vague script into something playable on screen?

• ·         Breakdown a script, determine what it’s really about and move toward that thing.

• ·         Create a Visual Expressions Narrative for each character. (Refer the script.)

• ·         How do I take a character through an emotional journey?

• ·         What is their psychological make-up into playable actions?

• ·         Design where things are located in each scene and how the lighting is set up.

• ·         What is the choreography for every character for each scene?

• ·         How do I design each shot to heighten the emotional effect of each scene? 

 These are just some important notes I've gleaned from Chris Oatley's Paper Wings Podcast Episode # 27: Creating a Professional Portfolio Part 1. Unfortunately, I didn't learn how to draw amazingly awesome storyboard in college. So, in addition to books I have on cinematography, storyboarding and the FLCL storyboard book I look for free resources online to learn the tricks of the trade. I'm sure there's more to creating storyboards from scripts than this; as alluded to by Justin Copeland. 

Chris Oatley's website:
http://chrisoatley.com/

Justin Copeland Interviewed on Chris Oatley's Podcast:
http://chrisoatley.com/storyboard-portfolio/ 

Justin Copeland's Deviantart page:
http://jusdog.deviantart.com/

Writing as a Drawing Tool

Writing as a drawing tool - yeah, that sounds weird. If you wanted to work with words, you’d be a writer, right? This isn’t beautiful writing, though. This is organizational, planning writing that I’m going to talk about. Writing out a scene beat by beat in order to outline an entire story is a good way to better understand mechanics of visual story telling. (I’ve re-written the previous two sentences for better clarity.) 

Full disclosure: I’m not a visual thinker. If I’ve only met you a few times, I recall you in terms of a general impression and descriptive words. I have no picture of you in my head. It’s kind of crazy that I’ve gotten this far in this field without a mind’s eye, but using writing as an intermediary between intention and drawing has helped me a lot. If you’re a visual thinker you probably have your own methods of working, but either way I hope this is useful. When I jump straight into boards or thumbnailing, it can be easy to get lost or forget the point of view I intended to convey in the scene. When I work straight ahead in either writing or boarding - it’s easy for me to go down the rabbit hole of possibilities. The farther down the rabbit hole you go, the harder it is to distinguish which choices are serving my goals, because this option is awesome — wait, and this one is, too. All of them are interesting and worth pursuing, and sometimes I forget where I was going in the first place. While that exploratory work is useful, it can be deadly when I’m crunched for time. Not LITERALLY deadly but, deadly to productivity for sure. So that’s where writing comes in. When I write down where the scene should end up, what each character is doing, that’s one thing I don’t have to constantly grip in my mind. I’ve got it on my notepad, and my mind is freed up to explore within the constraints I’ve set down. It all seems clear in my head, but it helps to write it down. Seeing the whole thing down on paper gives me a good look at where the disorganized areas are, so I can make adjustments. When I go straight ahead, it’s easy to tell myself I’ll figure it out when I get there… but, this brings me to another point: Writing is so, so much faster than drawing. I’m not talking about flowery description. I’m talking about basic “she goes there, he feels this, because of this she does that,” etc. You can knock this out in five minutes. Even looking at the bare bones it’s easy to see where you’re losing the spirit of your pitch. I’d much prefer to find out that I’ve lost the spirit of my pitch in five minutes than an hour later, after thumbnailing the whole thing.

Here’s another advantage: I can write down my plan, approve of it in sound mind, and have that paper with my plan for the scene or story written on it when I am:

•tired

•drunk

•in the throes of self-doubt

•seduced by the compulsion to change everything at the last minute

•wondering whether this was ever a good idea and what is on TV (very subtly different from the   throes of self-doubt)

If you’re not convinced, you’re not convinced. If you are, here are some guidelines: When you’re beating out a scene, think about WHY the audience is watching - like, what do they want to find out? Think about what they probably EXPECT will happen (so you can support that) and what ACTUALLY happens (so you can surprise them with it). Write down everything that happens in the scene. Descriptive words help (because again, when you’re tired and can’t decide what the acting should be, you can look at your descriptive word and just do that). 

•She looks up, confused.

•Above: wasp nest on a tree

•Wasps buzzing around it

•She is horrified

•She runs

For an outline - for your whole story - things are a little different. A general guideline I use for writing out an outline is that each of the following gets a paragraph:

•the concept of the story

•who the main character is

•what is her place in the world

•what goes wrong (inciting incident)

•how does she try to fix it (act 1 break)

•brief description of complications (act 2)

•what really goes wrong (midpoint)

•low point

•resolution (act 3)

It seems counter-intuitive that almost half of the outline would be setup for the story, and that the end would be just one paragraph, but this really does work and make sense when you need to see your whole story in just a few pages.So next time you have a story idea, try writing some things down before you start sketching your favorite moments. Maybe you’ll like it.

(I forgot where I found this tidbit of information but, it's definitely worth including here. And, I’m not sure who to give credit to for writing this.)

I'm glad to have found this on my hard drive. Since then, I've saved this into the Adobe Flash document that I'm creating my storyboards in. Also, I have Mark Andrews Lecture Notes I copied from two YouTube videos in the same Flash document. If you'd like to see the videos and read my notes here are the links to them:

Mark Andrews Lecture part 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmd7YIHUI5M 

Mark Andrews Lecture part 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ayjNzBnFXo

My Notes on These Two Videos (300dpi print quality)

http://bleu-rain.blogspot.com/2014/05/mark-andrews-cal-arts-lecture-notes.html

I'm Working on a Professional Storyboard Portfolio

I've been working on creating a storyboard portfolio. As you can see it's coming along nicely. The image looks a bit cramped so, I'll free up some space in it before posting the final boards.

