Tiffany Kitty has a teardrop

I made a quick animation using a drawing I made yesterday with Photoshop. The animation is done in Toon Boom Studio. Photoshop was just acting strange so I went with TBS then it was acting stupid, so I restarted it, a few times, and it eventually worked. The result is below, with no audio added yet. When I'm ready to make a few kitty sound effects, I'll try to add them. I've not tried that in TBS yet, so it's a good opportunity to familiarize myself with those tools; Photoshop requires audio to be produced elsewhere, then imported, which is a pain in the butt for a simple project like this.

Let me know if you like my kitty drawing too. It took about 4 hours to complete the whole drawing with Photoshop and a Wacom tablet, but it turned out exactly as I pictured it in my head for a change, including the slightly dramatic lighting.




Ok...now I don't like how YouTube replaces my video at the end with a bunch of thumbnails...so I slowed it down so you can be sure to see the final speech bubble. Sorry for confusion, but YouTube doesn't have a quick way to replace a video once it's uploaded.

How to attach Floaty orange foam to back door of GoPro

Two things confused me when I opened the package.

1) Why are there two different plastic doors provided? I found the answer on the GoPro.com website, after finding no instructions on the package. One is for the dive housing, and one is for the standard housing that comes with the camera.

2) How to you peel off the backing so you can stick the foam on? I tried tugging at the orange tape, but it looked several times like I'd ruin the dense grey foam underneath. I didn't want to tear the grey foam. However, that whole orange backing has to be parted from the slim grey foam, so that the orange foam block can then be firmly pressed on (centre first so you don't get air bubbles) with some give provided by the grey stick foam which is very sticky when that orange peeling is removed. I got the sticky grey foam exposed, hovered the orange block over the standard housing (I don't have a dive housing) and pressed down evenly and hard. I should've pressed in the centre first to squeeze out air, but still it seems very firmly affixed now.

Then, I needed to learn how to switch doors from the standard see-through to my new Floaty orange back door. It turns out it's very easy. The manual (downloadable from GoPro.com) shows exactly how to do it, and basically you open the housing all the way, and pull straight down so the door unseats itself from the bottom of the plastic hinge. I wonder how the plastic will hold up to frequent use, changing between the standard, open-back, and Floaty back doors. Let's hope it's really sturdy plastic, as it seems to be.

What I've been working on lately

There's so much to tell. I've been away from my blog and just want to tell you why -

I've been trying out Hype 2 software for HTML animation, studying fantasy drawing and cartoon drawing, celebrating Christmas and busyness in the stores, baking, decorating my apartment, and doing gigs on Fiverr.com, and other on-demand sites.

I ordered a few mugs and a tote bag on society6.com. I'm very pleased with the finish and quality. I wish the tote bag was more rugged, and I'd be willing to pay for that, but the quality is good and the price is right, meanwhile. My drawings looked excellent on those products, which I gave for gifts at Christmas.

As always, I'm trying out pastel and charcoal drawing techniques. It's a lot of sketching, that isn't really worth showing. Just for practice. My goal right now is to finish a cat drawing I just made specifically for a comic panel. So this one will be different from others I've shared on society6 products and Fineartamerica, and everywhere else, because it'll serve as a sample of my style to be shared on cartoon forums such as penciljack.com.

During this week between Christmas and New Year's, I hope to settle on fewer, more focused forums and social media for sharing my ideas, art, and services. Fiverr.com is a definite yes; my newly recreated Facebook page is too. I will likely drop instagram and even twitter, in favour of routinely participating on Fineartamerica.com, deviantart.org, penciljack.com, cgsociety.org, and maybe even flicker.com because they offer opportunities for showing work, getting critiques, and getting hired!

Watch for news in the new year.

Happy holidays,
Heidi

Productivity with book Draw Out the Story

Did a short promotional comment on YouTube today for this book on making comic books. It's at my local library or at Bolen's. Covers the basics to get started, and it's easy to follow till you get the hang of following through with a story you want to write.

My first HTML5 animation was a success, now visible on Youtube and my website

After some experimenting with the capabilities of Hype 2 on the Mac, I came up with a short animation about Christmas and cats that I have shared on Youtube at http://youtu.be/ITsWH0Rzigc and on my website www.patiostudioproductions.biz. Full audio is only included in the website version, because exporting to video doesn't seem to include audio.

Let me know what you think, there or here in the comments.

Here's the YouTube version, but it's better to see the website version because it utilizes the audio files and original HTML and graphics files.

Now that I know Hype 2 works well, and is very easy to use, I am excited to come up with more compelling stories. I can justify putting time into complete cartoon or line art illustrations, with suitable components to be animated with HTML5 and Javascript. For my samples, I am planning to make a few educational and entertainment pieces. My college and university studies offer lots of enjoyable subjects to choose from, that I'll try to show in a funny or unique (but compelling) way. For entertainment, I have a few cartoon characters that I draw frequently and would love to portray in animated stories. Not to mention promotional animations for my own and others' websites.

It's exciting, especially after I decided Madefire's online animated comic book creation tool seemed to have an unnecessarily dark and mysterious learning curve. My project there failed three times, and I say that's the end of that!

Madefire out...Hype 2 in. Plus, Hype 2 creates HTML5 assets ready for FTP upload. I've never used an FTP client before, but on short notice, and strong desire to show off my Christmas cat and tree animation, I figured it out (using FileZilla) and it worked perfectly. The first and only thing you'll see on my 'practice' website space (www.patiostudioproductions.biz) is that cat and tree animation!

I can't believe Society6 favourited one of my tweets!

I suggested something on Twitter, and they noticed. Click on the photo to see it bigger.

Follow me on Twitter @frisky650 to enjoy my other stunning comments.

Facebook page updated today.

