Kate-T3 in Snapchat

Hello! I just wanted to come back to the blog with something silly to share.

I swear I've been working on some new worthy things to present here; I've been working on them on and off very slowly behind the scenes.

Anyways, Snapchat released an AI chat bot not too long ago, and I've been messing around with it lately. I customized its avatar to look like Marilyn at first but realized that making it look more like Kate-T3 makes way more sense since she's an android robot.

I went ahead and named the AI bot after Kate, and told it that I did so.

Needless to say, I think the real Kate-T3 would be very excited to learn that the Snapchat's AI bot was honored to be named after her.

I hate to say this, but unsurprisingly when I referred to the AI chat bot as Kate again some time later, it had completely forgot that it accepted being named Kate.

Oh well.

Merry Christmas 2022!

It's here! The jolliest time of the year! Christmas has arrived!

No matter how many years go by, you're never too old to take a photo with Santa!

This year's Christmas art marks the end of "The Year of Class of 2422." I always find myself being obsessed over my own characters and story ideas over lengths of time, and seeing that the year 2022 makes us exactly 400 years away from the year 2422, it justified me to marinate my thoughts over Robert, Marilyn, and their friends over this past year.

Of course, this won't be the last time we'll see our friends from the future, but I've got to make room to showcase characters from other story ideas I've been working on. Lately I've been developing a new story project and designing out a new set of characters that I can't wait to post about here very soon.

But enough reading about my silly stuff. Go on and enjoy the holidays with family!

Merry Christmas!

Happy Halloweens 2022! - Day 3

You already know the deal. The future celebrates Halloween over a period of three days!

And since this year is all about "Class of 2422," we're gonna celebrate Halloween like the future: over a period of three days with three illustrations!

For the final day of Halloweens, Marilyn had to do a lot of convincing to Robert for the two to go trick-or-treating together. Robert used the excuse of not having a costume, which Mary was more than prepared for.

Needless to say, Robert ended up having a lot of fun with Mary this Halloweens night!

Originally, the idea of this drawing was supposed to be the sole art for this year's Halloween drawing, but about a month ago, I was thinking about world-building elements I could implement for the culture/society of the year 2422, and a three-day Halloween celebration was one of those elements.

And plus, Halloween is my favorite holiday so there might be a tiny hint of bias in there somewhere. Maybe.

Before I go on, here's the roughs for this drawing

Once I decided on the three day Halloween theme, I originally thought of doing a three panel comic (one panel for each day) of Marilyn convincing Robert to go out trick-or-treating with her with this drawing serving the final panel.

The first two panels didn't really stick to me as very interesting since I couldn't figure out how to make that story fit into just three panels, so instead I went with using other characters to create like a multi-day progression (the 29th-31st) of different characters in different scenarios played out in the course of a single day, as evident of the progressing shift into the night as seen in the backgrounds of these drawings.

I didn't want to just make three different drawings with all of them taking place in the same time of night, so the progression of sunset to night over three drawings was more interesting to create.

I guess in a way, there kind of is a story that's played out in these three drawings, like an A-plot, B-plot, and C-plot going on at the same time.

Either way, this was a fun challenge to do three different Halloween illustrations instead of the usual one. Hope you enjoyed them!

Happy Halloweens 2022! - Day 2

In case you forgot, in the far off future, Halloween is celebrated over a span of three days! From the 29th to the 31st! It's a lot of fun, I assure you.

And since I themed the year to "Class of 2422," I've created three illustrations to observe how to celebrate the future's Halloweens!

October 30th sets us up with a little debate between Aika and Ted about whether or not a scary costume is a necessity for Halloweens.

I do all my drawing at night, so you can imagine that when I had to pull up image references for Aika's costume, which is Kayako from the Ju-On movies (The Grudge), it was uhhhhhh kinda spooky for me to say the least; I'm not much of a horror movie kind of guy.

Not sure if I said anything about this, but I went back in and redesigned Ted's hoverchair. I was absolutely not satisfied with the design I put out before, but I think I figured out a design that's sleek, futuristic, and easy to draw.