The San Diego Comic Con is this week. Wednesday night was Preview Night. Thursday through Sunday is the actual convention. I wish I were there now. Maybe I'll post some videos from the convention posted by people who are attending it. The new Star Wars first look video is online at YouTube. After I see it I might link to it here.

Tomorrow, I might post about some of my artistic influences. Last week I started on it but, didn't finish it for this post.

The Youssef Drawing Syllabus - Movement & Form by Samantha Youssef

About Samantha Youssef 

 

Samantha is the founder of Studio Technique, an artistic training studio specialized in the training and development of industry artists.  She is the creator of the Youssef Drawing Syllabus, a unique drawing program based on various schools of academic draughstmanship, her experience as a feature animator for Walt Disney, and her background in classical ballet where she draws upon principles of movement and posing to design a progressive and successful drawing program.

All images copyright Studio Technique Artistic Training inc. All rights reserved. 

Samantha Youssef is a feature film character animator and visual developement artist.  She is a former animator for Walt Disney Animation, and has animated and directed for Ubisoft cinematics. She is an award winner at the Toronto Film Festival for her animated short film La Fuga Grande.
Film and gaming animation studios employ her to train their artists, and she has done masterclasses for animation studios, colleges, events and conferences around the world.  Samantha has been featured in the media, including Chatelaine Magazine, Musique Plus, and Wired Magazine.
As founder of Studio Technique, Samantha offers a rich and extensive background in the arts. Her classical art background, along with her experience in feature film animation and the video game industry, has allowed her to create a unique program that offers specialized training to all varieties of artists.  She graduated from Sheridan College's world-renowned animation program, completed the Gobelins intensive program in Paris, and has studied at prestigious art academies around the world.  She is a former ballet dancer, and brings her understanding of dance, movement and physicality to her uniquely designed program of drawing and animation.
Read more at Studio Technique

• tumblr
• blogspot
• twitter

 https://youtu.be/uDMvtg6JoRk

Live Q&A, Demo and Critique session to celebrate the launch of the book Movement & Form, the Youssef Drawing Syllabus.

She's a classically trained animator. And, I've decided to buy this amazing book by Samantha Youssef. : )

More Storyboards

 Unintentionally, I found a Chinese movie online starring Bingbing Fan entitled Double Exposure. She also starred in the recent X-Men: Days of Future Past as 'Blink.' She's a producer, singer and a phenomenal actress. I really am impressed by the lighting and cinematography in this film. That's why I've decided to reverse engineer the shots in this movie to understand how they were put together. Yes, these are very rough. Since this is not a movie blog and I'm not posting the link to the movie. The following is a very brief synopsis of this movie.

"When Song Qi stumbles upon her boyfriend's affair with her best friend, her life quickly starts falling apart and she is subsequently drawn into a quicksand of revenge and murder. Though all is not as it seems and Song Qi will have to embark on a twisted journey into her past and the very depths of her own mind...  " - Written by Anonymous

33 Things I Need To Start Doing

These are 33 Things I need to start doing now. I need to spend less time surfing the web and more time navigating the real world. I'm here to tell ya, looking at other artist's work is a serious time drain. For the next week or so, I plan to start drawing more in my sketchbook, continue the two hundred Colors DS paintings I promised a close friend of mine. And, actually begin the paintings I promised to paint for her, and write and draw my very first 16 page comic book. Also, I plan to work on the storyboards I posted in the previous post. There's a whole list of things I've got in the works. Most of them will be evident soon and I'll keep you posted as to what those things are.

On a similar note, I've been thinking about buying a few of these sketchbooks to take with me when I go out to sketch on location. A few months ago, I viewed  'Victoria's Cal Arts Sketchbook' video. http://youtu.be/T1qtLUTxshc And, as I'm on the look out for really nice small sketchbooks I've decided to buy three of these to use with my cool brush pens. And, I've got some really nice writing pens that are great for archival purposes. I'll have to add on to this post or start another post entirely to tell you about them.

I would like to buy the 8"x6" inch version.

http://www.pentalic.com/journals/traveler-sketch.asp

http://www.jetpens.com/search?q=Pentel+Standard+Brush+Pen+-+Tsumi+Tip

Storyboards - As Promised

These boards are based on a script my sister wrote for me. I'll post the rest later.

A Little Freelancing Advice from an Old Pro

This is a little something I copied from an image I downloaded a while ago. The original was done in what looks like ball point pen and color pencil. I promised some art and didn't deliver but, it is coming.

Happy Valentine's Day

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HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY

Sorry, I plan to post something tomorrow.

I'll Post Something Tomorrow

I wanted to post something today but, I ran out of time to do so before having to get ready for work. Tomorrow is a better day for it anyway. This post is just a placeholder for what I really want to post.

I've been thinking about finishing this old sketch from way back when. Unfortunately, I haven't found the original .fla file.

A painting... "Asian Girl with Flowers in Her Hair"

For some reason I can't get this image out of my head. So, after work this morning I've started painting it in PS. I've got to continue it sometime when I have a few minutes to myself. Also, I'll continue listening to my favorite 80s cartoon commentary while painting it. : )

I Hope It's Not Too Late for a 1st of the Year Post

I plan to post more art this year. : )