Blog Reboot

| scarlettoamber
Cat_Helpers
Cat helpers and why I get nothing done at home.

Good morning, its about 6:30 am and I’m already on my second cup of coffee–it seems like its going to be a million cup of coffee kind of day! If you’ve been following this blog for a while now you might have noticed that its gone dormant in the last few months –years– I’m sorry, that wasn’t my intent but I was transitioning from a post-undergrad struggling to find a way to make a living in art into a graduate student attempting to pursue a rigorous animation program, work full time and maintain my sanity–the jury is still out on whether or not that’s been a success.

I’m in my last year of graduate school (hopefully) and trying my best to learn, understand and practice animation. I’ve come a long way over the last five years (I’m part time) but as is the purpose of graduate school–I never feel like I’ve come quite far enough, given quite enough time or quite grasped the concepts. This blog is going to serve going forward a place to collect my thoughts on animation process, practice and films in general as well as a look into the life of a working grad student–a reality that is becoming so much more commonplace as schools develop programs that make doing both easier but ‘real life’ never seems to want to cooperate.

In addition to needing a place to put my animation thoughts I was also inspired by a fellow artist/designer looking to find her place in the art world–Anne— I love reading her blog and seeing how she navigates her transition into designer.  Also the lettering is beautiful and something I’d aspire to if I had that kind of patience.

Back in Action

| scarlettoamber

I finally finished my semester! It was an extremely difficult semester full of sleep deprivation and animation but its over!! I am back at work in my studio after only a couple of days break because I have a show at the Red Dot Gallery in Sacramento on February 9th and I’d like to show some new work–here’s a sneak peak at what I’ve been doing–more sketches to come soon!

gettin’ ready to paint
underpainting-start
Pencil Line Drawing

I’m trying to develop a process for painting and on work on these few in the same way for each one–What I’ve been doing is drawing a very detailed image, tracing the image on to vellum with a pen and doing an image transfer to get it to the canvass–I want my new paintings to have more volume and shape so I’m working for create a strong under painting in sepia before doing the details–hopefully it all pays off!

Sketchin’ Lots!

| scarlettoamber

I’m making an effort in the next few weeks to re-do my portfolio to display the right stuff in a professional way.  Lately I’ve been feeling like I haven’t been doing anything–apparently that’s not true–look at all these sketchbooks!

Sketchbooks
Sketchbooks

These are all pretty much full–give or take a page (I find it really hard to draw on the last page of a sketchbook–not sure why)–now back to work!

Storyboarding-again

| scarlettoamber

Here are a set of presentation boards for this silly product called “Trunk Monkey” yeah its weird but its what we had to do for class this week.  I spent way too much time developing this and on the characters and poses and not enough time animating!! Must get that worked out….

Trunk Monkey-FIghting Kids Edition

With three sisters this is pretty much how I spent my childhood–just kidding! We’d have never survived the car ride like this—but the mom in the first panel is based on actual events–who doesn’t remember the evil eye through the rearview mirror??