It's funny that his pirate ship costume covers up the newer design completely. Good thing I'm here with early roughs for this drawing where it's visible!

Aika's kind of harsh with her words in general, but I felt it was a bit too harsh for Ted, especially since I hardly picture these two interacting with each other much anyways.

See you tomorrow for the third and final drawing!

Happy Halloweens 2022! - Day 1

Did you know that Halloween is a three-day long holiday in the far-off future? For those living in the year 2422, it's a very true fact!

Of course, since this year is "The Year of Class of 2422," we must observe how Halloween will be celebrated in the future: not with one, but with THREE illustrations for Halloweens!

Starting off the first day of Halloweens, October 29th brings us a curious scene of farm girl Nelly teaching our Earth-visiting alien Nevadri a thing or two about carving pumpkins for the spooky season.

Something about that organic pumpkin really spooks out Nevadri. Let's hope we don't bring the extinction of pumpkins into our timeline.

The background art was originally a bit more elaborate, but I felt the need to tone down certain details in order to match the simpler backgrounds for Day 2 and 3's artwork. You'll see what I mean during the next two days.

Here's the process for the art:

The concept was pretty much nailed from the get-go, so it was a matter of refining the drawing. You'll soon see this is the case for the next two drawings.

National Cinnamon Roll Day 2022

Normally, I don't make any drawings or illustrations for any of these silly non-holidays like "Talk Like A Pirate Day" or "National HVAC Tech Day," but a few days ago I caught wind that October 4th is "National Cinnamon Roll Day."

Considering that 2022 is basically the year of "Class of 2422" for me AND that I have a certain musically talented blonde in that story that has a weakness for cinnamon rolls, I figured that it'd only be appropriate that I come up with something to mark today's occasion!

How could I not celebrate "National Cinnamon Roll Day" with Marilyn? It's her all-time favorite dessert in the Solar System! Yum yum!

Where did I get the idea that Marilyn's favorite dessert should be a cinnamon roll? I created my characters as Mii characters on my 3DS so I can import them into my Tomodachi Island game, and the game made the cinnamon roll as Marilyn Mii's all-time favorite dish. I felt like that fact is really fitting for her character and it made sense to me so I ran with that as fact for her character ever since.

I still haven't renewed my expired Adobe subscription so this drawing is the first time ever I used Clip Studio Paint to create a finished drawing!

Of course, I'll be back later this month with this year's Halloween drawing. Or drawings, with an "s?" Stay tuned!

A Happy Birthday from the Future!

Oh hey! It's my birthday! Again! On this day during this month! How predictable!

I mentioned earlier this year that since it's the year 2022, I've basically unofficially made this year the year of "Class of 2422." Themed drawings for this year will exclusively feature characters from this story project, and this year's birthday art is no exception!

Another year to add to my year count. Did we do good with shaping ourselves in the shape of the number 26? Judge for yourself!

I know that the yellow background color is too bright and loud, but I couldn't find any other good color to use. I hope it isn't too annoying to the eye.

It'd be super cool if I could see how our world advances in 400 years. Now THAT would be a killer birthday wish to be fulfilled.

Congrats Grads of 2422

With so many 2022 graduation cards on store shelves this year, I couldn't help but claim one for the graduating class of 2422.

Happy New Year 2022!

Smell ya later 2021! Wouldn't wanna be ya!

Last year, I mentioned that I have a silly rule when it comes to making the Happy New Year artwork, which is that I avoid using characters from the Class of 2422 story since it would be silly for them to celebrate the New Years for a previous year because they live in the future. I broke this rule last year because I was on a time crunch.

However, this time I broke the rule on purpose since it makes sense. It was the perfect time to feature these characters for this year's New Year artwork. Why? Which set of characters were perfect for ushering in 2022? The ones from 2422 of course! Duh! Prime opportunity!

Speaking of which, any artwork for certain occasions during this year only (such as my birthday, Halloween, Christmas, etc.) are going to exclusively feature Class of 2422 characters; we are, after all, exactly 400 years away from 2422.

