Karen’s Animation Blog!

So after doing that giraffe digital painting practice I got the most pleasant surprise of a commission! For more paintings! Hooray!! So now I’m doing jungle animal themed paintings for a nursery. Awwww so cute. I’ve gotten the giraffe done so far and started doing some sketching for the other animals (monkey, lion and elephant to be exact). Here’s the giraffe;

Giraffe Commission Painting, A commission I’m doing. Done in Photoshop. 2011

Also today I’m heading over to a meeting to discuss a possible contract for a social game. Here goes nothing!

Let’s see I did say there was more what is it? Oh yeah, I made cookies…white chocolate chip cookies to be exact…and I can’t stop eating them…oh my goodness they are so dang good I’m ready to give up all food and just live off of these things. I think I have a problem.

~Karen

OK you got me, there is no other fun, just the giraffe painting. I just wanted the title to be more interesting than just “Giraffe painting.”

Photobucket

More to come soon! For now I must work.

~Karen

Well to be fair I never really got out of the saddle…just out of the saddle of blogging if you want to get technical about it.

Anyway why haven’t I been blogging much? My life has been INSANE that’s why! Not always in a bad way though, but always in a busy way! I’ve struck out in this world of freelance and it has been keeping me on my toes that’s for sure! But aside from the late nights and the long hours I must say that being my own boss has been kind of fun! Working in an office does have it’s perks, but so does the office that’s next to your own living room. Each has it’s pros and cons, I enjoy it all. That’s what happens when you do what you love, you end up loving it all. But then again it’s also what you do when you’re in art of any kind, you have to grow a super ridiculously thick hide while also staying amazingly buoyant so that you can try your darndest to roll with the tides. Yeah….good luck…I don’t think there’s an artist on this earth that’s mastered that one yet. I’ll keep trying though!

So enough with the ramblings. What have I been working on lately? A little bit of absolutely everything! Mainly animation (my true love), sometimes with prize winning cartoonists making amazing animated shorts about the tuna industry;

to animating amazing illustrations for an animated storybook for ipad (will let you know when that gets released!), to completely taking the reigns of an animated series (again, will let you know more when I can), and more that I can’t really divulge at the moment…let’s just say it’s a lot of cool stuff going on all at once! But with the ups come the downs like clients that don’t work out, projects that get rejected, and all that other great stuff. But we won’t dwell on that too long now will we?

Also the idea of strengthening my digital painting skills has come up recently…so I busted open my magazines and tutorials and I’m diving right in….here’s a screen shot of what I’ve got for the night;

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It’s just the rough sketch, with colors and shadows somewhat blocked in. This is super rough, just a work in progress is all. Will post more as it gets more refined.

So I’m hoping I’ll get the chance to work on my new giraffe friend more while also working on my projects and keeping the blog updated! But for now…some sleep….

Goodnight everybody….

~Karen

So lately I figured it’s about time I got back into the swing of life drawing! I’ve been doing a couple of life drawing sessions and also heading to the Zoo to get some good animal drawings in. I love drawing animals they have so much personality. We had an especially good time watching and drawing the gorillas. There was even a gorilla that was being playful and messing with the people watching her by sticking out her tongue to watch everyone react. Sill gorilla tricks are for kids!

GorillaDrawings_2011

And here’s some giraffes. I believe the giraffe’s best side is directly from the front. This guy came right over and stared at us. I swear he knew what we were doing!

GiraffeDrawings_2011

And here’s my life drawings from the sessions I did. These poses range anywhere from 1 minute to 20 minutes. Most are 1, 5 and 10 minutes though;

Life-Drawing_Aug15_2011

Life-Drawing_Aug29_2011

Along with the life drawing I’ve also been working my behind off on tests, practice, and freelance work. More updates on that soon! Hopefully I’ll get a chance to head back to the zoo too.

Cheers!

~Karen

And he sure did ride uh-huh!

Yup! I FINALLY finished this thing! What started as a quick practice to try out an app for my Ipad called Animation Creator turned into quite the project! Thanks to my fussy changes and also getting to know the program it turned into quite the learning experience! The ending verdict….I like it! It’s a fun little program! Granted I’m sure it’ll be easier now that I know more about what it can and cannot do exactly. And yes it’s not as versatile as a full program like Flash or After Effects or the like but I must say I did enjoy being how I could work on this anywhere. Seriously anywhere! I wasn’t confined to a desk. Even when you’re working on a laptop you need a desk and a Wacom in order to do any drawing. But with this app all I need is my Ipad and my Faraday pen and there ya go! As easy as a sketchbook. A magic sketchbook that can animate that is! I swear the progress we’re making with electronics we are making magic with these devices now-a-days! But that’s a different nerd rant

Enjoy my silly little froggy short!

