Schoolism-Week 1

Well hey there!  I started taking an Intro to Digital Painting class through Schoolism.com a week or so ago and I though that I would post what I've done so far.  I had never really painted, let alone sketched in Photoshop before but it always been something that I wanted to learn.  The class is taught by Andrew Hou, and he has some mad digital painting skills.  He's been digital painting for a while and has worked both in comics and as a concept artist.  You can see some of his work here www.andrewhou.com.

The first lesson was how to sketch in Photoshop.  I hadn't really worked with a tablet before so it was all pretty new to me.  I decided to draw a sloth having a party.

It definitely could have turned out better, but I'm still kind of getting used to everything.  Andrew recorded a 15 minute critique where he went over my drawing and showed me ways to make it work a little better.  His drawing looked a lot better than mine did, hahaha.  

New Shot-blocking

I've started working on a new shot for my demo reel and I thought that I would share what I've done so far! I chose an audio clip from the ridiculous movie Top Secret and set it in a Mad Scientist lab/dungeon.  I've only done a couple of passes in blocking and haven't done much with the monster or set yet, but this is what I've done so far!

The first blocking pass

 I got some feedback that the monster wasn't reading very clearly lying down on the table, so for the next pass I made him a little easier to see.  I also did some more breakdowns for the scientist.

Any feedback/comments would be very much appreciated!

25th Anniversary

It was my Mom and Dad's 25th anniversary a couple of weeks ago, so I wanted to make them a special 'card'.  They went to New York for a week to celebrate so I wanted to make them a NY themed paper sculpture thingy!  I tried to incorporate as many of the things that they actually did while in New York as I could. They saw The Lion King and Once on Broadway, saw the statue of liberty, went on a horse drawn carriage ride in central park, went to a BMW store to look at motorcycle jackets for my dad, and ate a super gross looking giant hot dog. (For the record, I thought it looked gross but they really enjoyed it)  I set it in Times Square so that I could make use of all of the signs up on the buildings.  I was going to add an angry cab driver too, but I ran out of room.

Mom and Dad looking super precious, holding hands in Times Square.

The words were a real treat to cut out...

Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad!!

Happy Sloth.

AM Graduation

So because I'm so good at posting things like a month after they've happened....here's a post about my AM graduation!!! :)

My family and I flew up to San Francisco on July 26th for an Animation Mentor filled weekend.  We headed over to The Cheesecake Factory inside of the Macy's in Union Square because there was an AM diner extravaganza meetup thingy happening that night.  I got to meet a bunch of the people that I have been going to school with for the past two years which was pretty awesome.  AND there was cheesecake involved, which made it even better!

The next day we had the open house at AM headquarters.  You could kind of see bits of it in the video news each week, but seeing it in person was fantastic!  They have a super cool work environment where everyone gets to personalize their own workspace.  There are castle cubicles, crazy lego models, cardboard cut-outs of Austin powers... We got to go on a tour and see all of the different departments.  They also had a mini 'Spike Carnival' set up where you could shoot targets with a nerf gun and win prizes.  Because I'm a stone cold killah I was able to knock a few of them down and win some candy and a lovely AM pin.  My sister is apparently a trained assassin because she was able to get the hardest one down and won me a t-shirt!  Way to go Paige!  They also had snacks for us and a photo booth which I unfortunately missed out on.  And I got to sign the alumni wall which was pretty cool!!!  We went to the Walt Disney Family Museum afterwards which was lovely!

Guess who's inside of Spike?

Sat the 27th was the day of the graduation!  I got to meet the rest of my graduating class and take part in an amazing graduation ceremony!  We also had an incredible commencement speaker...ANDREW STANTON!!!!  He gave a super inspiring speech and said that he could now call us animators.  In the words of Sophia Grace, it was 'SO GOOD'.  I got to walk across the stage and get my diploma from the 3 founders and I think that I surprised them with my 'creative accent'.  They seemed to enjoy it though. :)  There were also some student awards that went to some crazy talented and wonderful people and some great speeches from some of the mentors.  At the end of the ceremony they released a ton of balloons from the ceiling and it was really, really magical.

Post balloon bombing.

With Shaun Kelly!

With Bobby (Boom) Beck!

With Carlos Baena

I was pretty excited about Shaun signing my hat.

Who wears Mickey Mouse gloves to accept her diploma?  THIS GIRL.

Afterwards I got a chance to go and meet all 3 of the founders and take a picture with them.  And I got them and a bunch of my awesome classmates to sign my graduation hat.  My parents took my sister and I out for supper that night because she had also recently graduated from university.  We also went to the Disney store...and it had 2 WHOLE FLOORS.  It was a good day.  

Then on Sunday the 28th we had the AM BBQ which was open to both students and alumni as well as their families.  I got to meet and hang out with a bunch more awesome people.

The people at AM put on an amazing weekend for us and I'm incredibly grateful to them!! It was a fantastic (if slightly overwhelming :) ) weekend and it was great meeting my fellow classmates and finding out that they are actually real live people!  I'm looking forward to seeing a bunch of them again at CTN later this year!

I have a website now!

You can find it at here  or at www.ericaanim.com!  I wanted to have ericamiles.com as my domain name, but it was already taken by a different Erica Miles who writes 'edgy, paranormal romance novels'.  I promise that it's not me...probably... :)  Anyways, check it out if you like!  It is also linked to this blog, so you can always find your way back!  Hurray!

Paper Adventures

For my USCAD graduation show way back in 2010 I did a sort of multiplane camera type piece consisting of different layers of a background separated slightly to give the illusion of depth.  Ever since then I've been playing around with different techniques to get a similar look.  The amazingly talented Brittney Lee has been a huge inspiration to me with her super cool paper sculpts so I decided to try some out myself!  I had never done anything like this before so I kind of made it up as I went along.

The first one was for the Saskatoon Exhibition's Showcase of the Arts last year.  Their theme class was 'Blast from the Past' so I decided to do a piece with a blast waaaay in the past.

I started out with a rough sketch

And then cut everything out of paper.  It was a lot of cutting...I used my trusty glue stick to put it all together.  I like how it turned out, but I would have liked to get a bit more depth into it.  I may still add some accents with paint. 

The next two I did for my friends for their birthdays!  They are both big Disney fans like myself so I decided to do a scene from the Little Mermaid and the Sword in the Stone.  Looking through my dvd's for scene's was pretty entertaining.  Especially seeing the individual frames of Ursula during Poor Unfortunate Souls. They were pretty fabulous.

I especially enjoyed this one.

They ended up having more depth than the Blast from the Past one and I really like how they turned out!

I gave her some lovely red nail polish with paint.

The second scene that I chose was the wizard's duel between Merlin and Madam Mim.   It's just a really wonderful scene.

I made sure to add the 'magic' accents afterwards.

This last one was a gift for my aunt for her 50th birthday.  We both really like dragons, because really, who doesn't?  

I did a rough sketch of a dragon hanging out with a giant '50' and looking pretty excited about eating some cake.

I made the '50' out of foam and the rest was cut out of paper.  I had a bit more room to work with in the frame I had, so I tried to push the levels of depth and make it as three dimensional as I could.

He's pretty pumped about that cake.

Framed!

My aunt really liked it but wasn't so thrilled that everyone would see that she was 50 when she hung it up on her wall... :)