Y1W11 “Welcomed Death like an Old Friend.” and Thank you.

Year 1, Week 11 (26th Mar to 1st Apr)

• People Drawing: some Derp’s doodle for the day pieces came from here.

Could it be?! I’m not using pen! The end is nigh! I’m using coloured pencils that I borrowed on horrible paper that doesn’t take it well! Coloured pencils was (is?) one of my favourite colouring mediums. As with most artists, we usually start with them. I had to amp up the contrast for the pencils to be seen here.

Clarification: the brush pen I used is amazing. Not referring to anything else.

People on train; includes guy watching Doctor Who with a stern face. Yes, this was a Maths Pythagoras worksheet I photocopied but never used. It has come back to haunt me. Not too happy with the results but it’s practice paper anyway. I guess the paper takes pen and ballpoint best as pencil is not doing so well on it (I strain to apply the lead onto it). I can already hear hordes of artists screaming at me to get a real sketchbook, rather than stick with bad copy paper. Despite how I can’t use other mediums on it, I’ve got that 80cm tall Copy Paper Tower Challenge to finish, remember?

• Position: Vacant: Festival Submissions continued; needs to be done. And my team’s film is in June’s Best of the Next Australian Graduate showcase for the Melbourne International Animation Festival and May’s Australian International Animation Festival! It’s now official! Huzzah! The team shall be attending hopefully at both festivals (or at least MIAF) so see you there if you are coming! Details, dates and times…4:30pm 22nd June I would think? And so…I did some edits to the headers and my illustration which won’t be shown till closer to the date.

You, the one special reader, gets to see this re-edited banner first:

It feels so official with the fancy laurels. It was Tonko’s suggestion back in Jan/Feb if we do get in.

• Save My Tribe: Shall be trickling finished versions of my art throughout this month. Threw a character sheet away; shall need to redo it, make more characters and perhaps start on the illustrated story when I find the time. For now, I need a break!

• Arm strain; shoo! I forget to take breaks because of my application… It’s taken me 4-5 months to feel better about doing art again but it does come back if you revert back to old habits of not taking care of your arm. Whoa, and look at all the times I tag “arm strain” to my posts. Right now it’s a big cracky with air in the bones and a tiny sore so I’ve taken a day’s break or so. But it’s good. Managing act! My fun tumblr has some useful videos in regards to tendon elbow exercises (and TED talks).

• Photoshop Brushes: Decided to try them out, still l got a large selection to weed out as I when I apply them.  And to those with the brush question, I usually make my own temporary brushes or use the basic default round brush or chalk brush so I was looking for new brushes to try. I’ve horded so much of these and I’ve got no specialised brushes to share because I haven’t really used them. I’ve just downloaded a lot since 2005! So testing them all at my own pace; experimentation time!

Save My Tribe Rough Portrait: Result from playing around with one of the brushes; not happy with it as I haven’t been painting like so for awhile! Still need a lot of improvement, especially her skin (clearly not polished). Looking at what brushes I actually have motivated me to digitally paint again! Rough painting from imagination plus tribal fully geared up old ladies as reference. Didn’t want to spend too much time on it as I need to move on and I still need to work on anatomy before all else! This is just for practice and I’m finding painting without the boundaries of lineart and many layers gives me more freedom. I can nitpick this a lot; essentially I need more practice…

Other Adventures: 

• Games (watching snippets): Pokemon Nuzlocke, Yakuza 4, Dark Souls II, another’s take on Last of Us: Left Behind DLC, Prop Hunt, Trouble in Terrorist Town, Deception IV: Blood Ties
• Dr Luigi (playing): I seem to survive longer at the game than my bro and he’s supposed to be the one better at video games…
• Super Mario Kart (played the 95 I think?): Racing on some retro courses. The WiiU gamepad was horrible to use for this game (essentially you lose if you use it) and the classic controller was much better. The Choco course…didn’t look like chocolate but something more unfortunate. The Bowser roaring animation is cute. (:
• Super Luigi Bros (played): It was gruesome, full of silly deaths and frustrating 2 player Luigi sliding action

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Reflection for the Week

Since the Workshop Application

Took a rest from facebook since applying to the Workshop (see previous post) to get some time away from it, got some other things done and also the tiredness from sleep deprivation didn’t go away as fast as I would have liked. Horrible sleeping patterns led me to horrible fatigue, falling asleep at random and so I have been just taking it easy for several days. Knew it was not good to sleep deprive yourself for too long in a row so I took this in stride! Need to make it healthy again!

I just cleaned out my work area instead to freshen things up, went for an important but awkward visit, started a loose plan for the next month and got some more applications to some day jobs done.Whoa; deep thank you before we move on!
Was genuinely surprised at the handful of kind feedback, support and encouragement I got due to the last post and video I did. It turns out that I do actually have a small special group of kind people supporting me. I was honestly expecting silence/indifference/disinterest/accusations of being dramatic and attention seeking even (my wild imagination and the internet’s influence) and maybe a few kind likes and words from the couple of people I know who read. Perhaps keeping the video discreetly unlisted helped, who knows.

To those of you who responded (if you do read this), you’re probably tired of it but I can’t help but say thank you *again*; all my silly fears in exposing myself like that are gone. I don’t feel like it’s being brave though. It now feels like a gust of fresh, sweet, good air to finally forgive myself and break down those walls I built around me; the past shouldn’t be a big deal for me, at least, not anymore. (:
As mentioned in the last post, let’s move on and forward!

The results for the Workshop competition are out! Congrats to the announced, deserving winners! Going to keep a lookout for them and excited to see great animation from their projects. (:

Journey so Far

Been a week of getting back to sorting out admin, a break and studies of my own! And trying to reverse my zombification process, back to my functional self. But at the rate things are going, outcomes have been varying.Keep being amazing, you.

Until next time, Leonie

(UUUinfinity/TripleUinfinity)