Monsters In Motion, My First Animation.

Hello peoples!

Today I’ve got something very interesting to show you, one of my little monsters has been animated! and yes it’s only 12 seconds long but still I’m quite proud of it.

Cool eh? I’ve always wanted to see what one of drawings would look like if it came to life so when Enlightened Monster Productions (an independent film company) got in touch about doing small animated intro I couldn’t say no.

Anyhoo, I really enjoyed the job so you never know, it could be the first of many!

let me know what you think!

nx

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Ok so William Fitzsimmons messaged me..

When i got home from work today (yup,got a part time job,bloody credit crunch.) I had a check through myspace mail and what do i find but a message from one my favourite songwriters William Fitzsimmons! It looked like this…

Amazing! prior to that message, like a total fanboy, I had sent him some art that he inspired, not really thinking he’d reply but why not eh? now I don’t really know what to say back!

I get quite alot of ideas from music actually, sometimes lyrics or phrases pop pictures in my noggin, this was one of them…

I got the idea from William song ‘Please forgive me(Song of the Crow)’ where the first line is “My demons walk with me…”  It’s a really nice song actually, one of my favs :)

Anyways, I’m going to get myself together and reply to this most unexpected message, for a peep at Williams music and my favourite song try his myspace.

In other news by band will be in rock sound magazine on wednesday so fingers crossed we get a good reveiw!

in the meantime have a good weekend!

nx

100 Days Of Monsters

Greetings spacefans!

Hope everyones doing good! I realise ive been blabbing about myself for a good while, so now’s about the time for me to talk about some other arty people that excite me.

I Cant quite remember how i stumbled apon Stefan Bucher, I think i was trawling through some comic forums and his name popped up, anyway, what i like about Stefan is he draws monsters every single day!

on his site there’s literally hundreds of them and a lot of the time poeple go on and write cool stories about them and its quickly becoming a little bit of a interweb phenomenon.

this guys my fav :)

Stefan uses a really cool technique of blobbing ink then blowing it about to make cool shapes before turning it into a monster, i tried it myself, obviously its not quite as cool but not bad for a first try?

He’s called tree boy, maybe someone could write him a story?

for more about Stefan have a peep at his site or have a swatch through his book,i got it from borders and its rad!

take care!

oops a wee edit here, i put a link to this on his site and look he got back!

amazing!

nx

Monsters by numbers.

Ever wanted to paint a monster? well this is for you!

i get asked now and then about how i do my paintings,how long the take, what materials i use etc hopefully this should cover all those.

Ok lets get started!

1. I’m using a stretched canvas here,but this should also work on thick paper or board or any other surface that takes to paint.

I have my monster sketched out, i started very rough, erased the bits i didn’t think looked right and refined the bits i did. I’m going for a big cute simple look.

2. Alright,lets get painting! i start with the background with quite a watery base coat working from the inside out, I’m using acrylics here which dry fairly quickly so I’m going to do the background in one go.

3. we’re going to finish the background now, i like to make the outside of the background alot darker than the inside, this makes for more focus on our monster. I also use a bit of matt medium and a bit fat brush to help blend the shades of blue,although this is not essential. thats out background done! woo!

3. Right, lets get started on our monster. it’s best to start with a base coat that is not too dark and not too light, this will help make room for shadows and highlights etc.

4. He’s lookin good! ok wer’re almost there, now we’re going to add in the shadows and highlights,i start with the shadows, adding a little blue to my yellow to get a nice dull green shade,I’m going to have the light coming in from the left so all my shadows will be on the right. knowing where to put your shadows really helps the shapes pop and come to life a bit. next i add the highlights,mixing a tiny bit of white into the yellow and painting sparingly with a dry-ish brush where i see aplicible.

5. ok! here’s the last and probably the most tricky bit,the outline. you can use black acrylic for this (some people use marker pens) although i find it a bit easier to use indian or acrylic ink as it flows a alot better and is a lot easier to control when working with lines. I go over all the lines (carefully) and block in his eyes.

And that’s that! we have created a monster!

Hes a hottie! im going to call him Herbert, Also, using the same process i made him a friend, meet gary!

Both of these chaps are now available in my etsy shop! i Hope you enjoyed our little painting lesson, remember its not a mistake its a happy accident!

if you have any questions or anything let me know :)

take care

nx