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!

Merry Christmas 2021!

Hey! Christmas time is here! Again!

This time I wanted to go in a different direction, featuring Autumn in the winter. She's never heard of Christmas in her entire life and finds herself completely enthralled by it.

I've had some issues with this at the beginning, but after trying to overdo the composition, attempting some kind of rendering, and worrying that the storytelling element is lost on the viewers, I told myself to "keep it simple, stupid" and to trust that the viewers will get it, so I hope you do.

I also wanted to share the process of the artwork here:

Last minute additions to the art was the branch that the ornament hangs from and the snow.

I'm glad that she was able to be featured for the Christmas art! Using an autumn-based character for a winter piece is a pretty good combo. ("Nightmare Before Christmas" proves the mash-up works.)

Anyways! I wish you all a Happy Holidays and a very Merry Christmas!

May Animation Practice - Armor Hand (Final Animation for 2021)

Oh man oh man oh man, May's animation being posted in November? What gives?! What's up with that?

Actually, here is what's up with that. Life has gotten in the way too many times this year for me to keep up with monthly animations and since I'm a full six months behind, I'm calling it quits for the rest of 2021. There's no way I can catch up this far into the year.

I do have animation plans for 2022 that doesn't involve making animations every month, but I'm not sure if I'll go through with those plans.

I just wanted to give out that update; hopefully it won't be too long for you guys to see another animation from me. Now let's talk the animation that I do have, right now!

You know how in Marvel films they have the actors wear these weird markered suits while filming so that the actual suits are CGI'd on top of them in post production? That's the idea for this animation. I wanted to try my (literal) hand at that, but with 2D animation.

It's not super polished, but I think I got a decent end result.

What do you guys think of my robot hand armor prototype? The boys in the lab just finished working on it yesterday; Tony Stark's gonna like this one.

I had a work-in-progress version of this animation that I showed to a couple of people, and one of them described it as "rotoscoping," which I didn't think of it as such at the time, but after seeing the finished end result, I guess I can agree that it is rotoscoping.

This animation was originally supposed to be longer, but as with all ambitious animation ideas I had for this year, I had to cut it short. The second part of the video was me shooting out a laser from the index finger and etching out a happy face on the wall behind the hand. Oh well!

The animation was also to serve as a stepping stone for other ideas relating to creating animated elements on top of recorded video footage. That is something I still want to experiment with, so who knows? Maybe I'll work on and post something similar to this some time in the future?

Thanks again for every one who's been following me on my journey to creating monthly animations for this year! The purpose was to push myself and give myself more animated mileage, and I think I've done that! See you in the next post!

Happy Halloween 2021!

Halloween is back, which means another round of Halloween art!

Something that I came to realize is that every time I use Sally and Mandy for the Halloween art, Sally is always on the left side and Mandy on the right. I don't know why that's been the case; it's just a coincidence.

And because Mandy is always on the right side of the drawing, we always see the left side of her face facing us, which is a side I hardly draw in general.

It's just a minor detail I wanted to point out.

Anyways, Happy Halloween!