This is what happens when you work in a call center

Okay, so it pays the bills... but that doesn't mean I have to enjoy it. This is some of what I have been doing from 8-5, Monday - Friday for the past month... When I'm not being yelled at about Health Care Reform, naturally.

I moved to a townhouse about a month back, and it's kind of awesome. There's not one but TWO pools. I have my CHOICE of pools!!!!! AHHHHSDJASKJDASKDJSDJ SO GOOD!!!! 

...Anyway, one of the best perks is that we have a basement. Well, it's really a crawlspace with 4 foot overhead clearance... But whatever, it's a basement to me. It's also the perfect place to shoot some stop motion! My roommate has agreed to help me out with shooting, and lend both his soldering tools AND Dremel. HOT DAMN. So in the next month or so I'll be redoing my senior stop motion piece, and shooting 2-3 shorts. Maybe a longish piece too, depending on how motivated I am to make a pack of homeless robots. I think we're going to attempt ball and socket armatures, as well as green screening something... At this point I'm still ordering parts for the armatures and buying lighting, so plans could change. All I know is that there's a vast crawlspace at our disposal, and I intend to use it for ANIMATIOOOOON. 

STORY TIME, KIDDOS.

Ok, so as I said previously (2 months ago at this point. Ugh.), the power supply went on my computer. It only got replaced when my boyfriend ordered a hard drive for the sweet ass file server he was building. 

Side note: The server is now complete, and holds 2 TB!!! WOO!! 

So anyway, my computer got some new power and soon after, what must have been a pack of lolcats descended on it and were all like: "O hai, I upgraded ur RAM." 4 gigs of ram, in fact. :) So with the extra ram we decide to install Windows XP 64 because we had a copy lying around. 

Biggest. Mistake. Ever. 

Once the OS is ready, I learn that absolutely nothing I own is compatible with 64 bit XP. So things like CS4, my tablet, and printer just won't work. Luckily Microsoft was, and maybe still is, offering Windows 7 for $23 (32 or 64 bit), plus another $13 if you want the disc. We opted for the disc and waited for 3 weeks until it finally shows up. We get the OS installed, and then comes the true test... will CS4 install?? OHMYGAWD yes it did. And the rest of my stuff works now as well. 

There's only one problem... now Photoshop and Illustrator are really sluggish. Flash works well enough, but I don't have the patience to sit there and watch all the lines I just drew in PS finish piece by piece. Now here's the weird bit. It's an intermittent problem. Today Photoshop seemed fine while I was scanning and adjusting sketches. It's pretty bizarre, eh? :3

Our thoughts are currently that the power supply failure damaged the motherboard and/or processor. I've been meaning to replace them for awhile, but I don't have really any extra money. We're going to try installing Windows 7 32 bit and see if there is any change, but who knows at this point if that will work. : /

So that is my current situation. I have kind of been sketching, so I thought I would dump some stuff here...

SONIIIIIIIIIIIIC! And... Fat Tails. I was sort of playing around with the idea of a washed up Sonic the Hedgehog and friends (most of which is not shown because it was TURRIBLE) ...IDK.

I got my boyfriend to watch all of Avatar: The Last Airbender in like... 4 days. Awesome. 

There are plans for a huge stuffed Appa in the works. Maybe for Christmas? :3

Getting my ass into gear... 1st gear...

So aside from playing more than a healthy amount of DDR and working my part time job, I haven't really done all that much so far this summer. I think I really needed an actual vacation har har.
Since I am a horrible art student and don't own a Mac, working on making a decent compilation reel has sort of fallen to the wayside for now. I'm saving up for either a car or an IMac, and right now the latter seems to be the most appealing, since I do kind of want a job in the near future. (But there are so many new hatchbacks that I want to purchase!!!) We shall see where my money gets thrown once I become more desperate to pay off those rather intimidating college loans :/.
I have also been away from the computer for a bit since the power supply burnt out about a week ago, but the new one came in yesterday, so now I really don't have much of an excuse for ignoring the things that I probably should be doing.

I don't really know what this is, I just needed to screw around with colouring styles... Half-inspired by Lilith from Borderlands, but that's about where the thought process ended!

Hello Clariiiice

My senior show is "jail break" themed, so we are making caricatures of ourselves as inmates and criminals for posters.
I'm pretty satisfied with how if came out. I hope I made Tom Harris proud lol

The Final Stretch, the Final.... Countdown?

The end of the semester, which is also the end of school FOREVER, is fast approaching!
I _think_ I am kind of on track. Sort of...
I put together more backgrounds tonight!
Since one is a SPOILER, I'm only posting one : P

It's the inside of the bank I posted a few weeks ago.
I'm actually kind of enjoying this simple geometric background stuff. I don't want to overdo it in future projects, but maybe with some refinement I can have a real "style" going.
Or something like that.

DONE-ZO.

Finally, after spending all day stitching a suit I am DONE with my two main puppets. I just have one more to do, but that one is considerably easier than these two, so it shouldn't take more than a day : )

My motorcycle girl (or Moto-Girl as I have been affectionately calling her)

ZOUNDS! It's a creepy Conan O'Brien-esque used motorcycle salesman. I would watch what you say though, I've heard he has a _monsterous_ temper. Mmm har har. Oh, that's a joke that would probably make sense if the whole thing was done.  Hmmm....

GO TEAM V-- Hey, wait a minute...