Check out out my new facebook page. I'm going to share my news there, just like I do on the blog, to catch attention from people who are regularly on there.

I don't seem to get comments on the blog, but I do get a lot of views. Facebook seems easy to start conversations, of course. But the blog allows me to share longer posts. I probably ought to just keep both in my radar for keeping in touch and sharing my own news.

So you can follow my Facebook page, like it, and leave comments just like you do on any other Facebook profile you like. I'll follow your news too.

Audacity with Mustang I amp

Today I finished a video made of many photos and short video clips. The last step was to add a guitar track. I figured it would be easy to use my iRig for iPad, but that involved downloading an app with a bit of a learning curve so I gave up. I need a track added today.

So I tried using the USB cable straight from my Mustang I amp to the Mac. Audacity didn't recognize it so I sought help online. It sounded complicated, to add drivers and get into some awkward audio settings in the Mac. Then I thought, now that everything is set up and hooked together, guitar and all, what if I just reboot the computer?

Macs are pretty smart. So is Audacity. And the price is right, for this open source software (free)!

When I opened Audacity, I was delighted to find that the audio input included my usual built-in microphone, and a Fender Mustang choice. I was shocked it was so simple.

When I selected the amp as the input device, and started recording and playing, it recorded the guitar and nothing else. Fantastic! I laid a few tracks. The only issue I've found is that the guitar was recorded at a fairly low level, even though the amp and guitar were nearly maxed out in volume controls. Some people have commented online with various settings that repair that or prevent it. 

Given this was my first try, I'm delighted with the results. I boosted the level of the tracks, exported to an AIFF file, and imported it as an audio track in Photoshop to be compiled with my video tracks. Next time the whole process will be easier and I'll produce something that I can show as a sample, and I'm excited to be making progress with my guitar playing too. I only started playing this year, after a few rough starts when I was younger, so now I can add my own guitar tracks when necessary. I've also got the hang of video editing in today's software, and getting more practice with making small video projects in my neighbourhood and family, almost on a daily basis.

Yesterday I took my new GoPro camera up Christmas Hill park, to get a view of the region all from one spot. It worked great, and that too has a learning curve. GoPro comes with it's own software to edit and prepare files. Given that the HD and better resolution files are relatively huge, I want to keep the process manageable on my basic iMac. When you open video files, and start adding music, voice tracks, and multiple tracks of annotation and animated graphics, the computer indeed does struggle to keep up. I'm grateful it doesn't actually crash, but one needs to be patient with huge Photoshop files.

Educational video graphics sample in progress

It's already been a few weeks since I studied an intense intro to motion graphics. I gathered some footage to practice with and decided on an educational roadside ecology lesson, that takes me back to college when I learned a lot about Garry Oak trees.

This project ate up my time today, in addition to going for a long walk in Swan Lake park that resulted in getting drenched during a moderate rain spell.

It's about 10:00pm and I'm still a bit damp feeling from that walk, while I work on my Garry Oak video clips.

I'm busily creating new samples of my recent interests like animation and motion graphics. This video may not need motion elements, because it's already filled with short segments of different features of trees, and I'm not adding any cartoon characters...or maybe I should!

It's all good practice. Adding and/or animating elements in a video, such as text overlays, requires a sense of timing and generally a sense of usefulness. I've decided that the audience for this sample video is 10-12 year olds. I don't have quick and easy access to lots of terminology about ecological and biological features of trees; college was a long time ago and I don't remember the specifics. 

A little animation may draw attention, without overpowering or dominating the visuals of the trees themselves. I'm most interested in practicing with the pen and brush tools to see if I can produce a line that connects the terms to the tree in an animated fashion. 

Luckily, with practice, the techniques I learned in the tutorial (off lynda.com) are getting easier and more precise, and they tie in nicely to basic graphic design principles I've also studied in the past, which keep me from going overboard with animation (hopefully).

I'm sure you readers will let me know if anything looks wrong!

Some screen shots from the action while making animated characters the past few days

I've uploaded the samples of a few recent simple character animations to YouTube, and wanted to show off some screen shots too, so you know what the Toon Boom interface is like. Some conversations online make it difficult to choose among Toon Boom Studio and products like Flash and Anime Studio Debut. I personally didn't like Anime Studio, and have never used Flash so I can't comment on any comparison yet.

Here's a hint at what working with Toon Boom Studio animation software is like. First, a character with bones and "zones of influence":

A character following a "motion path":

Adjusting with cut-out animation tool:

And some screen shots of the interface while working with my stick figure:

'Zones of influence' for bones are visible; not sure what they do yet!

Leg 'bone' selected and can be rotated about the hip attachment point

Motion path with keyframes along the line spanning 5 seconds, at 12frames/sec

Timeline shows several layers are created to enable motion of each limb

The tricky part of using sophisticated animation software, it seems, is to use the right tool for each task, and select the right layer and timeline position every time, before making an adjustment. One suggestion to Toon Boom already: make icons bigger!!! It's very difficult to tell which view is selected, between Drawing View, Camera View, and the side & top views.

First character using Toon Boom Studio's cut out animation procedures

This is my first character more involved than a stick figure. I wanted to get more practice using cut-out animation, which differs from bone animation but I'm not sure to what extent. Bones offer more adjustment tools, it seems, and cut-outs appear rather quick and easy, with effects like my attempt below:

Stick figure walking with bones features in Toon Boom Studio

He's really getting somewhere now:

Busy with a variety of artistic media

It's hard to choose some days. I always start with at least two goals for the day, such as finishing a painting and doing a digital painting exercise. Any gigs I get off fiverr.com are done in addition to that, because I have a high drive for learning newer, better techniques than I learned way back in high school and days off during a long period of work and studies.

Last week, I decided to focus a little, however, and I set aside many drawing goals (ie. life drawing studies) so that I could try out some animation, motion graphics, and video compositing techniques I found tutorials for. I ended up downloading an animation software demo that lasts 15 days - Toon Boom Studio.

