The Post Before the Disappearing Act

The school break has started, and I have just a few days to pack up, say my goodbyes and go off into the woods for two months. Unfortunately we've had a tragedy in my family and inspiration isn't really driving me right now, so I haven't been making anything noteworthy. And the animation is at a halt until I resolve my after effects issues..
Above is WIP shot of a comic short I'm working on, themed around Valentine's Day. It should be around 20 pages or so. Considering how slow of a worker I am, I probably will finish it by next Valenine's day..

The work above was an acrylic painting for my mom's birthday of her and my dad's trip to Paris.

This isn't too clear, but is currently a website design idea I'm working for redoing my site which is too horrendous and anime obsessed for the average eye...
Enjoy!

Moar 3D

This was my final project for 3D class which I am kinda happy with. I'm glad I took photos before going on the city bus as some parts of her got destroyed..

I am too poor to buy proper sculpey so I dug around old high school supplies till I managed to find some old pieces of it, hence the flourescent colour throw up..

Hectic Hectic

A quick midnight pencil sketch that is turning into some photoshop fun. Dear lord I hate photoshop. How the hell do people make such masterpieces in an hour? I've been at this one for about 2 hours.

A few life drawings from my sketchbook back from um..February I think. 3-10 minutes. Both these models rock.



Life has been overwhelming lately and I've had not much time for school art, let alone personal stuff. On top of everything, my after effects has failed me and I'm having to redo the animation composition...whenever free time chooses to happen for me that is. Mostly it's been the usual bus sketches and whatnots.
My classmates got their portfolio results back and only a few got into animation, the poor chaps. But, those who did get in are going to go FAR. I got a nice part time job offer from X'ian, China for next year and will probably sign the contract by the end of the week once negotiations are done. I can't wait to get over there but at the same time I am terrified.
Otherwise, I'm working out like mad to get in shape for my first year of treeplanting, buying every bug dope in existence and ridiculous gear. I have a stupid dream of looking really rugged and badass once the planting season is over and scaring a few people on the city bus..heheh. Assuming I survive and can keep up to the planting standards.

A-Pu-Day-tu!

Clara & Goose Animatic from Yuliya Stone on Vimeo.

So...I am an idiot who refuses to follow rules and then goes nowhere with her ways of doing things. I more or less had finished the pencil art for my cartoon following the piss poor "animatic" I had made in 5 minutes back in october. The animatic had maybe one sound effect, the scenes weren't timed and there were 30 different shots/cuts for a 1 minute cartoon. Which would mean 2 seconds per scene? Stoopid me. So I sat my stoopid ass down and spent two days actually doing something reasonable and smart as every animation book I have read so far has told me: do a full on animatic and do the sound before you start animating.

In other news, here is an insight into my bipolar brain:

1) Bakcground idea #1 - made sometime in october I wanted a simple, powerpuff type bg look. Looks awful.

2) Background idea #2 - Let's pretend we can outdo Disney. And make a North American forest look like a tropical jungle while at it. Fail.

3)Background Idea #3 - This one actually stuck for a while. Probably because its as generic as backgrounds can get. Yet another fail. And I'm starting to lose all hope in my Photoshop skills by this point.

4)Background Idea #4 - The weirdest of them all it seems, but this is what I am going to go with in the end. First it's done entirely by hand using my favorite art supplies. Second, it's not generic and suits my work more. Third, it's epically awesome or at least at this hour of the night it is.

Look What I Can Do

I did my first time consuming pop up artbook! Probably my first pop up in my lifetime. And it was both ridiculously challenging and tedious at points, but also super fun figuring out what mechanism will work and which wont. I must say, I am loving school assignments from second semester. Tons more freedom. : )

This one was simple but took forever to make it work so it folded up properly. And it does! I have to say I did cry when I saw my reference image of a factory farmed chicken

The following 2 pages were easy to make but took forever to color. Plus looking for food items in magazines is apparently a much more difficult task than one would think..And yes, I am aware of her extremely "dayuumm" derriere.

Goosed Out

Today I discovered a hard as a rock baguette hiding behind some kitchen pots and heard the loud quacking of stupid Canada geese who chose not to migrate. (They are now freezing their butts off as a consequence for being so lazy) Since they are already fed by so many people, but still choose to be jerks to everyone (there's about 50 of them and they hang out at the parking lot near my apartment building) I jumped the bandwagon and thought I'd get some nice inspiration feeding the birds. Yes, I am 19. I got some great photos, some beaks and wings in my face (animal instinct for food is scary..) and one bit my butt to get my attention and be fed. All in all, my characterization of my character goose (scroll down) is pretty accurate. Selfish, irate and...eats anything. About all these geese seem to do. And soil the kids playground too..

My First Go at Animation

Clara & Goose is a project I've been working away on for the last 3 months. I have no formal training in animation (yet hopefully) but this does not stop me from trying and cramming my head with animation books and software manuals. So as far as this animation goes, character design is done traditionally, using animation paper and a home made light box which came out to a fraction of the cost of a drafting/light table.

Here's a quick pencil test preview of some scenes from the short:

Clara & Goose Pencil Test from Yuliya Stone on Vimeo.

The pencil animation is 3/4 done at this point, I'm thinking ti will be about a minute long, and I'm now starting to consider how to ink/colour the short. Here are some test trials I went through before I settled on the final draft. And its time consuming, all 3.
1)Digital Inking - the really hard pen lines don't really work with the organic bouncy feel of the character, plus it takes 30 minutes to ink each frame..(I have about 400-500)But colouring is fast and effective as the paths are clean and you can just paint bucket the thing in minutes.

2)Pencil Inking - takes only 6/7 minutes a frame but scans horribly, magic wand tool picks up nothing when I try to colour as there is so much grey going on, and it blends the character with the background way too much.

3)India Ink - takes about as 4-5 minutes a frame, but about 1-2 extra minutes to fix up the drawings as I ink the rough directly and some of them are messy or unfinished. Colouring picks up alright,t here is space between colours where the line goes over, but by setting it to multiply, it isn't noticeable. And I like the look of it best. Let me know your thoughts if you have any.



More of this spam will soon come our way, enjoy!