Space Zombies EP

After beating two dead horses together, YouTuber d00d Jarrod Alonge kept beating out more musical concepts. His fake bands lived on and gained more traction - before we knew it, he put out another album as his Pop-Punk moniker, Sunrise Skater Kids, AND announced that he'd be a Fearless Records Warped Tour Pit Reporter again... year #2 in a row! Here's where I had left him last time:

Being from Columbus, Ohio just like AMIDST THE GRAVE'S DEMONS, I was excited to break out all of the feelings I had conjured from old Warped Tours and free metalcore church concerts. If only I still had my old cool-girl TDWP shirt to aid me (ugh I gave it to Wes).

So Jarrod started by sending me these two THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA EP covers. Zombie and Space EP. Notice a coincidence? He even sent over a very helpful smash-up collage.

I promptly sprinkled alien zombies all over the place.

Jarrod wanted a spaceship. The instinct then was to slap him and a pet cat inside.
Eventually both cats!

The best of the zombie aliens made it to the next round:

Got cleaned up + scooted around a bit:

We dialed back some fog, changed up some grass, etc etc etc - and wound up at the finish.

As things wrapped up with the album cover, I thought it was time to call it a day. BUT WHAT IF - we make a mid-to-late-2000s bright colored, Hot Topic, scene-kid tee happen? Was I dreaming? I'd be lying if I said I didn't have any garments that fit the bill remaining in my closet... a few of which were made by my favorite Hot Topic aesthetic-mastermind designer/one of my main inspirations on my way into art school, Kyle Crawford/Electric Zombie-boy! I've been training my whole life for this moment!

Only requirements were: hey, let's use bright colors. The band name of course. And we need a large alien zombie monster puking just about everywhere. I wanted to throw his cats in again.

Took about 5 hours of grinding into the night/morning. You never know what you are capable of until you are literally drawing something fun + straight up your alley!

The best part of everything... I handed off a ton of vector pieces/alien zombie body parts to Jarrod via a hefty Google Drive folder to be used in a lyric video. A lyric video? With things I drew flying around in it here and there? Those videos are usually cheesy cheese, especially because they remind me about trying to learn how to animate in Flash by making lyric videos for local bands. When I finally mustered up the courage to listen to the single and watch the animation, I wanted to pick up all of the change of the floor. Pretty slick. My alien babies were doin great (thanks to this guy), destroying everything in their wake. Especially toward the end...

That's a wrap! Thanks for looking! You can grab the EP + tee + poster combo, or at the least go feel out all your metalcore dreams on Spotify or somethin.

#zombiegradients

Birthday Aliens

Here's to cartoon aliens helping me enjoy the last of my last winter break from school.

Another week, another blog post. A lot has happened within the past week - I had a 22nd birthday, I survived an icy/arctic blast of weather (a pipe even exploded on my street, flooding it with water, which was a sight to see), and the animation computer labs at school finally opened. Tomorrow morning I have my last Orientation session with CCAD, and Monday I start my last semester. A-times, they are a-changin'.

The labs opening meant that I got to create this animatic for my thesis project (see below). I realize that the way I created this animatic seems pretty backwards overall - I made the drawings in Storyboard Pro. Finals kicked in, and I never caught the time to time out the frames. My personal computer has one step behind of the school's version (Storyboard Pro 10), so I could not open my file over break. Just before Christmas, I timed out small screen-caps of my frames in Flash. When the labs opened, I swapped newly exported images. The result is this animatic as well as files ready for me to work in. The moral of the story: work with what you have!

The blog where I am posting updates on the project isn't just for me to post in, but also for those who are helping me out. Right now, the team also consists of my background artist/friend, Kevin Deasey. I couldn't be more excited about working with him. Stop by his great blog!

Here's some more links I'll share this week:
1. The latest from Chris Oatley's Art Cast is extra up my alley: http://chrisoatley.com/wouter-tulp
2. Here's a website my friend Don sent me on my birthday: http://procatinator.com
3. Pianos make me cry. Lions (plus Hyenas!) and a guy who hugs them to raise awareness of their lives, plus pianos around 13:00? Not saying that I cried, but this Go-Pro creation is great: http://thehigherlearning.com/2014/01/05/wow-the-man-who-hugs-wild-lions-brought-a-go-pro-this-time-video/

 

New Year Sketch Partytime

Really excited about this new year as a whole. 2014 is the year I graduate college, pack up all of my things, and head out into that strange place they've been talking about in the movies, also known as "the real world." In the meantime, it's only January. And here are some drawings I've been throwing onto my tumblr over the past few days.

Some Happy New Year Drawings:

Marker fun. Abstracted self portrait on the left, feelings on the right.

Space Puppies and Kitties. Practicing being able to draw these guys as fast as possible!
Animating this stuff starts on Monday.

I will be making lots of obnoxious aliens leading up to the short film being finished.

Sketch ATTACK! #8 - Space Puppy Returns... Again

Here's the last batch of sketches I have compiled.... for now! More Space Puppy. There's some drawings of storyboard thumbnails in here: I was working on making sure each shot made sense as far as flow and leading the eye from shot to shot. I plan on revamping my initial storyboards as well as the animatic before I dive in. 

Sketch ATTACK! #7 - Space Puppy Returns

More sketches! Here's some sketches for my senior thesis.
Tons of puppies, kitties, and aliens. More tomorrow!

Space Puppy - Animatic Attack!

Lots of process updates for the animation I plan on making my senior thesis film!

First off, in class, we started timing out the drawings we created for our storyboard:

After these were done, it was time to start timing out the entire piece. My instructor brought up a really good point: I timed things way too fast. We tried playing it at double the time, and lots of scenes instantly read better. Here's the fast pass (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CU9mx-JKKOc) vs the double-timed:

After playing with the timing, I came up with this. There are a few drawings missing, but I am overall happy and ready to take another pass at this sometime this summer, as well as really start digging into the animation before senior year begins:

Space Puppy Character Designs - Pass 1

I have been drawing the characters for my Layout and Timing class a lot for the past month or so, making way for the first turnarounds that we recently completed. These were my first character turnarounds, so I can wee some wonky features that I am ready to go back in fix in the upcoming pass. In class, we were instructed on how to "check" your turnarounds and animate them spinning - a really cool exercise I want to definitely continue to do in the future.