I've also completed a study in motion graphics that went from basic motion tricks to creating animated logos in Photoshop. I went on just in the past few days, to try to figure out how to add masks to videos, so that people can be highlighted or cropped out for example, even when they are moving around in the frame. Clearly, there's lots to be covered in my bag of interests.

So far a single activity hasn't popped out as 'the one' that I'll prioritize in my personal and commercial pursuits. In the past few days, my animated stick man has gotten more sophisticated, and so has my video masking. Meanwhile, all of those activities require keeping my drawing skills keen. Thus, tonight I set aside most of the computer activities and started a simple watercolour painting exercise using my favourite subject, cats, to try out some quick colour decisions and glazing techniques.

I just wanted to write to keep you interested, and know that I'm not falling off the radar. I have taken a bunch of photos and computer screenshots and need to sit down, organize them, and post them with useful stories about work in progress and my reviews of techniques I've learned recently.

Also, one drawing has been chosen to appear in a group show at Pandora Arts Collective later in November. It's the Forest Kitty ink drawing I previously blogged about. I'm excited about that, and to see the work of my drop-in art group peers on display together.

Happy graphics/video/animation/painting everyone!

More stick figures; looking for tutorials to optimize Photoshop animation for 2D characters

I made a few more stick figure animations today, shown below. They were fun, and I'll continue to apply my cartoon-drawing dreams to Photoshop as my preferred animation tool until I can find a good reason to take on an animation software (and all its necessary learning) such as Toon Boom. I also have Blender installed for free 3D animation experiments, so I'm not bored yet.

I would like to be able to do rigging, rather than relying on Photoshop's puppet warp tool for doing character movements. Still, I think puppet warp forces me to really pay attention to gestures and biomechanics (both are personal interests in terms of their related sciences and social sciences), so I'll enjoy the experience.

So far I'm relying on 3D animation literature (old textbooks, and software-specific tutorials) to learn the concepts of keyframes and tweening that I'm using for the stick figure animations. Animated logos are so much easier - Photoshop's tools are designed for manipulating those quite nicely. It's just a little harder when your graphic is a character drawn with the paintbrush tool and a Wacom tablet.

With the tools I've got, I think there's no reason my next animation session couldn't include my cat cartoon characters. After a bunch of that drawing practice, I may want to move into a pro animation software and possibly the 3D side too, perhaps starting with Blender (free).

My choices are open to nudging by clients who may need specific animation and video effects that one software or another excels at. Of course, I'm not just drawing for fun. I want to do animated or semi-animated videos for other peoples' promotions, events, or stories.

Tell me what you think of these ones, and any suggestions you have for a logical next software to try out. Keep in mind I can't afford or justify spending $2,000 or more, for professional versions like Toon Boom or Maya.

Version 2 of stick figure:

And version 3, with more frames and 'tweening':

Ok...I didn't like the ghosty effect in version 3, so I made a version 4 with shorter frame duration and no 'tweens':

Comments, please?

I've gotten no comments on my blog posts in recent months. Well, actually, I've gotten zero comments in this blog's entire history.

So, I added a Facebook page where I hope people will be more open about sharing thoughts. Comments are open to any Facebook users and the general public can see the page as well.

Photoshop animation experiment worked - stick figure and tweening

I've gotten a lot of ideas for simple animations lately, mostly involving cats, no surprise. I heard many times that the video tools in Photoshop also work for single frames and the "tween" feature fills in between the frames to make them appear animated.

I wanted to be sure at least basic animation could be done with the Photoshop I already own, so I created 4 frames with the brush tool then looked at them in the video timeline. At first I couldn't figure out how to animate them, and fill in frames between their poses. After some pasting and fiddling with features I learned in a video editing tutorial recently, a few seconds worth of animation and tweening appeared.

I'm not sure why the ghost effect appears but I'm pretty sure it can be turned off. I have some other projects on the go that need to be finished so this was the result without too much fuss (maybe an hour's worth of trying different arrangements and tools):

As you can see, Photoshop does indeed allow quick and dirty animation to be done. I'll be a lot happier when I grasp the video and animation tools better. My goal is to add animated line art and possibly whole characters to my video projects. This is why I've been practicing watercolour, pastel, and charcoal drawing, and practicing with my new Wacom tablet. I like the idea of splicing or pasting in different hand-made effects into digital modern video recordings (websites too), to create an engaging story.

I enjoy making art, of course, but animation for websites and videos is the real application I want to excel at, for making modern low-budget but invigorating short promotional videos for non-profit agencies or sports teams, and similar.

As soon as my skill evolves, I'll be sure to share the news and examples here and on my YouTube channel.

Trying out Elgato video capture device for Mac

I can't believe it. I have been looking for a way to capture video on the computer from my old home movies on VHS and camcorder tapes.

I tried using a dazzle but mine was meant for windows, and I couldn't get any of the unofficial workarounds found on YouTube to work. Apparently there is a version for mac but i couldn't find it anywhere.

To my delight while searching today I found the Elgato device, and it was available from London Drugs, and in stock half a block away from my home!

I opened the box and the obvious cables were in there, along with a CD with capture software and instructions printed on the inside flap. I'm used to devices that are difficult to set up. This device was very easy to set up!

At the store, I was a bit concerned about quality. It captures at 640 x 480 and I hoped that was adequate. And I thought the HS is not that great of quality anyway, and the next quality up is for hardcore gamers and quite a bit more expensive over $200. This device is just over $100.

I'm just in the process of going through a tape right now to capture it, & I will keep you posted with any news and reviews about this device.

My goal is to capture my home movies so that I can practice my newest video editing skills on them. I started video editing as a child working on home movies as gifts, and I feel very confident that I will enjoy video editing for gifts again as an adult.

