Yr1 Wk1 Got “Position: Vacant” started and “Life drawing; Yeah!”

Leonie’s small blog island says hullo! (:

Showing my derp face in the last post wasn’t as embarrassing as I thought. As much as I don’t like constant “selfies” for the purposes of extreme vanity and looking unrecognisably better than you do in real life (most people I know aren’t like that anyway, so I’m not talking about you), my aim to show myself as I am yet make myself look sillier than in real life worked!

I might do this again for next year’s milestone after all; who knows. Well…that’s one door of the comfort zone kicked down!

In this post: Busy finishing off PV and doodling some more in between.

Let’s go ! Journal Time.

It’s been so long since I did some life drawing. I don’t know when I can afford the next time.

• PV team: renders getting finished up! Sorting out submission stuff! There’s always tiny things to nitpick on the film, but it’s time to stop. So we are actually done polishing the film! Woo! We feared we might not make it! Now I’ve got to keep up with sorting out the promotion, picking out/researching international animation festivals (overwhelming amount out there) and the website side of things. It’s not completely done in terms of involvement!
• PV sites launched: Facebook Page and Website are setup and I will keep updating them as time goes by. Would greatly appreciate it if you could like the page and help get it out there globally (if you want of course!). I’m just pushing it to see how far it can go. (:

Can finally put this here in my blog. I did all that vector type too aside from the urls.

• PV illustration: painting it up and slowly. Making me realise I enjoy all the other stuff more than rendering towards the utmost polished style. Finding that super rendered painted art is not what I’d like to go for. Hoping to rough it up. But am taking a break from it.
• PV team illustration: Did this to take a break from the PV illustration and try some other style as well. Can’t show you yet till June!
• Global Game Jam Prep: how do people make 2D game assets again? Just when I was starting to think that I should consider 2D animation, looking into animation as a whole again reminds me why I’ve decided to avoid animation ages ago.

It definitely requires a mastery level and admirable amounts of dedication. But the main thing is that I don’t actually enjoy the process of drawing/making animation 24/7. Of course learning about how things move is incredibly useful but depicting movement and character through engaging, believable and amazing animation is not where I get my drive. I guess I just want to keep developing, drawing and illustrating key moments or designs instead.

• Arm strain; left hand strain…why don’t you gooo away.
• Sketchpad adventuuures: some figure doodlin’ from photos. My cheap sketchpad is coming apart already.

Back to pen doodling. Lady head shots from the book City of Shadows (thanks to Darren’s link)

 

• Inpromptu Life Drawing meetup! It was wonderful catching up with peeps and getting inspired by them at the same time. It was wonderful and energising! I wish I could afford going to life drawing on a regular basis. The last time I did this was…2012? Whoa. And I wish I played with other materials; I’m finding that my ball point pen is my comfort zone. And all the crazy cross hatching I had to do. Ah, this counts as NAC homework; go to life drawing haha.

Oh look, it’s awkward Derp again. And train adventuuures time! I was also testing out my new brush pens! *Sweet!* Most of the time, I find myself looking at art stuff even if I can’t afford them. Someday, I’ll get the good expensive stuff. Someday. I still went back to my trusty ball point pen though for doodling; nothing wrong with cheap materials.

Some people and a pillow as we waited for the model to arrive and some gestural poses.

I now wished I used the conte; less pressure on my arm. Bleh.

Some longer poses. 2 min and 5 min? I don’t remember.

“Life drawing; YEAH!” I actually remembered to label the time duration finally. I got to do her face too! My bro lent his gel pen for me to write that, haha. (The preview image)

Longer poses continued. Her face is so inconsistent haha.

Interesting angle with heaps of foreshortening; it looks somewhat flat though.

Other Adventures: 

• PSI-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy (snippet): your “mind drain” superpower is brain exploding? Hilarious melee hits and kicks, turrets shooting at your corpse’s behind, random lady helping you, waving human bodies in the air into fire and…I can’t take this game seriously.
• Yakuza 4 (watching): dating and dress up with Lily and hostess training. Extreme violence that should ensure instant death but it doesn’t here (ramming bicycles, bats, poles, your knee into heads! Come on!), coming across a dead corpse many days old and “revelations” photo moments where I incredulously witnessed a half naked bra and “panty thief” fall to his own dramatic, prolonged death. It was one of those “is this a game?!” hilarious moments. I was left in a state of shock.
• I have no Mouth and I must Scream (watching): Ooh the very uncomfortable elevator confrontation for Ellen.
• Bad Rats (snippet): so gorey. The death animations are so ridiculous. Set up your stuff and let the physics happen to “solve” the cat. Not my cup of tea.
• Rust (snippet): seems a pretty intense experience for survival and crafting in a radioactive world.
• Long Live the Queen (snippet): Questionable clothing for the anime teen protagonist and found it boring to watch though apparently it had interesting “choose your own adventure” gameplay where there is the potential to die heaps according to your choices.
• Fallout 3 (watching): Well I hear about it heaps but I haven’t played/watched it. Here goes! Pretty interesting world. Dog companion, exploding heads, looting to no end, searching for your father.
• Pocky and Rocky (snippet): Aw man, seeing this reminds me of all the deaths me and my brother suffered back when we played it co-operatively. I still haven’t beaten the game; he has though. I’m not good at it!
• Assassin’s Creed Liberation HD (snippet): Wow. Interesting and cool looking disguises and it was amusing to see the player charming whoever he could.

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Reflection for the Week

I’m not going to expect anything and my inner critic will keep debating on this but now that it’s launched, but it feels strange and bizarre to me that Position: Vacant actually has the potential to get out there. Need to keep my expectations neutral though!

I guess I’m slowly finding myself more positive with how things are, even though I get increased external and internal negative and unhelpful pressures upon me now that I’m not at AIE anymore.

I’m no longer lying to myself like I was before and during 2011 because I’m finally heading towards a path I want to take and believe in, despite the existence of my “am I a fraud?” syndrome. I know it is just something many had to keep persisting through so I’m grateful for the few handful of supportive friends that are going along the same journey as I am. We just need to keep going. (: (Why do I find myself saying mushy stuff in this section anyway?)

2014 is going to be a year of change for me. The scary excitement lies in experiencing what these changes are and will evolve into. Well…as long as I’m still blogging here, I haven’t given up!

At the time of posting, I’ll have started the Melbourne Global Game Jam with limited internet access; not sure what’ll happen!

Thanks for reading & feel free to comment below! (:

Until next time, Leonie
(UUUinfinity/TripleUinfinity)