Merry Christmas Everybody!

Well here I am blogging on Christmas Eve. First time I've been at a computer in some time and I'm having difficulty responding to and sending email so if you've mailed me in the last week it'll be a bit getting back =)

Anyways if I may be permitted a little nostalgic moment I'd like to share something with y'all that means a lot to me. Back when I was a kid Eaton's department stores in Winnipeg used to host a wonderful little Dickensian village set with with fairy tale displays in the windows. I haven't seen these things in years since Eaton's department stores were closed and in the later years the figures and sets had fallen into disrepair. But this year I learned that the Manitoba Children's Museum had erected the old set and it had been repaired. Looking into those old windows that used to be so much taller than I used to be was a real treat. All these figures and sets were hand made by people who apparently used to work for Eaton's. They're slightly crude, but look at them! All hand made little wonderful things! Here's a picture or two from Winnipeg and from the old village sets. Bring a tear to me old eye they do.

Everybody have a Merry Christmas, a wonderful holiday and a fabulous New Year!

-Sean

December! Whoop!

A couple friends of mine were in a burlesque performance and then I had another day of Burlesque Life Drawing which for the record is WAY more fun than regular life drawing although it's kinda dark in there so my hand shadow was over my sketchbook half the time. Still super fun. And Janis and Felicia and I went to the aquarium last Wednesday so I got to draw the turtle again and there were few enough people for me to have an actual sit down in front of the croc tank!

Oh yeah! There's a little short there as well... I almost forgot! Long story short that little guy in the scarf a couple posts down was a drawing that was done when i was really bored in the morning and then I started animating him a little. The whole thing is drawn entirely in flash and every frame is coloured by hand. Which for the record takes a long time. Hope y'all like it!

Kids, girls, fish and monsters.

Bunch of stuff. More exciting things probably next week.

So... coalition government, eh? I can't decide if that's going to be stupider and less productive than a conservative minority. Probably. Making a deal with the Bloc never turns out well for anybody. The NDP on the other hand... Well it'll be an exciting new year in politics

November "holiday"

Hey everybody! I'm still here! I'm unemployed for the moment (new contract starting in December) so I decided to take November as something of a vacation. And three days into that I got bored and started a bunch of new projects. So here's some drawings from the costume lifedrawing, some library people drawings and other assorted doodles. The kid walking through the snow was a quickie that kind of expanded into sort of a new big-ish project. More on that in future posts. But for the record that's where it started at 5:00 in the morning a couple weeks ago.
The coloured thing is my rendition of Ulmo from The Silmarillion. I meant it to be a companion piece to the Morgoth illustration I did... heck I guess a year and a half ago now. Not sure if I like it as much as Morgoth but oh well. It's better than my first attempt. I'm having a real problem making ulmo look.... watery... like there's a sense of depth to the body of water. That's a hard thing to abstract as it turns out. I guess I should have tried some little colour studies before I launched into the full thing. Live and learn I suppose.

Happy Hallowe'en everybody!

And now Ladies and Gentlemen, without further ado I take great pleasure in introducing you to Dr. Aleister Grisbane and The Creature! For the record all of The Creature's gears actually work and his heart DOES pump blood. Good times were had by all! Also note how Cookie Monster is projecting a beam of desctructive energy from his mouth behind The Doctor. We all barely escaped alive!










Part 2. Now the exciting and hopefully not overly vague conclusion to Skin and Bones! Kind of rushed the end here but... It's Hallowe'en! I'm tired! I'm curious to know if the premise reads at all.

Here are some pictures from the breakfast television set that my buddy Ben and I build for City TV. Good times. I am too tall to be shot properly on this thing though =P That mirror is a 2 way mirror so if the people there so desire they can make spectral images form in it. Not sure if they're gonna use that bit though. But I like to know it's there.



I will update this post with pictures of my costume as they become available since I've only done crappy cell phone pics of the makeup test up until this point.

Ooo, ooo, ooooooo......

Part 1. I've always wanted to do a comic. The reason I don't is overthinking. So my "strategy" here is to run blindly at a short, non committal subject based on Raffi's children's song "Skin and Bones." Turning out OK. But whatever. It's a learning thing.

Also this pen doodle is the final design of my Hallowe'en costume. it's looking actually pretty faithful to the design if quite a bit more elabourate (The helmet is epic)

Pics with Part 2. Hope you're all having a great Hallowe'en week! Go out and support your local Haunted Houses!

Something in the meantime.

Bloggy's looking a little bare this October right? Well in my defense I had a big portfolio deadline to meet and visitors over Thanksgiving. Talk talk talk. Well don't worry kiddies. I have a special Hallowe'en surprise for you in the coming weeks. Stay tuned for Part One. Part one of what?