Right now I'm following a tutorial series on using Photoshop for video editing special effects animation. It's going really well. I have learned how to make graphics move in and out of a video sequence, and make animated logos for my video introductions! I found the tutorial lynda.com, no surprise. It's excellent quality and covers more...much more... than I've ever learned in any of my books or classes.

Check out my initial sophisticated setup:

Website antics today; problem with SSI (server-side includes) already solved

While keeping up my drawing and painting skills, I'm also making progress on a website that serves as a sample of my HTML skills. The site (of course still in progress) is patiostudioproductions.biz.

My notes below are shared for people who may have the same problem I had with using server-side includes in my HTML files.

Today I worked with server-side includes for the first time in my life.

SSIs allows repeating elements like navigation bar and footer to be created once, and included in every page. My web host Freehostia.com allows SSIs and now that I've got it working, I'm grateful because apparently not all web hosts allow it.

It's an alternative to using templates like you find in fancy software like Dreamweaver. I don't use Dreamweaver so I can't use templates. There are other alternatives such as using PHP but I'm not aware of how to do that yet, so SSI is my faithful companion for having consistent repeating elements in all my pages.

Here's the line that includes my navigation bar to appear in all the pages at patiostudioproductions.biz:

!--#include file="navbar.htm" --

While following along in my big Missing Manual: Creating a Website book, my nav bar wasn't working correctly. My nav bar links would show up as the expected list of pages, but each link would go to a 'page is missing' notice.

I thought I did everything absolutely correctly.

It turns out, I did, and here's how an error creeped in without my awareness.

First of all I'm using a Mac. I use Blue Griffon as my HTML editor, and TextEdit for editing CSS pages.

To work with a SSI, I needed to create a separate HTML file for the navigation bar information - just three links that go to 2 pages and 1 bookmark in my site. Previously I copied and pasted the links into every page. I inserted the #include statement shown above.

At that point, links showed up but were leading to error pages.

I looked at the navbar.htm file closely. Just three links. No problem there, I thought.

I compared my two pages line by line and noticed a missing DIV tag. So that helped a little. When I manually typed in the address of the page, it looked a little weird to my surprise, but putting the missing tag in solved THAT problem.

Still, my nav bar wasn't working.

Again I looked at the navbar.htm file in TextEdit. The reason I needed a plain text editor for this is that Blue Griffon automatically places HTML and BODY tags, etc in the file whether you like it or not. Files that are going to be #include'd mustn't have those tags, so I created it with my Mac's basic text editor, TextEdit. To edit the file without introducing any tags or text formatting elements, I found the best solution was to simply rename the file as navbar.txt each time to open it in text mode (rather than RTF document mode). Then, just before uploading, I'd rename it as navbar.htm.

I had opened and closed the navbar.txt file several times, trying to make sure I had no spelling mistakes, etc., since it wasn't looking right once uploaded.

See if you can see the problem.

There's a problem there alright...but I've never noticed it before in other contexts!

Version A

Version B

One works, and the other doesn't. Which one is the correct one? Interesting, huh?

Well...maybe you noticed the error much sooner than I did. It's the quotation marks. Version A works. Version B doesn't recognize the Home link because the file name isn't technically surrounded by quotation marks. Just after the file name on the 2nd line, the closing quote mark is the curvy/slanted style used in word processors. When I copied and pasted the straight up-and-down style quote marks from elsewhere, the file worked perfectly.

If only I'd known. I wasted an hour copying and pasting before I noticed this finicky problem.

Now look at A versus B again. 

Those curvy quotation mark stands out in version B now!

As I said at the beginning, I'm sharing this to help people in a similar circumstance solve the problem quicker than I did.

'Cat on path' drawing took a lot of time and involved a lot of ink

I completely neglected to blog as I was creating this one, over a period of about 3 days. So here it is. It's one that already I am arranging to frame and hang on my wall. It seems worthy of trying to sell on ebay some day, or my local shopping site usedvictoria.com.

Here's a quick look at the finished piece:

Forest kitty ink drawing by Heidi Bada

A few points to remember about my artwork

1. All images anywhere on my blog, stores, and other online or print locations are copyright protected. I'm shocked that people these days think they can use peoples' drawings and photos in their ads. It doesn't matter that a (c) copyright symbol isn't present. Please spread the word that you need consent to use other peoples' images in your ads, signs, flyers, websites, and so on. I'll stop the lecture there.
2. I'm looking for feedback and of course let me know if you'd like to buy a print. My next step is to upload it to my FineArtAmerica and Society6 stores (Society6 seems to have cheaper shipping but I'll leave it up to you to decide). 

How this image evolved

Since the piece is completed, I'll give you the whole story with my recollections.

First, I thought I wanted a sweet little forest scene with munchies for the cat. I sketched on scrap paper to get the figure close to real life proportions, and wanted to keep that cute little face that appeared even though it seems like it's straining to see something off to the side.

Basic cat on a path surrounded by weeds

I thought a cat on a plain green background would be boring, and I saw an opportunity to make a foreground of encroaching branches. I was also trying out a potential maximum for the reach of the grass, represented by those yellow bushes in the top region.

Grass and leaves added

I'm pretty sure I didn't like what I saw. I wanted to see what the sky would actually look like, not knowing how dark my new blue ink would dry. Yikes! It's pretty opaque and medium-dark.

Sky and rocky foreground started

Going on my idea of leaves, which at this point weren't standing out very noticeably, I also discovered the bottom region needed a foreground too, as an environmental cue that the pathway is an opening for your eye into the picture and perhaps adventures of this kitty cat.

Now a step back to see some balance in the image

I seem to have gotten quite involved at this point, and didn't snap any more cell phone photos. I really wanted a bright cat, with an inviting environment to explore. Given the sorta dark sky, I started to sense an evening time for this image. 