With all that out there, I wish everyone a Happy New Year! Let's hope this year's a better one than the last!

December Animation Practice - Moonwalking

Whoa! I'm extremely late with this one but here's December's animation practice (for 2020.)

This is the first time since April 2020 that I had to post an animation incomplete (and first time posting it almost two months late), so to make up for it, here's both the second rough pass and the first rough pass of this animation.

Second rough pass:

First rough pass:

I knew from the beginning that I was gonna late with December's animation so I initially wanted to do a simple loop; I went with animating a moonwalk since I don't think I've animated that before. Then I thought it'd be boring having just a moonwalk with no context around it so that's when I added the interaction between Aika and Marilyn. As I said before, I was busy behind the scenes with other things during this time and I was steadfast on reaching some level of polish before posting.

Ultimately, I realized that was never gonna happen (considering it's currently February.)

That's a wrap on 2020's year of animation practices! On to 2021!

Happy New Year 2021!

Marilyn is usually a 1950s fan, but she's willing to party 1920s style!

Now, my silly rule when it comes to making the New Year art is that I do not feature any characters from Class of 2422. Why would they celebrate our current day New Years if they live in 2422? That would be like us celebrating the New Year of 1776 in 2021; It doesn't make much sense.

However, I broke the rule this one time for the 2021 New Year art because I was running out of time and ideas for the artwork.

You might be asking yourself "couldn't you feature another female character dressed in flapper attire for the artwork?"

And to that I say, shut up.

I couldn't think of any other characters at the time that would enjoy wearing a flapper costu-

oh wait I could have used Sally huh

June Animation Practice - Android Repair

Hey, I got this one done with decent timing! We're still in the first week of July!

After looking through my list of characters I haven't animated yet, I initially decided to take care of two of them at once: Kate and Kevin. However, the two are from different story series and it wouldn't make much sense to mix the two right now (even thought they both take place in the same universe), so I replaced Kevin with Robert.

I've animated Robert before, in case anyone forgot that.

Despite advancements in A.I. and technology in the future, androids still need human assistance for repairs. Robert's always open to help Kate out, and the results are shocking

This one took me about a week to complete. I really wanted to finish this quickly so I sort of rushed the rough animation for this one. I totally paid the price for that since it was more difficult to do the final line work, with unadjusted timing for certain movements and placements of certain elements being off after refinement.

I like how it came out! I really try to make time to do the final line work and color for these animations since the end result looks like completed animation for television.

Speaking of which, I've thought about using one of these months to go back on an old monthly animation to either redo it or to fully complete it. Not sure if it's a good idea to do so, but we'll see. After all, we have have six more months left for 2020!

A New Addition for Class of 2422: Aika Koizumi

Remember I made a post awhile ago saying how crazy it would be if I added a new character to the main cast of Class of 2422 this late into its development?

Well crazy's here!

Just when I thought that I had the main cast totally finished and set in stone, we have a new character to introduce! Meet Aika Koizumi (小泉 愛佳), a Japanese student that transferred to Codik High School in an exchange program for her final year of study.

Her creation comes from a place of necessity. Even though the main characters are Robert and Marilyn, I came to the realization that because the supporting characters are mostly relationship-oriented with Robert, Class of 2422's story is primarily Robert's story.
Of course, the supporting characters also have relationships with Marilyn, but not in a strong sense as with Robert. I realized that I didn't have a character that was tailored for Marilyn, so from that void I created Aika. I wanted Marilyn to have a friend she can hang out with and talk to about her interests and bring out Marilyn's personality; she needed a good gal pal that's not mixed up with the main "will they, won't they" story.

Why make the new character Japanese?

Merry Christmas 2019!

The Christmas season is back!

Our friends from the future are here to celebrate the holidays!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone!

November Animation Practice - Jamming Out

Hey hey hey! It's December! I would have made this post earlier but finals week was happening! And of course, I needed some time to chillax from the semester's work. I'm here now!

Here's my animation practice for November!

I've never animated a dance before, so I decided to change that!