New animation

Not sure how Edgarry this model is but it took me way too long to not post it. I cast thee off my table, animation.

Slapdash update

Well I tried to learn Open Canvas because I was told it was good. It is not. I say this because in the 20 minutes I spent with it I wasn't able to completely master it. I have no patience for learning you, program! So I finished it quickly in photoshop just to get something colourful on bloggy along with the usual assortment of doodles.

Doing the Negligence Raaaaaaaaag!

OK so here's a bunch of stuff. Lite on the drawings since drawing time has been reserved for animation. (Damn you Edgar!) However! I've got some other goodies.

*Pucca reel removed until I figure out whether I'll get myself in trouble for posting it

Here is a quick one-hour animation of a raven. Just for giggles I wanted to see how flash did at shape-tweening my keys. It was... not nearly as loopy as it could have been. Though it needed some help once or twice. Now flash if only you could shape tween a triangle properly I'd be very happy with you.
Also I'm going to throw this up there. This is the missing page from my online portfolio with some stuff from Class of the Titans. I reboarded a large chunk of this episode and I was gratified to see that some of the sequences turned out pretty well. I especially like Atlanta's line when she's talking to Archie. Here's the episode as well.
Wow! Did you read through this long somewhat uninteresting post? You deserve a cookie! Here! Have my first year live action film from college. Making this movie was all sorts of fun. The sound was added by a very tired me all in one live take at 5:30 in the morning the day the assignment was due. Which explains why it's so awesome. Special thanks go to Jesse Walker for letting me drag him across the cold cold ground. Oh also for ramming his face into the turf for the sake of comedy.

More quickies with the promise of more later.

Well I haven't been posting much. Reason is for the last few weeks I've been prepping for Frightfest (a bunch of avid haunters get together to put up an impromptu haunted house out in Langley for a campground)

We had hundreds turn up this year. The line went clear back to the entrance to our area for three solid hours. Good times! Photos of the set we build, some of the costumes and props to follow as they become available. Here's a couple starters and a bunch of little sketches from recent doodlequests.

it's a fun-splosion!

Lots of drawings and projects. Poster for a play a friend is doing, some coffee shop drawings, circus posters and Slughorn. I feel the need to explain the Slughorn thing and the Circus posters. So here we go. Circus posters were an attempt to draw like a person who *can* draw but was never *trained* to draw. Like if you started with the eyes like you used to draw people as a kid. Not sure how successful it was. I like the aging effect though. I'm going to print them out for our featured Circus room at the Hallowe'en in August event at FrightFest this year. Give them a good working over and singe the edges and so on. Slughorn was because I tried him a while back but it morphed into some weirdass non-slughorn character. So much to my amazement when I google images of "slughorn" I find this terrible drawing I did. So I'm doing this slughorn design to try and overwrite my previous terrible drawing of him with something more representative.

Have a good week everybody!

Madly Off in All Directions.

I have about a million things I keep telling myself I'm gonna do and all I'm doing is watching Season 1 of Q.I.

Life Marches on. And The Mist is a great movie.

Got the mist. Watched it. A lot. Cool movie. Very cool. Here's some paintings! One is sort of a drawing jam speedpainting I did trying to capture the look of the hidden city in The Mountains of Madness. The other is an attempt at "Innsmouth folk" but I don't think he looks fishy enough. Still like the painting though even if it missed the mark a little.

Hey everybody! Have a great day!

some quickies before I leave for the weekend

I'm going on record as saying that I really don't like Ledger's Joker. I stick by my trailer assessment that he looks like "a" joker rather than "THE" Joker. And I'm also getting the feeling and I hope I'm right that I'm gonna eat my words. I really hope so. Mech was inspired by an image I saw at theStudio B art show. It was very VERY cool. So I went and doodled a quick mech related image and did some quick colours and stuff on it. Fun times! I wish I'd been more careful wiuth the perspective. WTF is that thing behind them?!?!

Quick, man! Post something!

Yessir, here's some drawing and a painting. I got all inspired watching how fast ManMay's getting awesome at digital painting so I figured I'd jump in on the fun but the "speed" painting turned into a multi-day tinker and fiddle. Oh and owls are cool. Cats are there because I was staying at dad's place while he's in Winnipeg (Happy Birthday, Mum, Dad, Gillian and Paul!) and he has a cat. But she's boring to draw so I was drawing her poses as if she were more interesting. You hear me Marley? You're uninteresting! Ah-hahahaha!

Kung Fu Panda: Dreamworks Finally Gets it Right

It's awesome. I could nitpick but... screw it. Everything I wanted and more. Everyone go see it or else.

I'm probably very excited about Kung Fu Panda

Probably.


**EDIT** That Kung Fu Orangutang was bugging me so I tried a few variations.