I smoothed out the grass and the rockery to match the even tone in the sky. The cat's colourful coat required several...coats...of ink to cover the area and allow some highlight variations while I also had yellow on my ink palette for doing the green grass and leaves. While the leaves ended up brighter than the grass, they actually stand out as an eye-catcher for the cat's yellow eyes I think.

The land unexpectedly started to look like it was rolling off into a valley at left. It reminded me very much of rolling hills along the roadside in the interior region of B.C. where I've travelled.

I thought I'd leave the ink work done here, with a viewer wondering what the cat is thinking, what it's looking at, and where it might be located. I think the bright leaves indicate the location might be close to streetlights or houselights, and it seems cozy to me.

Finished now

Working on a cartoon skiing watercolour today with Aquarelle paper

It's my first time using Aquarelle watercolour paper. Right now I'm just waiting for an initial blocking of colour to dry. It's my cartoon character Fuzz in a ski scene.

My last few drawings were ink, and even though I just bought a few more ink colours to make tints and shadows easier to complete, I feel compelled today to revisit my interest in watercolours. Depending how the painting turns out, I may add some illustration using ink as well, but ideally I will control the paint enough with several washes to make my cartoon character pop out of the scene.

It's an action scene, just like I used to draw as a teen, and in college too I recall. This is my most-frequently-doodled character in my school notebooks. He doesn't look like a stunning dude so far, but let's hope my watercolour skills give him some stature by the end of this painting exercise!

Fuzz Skier watercolour in progress

Notice the painting support is my trusty Sterlite plastic bin lid. Works every time, and protects my work table that also serves as my fine dining table.

New ink and pastel image done: You're Watching?

I've been busy organizing my website and learning some new HTML skills the past few weeks. Normally, I would like to post on my blog more frequently.

New cat drawing: You're Watching?

You're Watching? by Heidi Bada

So this drawing was done with some self-imposed pressure. Also I was a little unhappy with recent efforts at drawing the image in my head of a cat being interrupted while cleaning its paw.

Here it is, in pastel and ink. I think this time I captured the eye properly, to show that she is perturbed while being watched.

Prints will be available soon from my FineArtAmerica and Society6 galleries. Of course, this original is for sale too!

Website Project

Now the other thing I've been working on, the standalone website, started out as a venue to show off my HTML skills. However, it quickly became a goal for me to show off my illustrations in a comic book format. Then it was not so much comics necessarily, but just any storytelling goal using a website and modern HTML and companion tools.

I'm now taking a different direction with my website project, studying successful websites and figuring out what makes a good story in websites. I don't have anything up and running on my website to share yet, but rest assured this blog will be plastered with it when I've got at least a few illustrations in place.

My goal is to use ordinary webspace to demonstrate illustration as a storytelling tool, in both animated and static forms. Could be for entertainment, but more likely advertising and product demonstration. I love working with video as well, so the trio of illustration, animation, and video combined in a webspace creates a fun environment for me to work in. I'll want to create the images and the interaction/animation functions for custom projects, ideally.

It turned out that self-directed comic book sharing on comic book sites is a difficult way to get noticed and get feedback I need, regarding engagement of viewers and the qualities of my characters and storylines.

Using a website of my own, I can at least share my work, get more HTML experience, and get direct feedback from friends and fans.

My animation style was originally inspired by some Madefire comics I found using my iPad in the app store. I like how animation is minimal, and simply enhances the storyline (usually).

There you have it: a commercial application of illustration that is quite exciting and delightfully unpredictable as technology changes. Sounds good to me.

I survived creating a nearly-free web site this evening

The process took an hour or so. I was surprised it worked; I gave up on using godaddy.com a long time ago because their system seemed quite complex for the website I wanted to create.

I found freehostia.com which offers a free web hosting account. It truly is free. My website is working.

But...

It requires a domain name be registered, or an existing domain name typed in which will be forwarded. I didn't know what to do but I was sure there were cheaper ways to get a domain name. Freehostia is cheap, around $10 for a .com or other domain suffixes, but I wanted something cheaper!

To go along with Freehostia's web site hosting, I went straight to whois.com where I've registered domains before. I chose a domain name which was going to be suitable but discardable in future. I simply don't know what I want to call my "business" and I don't know exactly what type of service it will be, so I chose patiostudioproductions, which is very indicative of how I spend my days.

The suffix .biz was on sale, so I purchased patiostudioproductions.biz for $5 or so, and paid using paypal. I won five bucks a long time ago, and apparently it was still sitting in my paypal account.

I put in a partial name and address, so my real info wouldn't be visible whenever some joker looks up who owns the domain. I didn't want to have to pay extra for privacy. To have my name and address hidden, the cost per year is double what I paid for the domain! I don't approve of that practice.

There was a bit of setup required. You have to log into the whois.com (or wherever you bought the domain) domain centre and change some DNS settings to match the website host. You log into the domain centre on the website host as well...

To make a long story short, I just opened a desperate help chat window at the whois.com website and they typed enough instructions that made the whole problem disappear.

It worked. Like, right away! Within minutes I could type my new website address into Safari and it appeared! I had created a simple home.html file that said "Welcome" and so on, and it actually showed up all of a sudden. Those DNS settings are important. I'm glad the process worked; it seems my cutting and pasting of settings moved the right details into the right text boxes.

So there you go, I have a domain name and web host to practice and show off my HTML5 and CSS skills I learned earlier this summer. Who knows, maybe I'll become a producer of some...productions...! They will be artistic no doubt, and likely involving web design and video too.

New watercolour sketch in my portfolio

Check it out - click the Portfolio tab in the menu. It's a watercolour sketch of a cat sleeping. Here's a sample. It looks better on my portfolio page.

