Merry Christmas

a snowy standoff

flour sacks

Lately I have been seeing a number of animated flour sacks - an exercise in learning to create movement and emotion in a character. This is something that I struggle with, so tonight I did a little searching for some inspiration and images of what to work toward.

There is a great collection of images and videos posted by Stuart Lees Tait here.




And from other blogs...

Scribble Junkies

" It really is an effective thing to practice drawing with. The bag of flour exudes weight, shape, volume, and even texture! (I told my students to add stitching in the front to further help in defining the form), but is also a very simple shape which anyone can draw." - from Scribble Junkies

Animator Island

DeviantArt - heylorlass

Just found a link to this very informative blog post on the origins of the flour sack exercise and what it's real purpose was - a very interesting must read! Here's a small quote from it:
"So the primary reason for the half-filled flour sack is as a simplified learning platform for understanding natural deformations in movement and dealing with the inherent limitations. The additional imparting of character, personality and emotions to the flour sack is a secondary part of the exercise that evolved later. All too often animation students are introduced to this exercise as a lesson in learning to develop and show character and emotions in a simple object and don’t truly understand the primary value of the exercise. The poor misunderstood little flour sack gets a quick pass as a simple and pathetic little character and is often overlooked as a real training ground for understanding forces, deformation, and fundamental organic movement." 
Read the rest of the post here.

It's a busy season!

It's a busy season - yes Christmas is just a month away, and that makes it doubly busy and exciting. But I am refering to both PiBoIdMo, SkADaMo happening this month and starting in January another favorite - PB Dummy Challenge which sounds like it will run similarly to how we did the Unofficial PB Dummy Challenge last year.

This morning on the PBDummy Crit FB page, Diandra Mae posted a great link to "3 Ways to Pace your Picture Book", which had links to some other very helpful posts for writers and illustrators, including "How to format a manuscript" - all great info I am going to need in the near future. So this is me, just leaving a few bread crumbs for myself and hopefully leading some other readers along the path, making it a little simpler for them as well.

(ps. Another little facinating gem was a link to a post about Sendak's PB Dummy which later turned into "Where the Wild Things Are"...and wow was the first dummy different from the end product!)

PiBoIdMo 2013

And here we go! Another month of PiBoIdMo. I really do love these online challenges. Last year PiBoIdMo was such a great experience for me. At the end of the month I had 30 ideas, two that I LOVE! and 28 others that with time and a little tweaking may lead to other great stories. And I don't even consider myself a writer!  But these are all great stories to feed my illustrations.


So thank you Tara Lazar for leading us once again for another 30 days, and for the wonderful line-up of bloggers who will inspire us from day to day.

Happy Halloween

Photoshop Power Day

I just invested $75 in Will Terry's Photoshop Power Day earlier this week and I can't get enough of it! Five GREAT illustrators are giving their tips and tricks, things that they use regularly in creating their work. So definitely check it out if you are a beginner - intermediate Photoshop user. It's currently 25% off, the price jumps Nov.1

Here's a piece I just worked on this afternoon after watching Jake Parker's instruction earlier this week...

I started by scanning in a old sketch from a few years ago...

Then followed Jake's steps and within a couple hours, voila!

Thank you Mr. Jake Parker and Will Terry!

Learning about textures

It's late, but I just wanted to give kudos to Hibbary at Deviant art for the great textures and tutorial for using textures. There are some great ideas here, it's worth checking out.

How do you stay motivated?

It has been a long time since I have posted something. I have a long list of things to post, just haven't been motivated to take the time to blog lately. How do you stay motivated doing what you are doing - whether it's writing, blogging, illustrating...whatever creative pursuit you may be involved in. We all go through highs and lows in creating.

Today was a sick day for my littlest one and as he was resting in bed I took the opportunity to get online and just soak up the creativity and enthusiasm of others. Julie Hedlund, creator of 12x12 is one of those people that is full of passion for what she does.

Recently, Julie posted a neat interview she did over Skype with Peter Brown, now a Caldecott winner for "Creepy Carrots". It was a great interview that left me encouraged and motivated once again. If you have 30 mins...enjoy!

Texture

I recently completed an amazing online class taught by Will Terry and Jake Parker who have created a 'School of Visual Storytelling'. I can't say how much I loved the class and have come out of it with more focus and motivation to keep working toward this dream of becoming an illustrator of children's books.  Additionally the students in the class were great and we have come out of the class with a community of support.

There is so much to learn, but I am working on babysteps. On of these first steps is going to focus a little more of digital painting and harnessing the power of Photoshop. I found a great tutorial last week on apply texture by Alexandria Neonakis.  On this page, there is also a link to some great textures that are free to download.