Messing around with Sketchbook Pro again...

Messing around with the painting side of Sketchbook Pro. Did I mention I love this program?

Lazy cat days are almost over...

Yeah? Another baby post! Its gonna happen every now and then...you're just gonna have to get use to it. Its my sketch blog and I can do what I want. And since the baby is the biggest thing in my life right now, its going to start effecting my sketch mind.

I can see Tuck is probably going to have issue with the newborn...poor guy. I feel bad for him. The middle sketch was the initial drawing of this batch. It was sort of a "Holy nuts! I'm a dad?" then I placed Tuck in it as an afterthought and it spawned these cliché baby/cat interactions.

Just...

...because.

ROBOT ZOMBIE vs NINJA MONKEY!!

SketchBook Pro is my new best friend! Now I can just sketch down stupid random ideas and its easier than a sketch book...plus I don't have to go to kinkos to get it scanned onto a digital format for the blog...NOW YOU WILL ALL KNOW THE WRAITH THAT IS MY SKETCHING MIND!!! MMWWHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAAHHAHHAHAAHA!!!!

Fishy McSketcherson

I got a new toy recently that will help me draw more! I found Autodesk SketchBook Pro on Amazon.com for $90. To put in perspective on how awesome and cheap it is...It is basically Photoshop without the photo editing (which I'd hardly use anywys) simplified for drawing/painting. Adobe Photoshop is $700 for the straight up copy. If you were lucky enough to have a copy before hand, its $200 for the upgrade to CS4. Hardly a deal for just doing what I'm doing...which is just sketching and faux-painting.

Anyways...this is one of the many results of me playing with Sketchbook Pro for the past 7 hours. Its certainly a lot of fun and easy to use. It all comes very natural, especially if you already have a Wacom tablet to work with. I did a family portrait of Misha, my unborn child and myself from memory...so it might be a little inaccurate. The baby is a little more developed in the drawing than the actual baby.

Expect more sketches to come! :)

I'll throw stuff at you for $5!

WARNING! Liam Rant Ahead! For those brave enough to read on...do so at your own risk. People with pace makers and mothers who are nursing are to stand 5 ft from this rant:

A lot of people went to see James Cameron's "Avatar" recently...it apparently out-grossed the #1 grossing movie of all time, James Cameron's "Titanic". But that's like saying a $17 hooker is better than a $6 hooker because the $17 hooker made slightly more money and if you wear special glasses she's a tad more attractive...but the experience is about the same.

So based on pure dollar sales, Avatar is the top grossing movie of all time. but lets also fail to mention that with the gigantic costs of regular tickets these days compared to 1997, its almost doubled. Then add, that you don't get the same experience if you don't watch with these special glasses that make it 3-D (WHOOP-DEE-DOO!) and if you don't see it in IMax, well then you are just wasting your money! So after the jacked-up ticket prices, 3D glasses, and the IMax theater prices...About a 1/4 of the overall Titanic audience could see Avatar and it'll be the top grossing movie of all time.

The most infuriating thing is that when people talk about it...its all about the technology of the film and how wonderful it is. And when I ask about the plot and if its interesting...I get a bunch of mumbles. Someone actually said to me (which actually set this whole thing off for me), "If you aren't going to see it in IMax, then its not worth seeing." WHAT?! I heard similar verbiage with "Transformers 2" and we all know how that turned out. How does that make it a good movie?! I swear to God...if I dressed up a turd as a cheeseburger with lots of great hand-crafted french cheeses and crisp lettuce and freshly cut pickles and tomatoes from the garden of Zeus himself...these people would eat and say "I loved it! The cheese was great!" Just because someone put a pretty 3D filter on a movie and said it was the greatest invention to movies since colored film...doesn't make it great.

Let's peel back the layers...take away the unnecessary 3D (which is purely there to add dollars to the ticket price) and then put it on the small screen in your living room. So all it has to rely on is the storyline, acting, and general directing and pace of the movie (LIKE EVERY MOVIE ON THE PLANET!!!). I have faith in James Cameron to make a great movie...he did give us "Abyss" "Terminator 2" and "Aliens". So I have no doubt that he can direct. But judging from what I've learned via critics, from what I'm to believe from trailers, and general word-of-mouth...is that this movie borrows heavily from "Dances With Wolves", "Fern Gully" and more recently a forgettable (3D) animated feature called "The Battle for Terra" which is actually more like Avatar than anything else since it features humans conquering a populated planet for its resources and one human must make a choice between his people or his new alien friends (OH! THE DILEMMA!). So originality isn't creeping into this as far as I can see. James even admittedly borrows from his own movie, "Aliens" with some of the designs like the drop ships and the battle mechs.

So if I am going to watch it, I'll rent the dvd. No one is going to make me watch a movie for $17 JUST BECAUSE its in 3D and on a bigger screen. So what...this 3D trend has infuriated me to no end. It doesn't do anything except make it kind of seem like things are flying at you. Really? You'll pay another $5 for crap to be thrown at you? I'll stand underneath the screen of "Avatar" with a cannon loaded up with the members of the Blue Man Group and shoot them into the audience...I'll BE RICH!!!

I made that!

Once again work and just general life has made it hard to post anything lately. But yesterday was a very exciting day that I had to put work on the back burner for a small time to make something special for this occasion.

WE'RE HAVING A BABY!

Just yesterday, we went in to see the first ultrasound of our new baby...and he was a rascal. He was jumping around and I think at one point he was flashing us his lil' bum. (note: I want to say at this point that we don't know the sex of the baby, its just easier to say "he" instead of "he/she" and more respectful than "it")

About this animation...I've been working on this for a couple of weeks...I must be Nostradamus incarnate, because I had no idea how close to bouncy he actually was until yesterday. I realize its unfinished, and I doubt I'll color it in anymore than it is, but its there to really work on timing and some different cycles along with quick transitions from one pose to another.

ENJOY!