Daily Sketch Day 20 - Pringles

 

 

 

 

Today, I have again asked some friends to lend me their pet dog's photos, so I can draw them. So for today, it's Pringles - a smiling Pug-Pitbull mix. Her big wide smile is so cute I just have to draw her. She can be a good inspiration and reference for a character design  of a dog character in an animated film.

As for the background, I added a Stucco Deco design using the art clippings brush preset in Artrage 4, for the floor, and added some spot lighting effect to the whole image. Coz she's a star!

Daily Sketch Day 19 - Mellon

It's my friend's pet dog, a Jack Russell mix. I kept it simple with just black and white pencil and added some noise filter for the overall look.  Just trying out a different style... and finish it on time. Yay!

Daily Sketch Day 18 - Golden Retriever Puppy

After drawing horses for a week, it's drawing canine week starting today.  I'm starting off with a cute Golden Retriever puppy. This sketch is very loose and painterly-looking.  The fur still needs a lot of work but I ran out of time.  Just have to let it go and start anew tomorrow. Sleepy now.

Daily Sketch Day 17 - Three Donkeys

As part of the equine family, I just have to draw donkeys as well. They're just basically the smaller version with longer ears.  I think they're a really cute.

Daily Sketch Day 16 - Horseplaying Zebras

 

Still on my drawing horse week, I decided to vary things up a bit by drawing zebras, which are also of the equine species.  I don't remember having drawn much zebras before or it must have been when I was still very young and can't draw animals properly,  But now that I can, I just realized how helpful those zebra stripes are in indicating their three dimensional form.  One benefit of drawing is you're force to take a closer look at your subject as if for the first time and notice things you wouldn't normally have.  And I'm amazed at how those stripes really conforms to the zebras' body like construction lines.  Great visual cues for drawing.

Daily Sketch Day 15 - Horse Call

 Instead of my usual three horses I added one more, because the composition calls for it. As a result, this sketch took me longer to finish.  This time it's a sketch study of horses in recline plus a horse neighing.  So I drew them lying around while one horse calling them out for their laziness.  Such fun!

Daily Sketch Day 14 - Grazing Horses

 

 

Learning to draw any animal must involve learning to draw them in different poses. Thus the three horses,   I'm also experimenting with the rendering style, by keeping it loose and keeping the pencil lines visible.

Daily Sketch Day 13 - Gossiping Horses

Continuing with the horse theme for this week, I drew three of them focusing on the head in different views.  And because of the way they are grouped together, I titled this drawing as Gossiping Horses.

Haha...

Daily Sketch Day 12 - Running Horses

For today's sketch, it's running horses. I kept the pencil outline visible on top of the colors, and placed the horses on a grassy background which gave this sketch a more illustration-style look.  My style is still evolving at this point, so it's fun playing around with this look,

Bunny Rabbit's New Look!

        When I designed the original Bunny almost 4 years ago, I was just starting to learn digital painting in Photoshop.  I wanted to see if I could animate a single image without having to draw the character multiple times.  And so, based on a single fully rendered image,  I edited it by cutting, distorting and pasting the character's body parts to create the different poses of  the action. Any additional drawings needed was kept to the minimum.  I achieved what I wanted at the time. 

   

New cleaner design

      Since then, my understanding of the built-in timeline have improved and so is my character design sense. It's been awhile since I've animated in Toon Boom that I have already forgotten how to use it.  Photoshop is not my ideal animation application to use, but it can do simple animation loop like this well enough that can be exported to GIF easily.   So I decided to use Photoshop instead.

New lighter color with some pink added.

     

         So last weekend, I decided to give Bunny Rabbit a new look and new animation.  The old version was a 10-drawing cycle.  This time, I added more drawings, cleaner lines, and a more streamlined design.  I drew the face and body with a more feminine look.  The head is more triangular, reminiscent of  Kisses chocolates. The eyes are also triangular to complement the overall shape. The eyebrows are thinner, the lashes longer and more pronounced.

        Instead of the skipping animation cycle of the old version, I animated the thumping foot from one side to the next, reminiscent of Thumper's foot thumping in the Disney classic film Bambi. This bunny is inspired by Thumper after all.

A 26-drawing animation cycle.

A more feminine design

The animation is a bit longer now with 26 drawings. Instead of editing from a single fully rendered image, I did it just like how I would do it if it's done traditionally.  Line key poses were animated first, then in-between drawings were added after. Once the timing of the action  was done, colors were added in.

FX and Drop Shadows added

        I kept the original theme of the blue bordered box to contain the bunny, for continuity reasons. Who knows, this might still evolved in the future.  I added some FX and Drop Shadow elements on top of the finished animation to help it pop out more from the blue background.  This wouldn't be complete without the Pixie dusts, so I reused the old dust animation cycle but changed its timing. It's now a bit slower and dragging a bit. 

        And so.... here's the new, improved animated icon of this blog.

Bunny Rabbit Pixie Dust logo