Karen out
(I’ve been watching too much Star Trek since they added it to NetFlix)

Hang on I need to warm up my coffee first…ok here I am. So anyway I’ve given myself the very loose goal of animating and drawing a little everyday. And I’m not going to be too hard on myself either. It doesn’t have to be life changing, amazing, or incredible. Just drawing, a little, everyday. Simple as that. So yesterday I was about ready to get down on myself because I thought I hadn’t drawn when I realized that I HAD drawn a little. I had made a small drawing for my son’s lunch. I always thought it was cute when parents left little notes in their kids lunches to say “hey! I loves ya” and I thought I might as well do it with drawings. This is the one I did for him last night, but he’s staying home today due to a nasty sniffle so I will have to save this note for another day.

Peep Drawing

Now at first I was thinking “well this doesn’t count for my drawing because I just copied it from “Peep and His Pals” but then I came out of my stupid cloud and realized I drew this, thus, it’s drawing! Ahh the mind of an artist…constant nit-picking of everything.

So I also did my little bit of animation too last night. I’ve been messing with an animation program for my Ipad. Yes you heard right, for my Ipad! Crazy!! It’s called Animation Creator HD and with my stubborness and being too excited to read the instructions I’ve had some set backs along the way. But so far things are going pretty good. There’s not nearly the same about the control over the drawing tools or even the animation (I have to animate EVERY frame and one frame, I can’t separate the layers and animate separately, so thus I have to animate the background, foreground and everything in-between on EVERY frame, no copying only certain layers or anything, LAME!) and there’s also a “background” image option but there’s no way to change the background at different times in the timeline. One background at all times. Double lame. So instead I had to draw my backgrounds in a different program and import the image in on a layer…on EVERY frame…needless to say there’s been a lot of busy work for this stupid little frog. BUT, it’s a learning experience so nothing is a waste right? I think the late, great Bob Ross put it best; “Oops, there goes our pretty little cloud we made … but that’s okay, as long as you learned how to make one, your time’s not been wasted …” –Bob Ross, 1988. That man always knew how to make things better. Here’s a screen shot of my work in progress;

frog in progress

Speaking of Bob Ross, I was trying to watch some old episodes of The Joy of Painting for some inspiration and I couldn’t get over this opening for his show;

The Joy of Painting - Mountain Ridge (part 1/3) by jhcmarket
Epic

~Karen

So of course the artist in me keeps looking at my online portfolio and picking out every little possible thing wrong with it and having to change it up constantly. So I’ve added some updates! Check it out! www.karetoons.com

So the first updates was the demo reel, I saw on another website where someone had put the details right on the movie itself. No need for breakdown lists, and no questions for the person watching it. Brilliant. So I had to do it too. While I was there I took some advice I had gotten and I sped it up quite a bit. I cut the length in half and made the pace go a bit faster. So that was the first in my long laundry list. The next things was adding my SuperPoke Pets finale movie to my site, and with that I also broke my animation category into sub categories so instead of having one big ANIMATION category with absolutely everything I now have then broken down into (hopefully) more manageable bite sized pieces. I’m just hoping this works to my benefit and doesn’t become too confusing for people to navigate. There are a few more things I want to update…but that can wait….I hope.

On a personal note I’ve been messing around with an Ipad app called “Animation HD” and making a little animation about a frog meeting a fly, and hilarity ensues. It’s got a lot of plusses and minuses to it. The drawing tools are clunky and the animation tools are not as versatile as Flash or After Effects. But it is an Ipad app which is pretty amazing overall. I’m coming to the conclusion that the background should be done in another program and just imported into the program. Hopefully I will be done with it soon and I can see how their sharing connections with Youtube work. Then I have an idea for an animation that involves some pigeons and a churro. Sounds exciting no?

~Karen

Comic Coooooooonnnnn yeah!!! Good times had by allllll!!! What I love about Comic Con is that it means so many different things to different people. Some come for the free stuff. Some come for the movie previews. Some come to sit in Hall H for days on end. I personally love Comic Con for seeing friends old and new, finding art books for artists that inspire me, and catching those small obscure panels that mean nothing to most con attendees, but mean everything to me and a handful of other animation enthusiasts. Take the “State of the Animation Industry” panel, a tiny panel that brings together a half dozen animators from all walks of the industry to talk about animation today. And the only panel that I take notes at every year. This year the panel seemed to lend itself to the topics of 2D versus 3D, motion capture, and animation in games. I’ll put it all in a nutshell;
The panel guests were; Tom Sito, Ken Duncan, Allen Battino, Sean Petrilack, Brittany Biggs, and Kevin Grow
As for the “war” between 2D and 3D animation, I think Ken Duncan put it best by saying that both are trying to give a performance to a character. You create worlds that are very unique. Both are valid mediums. It’s all the same universe.
Allen believes that when it comes to 3D the overly detailed and overly rendered has been done and we’ll get back to the stylized look we had at the beginning of 3d (which I agree with, I’m over the super realistic 3D now-a-days)
Sean Petrilack could not stress enough that it’s a good time to get a job, there’s lots of shows going on right now so now is the time to submit! Panelists also said that a good demo reel is one that shows everything you can do. Variety is the key! Show how many programs you know. Show it all! As for breaking into the business though a major theme that emerged was to prepare for rejection! It happened to pretty much everyone on the panel with Sean Petrilack testing for Nickelodeon 5 times before he was ready to give up and then he got selected!
Another topic noted was overseas animation. Basically they said what we already know, it’s sad because there’s plenty of talent in the U.S., but the execs can’t pass up how cheap it is to just ship it off….it’s a pity, I agree.
Then they moved on to motion capture and they made some really good points. It has it’s place but as a means of making an ENTIRE performance it’s a complete failure. If there’s motion capture it’s best used for side animation in games (when you need hordes of bland human background movement or something like that) or when you use it but then go back and let an animator touch it up. Amen to that! Stop with the zombie eyed dead characters we’ve been seeing in those creepy all motion capture abominations! Stop it!
Allen Battino then had some things to say about the future of 3D as in they need to develop separate screens for separate eyes in order to make the 3D effect work….I think we were talking about a different 3D there Allen…but interesting concept. Totally over my head though. I think this “3D TV” stuff is a gimick and will probably either die out, or evolve into something more practical. I believe 3D TV’s right now are the Beta of their field. We’ll know about them, but no one owns one anymore if you know what I mean.
Kevin Grow had some great things to say about the future of animation in games. With all the technology available I think the line between game and feature animation is starting to blur. It’s just a different process because with features you tell one continuous story while with games you go from cut scene to cut scene with gameplay in-between but the quality is really getting up to the same level. Who would of thought?
So all in all it was an amazing panel like always. I just hope that maybe next year or some year in the near future we can finally get a representative on the panel for either Flash animation, or animation in social games. I would love to hear a voice from that end of the animation world because I do believe that there’s a future there when it comes to animation (not that I’d be biased or anything).
On a random side note though I was surprised to see Brittany Biggs up on the panel because back when I was a lowly PA at Duck Studios she was our intern before she went to Japan! Congrats Brittany!

