Sketch Dump

It's been a little while since I have posted anything so I thought that I would upload some of the stuff that I have been working on at the moment.

This is something that I did in a few hours, to practice getting back into using Copic Markers again. Sadly both of my light blue markers started to die on me while I was working on this so the sky looks really patchy. Hopefully when I get refills for both colors I'll be able to fix it up and repost it.

I am really not great at successfully coloring blonde hair yet. I need to look up some tutorials on how to do it better because her's, while not horrible, isn't what I want it to be quite yet, and I'm afraid if I over work it the yellow hues are just going to become ugly and muddy.

This is one of the cover's I did in France over a year ago. I printed out another copy and used Copic Markers to color it. I'm fairly happy with this, and think I will ad it to my scholarship appeal portfolio.

This is something that I think I will either end up using on a business card or at least in my display for any artist alley's I end up going to.

I was think that for cons, I could always wear a stripped shirt and dark bottoms (cause I have so many black/dark jeans and shorts ^^;; ) That way customers will hopefully eventually recognize me from a distance based on appearance and my table set up.

The star's are because I made a new Deviant Art account as an experiment to see if I market and brand myself better if I can get a bigger audience and sell more art in a shorter period of time than my last DA account. The username is 'etoile-san' which etoile is french for star.

Scholarships...I need them.

I got my official acceptance letter from SCAD about grad school. Yay! Unfortunately, I didn't get much in the way of scholarships from the school, so now I have to go through the process of appealing my current scholarship and hope that maybe they will give me more. I'm also fervently searching the internet for scholarships as well. If I can't find a way to minimize how much in loans I will need to take out, then I don't think in the end I will be able to afford to continue my education.

So aside from searching the web for ways to win money from organizations, I'm also going to start whoring myself out on DA (and I will create a brad new account for this) and try to make money through commissions. That way I can deposit it into my savings/pay for supplies and possibly classes to prepare myself for the 100,000,000 dollar debt I may end up in.

There is so much that I need to start doing so that I can actually be successful in my field that honestly I have been putting off for too long.

 I need to:

• make business cards
• design a logo
• build a website
• start going to cons to promote myself
• buy a button maker

And I am sure many other things that I just haven't listed.

Gotta get on that and stop being lazy. :/

Grad School

Well I've applied to grad school. I don't doubt that I'll be accepted. I'm sure that SCAD wants more of my money, but I do hope that they give me a decent scholarship. I'm both excited and nervous about starting grad school. I'm excited to have a more productive environment to work in that the classes will provide, and to be able to get truly constructive feed back one last time in the required critiques. But the thesis part has me worried. I sort of know what I want to explore, but I have never considered myself that great of a paper writer. Though I know there are classes specifically there to help me prep for the 45 hour review and the paper.

Anyway, the reason I'm finally making a new post is because I wanted to share a few of the pieces that I put together for said grad application.


Here are the first six pages. I actually started working on these when I was in Lacoste over a year ago. The inks are all recent but the pencils were done in France. I am fairly pleased with how these came out. One of the things that I want to start trying is using ink washes on characters clothes and also fabrics/cloth to give them a softer appearance.



This page is one of my more recent ones. I am really happy with it. I used to not work with textures much. Not because I didn't like it. I love textures, but I never really thought that I was all that good at it. I really worked for longer than I should have on this, but I think that it was worth it.

Arles

Arles was an interesting trip. It was really overcast and kind of cold, but the amphitheater that we visited was really impressive and if I remember the lecture well enough, Brittany said it was the best preserved amphitheater in France. One of the coolest things about the lecture was learning that at one point a whole medieval village was house inside the amphitheater because when Arles lost its power with the loss of the church's presence in the city it had no real way of defending itself so everyone moved into to the amphitheater to try to keep safe.


Here is a shot form the bottom of the interior of the amphitheater , I really just like the patterns that all the arches make. they create a lot of really interesting shadows (though now that i've said that I realize that this particular image actually doesn't show the shadows that well as some of the other ones...oh well guess that's what happens when it is overcast.)







