I think that's what they might start calling me here. My "office" space is set up neatly between the pinball table and radiator in the attic at my Aunt's house, and it's starting to feel like I'm melting into the seams of my swivel chair because I'm up here so often. But spending this much time in front of the computer means I've got some new updates for you! I guess most of what I've been doing isn't very visually FUN, but it's working towards that! I've been getting the groundwork laid out for the Wandering Tales Kickstarter. Scraping together a budget, brainstorming rewards, and getting ready to start trying to make people exited for the project. It's hard. Today I think I've finally got a decent budget outline that I still need my money-conscious cousins to look over/tear apart/rework, but I'm looking to get this stuff nailed down by late September. That's when I'm going to start looking at how to infiltrate the inner workings of the Wandering Tales demographic and convince people this is truly a project worth backing. It's slow moving, but when things start to pick up, you'll know it.
I moved to Boston two days ago. So that means yesterday I would have said "I moved to Boston yesterday", and the day before that I was driving to Boston. I have my computer set up and I have a bed between the crawl space labyrinth of storage boxes in the "Stuff" closet, so I think that means it's time to start calling Boston home.
While I'm waiting for the dust to settle (or at least adjust to it) I've been thinking a lot about Wandering Tales and how/when I can really start pitching the project as a Kickstarter. The funding portion of the campaign can only last a month-ish so I need to make it count. I feel really comfortable with Scudd and Charlie's designs and now I'm looking at storyboarding and making that Kickstarter pitch video. Details to come. Well I'm still messing around with Charlie because I'm STILL not happy with him. This time I'm retaining more animal qualities and messing with proportions and I think I MIGHT be going in the right direction. He's got a little too much of the creep-factor going on in this picture, but I've noticed that right before my characters hit their peak design, they straddle the creepy line for a little bit. So bear with him for now. Mostly this was an exercise to re-invent the storyteller's body shape. The humanoid figure wasn't working for me, and you know what they say: "If it looks too human cut off the legs and sew a rabbit on its butt". No I don't think they actually say that anywhere ever actually. Why are the sketches blue, you might ask? I don't have any real answer for that people just seem to use blue for pencil tests. It used to serve a purpose back when we were doing sketches on paper and scanning them in, but now it's just for the look of it. If this poll has you all torn up because you like New Charlie's feet but Old Charlie's ears, or maybe Old Charlie looks too frumpy but New Charlie looks too slinky, just drop a comment!
I've been working on my oDesk profile to try to make myself look like an extremely employable and efficient and professional and flawless and beautiful artist. I've been applying to a lot of children's book illustration jobs and things of that nature, and what I've realized is I don't have a tone of actual children's book experience. Sure arranging and conceptualizing characters and events within a children book setting is one of my favorite things to do, but when it comes down to it I don't have a ton of portfolio-worthy work to prove it. So I drew up this dummy spread of Dragen and the Rat (the story I wrote for English class two years ago). It's just a mock-up page of what a children's book spread would look like if I ever did one for a client.
Behold the Slim Shaggy Hunting Bear. I created him while on my impromptu trip to Pittsburgh I took this weekend. Now I'm hope and ready to share him. He's just a bear dude that is a little lankier and a little more predatory than your average bear. Kinda bear meets dog meets weasel I guess. I was bored.
Oh, hi. Well, it's January now so I feel like I need to make a post since I'm back in school for the new semester and not on vacation anymore and my sketchbook is starting to fill up. So that's kind of what I've been up to. My line up for the semester is a painting class that looks like it's going to be expensive, an illustration class that looks like it's going to be fun, a digital acoustics class that seems like it'll be a migraine-tastic way to start my Tues/Thursday mornings, and my thesis class which for the first time appears to have at least a slightly organized exterior going for it. Overall pretty excited! But that's just my first impression, so details/verdicts to come.
I've been ducking the blog lately because I'm super stressed about the impending real-life that is starting to impose on my college-life turf. I don't like it. I have to start applying to real jobs and stuff and maybe actually GET a job, which sounds terrifying. I intend to have a Kickstarter page up for my thesis sometime this month, and you BET I will post about that when it's here. Wowza. November 20th. I feel like I've been updating really sparsely lately, but I suppose that's the nature of being in the middle of classes. At least when I DO post, I usually have something interesting to say! Like for instance I'm working on my final for programming class (the Halloween thing kinda crashed and burned, but maybe I'll get back to it...). For my final I get to work with one of my favorite stories that I've written, Dragen and the Rat. It's challenging because I have to turn a very wordy dialogue driven short story into a mostly visual forking-path narrative. I've modified the story line to give branch it out into multiple choices, but I had to maintain the overall concepts of control and imprisonment and stuff.
More details to come, but I'm loving the little vector I made of Dragen looking down at the annoying little crap rat. So I thought I would share. |