Watercolour sketch by Heidi Bada

My skills are now for sale on Fiverr, for sketching and painting on demand!

My latest ad on Fiverr is for freelance sketching and painting website illustrations. I'm trusting that people will search for "illustration" and "website" - and hopefully mine will be one of the ads that comes up. My sample is below:

My sketching and painting skills are available on Fiverr.com

I'm also found on Fine Art America and Society6 websites so far, but those sites are not oriented to making custom work as much as print or merchandise sales.

Last time I created illustrations for pay, I was discovered in Craigslist...boy, those were the days!

PanPastel painting of luxuriously happy cat

I finished a pastel painting of a cat ignoring life around him, and enjoying a quick fix. When you watch it (hosted on YouTube), the video plays in landscape orientation.

Portfolio has a new addition

You can see it on my Portfolio page on this blog. Pages (only one besides the blog) are in a menu under the header photo.

I added a new drawing. As I've created new images, I try to remember to upload them everywhere. My drawing category is building up now, with three images. At the moment, one is an oil pastel (the mountain biker), one is a pastel sketch (with both dry and wet techniques), and the third is today's addition - the cat Tiggie in PanPastel.

Check out the photos category while you're there. You'll see I typically like a bright and rich look, accomplished with something called "bloom" effect.

Another of my favourite photo techniques is to make blends. For example, a blend of several portraits of a person at work and/or play, letting some aspects of each image show through, which produces definitely non-traditional look. I also like to blend photos with illustrative layers, although my images of that are not really high-enough resolution for the portfolio. I'm working on learning to fix that using Photoshop and perhaps re-doing some of my favourite blends from the past.

It's all a work in progress!

How to finish this off? Another cat pastel nearing completion

This one is made using pan pastels. I like the current unpainted state of the foreground objects.

Frisky Tail nearly completed

The whole point of this picture was to convey a typical reward that a cat looks forward to, being pat on the head.

But as I finished some of the background details, I noticed a bit of a social theme emerging. There's a mouse right in front of the cat. The sun is shining. The trees are lively and full of energy.

The cat unfortunately, like many people, is ignoring the world at his footsteps in favor of a quick fix. It's easy to look cute and get a pat on the head! It takes energy to enjoy active and cognitive pursuits.

In any case, the foreground objects will probably be completed with a bright color scheme to draw attention to them.

Let me know if you like it! The finished work will show up at my Society6 and FineArtAmerica shops, and my portfolio too.

Cheers,

Heidi

The paws grew claws today! It's a start on the finer details

Prissy Kitty looking a little more life-like today

Finally my colours and pen-handling on the Wacom are coming together. I decided to try adding some claws with a fine soft pastel, and add a whole additional layer of colour, so that I can even out the colour in the body and face. I believe I'm finished the tail now. My painting was brief - about 30 minutes today so far - and I like how the strokes of soft pastel created some appropriate highlights and shadows in the tail and front paw, plus edging to define those shapes.

Disregard the red background for now; I have a photo of a background I plan to work on and it has a cherry wood type of pattern.

I also spent a little time browsing tutorials online, to see if any more sophisticated technique could be applied. I found a useful tutorial that shows the basics of painting light and shadow on a still life, ironically done with Photoshop! It's title is Painting Light and Shadow, by Mattias Snygg.

Think I can finish this digital painting?

Just remember, it's my first one in a long time, and first one using a Wacom tablet.

My very first ones earned ribbons at my local country fair. The judges didn't know what a digital painting was, and no one had really heard of Corel Draw yet. That was my start with digital graphics, in 1993 to 1994, the first few years after I finished high school.

The kitty drawing (Prissy Kitty, I've decided to call her, to match her mean glance at the viewer who is interrupting her cleaning routine) has a face shaping up.

The eyes were detailed today

I'm crazy addicted to this digital painting, and at the same time need to read through the Corel Painter Getting Started Guide. I can't find keyboard shortcuts fast enough when I need them!

Progress on kitty painting...now it has a background in progress

Here's my Prissy Kitty digital painting so far, with a background started today. I'm following the basic steps in a tutorial on building up a 3-dimensional cartoon-like image.

This image feels like it's on track thanks to tutorial

I had been working on this image bit by bit, while learning to use Corel Painter AND my Wacom tablet. This tutorial was perfect for developing my image properly in terms of digital painting steps. I like the image in my head so much, that I'm being quite tedious in my process.

I went too far into my shading and highlighting earlier, trying to establish some depth to the character, before I found this tutorial. Depth can be established by painting, like in real life, with tints and shades of colours. That is was I initially did here. I also tried some dodge and burn tools that other tutorials suggested, after laying down a relatively flat colour to work with. It's useful to get practice in both.

And thanks to the Corel Painter Getting Started Guide I mentioned in my last post, I'm finding tools faster and more reliably already! And with only an hour of practice so far.

This tutorial starts out with blocked-in colours (in Photoshop I believe) then lighting effects, then details. The background is dealt with fairly late in the process, which suits this image similarly to the example shown in the tutorial. We'll see how it plays out in Painter and my kitty drawing. I'm still intending to have a leering glance on her, being interrupted by an admiring passerby looking at her shiny and clean coat of fur.

Finally found the best way (so far) to learn Corel Painter, free

I finally tried the Getting Started Guide for Corel Painter X3. The other tutorials and resources found earlier on the Corel site and help files didn't really cover the basics I need for this program, so the Getting Started Guide is so far helping out a lot. I also found the link online if you want to read it before you have the app on your computer: Corel Painter X3 Getting Started Guide.

Go download this, if you want a good basic start with Corel Painter

It's a PDF and you can download it so you can easily follow along with your Corel Painter window open, and also highlight things you want to find quickly later.

I'm working through it myself today, so that I can complete my cat drawing started earlier. I also want to begin working quicker and without frustration, for all my other ideas on my list.