Aside from Brittany it was a weekend filled with chance meetings and long overdue reunions with a long list friends and artists like; Leonard Robinson (An animation mentor of mine from Burbank), Jerry Brice (A former teacher of mine from AI), Eric Haddad (former Google coworker now at Behemoth! Bah!), Ramon Sosongo (the best Rufio EVER), Steven Gomez (resident grumpy old man), and more I’m sure…I must be tired, my memory is going…zoinks…

So with that I’ll sign off for now, happy Comic Con everyone!

~Karen

So I’m coming clean, the social game I’ve been working on for 3+ years is done and sadly that also means, so is my job. Slide is going in a different direction and apparently social games are not the direction they’re going in. But never fear! I have several prospects in the works and I have also completed an animation test for Cartoon Network (Hooray!) I feel good about them, I hope Cartoon Network agrees;


I have to say these animation tests were really fun to work on! It was fascinating to see how they setup the designs for Bloo and Wilt! Bloo’s body was mostly done with shape tweens and frame to frame old fashioned animation (which I love!) and Wilt has those crazy long arms and legs to keep track of! But overall I LOVE the look of the animations on that show. I always have. It employs the old principles (squash and stretch etc) and mixes them in with Flash technology and BAM! Instant awesome. Quite impressive indeed. I love the potential of Flash. I know a lot of artists loathe Flash and everything it stands for. But secretly I’m skipping through the flowers with my favorite little program. I truly believe Flash can be the direction to totally paperless animation without loosing the qualities of old fashioned 2D. You just have to believe!! Clap your hands if you believe!!!

So on another note it’s been quite sad around here as we all prepare for our departure from SPP. I must say I have been SO lucky to work with such a fun team of amazing artists. Through all the ups and downs around here this has been the most fun I’ve had at a job by far. And I’m coming out of it with a ton of experience, inspiration, and above all really amazing friends. So what do I do to celebrate? Make an animation to send off SPP in style! Enjoy!!

Bon Voyage!! Let’s see where the wind will take me next!

Karetoons AWAAAAYYYYY!!!

Where oh where would I be without my helpful little plugins. Sweet sweet little plugins you help my poor Flash program so very very much.

My first introduction to plugins was the “multiple library renamer” which basically allows you to add a suffix to your library items. Why is this handy you ask? Because it makes the possibility of taking symbols from other Flash files and dropping then into other files without the dreaded “You have something named that already! Would you like me to replace those items and mess up everything you’ve been working on so far??” alert popping up. It’s simple, it’s helpful, I love it!!

Next I was working on a project a few weeks ago, slowly swapping out symbols for a long string of animation I had just done and I thought “There has to be a plugin for this” so one Google search later and TADA! I had found Mass Swap which swaps multiple symbols at once! Sweet corn biscuits is that a handy plugin!! I highly recommend it to anyone doing Flash animation.

Also there’s “NewAnimClip” which I ADORE. Look up the Pringle method for Flash…yeah, they made it a plugin. Bam! That just turned it up a notch!!

And last but certainly not least there’s the timing chart. It brings a bit of the traditional timing charts of classic animation and sticks it into Flash! This REALLY helps in making animation more loose and you can really customize the timing between frames without having to jump through a lot of hoops. It also has some very handy presets to speed things up, like the slow in AND slow out between two keyframes. Get out of dreams, and into my Flash!

All of these plugins can be easily found through a google search or through Coldhardflash.com

~Karen