Halloween

So not much happened this Halloween. It was probably the least I'd ever done for the holiday, but it was still great and I had fun. Our ward had a Halloween trunk or treat party a few weeks back that we went too, that was pretty much it. We didn't get any decorations for our condo. We didn't even carve pumpkins, which I really wanted to do after I found out that Dave has never carved a pumpkin in his entire life! My family always got pumpkins for all of us kids and we each did our own, but I guess in Dave's family they just got one pumpkin and his mom carved it every year. Next year that is definitely on the to do list for Halloween. You haven't lived until you've carved a pumpkin. Our HOA didn't open our front doors, so we couldn't get any trick-or-treaters this year. Dave and I dressed up just for each other, watched some old tv shows and ate the candy that was supposed to be for the kids. It was pretty great. It was weird having 90 degree weather on Halloween. In Michigan (where I grew up) we'd sometimes get snow on that day. Crazy. Anyway, that's our Halloween update. I hope you all had a spooky time!

Blog Steal!

So, my friend Kristi told me when Dave and I were engaged that we have start a blog when we got married, all married people do it. I thought that was pretty silly, I barely knew anyone with a blog, but then all my friends got married this summer and I discovered she was right! All married people do have blogs. And since David doesn't use this anymore really and I'm too lazy to start my own, I stole this one. So this is our new family blog. I have no idea how to use it really, except to post this, but hopefully I will figure more stuff out soon.

Anyway, let me give you an update. David and I got married July 3rd, 2009 at the Salt Lake City Temple. It was probably the best day of my life, and definitely the best day of Dave's; ok definitely mine too.

For our honeymoon, we took a cruise to the Cayman Islands, Roatan Honduras, Belize, and Mexico. It was tons of fun! This picture is at some Mayan Ruins in Mexico.

After that we moved me from Utah to California. Dave had been living down here for several months before we got married, and I finally got to join him. We bounced around a few places in LA but we're finally settled in our new condominium in Encino. It's pretty great, except we still have boxes of stuff to unpack. Good thing we have a second bedroom to hide all our mess. Married life is pretty great, for me at least. I'm sure Dave thinks so too. How could living with me be anything but great? Anyway, I recommend getting married to everyone: you'll really enjoy it. That's really all I wanted to say today. Stay tuned for more...

Summer Already!

I thought I should start my summer off with a bang. To that effect I took a trip down to Zion National Park where I spent a day and a half wandering the park taking photos and drawing sketches as my whim took me. In one day, I figured I hiked over 9 miles, and one of those hikes was the craziest, but funnest hike I have ever done. For those of you who know it, its called Angels Landing. For those of you who don't, its only a 2.5 mile trail, but you climb about half a vertical mile and the last half mile is just you the sandstone trail, some chains to help you out and two sheer cliffs on either side. Some crazy stuff there. I think they said that on average 2 people die every year on this trail, but that could just be imagining things. It did lead to some inspiring views though:


This little beauty was also right on a cliff, which actually had a huge arch being carved in it. The trail to get there was much easier and had only a moderate level of cliffs involved. Its called canyon lookout.


There was also quite a bit of wild life that came my way. The most prominent were the squirrels which liked to come right up to you:


They even started going through your bags if they thought there was a treat inside:


Other then the squirrels, I saw eagles, deer, chipmunks, wild turkeys (huge), quite a few insects and other creepy crawlies and a few lizards. I only wish I could have completed the whole wildlife gambit with some gray foxes and a cougar. Overall it was a great trip with some nice rejuvenating "me" time.

In other news I got a call from Sony Pictures Imageworks this week and they offered me an internship for this summer. I don't know all the details yet, but supposedly I'll be working on their upcoming feature film and will be there from mid June to mid August. I am super excited!

Some Animation

I thought it was about time I posted some animation on my blog. This is a weight test I did for class. This is the first animation I've done focusing on the techniques and principles of the masters. If I have time in the future I would like to add his face throughout and his tail, and maybe eventually his hat, but for now I must move on.


Fox Weight Test -First Pass from Qenops on Vimeo.

Senior Film Concept

I painted this up for some concept environment for our senior film. I did it in about an hour. In the end they said they didn't like it because our main character's don't live in areas this dry, but I enjoyed doing it.

Well, I guess I'll do it my way

So Blogger has been giving me troubles recently. I wanted to upload a simple movie, but no matter what format or when I try, it just doesn't want to work. So I decided I'd do it my own way.
This is a render of the fox I've been working on for the last semester. The reason for the grid is that the fur was created using a trial version of Shave and a Haircut. It is also why the movie isn't a full turn-around; the trial ran out before the rendering was done.
He's all rigged up and I'm doing some animations with him. I'll post playblasts when they are looking good. For now enjoy the movies. The high res version is about 9MB and the low is about 80KB.

HIGH-RES FOX

LOW-RES FOX

The Cake is a Lie!

This is a final I did for one of my classes. The theme was "Pretty Ugly," and I think I captured it quite well. It was quite fun coming up with this one. This is by far the most violent image I have ever created, but shouldn't all of us branch out?
I'm sure if you've played Portal you'll enjoy this even more. Maybe I should add a weighted companion cube...but then it would only make me cry.

UPDATE: I changed the lighting to make it look better:

Senior Pitch

So we had our senior pitch today. This is the artwork that went along with my idea. It is an extremely lonely ghost town.

We had some really great pitches. I'm excited to see what we all choose to do. All I know now is that it will be awesome, so prepare yourself world: the BYU 2009 animated short will blow your mind.

Oh yeah, this is my first painting ever. So critique away.

An unlikley Heroine

I was hoping to have an additional picture ready, but all you get for now is this non-typical herione from my character design class. Hope you like.