My ever-growing list.

I draw every day, and I believe this is good practice, just like you'd do if you were learning a new language or learning to cook. Ideas don't do me much good sitting on my list.

Give Painter a try - I got a 90-day trial version when I bought my Wacom tablet, which is a good amount of time to decide whether I'd want to purchase the regular or light version afterwards. I have a feeling Photoshop will be a little inadequate for some techniques I want to do, such as the infamous digital watercolour paint effects that Corel Painter is so capable with.

Share your comments here...have you made any digital drawings or paintings, using Painter or any other app?

On that note, check out Painter's user contributions page. A lot of Painter-made samples show up that will inspire you. It's like going to an art gallery, but at home.

Also have a look at what happens if you search "using Corel Painter' with Google. What do you notice? My blog post shows up on the first page of the results ("Another kitty drawing"), because I apparently use that phrase frequently enough, and share it on my Google profile!

Happy digital painting!

Latest drawing - this one's a creepy, crawly figure

Here's a quick shot of a drawing exercise today, turned watercolour painting:

Cellphone snapshot of a drawing today

The exercise instructed me to start with a stick figure, which I took as an opportunity to draw an unfortunately weary human form. Then add mass, and colour, with light and shadow.

I didn't get so far as adding light and shadow specifically, but I did add an ominous tornado-like dark force at left, creeping up behind the poor traveller. Oddly enough, he seems to be heading into the light.

The paper was quite wet upon finishing, and I added some sprinkles of salt to try out the technique of using salt to add a textured look to watercolour washes. I sprinkled three areas - both of the red patches of background, plus the blue tornado element. I suspect the blue was nearly dry, as the salt had little, if any effect.

Note that my teen drawing was often creepy like this - some deformation but still recognizably human. This drawing takes anatomy more seriously though, to coincide with the thorough discussion of anatomy in the drawing books I've read recently.

This time, instead of starting with the feet, I started with the head; I really wanted the figure to not be completely in profile, and here he is turning away slightly so we see the back of his head and just a hint of an eye and nose. Then the basic pelvic shape, then the legs hanging off awkwardly, with dainty slow steps beneath.

I think he looks stable on his feet, but that crazy life-adjusted back curve tells a story that this person is not the same man he was years ago...although it still was just a drawing practice exercise!

Also note that his feet are able to articulate. I wonder if I drew that so prominently, at a time when I've broken some toes in my foot and can't make that shape with my own foot (yet?) !

This exercise reminds me that I love to make drawings of figures doing things. Sports is ideal for me, and I've done lots of that in past (not recently). And I also have fun using my imagination to create unlikely or unlikeable situations for the characters. Or maybe exciting and positive situations too. We'll see what happens at my next practice session, I guess!

Prissy Kitty coming along, even though I was busy doing a few freelance gigs today

Fiverr.com is keeping me really busy with app reviews. I love that computer geeky stuff, too, but I felt a little weird the past few days to not have much time to work on drawings.

So tonight at 11:00pm I blocked out a little time and no pressure to make a little progress on my sleek cat drawing idea that I started recently.

Cat looking a little more colourful after 20 min

I feel good that I made some progress. I still need to define in my mind how elongated I want her to be, and what kind of muscle tone I want to portray. I'm definitely leaning towards the clay sculpture look that I love so much.

Thoughts about transitioning from traditional to tablet drawing

While working with Corel Painter for this drawing this evening, I discovered a pastel drawing tool that feels very much like traditional Pan Pastel. It was Real Soft Pastel brush. I managed to get a real soft imprint as though I was using a sponge with Pan Pastels, especially when holding the pen in an overhand grip.

This pen grip doesn't always work with the graphics tablet, and works a lot better if you tilt the tablet so that the pen is making adequate contact at an angle. It effectively makes you notice how your whole arm is moving, rather than just your wrist. I prefer to not rely on my wrist, as I'm looking for soft, sweeping movements of course for my kitties.

I don't see any discussion online so far in my travels about how to transition from traditional drawing methods to a drawing tablet. I don't really want to give up my spontaneous and freely-moving arm gestures; a lot of comments online about Wacom tablets indicate the users are adopting a handwriting grip when using the pen.

I'd love to hear opinions on how people hold their drawing tools, whether pen, pencil, brush, or digital tools. Even my drawing books don't address this much, except for the one I'm currently reading. It's called Drawing Basics and Video Game Art by Solarski and it goes into some good detail about how to hold a pencil in various ways for drawing.

Another cat drawing came to mind - she's busy making herself look good

I got an idea to use the idea of a cat to portray a glitzy glamorous personality, to be interpreted whatever way the viewer likes, using pastel.

The visual style I want to use is the same one that dominates my mind but I work hard to get close to it using pastel. I believe acrylic would get to the effect quicker, but I enjoy using pastel, and now my Wacom tablet more than acrylics which are more costly in terms of preparing a surface and potentially ruining brushes.

I've decided the illustrative effect that I am most enthusiastic about can be described as claymation or china doll appearance, but in paint or pastel, which looks kinda like what these artists produce:

1) Will Terry, whom I found by accident online today. My favourite image of his is a good example of that 3-D clay sculpture look I enjoy. It makes me feel warm and fuzzy, and I believe it is a great way to portray cats. I believe cats belong on a pedestal. I'm sure my cat theme in my drawings tells a lot about my personality.

2) Jaime Zollars is another artist I found in some book in the past and I made a note of the name. My favourite image looks so serene and emotional.

3) Shawna Erback, found on Fineartamerica.com. My favourite image is video-game-lifelike even though you can't see the girl's face.

4) basically the entire graphics in the movie trailer The Boxtrolls, showing on TV right now!

