Letter Reaction Assignment- Freshman Year

One of the last assignments we did for the fall semester and one of the first animations I did with Niko. The assignment was to have our character read a letter and react to it in some way. In this case..Niko isn't happy about having to wait till Christmas to open this giant present.

2008-2009 Art

I recently found a folder on one of my older usb drives of paintings and drawings I did a few years ago. I actually put these into an old art portfolio. It's good to look on old stuff now and then for inspiration. To break it up I'll post some "now and then" sketches of my dog characters later.

"Take You There" Process

First off, an important thing to mention is I did this in Photoshop CS4. So if you're using Sai...well, it still could be interesting. This is gonna be sort of broad as I was experimenting for the most part. I would like to go more detailed as to how I do paintings and digital pieces as I get more comfortable with the process. But for now...this is basically how I did my most recent digital:

1. I have a very basic tablet so it's easier for me to sketch it out on paper. Sometimes I ink the characters out it if it gets really complex like this did. Just to make it clearer when have to ink it digitally.

2. After re-inking Ali (right) and Kit (left) I put in the flat colors. At first I used the colors they were, then used color balance to get the colors to match the background. (I got familiar with the lasso tool when I got to the grass.)

3. This. Was. Tedious. Particularly the grass. Again, got familiar with the lasso tool for that. I made 2 other layers for both the blue and golden grass. Both with slightly different shades than the first layer. Then for the blue grass I sort of cheated (^^') and copied and pasted different shades into different layers. To show more variety.  

After adding in all the shading I put in golden highlights in everything. For the fireflies that will come in later. Masking layers..becomes your best friend for that. Trust me.

4. Then I put in highlights in the eyes, stars, the fireflies and some glow effects to finish it off. And...ta-da!! It is finished! You can see a full view of it here:

Take You There

Sketchbook Video (full of animals!!)

This is a look inside two of my sketchbooks during my first year at SVA =)

First Year Final Animation

Well, it's been a great and stressful first year at SVA. After 8 weeks of crying and hard labor, I present the final animation that Vivienne Medrano and I collaborated on. Enjoy!!