A curious dog

This is my favorite picture so far. It has a great composition and its all monochromatic, which is sweet. The short depth of field really enhances it and the focal plane is exactly where I wanted it.

Photography

Yes I am a budding photographer. I recently got myself a digital SLR so I could take even better pictures. And here are some of the results. Enjoy!

Silhouettes

Character design had us making some creative silhouettes. The topics were 2085 Soldier, Geisha, Victorian Woman, and Native American 400AD.

"Solid as a Rock"

Yes I am guilty of neglecting my blog. A lot has happened in the intervening months since my last post. I got a job doing 3D animation and software development on a kids TV show, I left the MTC, and I moved into a new house with new roommates. Fun stuff. The summer was way busier than expected so I was not able to draw and work on my art as much as I wanted, but now I'm back into it. Aside from being an integral part of my new business model, the top one is a sketch I drew up in Rock Canyon. The bottom one was an assignment to turn one of our sketches from nature into a character.

Working Too Hard

Sorry, I haven't posted anything for a while. I've been working on an animation for one of my classes. I think I post a version of it when I'm all done. In the mean time, here are a couple of compositions I planned on putting up last fall, but never got around to it. They have a ton of stuff I would change now, but thats one good thing of looking at old stuff; you get to see your growth.

African Animals

Hey y'all! I did these for TheQuickDraw. They were done with a Pitt Pen and were really fast. I've been drawing for 15 min every day for about a week now, and I'm lovin it. Its good to get back into drawing.

Disembodied Heads

Yes, I am guilty of neglecting my blog for about 6 months now. What happened? Laziness mostly, but busyness too. We focused a lot of effort on trying to finnish Lion and the Mouse, but it is still not done. I think we all got burnout from working on it too hard in such a short amount of time. Enjoy these heads from my sketchbook. When I get bored, and have nothing else to draw, heads come out.

Shape Experiments

I think shape is a wonderful thing. I did a series of test drawings purely with shape in black and white to see what I could do. Tell me what you think!

	This is one I did of Timpanogos Mountain in the evening.	Same mountain in the morning. I love how the light catches the mountains.
	This is of another mountain near campus in the evening.	I thought I might try to do an indoor composition with only windows and lights showing.
	I like the variety of shapes trees create. First attempt.	Three is better then one.

I was in the studio pondering what else to draw with great shadows and this guy seemed to stare back at me.

Sketchbook Gestures

These are some live gesture drawings I did in my sketchbook. Some were done with black marker while others were gray marker with a pen overlay.

Animation Program

Well, I am pleased to announced that I finally got accepted to the animation program. A year and a half's work paid off, but not quite the way I wanted. They told me that I wasn't accepted for my artistic skill, but rather my work ethic. That's fine with me, but I'll just have to work harder on developing my art. As you can see from what I've posted and will yet post, I've got a lot of work to do.



This is a rough sketch I did with marker in my sketch book. Just a random sketch.

Philosophy on Life

Many people have thought it strange that after 21 years of not being an artist, I decided that I wanted to spend the rest of my life pursuing that course. I guess my decision was supported by my philosophy on potential. I have always the idea that there was nothing I couldn't do if I worked hard enough. I mean nothing. If I wanted to do ballet, all it would take is determination and hard work. Or if I wanted to be a theroetical econimist, all it would take is some study and hard work. Not that I have leanings toward either of those pursuits; they are still within my reach, if I so choose. I find that the only limits we run into are set by ourselves.

So I'm not that great of an Artist, for now. I will constantly be working and drawing toward that end, and if I work hard enough I will develop that talent and become the artist I would like to become. It's just like everything else in life. My Mission President told a story of one of his missionaries that was an amazing pianist. One day he was playing a beautiful piece and some other missionary said, "I'd give anything to play like that!" The pianist's retort came quickly, "Yes, anything but Practice." The truth of that is piercing to the lazy soul. Often we idealize people's talents and wish we could do something like that. Well, get off your duff and practice hard enough, and you too will eventually be able to.

Now I understand that some people have limitations where no matter how hard they work they can't attain a certain level of development. I would say for the most part this isn't the case, rather it is laziness. But for those few cases where this occurs, it doesn't mean that they can't develop that talent as far as possible and therefore won't get an assurance that they did all within thier power to do so. And with that assurance they can go on and excel in other areas where there aren't limitations. I would say most people have possibly one area where this is the case. Most often it is just that we hit the wall that always occurs in the progression of any course and we give up, and from that time are resentful and say "I could never do that."

Wow. I didn't mean to say that much. I'm sorry I'm ranting so much, and I promise I'll post more artwork soon. It's just easier to rant and rave then to do some work.

The slumps

So I've been kind of down recently. We all have 'em: those artist slumps. This week has not been my week. Most of the time I don't feel like drawing, but whenever I force my self to draw, it comes out awful. It's really bad timing too, because I have a portfolio deadline in less then two weeks. Life is fun, isn't it?
Well I hope everyone else out there has a good week. Later!

Figure Drawings

I thought I'd start things off with a couple of my figure drawings. These were all done within the last year mostly in classes at school. Before this past year, I had never done any figure drawing at all. In December of 2004 I decided to study Animation, even though I never had done any drawing, sketching or doodling, except as a kid in art class, so since that time, I've kept a sketchbook and enrolled in figure drawing classes. I've still got a long way to go, but I've made a lot of progress.

Hello everyone! Welcome please have a seat and make yourselves comfortable! This is a place to relax and talk about everything and anything. I am entering into a stage of life of extreme potential and great growth. Hopefully you will be able to see my skills develop and progress from the rudimentary and unpolished form of their current state to a more pleasing and refinded state. I appreciate all comments (within reason) so feel free to tear apart my ideas and work. Just don't rip it off. So sit back and enjoy the ride.