Revisiting an old friend (DeviantArt)

21st Aug 2016

Old Logo VS New Logo

I can’t remember after how long I actually opened DeviantArt. It had been years. They've even changed their logo! DeviantArt is that great community of artists, novices, beginners, enthusiasts, professionals all sorts of people who come together to broadly share, discuss and learn art. I don’t know how I forgot about it. I had eve forgotten my password! When I remembered it and logged in, I noticed the 1999 notifications.

It gives me such a warm fuzzy feeling to go through that site today.

With all the instant platforms like Facebook and Instagram, people don’t maintain their blogs or Deviantart profiles anymore. But here’s the thing – Deviantart, CG Society, ConceptArt.org and Vimeo is where the real art community lies. Where you get love, critique and help from people within that community. I remember using Sketchaholic too, I wonder if that still functions.
These platforms were exciting and inspirational! Besides professionals, it’s where I found people who were on the same level as I was. Some grew faster, some slower, and it was so motivating to know and see that there are artists like me out there. I’m going to try making it a point to keep my Deviantart updated. I hope to see you guys there too! 

It's good to move with the times, but it's important to not forget the roots. I’m glad it still exists!

P.S: Sketchaholic is alive too!! :D

Lissa Treiman's blog and Bill Pressing's painting process

6th Dec 2012

Whenever I find a story blog, I am always overexcited to see the artists work. So I was browsing cartoonbrew > saw the annie award nominations for story > found Lissa Treiman's uber cool blog!! She's a story artist at Disney.
I have spent the entire morning archiving her wonderful work. So funny and so simple! Drool. I wish I did so much work fr myself as she does, besides her boards for pixar/disney. I also don't get how she manages to maintain her own style while working in disney, where most people have a consistent way of drawing characters.

Anyway, do check out her blog. Besides her awesome work, >>

©Lissa Treiman

Here's Bill Pressing's painting process she mentioned and followed in one of her blog posts. So so helpful!
Hope you guys like it.

OMG! Mr. Drawing Animator!

22nd Oct 2012

Omg! I just saw this amazing feature called Mr. Drawing Animator by Oscar Medina! Heads up guys! This is shocking for me! Enjoy and swallow! ;)

Mr. Drawing Animator is coming... from Oscar Medina on-animation on Vimeo.

How to Draw the Head - by Stan Prokopenko

Reposting a really helpful resource that cleared out a lot of confusion regarding drawing the human head, and refreshed some old knowledge as well! Hope you guys find these helpful too!

If you liked those, there're more links on the eyes on his youtube channel.

Differentiating a real smile from a fake smile

I was watching a very interesting tutorial at AnimschoolBlog on lipsynching, and Tyler Phillips mentioned a real smile from a fake smile and I did this test! Turns out I'm very good at differentiating between the two! I got a 19/20!
Here's the LINK for the test.

Artist Inspiration!

Re-discovered these two great blogs/artist today!
http://www.simplestroke.com/wp/ Dice Tsutsumi
http://ronyhotin.blogspot.in/ Roni Hotin

If you haven't seen their work yet, you gotta! What an amazing inspiration! Roni Hotin is a Gobelins alumni and Dice has worked with Pixar as a visual development artist. I am drooling over their work right now!

Funny Cat References!!!

Somebody watch these cute kitehhhhs!!!!! :D :D How to walk your human Kitten's Dance of Intimidation How to introduce two cats to each other What a great reference for us animators!! ;)

Goro Fujita's Speed Painting Gyaan!

TREASURE! TREASURE!!!

Well I'm a big fan of Goro Fujita's work. I've been having a lot of trouble painting my backgrounds and coming to terms with myself regarding the look of the film. Anywho, I was about to request Goro to put up a digital painting tutorial, and then I stumbled upon this! I can't tell you guys how useful this was. It makes everything clear - and as long as you practice it, you'll keep getting better. One major mistake I made was I always kept the bg color white - which doesn't allow me to set the mood or play with the values!
Enjoy!!

http://chapter-56.blogspot.in/2006/11/speedpainting.html

And here's another one on the making of 'the hunt' another one of his works - stepwise.
http://www.cgsociety.org/index.php/CGSFeatures/CGSFeatureSpecial/the_making_of_the_hunt

Gesture Drawing Session - 24th April

24th April

Wow, I can't remember the last time I sketched/posted gestures! True, it's been a long time - but also true is my state of absolute stress and escaist tendencies. I've been running away from the fear of making a shitty movie and involving myself in games like Alladin (a childhood comfort) and Pottermore (this is based ON my childhood (Harry Potter)). I wish it never got over and JK Rowling lived as long as Nicholas Flamel. The fever is not back - it never died. I hate it when I talk about Hogwarts and people tell me to grow up! Anyway, more on that later (hopefully).

Gestures have become highly dependent on self-initiative now. Since juries are closing in, everyone's buy with coursework and noone has the time to sketch gestures. I was feeling super let down and rusty, so I sketched these from the AMAZINGly resourceful gesture drawing tool from Pixellovely. I used to use this for anatomy study as well.

So here's how they turned out. I'm embarassed! I went from getting-better to smelly drawings! Anyway. They all took about 1 minute to sketch and 1 minute for tone. Here goes.


I've sketched this Asian man before. He always seemed to have weird anatomy to me. Here I tried to quickly study color along with the lighting. Pretty decent for the first time eh?

On staging and animation

An awesome post on staging for storyboarders! Answered a lot of questions for me! I feel like changing my storyboard again, but I guess I won't now. I'll probably never come to a conclusion.
Happy learning!
http://sevencamels.blogspot.in/2012/04/flat-funny-and-depth-dramatic.html

Another amazing interview of a wonderful animator Cameron Fielding. He's reel is mind blowing!
Hope I can pick up a few tricks from him. :)
http://www.animschoolblog.com/2012/04/animschool-interview-animator-cameron.html

Pascal Campion's Interview

So I've been trying to learn lighting and color for my film's color script. I didn't want anything complex, but the deeper I get into it the more difficult it gets!!! There are amazing artists who I
've been learning these things from, some of them are Chris Appelhans - who designed some of the art of one of my fav. films - 'Fantastic Mr. Fox', and there's Lou Romano who makes color scripts for pixar movies - here's his BLOG.

BUT! I'm sure you've heard of Pascal Campion as well! His work is so inspiring. It creates a beautful mood and they all tell an emotional story. Here's his BLOG, and along with that, a special interview on vimeo! Here it is.

Day 15 - Female Studies (Babe Lab)

9th Jan 2012

Hmm! Feels weird to write 2012! :-s
My last project JH post was shamefully exactly 10 days ago, since I'm making this post for the 9th of Jan. Found this amazing website that teaches and helps pin up artists, animators etc. to draw women - because are exceptionally difficult. It's called babe-lab! (for 18+) So here's some of the stuff I practiced out of it. :)