Schoolism Week 8

In week 8, our assignment was to combine everything that we had learned over the past few weeks into a full illustration.  We were encouraged to use one of our thumbnails from week 7, but I didn't really like how the backgrounds in my thumbnails turned out.  Instead I decided to do an illustration of an idea that I had last Christmas for a picture for my sister.  She's a big fan of the show Spartacus and anything gladiator related, so I decided to make a slightly more festive version of that by using gingerbread men.  I was a little strapped for time this last week, because I was out of town for CTN but I got as much done as I could.  I generally like how it turned out, but it could still use a lot of polishing.

Schoolism Week 7

For week 7 we had to integrate a character into a background.  We only had to do rough thumbnails of a few different options, mostly to figure out possible colors and lighting.  I wanted to use a new character, so I quickly sketched a french bulldog as a mime.  I like how he turned out, but I still need a lot more practice with lighting.

MAXIMUS.

As seems to be tradition, here is a Halloween post almost 2 months after the fact.  I wasn't sure if I was going to have the time or money to make myself a costume this year, so I didn't start planning one until about a week in advance.  My friend Charli was giving me a bunch of ideas, and she mentioned the 'sassy horse' from Tangled.  Tangled is one of my favorite movies and I decided that 'sassy horse' would be a wonderful costume.

I looked up some reference images of Maximus and did a couple of very rough sketches of the costume, and how it would work.  I look very happy in sketch form.

I built the base of the head out of foam.

And then covered it in felt, made the 'harness' part out of fun foam and found some ping pong balls for the eyes.

So sassy.

The front of the body was made out of white felt and then fun foam for the saddle straps.

I painted all of the embellishments gold.

The saddle was actually the first part of the costume that I made.  I had Murder She Wrote on in the background, which made working on it even more fun!  I made the blanket under the saddle out of felt and then the saddle itself out of fun foam.

I gave Maximus a glorious and luxurious yarn mane.

And painted his eyes.

It was very important that I have a wanted sign for Flynn Rider.

And a little Pascal to keep me company.

I wore it to work and put on my best Maximus face.

It was probably the easiest costume I've worn at work seeing as how it didn't have enormous wings or as 3 foot tall head.  People seemed to enjoy it, even when they didn't know exactly who I was.  I'm pretty sure that a lot of the older customers thought that I was just a very disgruntled horse.

My manager really enjoyed it and whinnied at me throughout the day.