Welcome to Motion Graphics

My day job is introducing Adobe After Effects into our repertoire. I like that it is super compatible with Photoshop but motion graphics is very new to me; this is only my second piece. Here's something I worked on for a few days. I wanted it done before Halloween, but it couldn't happen. I'm still figuring out the Mask tool. If anyone has great tutorials, let me know. I'm already a fan of >>Layers<< mag.

Enjoy!

Pancakes! Pancakes!

>>Art House Co-op<<, an organization that I love, is having a >>30 second Film Festival<<. I've had a ton of ideas swimming around in my head about what to produce, but haven't had the time or willpower to put the pedal to the metal. Fast forward four weeks, and the deadline is approaching, so to get my creative juices flowing again, I made a stack of (very) mini pancakes. I liked how the pictures turned out, so I wanted to share them with you. Hopefully I get my act together and make a finished "film".

Pregnant Belly Painting

A friend of mine is ready to pop at any minute. We used Halloween face paint to paint her belly. They have a jungle theme in the baby's room so I made lions (although they resemble teddy bears more), and I wanted to play on the word "pride": proud to be a member of the family and a pack of lions is a pride. Think it turned out cute; she was pleased. My first pregnant friend. :)

Fall Mailer Sent Out

My Studio. This is in our sunroom; we live on a corner lot. I love opening the windows when I work. I know it looks messy, but I do have a pretty organized process. First I start with a big piece of newsprint taped to the table and sketch and write all over it. The nice things about hashing out ideas on newsprint is that the material is cheap, and there is so much space to draw one thing, and draw something else if you don't like it. Then I print up some reference photos (or take them myself), hash out more ideas on the newsprint, before I redraw a more solid composition on smaller paper.


Here come my Micron pens! I trace and trace over my sketches until I like the line work.


I scan the line work in and color in Photoshop. Here are all the printed mailers with their red envelopes. Before I stuff the envelopes, I like to see them all together. I wanted a strict fall color palette: browns, reds, oranges and yellows.


A closeup on my squirrels.



Ta-Da! Hope those of you that received this in the mail enjoyed this tiny slice of fall. If you'd like to be on my mailing list, drop me an email and you'll receive all of my promotional goodies.

500 Colored Pencils Contest

Entered a submission to >>Social Designer's 500 Colored Pencil contest<<. I'm always very interested in how other artists work, so I've included some sketches and an idea of my process below:

1. First, brainstorming: thinking and writing. I wrote all the pencil names I thought were interesting. This was actually several pages but I'm only posting one. The names were different and I really liked that.


2. Then, loose sketching. I really liked the name "Toast" for a colored pencil. I wish they had a "Butter" but they don't. I may come back and do something with toast...


3. Then, thinking. (no image here, lol) This is where I leave the computer or sketchbook to give my brain a break. Oftentimes when I leave and come back I notice problems that should be fixed. Lots of times I use this time to run ideas past my husband. He's not an artist, but I value "regular-people" opinions just as much. It has to make sense to the general public. My time away from drawing made me let go of my "Giraffe" and "Foliage" direction because there just wasn't enough room in the banner dimensions to do all that. I decided to definitely do the "Crocodile" and "Octopus" so I got online to collect reference photos for those animals.

4. Began sketching the final images with just a regular ballpoint pen.


6. Tracing over and over again until the composition and clean line is achieved. I traced with a Micron pen, but the final trace was in colored pencil so that I could get a textured line.


7. Scanned into Photoshop to color.

8. Final product:


9. Finally, I file every scrap of paper used in this process in a physical file folder. Anything with a doodle, sketch, or even written mark about this project is filed for future reference if I ever want to revisit an idea.