WIP Stop Motion

I have so much stuff to do by the end of the semester!! My Flash project is coming along _slowly_, mostly because I am taking a little break to work on my stop motion stuff.
I still have a ton of work to do before I can start shooting, but I thought I would let everyone see how the puppets are going so far : 3
Hopefully you can see the sketch of how this guy will actually look once he's done. Inspired by Conan O'Brien... only slightly more lanky and much more creepy!

DRAMATIC CLOSE UP.

Jack Black looks on in approval... I think.
Believe it or not, this is actually a girl! She's getting hair right after this post :)

Maybe she'll get some fake eyelashes too. Depending on how motivated I am, that is.










That's it for now. They should be completely done by this evening, and I will try to post pics

My job would be so much easier if we lived on a blank piece of paper.

Just finished my second background!!
I was actually thinking this time around, and only have a few backgrounds in total! I am on my way to being done with these beasts.
Take a look :3

Game Production

It's official, YO.  If you have an ipod touch/iphone you should download it (it's free)!! Also, it's super easy to beat. Seriously, I made it pretty short and relatively easy to get through. You will feel super good about yourself as a gamer. Think of your self esteem!!!

Since I put this thing together pretty quickly, I kind of want to try again. Maybe not this same concept of run/jump over things, but something else iphone worthy? We'll see what the future holds... lol.

A Certain Shade of Green

As most everyone knows, today is St. Patrick's Day. It is an auspicious occasion, when you can get completely drunk out of your mind at 11 am... and it's considered socially acceptable! Well, maybe not... but who's going to stop you? ;)

It also happens to be my dad's birthday. As a kid, we usually got him the same lame 5 or 6 St.Patrick's/Birthday cards that they made throughout the 90's, but certain years we would be able to spice things up with cards featuring our favourite penguin, Opus (from the comic series "Bloom County" by Berkeley Breathed. There is actually an Opus Christmas movie called: "A Wish for Wings that Work". It is one of the very few holiday movies I still enjoy... so I think it is pretty damn good :3).

Since Bloom County is pretty much obsolete now, I can't really get him an Opus card like I used to... So I think a quick sketch of the little guy enjoying the holiday will have to do!

Happy Birthday, Dad!! : )

THE FINAL FRONTIER?

Recently I have been falling asleep watching episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. So when I went to do a few warm ups tonight before working on business card designs... that was really all I could think of.
Yep. I am a huge freaking nerd.

 

 I'm just going to leave this here...

Current Project Progress : 3

While my animation is still rather rough and scattered at this point, I thought I would post the opening background for my piece. : )
There are still a few more backgrounds to do, and about 2 more involved scenes of animation. I'm a little behind, but I think this project is coming together... gradually!

Background Re-Vamp

A re-do of a background from a project that will probably never see the light of day (at least for another year) : /
It's the inside of a spaceship! Ooooo, CONSOLES.

I should probably get back to work on my _current_ project...

Eyebrows or Eyepatches?

Taking a break from senior projects... just some sinister dude with an eyepatch. If he had arms he would have a cigar. Obviously.

mythology final project part 2

the remaining pages.

PAGE 2

PAGE 3

PAGE 4

PAGE 5

PAGE 6

Yeah, the last couple got kind of... ignored. They are still technically roughs, but it is the best I could produce given the circumstances of the last couple of weeks. I am hoping to get back into them later and actually rough the cover out (it's still stick figures and squiggles... not unlike what you see here : /)

Mythology Final Project

... or page 1 of my project, to be more accurate.
I don't really "do" comic books... so I wanted to challenge myself (SHOCK). I obviously haven't finished the story, and those pages should be posted tomorrow once I finish inking them and adding text. It's going to be a long night! And I really wanted to play WoW work on my animatic for Projects ; )

Also, I didn't write the text. It's from my textbook... so it's a little awful. I apologize!!!
(Click for full size... it's a big one. )

Backwards man, backwards man

He can walk backwards fast as you can!!

As a "twist", he is walking slowly due of crappy animated .gif form, because I am lazy.

CLICK HIM TO VIEW CYCLE.

This is what I do when I should be productive on my final mythology project. (To be posted when it's doooooone)

Official Deathstar Storm Troopers.

I was finally able to sit down for a few hours today and go through Halo 3 ODST's campaign. It wasn't as good as actual Halo 3, but I am all about silenced SMGs. They aren't useless, and this pleases me! But the introduction of a new species, which happens to be exploding engineer bubble things, was a little odd. What kind of species would be described as "flammable" anyway???
So this inevitably lead to doodling Halo related stuff afterward, while I watched Coco Christopher's last Tonight Show. Side note: If I were in that audience I would have stolen La Bamba... just putting that out there.

Stuff done in Fall 2009 at AIB

The title screen to my iphone game (which may or may not see the light of iTunes someday)

The only piece I made in Digittal Trio that I liked, and it's NOT done in Illustrator (shock)

There really isn't much else I was that thrilled with this semester, so this is what you get : 3

- morgan

First post with meaning!

First piece of 2010! : )

Do a Barrel Roll!... I mean, do a handstand! The hardest part is kicking off, I swear!
I was feeling nostalgic and thought back to those days long ago when I wanted to be a gymnast... I can't even do a split now. UGH. Where has the flexibility gone??! I blame art school.

Illustrator is beginning to become a close, personal friend of mine. I'm quite happy that I took a class to learn it last semester. (pieces from said class to be posted soon!)

- morgan