Hollywood Baby!

Well, CTN sure is getting close!  As I work to build my portfolio up more, I've been working on more concept art for Ritzkrieg.  I may be 6 chapters in, but it's never too late to do visual development!  A lot of the pages were done under a rush and in black and white, so there's a lot of potential for further development and design, which I'm quite excited to explore!

This is the Ritz Theater!  This is the location where our star players, Fredrich and Evalyn, first meet!  It's also a part of the title, so as you can guess, it's a significant location!  The theater itself isn't the biggest in 'ole Hollywood, but it's still a popular choice for premieres.  Its limited seating makes it exclusive for big events, but they happily welcome in 'all the little folks' for regular screenings!  

I got my inspiration from the actual Ritz Theater in Hollywood.  It first opened in 1939 as a newsreel theater (but it wasn't called the "Ritz" until the 80s)!  The version of the Ritz Theater that appears in Ritzkrieg is fictional, so my Ritz is much older, but it just so happens that the story begins in 1939!  Other inspirations for my Ritz come from the Chicago theater and other old movie houses around Los Angeles!  

Next, this is Eva's suitcase and all the non-clothing contents.  This suitcase first appears on the second page of chapter 1, and acts as the physical manifestation of Eva's past.  She hasn't had a consistent home in a long time, so her whole life is right here!  She keeps a frame that holds a picture of her parents, a mysterious locked metal box and key (it looks pretty old too!), and her favorite book that she's had since she was a little girl.  Eva absolutely loves stories, and so she also loves to read!  This particular book is her favorite and was also a gift from her father before he left for Germany.

So that's all for this post!  I have quite a few more environments I want to work through (the bridge, the park, Fredrich's apartment) as well as costume designs (reworking and showing Fred and Eva's outfits from each chapter).  That stuff should be up... soon! :D

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!  Try to avoid Gilda though, she's a prankster and you might end up getting your candy stolen or a pumpkin thrown at you!

I've got one more Inktober drawing, then I'll be working to get them scanned in and put together in some form over the following week!

Looks like Chicken!

Whoo, school has been a whirlwind this semester!  Certainly hasn't been much time for those polished digital illustrations, but it's okay because I've been learning a bunch!  First, I'm in a painting class that I absolutely lovee.  I've always wanted to take painting, and I've always needed to!  I'm really learning how to loosen up my art and pay attention to colors and lighting, it's fantastic.  Also, I'm in an advanced computer animation course, so I'm learning to model the characters I make, rig them, then animate 'em.  Also motion graphics!  And outside of classes, a group of us students are still working on the 5 minute animated short we started at the beginning of summer and we hope to have it out there early spring!  Annnddd... Inktober!  I've been keeping up, which makes 21 drawings as of today!  It's been challenging at times because I'm using predetermined themes, some of which push me outside of my comfort zone! This is very, very good, I need that.

The real reason I'm making this blog post is because I wanted to share one of my newest character designs!  This character is potentially for my "senior project" (thankfully still a year away), but I may choose to pursue this project outside of school (in all my free time yanno, hahahaha... ha...)

This is mah girl... She's not really a human, not really a chicken, but based on both things.  Actually, she's a sun drop!  For this short story, the sun sends her to the Earth on a cloudy day to wake up the flowers!  That being said, her personality is bright, cheery, and sweet.  She loves the flowers and everything else the sun touches!  I wanted her design to be like a triangle, so she ended up being an upside down sun ray of sorts!  Everything in the design comes from an abstracted chicken and an abstracted sun!

Here's the full model sheet:

So that's that~  I'll continue to design around this story and we'll see where it goes!

Fairy Tales

It's been a long time, but for good reason!  I have been drawing in all this time, but of course not everything is worthy of one of these schnazzy Blogspot posts!  Without further ado, my latest work:

There's a long story behind this piece haha, but the gist of it is that I really wanted to draw something fairy tale inspired, I've been especially keen on my 'ole Rogers and Hammerstein Cinderella OCR lately, I didn't get to do anything related for school, so I did my own illustration for Ritzkrieg!  This was a strong influence for this work https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yfh-F3nSE_c

I did another Ritzkrieg piece the other day, not quite as much effort as the one above there, but it's still something I was really excited to work on!  The sketch was about a year old, I was very interested in the concept, so I finally completed it!

Welp, that's that!  Literally just moved into a new place yesterday, so I've been quite busy hah!  Big things are also happening around campus lately, especially something that's coming up this weekend and then CTN in November!!

Chicken Noodle!

So classes have indeed started and it's taken me a bit of time and some whining to get used to my schedule again.  Truly, it is a busy semester, but in the best ways for the most part!  So much is happening and will be happening that I can't even begin to contain my excitement!  Anyway, above is my most recent finished illustration, which isn't anything too fancy but I'm happy to have been able to fully color something for the first time in a few days~  I love chickens and I love noodles!

But one more quick update, I'm 100% for-sure going to CTN for the very first time this year!  I'm extremely excited for that and I saw that some of my most favorite artists in the whole world will be exhibiting!!  It's going to be quite a journey, and I'm taking it with a bunch of friends, what could be better than that?

My Pet Shisaaa!

Alright, I've hinted at this project a couple times in previous posts, and now I've decided to finally 'officially' announce it!  Coming in Spring 2015, I'll be posting up a brand-new one-shot webcomic called "My Pet Shisa" about a young man and his ill-behaved pet Shisa!  I have been working on developing this one on and off all summer, I'll really be focusing on it between now and the release date!

Here's some concept work from earlier in the summer:

School starting tomorrow, here goes =w=

Back from Vacation!

Sorry for the long delay in posts!  I was on a magical Disney vacation for the past week~  First, an illustration I completed last night:

Giselle, from Enchanted.  I love this movie so much, I'd love to draw it more often.  It's such a lovely film, it has everything I like: romance, humor, beautiful animation, and grand musical numbers!  In this illustration, I used my own photo there in the background.  Last summer I went to NYC and I got to see the fountain that the finale of "That's How You Know" takes place in front of!  

School starts again Monday, so there'll likely be another delay in art production as I get used to my new semester schedule and all that.  I always get really tired during school, so unfortunately that means less art, but I will do my best!  I have a portfolio to add to, a comic, etc, etc., so I have to stay busy!