Wednesday, December 9, 2015

Mystery Museum

Materialises.

Done in about 3 and a half days- (stark contrast to the current book unfortunately).
I loved the chance to do some older fantasy sort of pictures for kids.
A direction I'd like to go.

(A shame so much was cropped out and shaded out on the back- again doing the front and back in an afternoon before I knew what words were going to be on the back.)

At the launch on Tuesday a lot of the kids said how much they loved my illustrations and how close the drawings were to their ideas
...which is a relief.
The stories the kids did were very interesting to try drawing.

The launch was one of the most lavish I've ever seen with pastries everywhere!



Bottersnikes and Gumbles

A long time ago I longed to work on a version of  the Bottersnikes and Gumbles story .
Then a few supanovas back I met some guys in sydney who were working on a series.
 ....and nothing.

Did a few pen scribbles the other night-(amongst the other scribbles)
looks like the bottersnike is a vindictive one- sitting on a jam jar of gumbles- with what could only be a discarded take away vindaloo container nearby.

Looks grim for those gumbles.


Sunday, November 29, 2015

Friday, November 20, 2015

Pac man infestation

Home entertainment

10pm -Nothing on TV- so sat and thought-
"I know I'll try a bit of cutout animation with Dragonframe"
45 minutes later.... Taadaa!    (I run out of steam)
Note all the things being accidentally shifted and not positioned back is my laziness- Dragonframe has modes that allow you to realign stuff but I just wantedto push on and see how it might look anyway.



Thursday, November 19, 2015

Sketches while watching....

......watching Manga Studio tutorials.

Man the pen feel is so much better than photoshop- you can go from superthin/hairline to thick like a paintbrush can.(much thinner and far better than photoshop)

Photoshop you are so dropped- I'll finish the book I'm currently doing in it - but after that......
seeya.


Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Quickly added Christmas Cheer

I bought Dragonframe- a stop motion program.
Man it is so cool.
There's a lot of the stop motion craft I don't know-
especially camera stuff- but I can easily see that so much has been thought out in the program- a weird and novel  delight to see in software.
I think the beauty of stop motion is that even if it is "craptastic" - somehow watching it you forgive any technical deficiencies.
Anyway- makes me feel like a kid again....
which is nice.

Also bought Autodesk sketchbook- I only have photoshop CS5 but as a drawing program it sucks mightily- primarily because of the appalling jaggies/aliasing/stepping as it reads your pen stroke.
Hadn't occurred to me how singularly bad it is until I've recently tried:
Sketchbook
Mischief
Manga Studio
Painter
and none of them have the same problem/suck so much.

Actually sketchbook has piqued my interest in concept art again- and plain drawing - so again excited to give it a go with the new tools.

Did a very quick replacement dinosaur for the banner.
Added a hat for christmas.

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Night doodlin

I need a real job- if anyone has one.

Kind of getting a revival of a desire to do animation....

I didn't plan or think about that penguin/duck one I posted - I just did it- didn't really think about timing- so some of the pauses are short/wrong/wrong beat  etc.

Still there's a a lot of enjoyment and immediacy about it....
even if the light flickers /things done wrong etc ( a lot of craft to learn with the stop motion I guess.)
Kind of reminds me of the stuff I did as a kid  trying to do animation.

Struggling with the Little Bad Wolf book- at least struggling to achieve the dream suggested by my roughs.
Must not get hung up on the roughs.
Must stay loose with the backgrounds while I'm clarifying them.



Anyway- some doodles- 25 minutes of noodling.....



Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Mystery Museum Mk2

Another attempt at the cover. Also a very fast attempt/idea for a back cover.
Both need a bit of photoshop love I'm afraid but ...here they are...
Had thought to do a page of shading/dark/vignette in watercolour and composit it over both in pshop.
Speaking of pshop I need to pull my finger out and learn manga studio etc so i can leave pshop behind-
I hate it.



Sunday, October 25, 2015

Did a bit more on that Dragon

The 'pre sketch' from Book Expo-
I did a bit more while sitting at my Caba Creative trail stand  (when I wasn't making the fish hat.)

Fish Hat



Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Monday, October 19, 2015

Book expo- Large drawings






Book Expo drawings and paintings



 A few unfinished ones here- ones I sort of started then gave up
or thought  "this bit has to dry" and put it aside then never came back to it.



 A bit rude this....but then if its good enough for Norman Lindsay to do these sort of things.....


Book Expo Australia