Visual Post - I got lots of painting done over the long weekend!

Normally Tuesday is my weekly written post but I'm going to change things up this week! The long weekend let me get a good bit of painting and not much writing done. I binge painted pretty much. Yesterday I touched up the cathedral. It's been bugging me for ages that the light in the wedding scene is yellow but there is nothing to make the light yellow. I had figured ages ago that to fix this I'd make the natural light more white and was just putting it off until I had the time. Yesterday I opened up the background in question and couldn't bring myself to nix the yellow light which I really want to have in there and which is so appropriate. So I just added stain glass windows with yellow panels over the windows! Here are some crops of the cathedral background:

I've let shots 26, 27 and 29 go for now. Those are the ones I've been working on recently. I was starting to just get obsessive about detailing and texturing them and when it came to putting down the light and shadow layers I decided to just hold off. I can do the animation first and then make sure that the lighting frames the action as needed after animation is roughed in.

I threw down some texture on shots 31 and 32. I haven't touched those backgrounds in a looong time. The lighting on these is a rough suggestion, I'll jazz that up with some nice brushes when the animation is working.

So I had my paintbrush on 5 paintings this weekend! Not that any of them were started fresh this weekend, and only one of those is final. But the 4 incompletes are close to being done and I'm going to finish them up when animation is done. I feel accomplished!

Painting Forever

I've been painting a lot in my spare time recently, (not that I have a lot of spare time). Today I actually stayed at the office until 8:30 pm to help ensure I hit my Friday deadline. A few other artists stuck around too and it was cool. When there are a handful of people who stay beyond dinner and the sunset at the office to crunch on a deadline, I feel this kind of glamour... I love the idea of working hard to make a deadline on a project that you care about with other people. It gets sad to stay behind at the office and be the only one there in the cold and in the dark. Anyway. I feel so desperate to finish up these background paintings! I've been painting here and there in scraps of spare time since... April 2011 ish! So just over 2 years. Even though I say to myself that I have 5 paintings left to finish up, there are actually even more. The title card, a bunch of food prop paintings and then the credits. I'll work on the 5 scene shots first.

In honor of feeling like I'm stuck painting forever, here are two rejected concepts. One is a background I sketched up and colour concepted but then deleted entirely from the film, the other is a colour concept for the kitchen that I decided not to use.

Background Painting: The Vanity

Here is a background I recently touched up! It depicts the scene Birdie fantasises about when she goes into her mind after experiencing a surge of emotions at the dinner party. She falls into the scene and struggles to swim through the air towards the vanity. When she reaches it to lean on for support, her reflection in the mirror speaks to her.

The colours I use in my film have meaning. This background is a blast of purplish pink. Pink is Birdie's innocence, personality and inner self, purple (and blue) are truth, and white is... how shall I say... shallow desire? White represents what Birdie hopes to gain in life before she is attune with her own emotions.

They call me Yellow Jello

Visual Post Friday!!!

I finished the last background painting from the outdoor dinner party sequence! This past Friday and Saturday I was painting the spectacular yellow fruit jello mold and here it is in all it's tacky glory:

As you can see I painted it beyond the frame edge, that's why there's that green stripe and all the brush strokes beyond that. It's just nice to have a whole jello. Mmm, olives in jello....

2 paintings and Gertrude and Alice Cafe

Here is a little sneak peak of a couple backgrounds:

I have been painting backgrounds all day every day for awhile now. It's feeling a little weird to sit in my cave as it has come to be called, all day each day. I want to write stories and create films. I like to craft a film, to storyboard and collaborate, I like picking colours and painting and animating... But some parts of the process are not completely my cup of tea and it's easy to start feeling doubts or concerns when so much time is spent. The collaboration I crave is for the most part, missing. I have given up on exercise and exploring and I am living as frugally as I can. It's just a strange existence! I am not complaining though. Next time my project will be smaller, or more collaborative and I will focus on the elements I am most passionate about. I am glad that I am learning a lot about the whole process.

My new book!

Yesterday, Sunday, was my weekend essentially and I trotted down to Hall Street with Steve where we popped into a great cafe slash bookshop for a sippa. It's called Gertrude and Alice Cafe Bookstore. I walked by said cafe about a week ago when the evil postman forced me to head that way to pick up an electric blanket I had ordered. It was the rainiest, windiest day I can remember. So windy that it was actually harder to walk with my umbrella open. There is a post office a 5 minute walk from my house, I think the postman deliberately gave the package to a further away post office. Actually, he had buzzed my apartment and promised to leave it inside but when I went down there was no package left for me! Anyway, when I was at this cafe, Steve and I crammed ourselves into the only two available spaces in the place on a soft green sofa. The cafe was bustling with staff, book perusers and coffee sippers. The first book I saw in the $2 bin outside was a hardcover book of Ronald Searle drawings! I snapped that up. I think it was worth more than $2. As I sat with my coffee I noticed that right next to me was a wall with lots of Shakespeare and plays and scripts. Then, past Steve and a woman sitting opposite him was a wall of books on filmmaking, directors and films. Everywhere I looked there were fabulous used books! We found a book with a list of all known heavy metal bands piqued Steve's interest. There were books on medieval armor and artists and their works, a wall of fantasy novels and newspapers and magazines scattered around. It was delightfuly chaotic and inspirational to sit there for a bit. We left after maybe 30 minutes to make room for new customers and to get back to work. But I will be back...