"The Breach"

My thoughts on the D23 and SD Comicon fallout are coming later, and probably well after anyone could care.   For now, let's talk Sketchbooks.



A Saunders Waterford Sketchbook from St. Cuthbert's Mill.  The Lamborghini of English-made watercolor Sketchbooks.  It was gifted to me by my cousin this past Christmas.  Here is it post-cover customization, with good old Carnegie Collection Corythosaurus for scale:

As you can see, it is colossal.  Imposingly so.  And probably very expensive as the paper quality is insanely nice.

As you might imagine, I can't wait to fill this book with goofy-ass animals and crazy characters.

Because it's KaiJuly, I figured why not start with some fanart of the King of Monsters himself?



I love getting to play with scale.  I had a lot of fun looking for photo reference of whales backflipping and I'm pretty proud of that sweet sky I painted.

Additionally, it's not a bad transition, because guess what month it is?



I want to see if I can do a weekly wrap-up post of my daily dragons this month.

Inktober Day 2.5 - Zentangle Thingie

I feel a little bad posting something from September during Inktoberfest, So I tried my hand at a Zentangle, without really understanding what a Zentangle even is.



Ehhh...

Bonus Dagrum:

Links of Interest - Disney Christmas Hangover Edition!

If you were paying attention to my Twitter last week, you know that my family loved Christmastime in Walt Disney World so much that we went back again to catch all the interesting-sounding stuff we'd missed.  We're back, we're exhausted,and we're in charge of the big Christmas party this year which takes place this weekend and we haven't even decorated yet.  So you, dear readers, are getting a Links of Interest.

* - All Yesterdays is here!  Here's Brian Switek's review.

* - We also have Matt Martyniuk's gorgeous-looking Field Guide to Mesozoic Birds to look forward to!

* - Adam and Ifi finally finished their chronological review of every Animorphs novel ever.  Aw, I'm going to miss this.

* - So... dragons, I guess?

* - Also, clowns, for some reason.  Everybody loves clowns, right?

* - The good news is, Disney and Netflix are playing nice again!  The bad news is, we're going to have to wait a while for the good stuff to roll in.

* - Ramping up for the release of "The Hobbit", Antagony and Ecstasy is reviewing every readily available adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's books, and along with the movies we're all familiar with, this includes some deeply strange films indeed.

* - For the moment, we can breathe a sigh of relief: we're getting traditional animation in the "Roger Rabbit" sequel... if we ever even get a "Roger Rabbit" sequel, I guess.

* - Tough Pigs sat down with "A Special Sesame Street Christmas" and learned very quickly that... well, for a given definition of "special"...

* -  The Onion AV Club listed their favorite opening titles.

* - For reasons known only to himself, Derek Walborn is illustrating "Jurassic Park" in its entirety as a webcomic.

* - Dinosaur Dracula has *sort of* brought back the tradition of Playmobil Advent calendars.  Matt also found the greatest Christmas decoration ever created.

* - TouringPlans started a lively debate over whether or not it's appropriate to surprise kids with a Disney trip.

* - East-coast dinosaurs need more love and Asher Elbein complies with lovely renderings of Alabama archosaurs.

* - And Feriowind did a series of illustrations where... you know what?  Hulk is friends with Jigglypuff and Thor has a Joltik on his head.  That's all you need to know.

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Sketch of the Day

I'd be more enthusiastic about the whole "OMG Dragons" viral Disney thing if there was some guarantee it'd pay off with this:

A girl and her Wyvern. It's a beautiful thing.

A lot of you have probably already seen this but it's new to me.



It's... it's very dusty in here. Hang on a minute...

OK, the really amazing thing about this short film is that it's basically a demo reel to show what the open-source animation program Blender is capable of. Here's a brief explanation, from the short's YouTube page:

"Sintel" is an independently produced short film, initiated by the Blender Foundation as a means to further improve and validate the free/open source 3D creation suite Blender. With initial funding provided by 1,000s of donations via the internet community, it has again proven to be a viable development model for both open 3D technology as for independent animation film.
This 15 minute film has been realized in the studio of the Amsterdam Blender Institute, by an international team of artists and developers. In addition to that, several crucial technical and creative targets have been realized online, by developers and artists and teams all over the world."

"Sintel" premiered on the first of October and already hit one million views on YouTube by the end of the week. The creators expressed their joy in the way only an animator can, "seems we’ve made everyone cry!"

Pretty amazing. I love how they've demonstrated everything their software can do while producing a short that gets me, as an animation fan, a heck of a lot more excited than, say, the "Megamind" trailer.

Be sure to check out the production blog, which has some wonderful treats like this super-adorable early concept art and creature designs.

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Announcement... really more like a disclaimer/apology in advance: I hurt my back pretty badly a couple of days ago. I'm in the "original injury is starting to feel better; too bad all the other muscles who had to compensate for the first injury feel worse" stage. It basically hurts to do anything besides lie down.
So basically, it hurts to sit up and type. I'm hoping I can find some way to work around this; I want to have *some* content for Halloween.
Yes, the holiday season has snuck up on me again. This, then, is getting older; "every year is getting shorter" and all that. I'll have some fun with that little existential crisis prompt while staring at the ceiling later.

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Sketch of the Day!
I haven't been able to upload anything new at the time of writing this, but I promise you the Pink Dinosaur Sketchbook project is still going.



OMG, this is AWESOME!!!



Bwahaha...