Now, some time ago I hinted that I was gonna add a new character to the Class of 2422 character line-up; the character here is that new character.

Consider this her early unoffical introduction since her character design is not finalized at this stage. I chose this character for the animation because she fits the bill perfect with the dance and music, so I just had to roll with it!

The video/animation is suppose to loop so set that up with the video player to see how well it plays by right clicking on the video itself.

The dance itself is based off of a funny dance from the show American Dad; check it here!

New Addition?

Hey, wouldn't it be funny if I were to add a brand new character to the Class of 2422 main cast line-up? Ha ha ha, that's so silly! I would never do that! I'm just kidding! Ha ha ha ha!



...unless?

September Animation Practice - September

A very spooky month is back! In case you don't know, Halloween is easily one of my favorite holidays! You can't beat free candy!

Now that October is here, that means it's time to post September's animation practice!
For September, I decided to base it on an illustration I did some time ago on one of my characters, Nelly, with her mother's tombstone.
It's a bit of a solemn animation, but I think it makes its point across well!

I'm getting a bit faster with this animations, and I even managed to add color this time!

Here's the illustration below:

Even though I only have two classes this semester around, I have been going at it 110% for the two; the digital painting class is especially tough for me since it's something I don't do often (or at all outside of class.)

I'm still working on some personal work to hopefully show off on here!
If anyone's interested, follow the @dojipocket pages on Twitter/Instagram! Better yet, follow my personal account @animatedslacker on Twitter/Instagram as well!

Birthday 23!

Welp! Another year on this Earth, which means another piece of birthday artwork!

Of course I'm canon in my own worlds! Who do you think pays the electric bill?

I wanted to add more characters (both unknown, new, and current ones) but I didn't want to overcrowd the drawing. I think it'd be nice to be apart of my own worlds and interact with my own characters.

We're only half way into 2019 and I still have goals I want to accomplish before the year ends. Clip Studio finally went on sale and I recently got a trial for ToonBoom Harmony. I know for a fact that my next animation will be done with Clip Studio instead of Adobe Animate; I'm sure I've already expressed my love/hate relationship with that program before somewhere on this blog.

That, and a comic book. I really hope this year is the year things will start changing/moving in my favor, whether it's finally landing a job as an artist or having a productive year with finished products I can be proud of.

Class of 2422 Character Line-Up Update

It's about time it's finished! Finally!

After many delays and slowdowns, I've completed updating the Class of 2422 character line-up! And for good reason! The characters in this line-up have multiple outfit changes, went through several revisions in the poses, and gave some characters proper development.

Initially the characters would be in a different pose when I redrew them in their different outfit changes, but that was taking way too long so I simplified the process. I'll post the alternate costume changes for the characters later, but for now check out the updated the line-up!

Before we see the new line-up, here's the last update:

...and now here's the new and improved line-up!

I'm really glad with how this ended up!
Currently, the pilot for this series is being worked on right now, so I'm hoping that'll be finished soon enough.

Class of 2422 Logo Redesign - Final Design

Hey hey hey! I finally completed the Class of 2422 character line-up! I'm totally ecstatic with the end results!

BUT!
Before I get into that story, we have to go into this story...

Part of the update for this project was to not only update the character line-up, but to also revamp/redo the logo for Class of 2422. Below is the previous design:

At the time of completing this, I was really proud of how this came out. Heck, I still think it looks kinda cool. However, as more time passed I started feeling "ehh" towards the design. I started to feel there was a bit too much going on in its design, such as the gradient in the "2422," the design on the blue rectangle, the white stars on the side of the words, and the typeface for the word "class."

Even during the process of this initial design, I really struggled with the typeface for "class" and "2422;" I ended up creating the design rather than using an already existing font, but then even I wasn't too big of a fan of how it came out.
One of my biggest issue was how "rectangular" the design is. Like it's so square! A boring shape! A boring silhouette!

I wanted the new updated design to be cleaner, simpler, and have a more interesting shape language. I'm sure you have already seen an earlier post where I posted different rough designs, right? I gives an idea of what direction I want to end up with.