After spending about a half hour at the amphitheater, we went over to a cloister that I was really blown away by. I was the first one of the group to enter the cloister and it was so quite and serene. i see now why monks live there, it really is somewhat like what they portray in the movies which I thought was cool.
Inside the building there were a lot of old tapestries and some unexpected stain glass that unfortunately my pictures do not do justice to. THey are much more green and less yellow in real life which is why I liked them so much. Green is one of my favourite colours.


Here is another view of the cloister, I really love the vaulting that they used, it always looks cool, even if it's a pain in the butt to draw.

Last but not least a few of us had attempted to go visit the really old roman cemetery but unfortunately it was closed because of Frances strange obsession with their lunch hour. So instead we went and stopped to get some ice cream (which omg was good) to try to cheer ourselves up from being unable to look at what would have been very awesome sarcophagi and statuary.

Oh I guess I should also mention that Van Goh spent some time in Arles in a hospital when he was going crazy. That's sort of important.

Glanum, St. Remy, and St. Saturnin

We visited a really cool site near St. Remy called Glanum, which is an ancient Greco-Roman town. The whole thing is in ruins, but you can still see the remnants of all the buildings that used to be there and they even reconstructed one of the pillars to give visitors a sense of it's grandeur. I think it's one of my favourite sites that we went to because it reminded me of the Rome comic that I bought in Angouleme when I walked on the site the first time. It made me really happy.



Here are a few more images of the site itself. I do know the three columns in front of the very bright blue sky are a reconstruction, and not the actual pillars, but it's still really cool looking.














The first things that we saw when we got there are really the two most impressive and well-preserved structures, which are referred to as “les Antiques” triumphal arch celebrating Ceaser’s conquest of the Greeks and Gaul. I like this picture because I've been trained to take reference photos that portray depth of field and don't just show the structure, hence the tree in the foreground. Thank you Tom. Heck half my pictures are more for reference rather than to actually be touristy while I've been here.





Anyway....and the second is a mausoleum of sorts dating back to 30 BC. They are both very old and very well preserved. Which makes them very important indeed.









A few days later we went to St. Saturnin de les Apt which had this really cool old ruin of a medival chateau and an old unused church at the top of a large hill/small mountain that we hiked up to. It was very windy that day, so it was a little unnerving walking from where the chateau ruins were to were the church was, but still it was worth it. There was also a decent sized damn that was expanded from the original roman damn that you could still make out through the water.

I took so many pictures of this particular place because there is a scene in the pages that I was working on in Vis II and will be working on more in Senior that takes place in an old ruin and I really kind of liked the layout of the old chateau ruins so I might use that as reference.


This is a picture of the church. what I thought was cool was there was a path that went around the damn and led to the back of the church, which I think some of the other students didn't realize did that. There was also this random path that was blocked off that I wanted to follow because I am pretty sure that it lead down to the water in the damn, but by the time I had discovered I could walk around the whole thing it was getting too late and since I didn't have my phone with me to tell me what time it was, I didn't want to risk getting left behind.

Avignon; The Popes Palace

I was able to go on the trip to Avignon to see the Pope's Palace with the Travel Portfolio class twice while I've been here since I am, or rather was using the palace as reference for my pages in Visual Storytelling II. It was really impressive, if not as....High Gothic as I wanted it to be.

Regardless, I really thought that the general history behind why the pope moved there because of all the turmoil in Rome at the time and all the changes that had been made to it over the years because the Popes that lived there kept adding and changing things was really interesting. When we were able to actually go inside, I think the most interesting thing, and most disappointing thing is that during the revolution the palace was sacked and looted so none of the original furniture is still around.

Very inconvenient since I needed interior shots of what the rooms would be set up like for my comic. At least with the interiors I was still able to get a sense of just how big (or small in certain instances) that some of those rooms would be in a castle.

Oh also there were a few rooms with the frescos still on the wall, that unfortunately yet understandably so we could not take any pictures of, but it was really cool to see all the colours and patterns in the rooms like the popes bedroom and such.

On a side note, Avignon...is kind of ghetto, just saying. and the inner city has this large stone wall surrounding it which I find kind of cool. Had to protect the Pope and all that you know.

















Here is a shot from the very top of the Pope's Palace. There was a tower like structure at the top where an archer could have been situated and I wish I had had more time to stay up there and get some more photos for reference, but sadly I literally ran up to the top snapping pictures as I went and then bolted back down. I'll just have to steal photos from a few of the other students that had gone up there sooner and had more time to take photos.


Lastely, while not nearly as historically significant the rest of the things that we saw in Avignon, but just as cool is this graffitti of Bender and Zoidburg from Futurama that we saw near the parking lot where we parked the vans. I thought I would share this find.

Anguoleme

One of the whole reasons that I wanted to come to France was so that I could go to one of the worlds largest comic book festivals. And I got to say, despite all the craziness that has happened this last month (hence why I've not updated in forever) it was totally worth it. I bought way more BD than I probably should have, and my suitcase is going to way a ton when I head home in about 8 days, but that's the price to pay for beautifully coloured and overall great comics.

For the most part while we were there it was either snowing or raining, but the very last day I was actually able to get a few nice shots before it became over cast yet again. Oh, and my goodness the freakin stairs and hill there! I thought when I saw it that Lacoste would have prepared me for it, but no, that wasn't the case. Not to mention I fell in a hole from where a tile in the floor had been removed and bruised/scrapped up my knee; that was fun.... Anyway back tot he festival.

I meet a lot of really cool people. A couple of Italian guys that spoke English really well and ended up getting into a debate with Billy about politics. It was funny. I had them look at my work and gave them my contact information, whether or not I will here back from them is a whole nother matter, but one of the reasons that we were there was to try to network, so mission accomplished. I also got to meet Mobius which was a complete accident but totally awesome. We were walking past a table and noticed this really old gentleman signing books and upon doing a double take Billy and I both realized that was Mobius sitting there. If we had been a second sooner I might have gotten a drawing from him, but as it was he only had the energy to sign my book, which frankly was good enough for me.

I also meet Julien while I was on a tour at the game design school that was located in Angouleme. He's a grad game design student there, and his school was participating in the Global Game Jam, which I think SCAD was also taking part in at the time, and is why I was even there (even though I totally am not remotely involved in the game design department at SCAD)... He even has a few friends in the school with him that are going to GDC this year, so Jolie is hoping to meet up with them maybe and network a bit more. Anyway, Julien was kind enough to hang out with Jolie, Billy and I for the majority of the last day we were there, which was really fun. And now we are friends on Facebook. I'm going to try and learn French when I get back to the states so that I can try to communicate with Julien in his native language since he spent the entire time speaking to us in English. I feel it's only fair (plus if I ever make it back to Angouleme I will be able to communicate with the locals better.)

There was this really cool BD museum that had everything from Euro comics to American comics, to Manga in it which was really impressive to see all that in one place. I love that France treats comics better than the US does. I really wish that comics were taken seriously enough to have an entire musuem dedicated to the art form. Sadly I do not expect that to happen any time soon. What was also cool was there was all the murals that were around the town. I really wish that Savannah would let us paint on the side of some of those really ugly buildings around town. Heck in Anguleme, including the mural we are standing in front of they use an entire side fo the building as ad space. That's what that painting is, an ad for some comic artists BD. It's such a great way to advertise. Everyone sees it, even if they have no idea what it is for. So when they are going through a book stores comics section and they come across it, they'll be like "oh hey, i recognize this, cool!" I want to be able to do something like that.


While we were walking around we saw these people on stilts, which was really cool even if we didn't know what exactly they were for. I really like this pic mostly because how sad the man in the foreground does. Dude, you're at a comic book festival, cheer up.







One of the things that we were required to do while we were there was visit this animation school, a BD school, and some local BD and animation artists that lived and worked in Angouleme. It was really interesting to see how they set up thier schools and programs for artist. I can't emphasize enough how much more France gives a damn about comics than the states do. Going to see the studio a bunch of artists worked at made the majority of us want to move to France and just live here and do comics. The French government, provided you get accepted into their program pays for all of your schooling or for your apartment or studio depending on what program you were applying for. There were a couple of students actually seriously considering applying for a spot in the programs to see if they could work there for a year or so on their projects. I would love to be able to do that honestly, but the selection process is super intense and I don't think at this point I have the skill to get in. Would be a great experience though if I could.

Anyway there is so much more that I can say about Angouleme but for now I think this post is long enough. Maybe I'll come back to it after I get back to the states and have more time to really go over what I bought and why they are awesome.