I started this cat image as a digital painting. I've gotten as far as a pencil sketch. She'll have a glaring stare at the viewer, to say 'leave me alone while I'm washing.' I'm pretty sure every hair will be in place, except maybe a tuft that is disturbed currently by her tongue. And she'll have a pretty bow or bell on her collar. It might just be my most challenging personal project yet!

I might also want to create a copy using pan pastels. I think the glow of white paper underneath the light dusting of pastel pigment would look seriously vibrant and engaging.

Cheers for a work in progress!

Hey...at least I got the basic form out already!

Where will I start with using my new Wacom tablet for digital drawing and painting?

I've been asking myself that since I bought my Wacom digitizing tablet a few days ago. It's not an easy answer. The product doesn't come with a manual, no surprise, but it also doesn't have anything to help a traditional artist or a Photoshop photo editing specialist adapt to this new tool.

Do I redo my drawing and painting skills using the tablet instead of pen or brush?

Do I open a blank window and press the buttons and move the pen around to see what it does?

Or do I try out the Corel Painter X3 trial app that came with the device - hoping that Corel has created a digital drawing tutorial to learn the tablet's features, and digital painting in general?
* note: several other drawing apps come with the device, but Painter is the only one I'm familiar with

Or hope and pray for help on YouTube?

Being the type of person who just likes to jump in and do something, rather than search online for an answer to a specific but obscure question, I make a short plan:

1. Open Corel Painter and follow any tutorials it offers using my Wacom tablet where possible
2. Try Wacom website (again) to seek instructional videos on using the hardware properly - during installation, videos offered gave me no instructions on what its buttons do, and I didn't feel inspired to search YouTube for other videos at that point
3. Use Painter while working through a book I just studied at library: Bold Visions, oriented towards digital painting

The results follow! 

I spent the whole afternoon getting a good feel for the device, and Painter to boot. All I knew about Painter at the start, is that it is the best app for simulating watercolour painting, and I love that idea!

I just finished doing a thorough practice using the book Bold Visions, and it works with environments, lighting, forms, shadow, and many examples of working from sketch to forms to details. This exercise gave me an opportunity to work with the copious notes I made.

In Corel Painter and Corel.com

Starting point for learning more about Corel Painter

To my delight, it offers a learning module full of instructional videos. Many cover how to work with brushes in the app, and some videos cover full image creation examples. Non-video written tutorials are also available for those artists who prefer to work with step-by-step instructions. I clicked on Digital Art.

After viewing a few videos, I was still only working with basic strokes, and still didn't know how I'm supposed to hold the stylus, or what the buttons do when actively painting. Note - the System Settings app in a Mac computer creates a Wacom category when the device is installed, and it lets you program the buttons and set up your usage preferences.

In Wacom.com

Here I found a different pathway to find tutorials. At the main wacom.com website, I hit the ? icon to get Support. Then Product Tutorials. There I chose my model (Intuos Pro) and also saw a Webinars tab that turned out to offer Painter and other painting tutorials that apply to any tablet.

Tutorials organized by Wacom product families, plus webinars

Continuing with the Intuos category, I found two tutorials that go beyond the installation process. One is for working with "radial menus" and the other is about configuring buttons and preferences. Finally I found answers to some of my curiosity about how the features work! I mean, I saw quickly that the buttons can be programmed, but without experience using buttons in conjunction with a drawing tablet...well let's just say the information didn't register as to how I might want to program my buttons and radial menu. A nice feature is that by default, the second "express button" down brings up a diagram of the buttons and stylus, and clicking on any part brings up the appropriate settings from the Settings-->Wacom Tablet module on my Mac.

*note - the tablet needs to be turned on (it isn't automatically on when using without cord) in order for Settings --> Wacom Tablet to open.

Good to know: 1) settings can be recorded for different apps, 2) the second button down on the tablet brings up a reminder of all the current settings for all the buttons

So there you go...I feel much better prepared for Painter, and I'll create some real pictures using my tablet with techniques learned in the Bold Visions digital painting book I found at the library.

Using Bold Visions techniques

The overall technique is probably the same any artist would learn in art school - rough in shapes, add tone to establish depth and three-dimensionality, and finally add details. The procedure using something like Photoshop or Painter requires several layers ideally, to get the best control of the digital canvas.

I started with no particular image in mind, just a cats theme and a textured pastel paper with a lavender tint.

I instinctively started outlining a cat with a pastel tool...then I remembered I'm not just sketching. I started over with the idea of blocking in shapes as an underpainting, still using a pastel:

I continued to work at adding colour glazes (influenced by recent studies in pastel) and edging. By now I was holding the tablet at a 30-45 degree angle with one hand, and drawing with a relaxed and loose grip (learned from drawing tutorials) with my dominant hand. Since learning to NOT draw with a handwriting pose, my drawing surface needs to be angled, including my tablet. It's proven to be effective for controlling my mark-making strokes. I'm certain that the classic handwriting pen posture was developed so we could colour inside the lines. No need for that here.

I'm having lots of fun using the tablet, as I would with tradition in-hand drawing tools. The ability to choose unlimited colours in my apps is invaluable, by the way. The colour picker is oriented around a colour wheel with tints and tones displayed in the centre, which is convenient. I wouldn't say that drawing on the computer is any quicker than traditional media. The colours and lack of dust are two positives, and when doing watercolours, I hear that Painter allows 'drying' the paper which is sometimes a pain when using real paint.

Here's some edging now on a new layer, in Gel blend mode.

More form and some edging

I haven't tried to smudge my pastels yet. It turns out Corel Painter includes a variety of Blender tools that smudge the strokes.

I've gone a bit farther ahead to do some detail in the eyes and nose, to get the shapes started in that area, so I can get onto shadows and light sources for the purposes of demonstrating the tasks I typically would do with a digital painting project. They eyes and nose layer is Default blend mode.

Closeup of eyes and nose beginnings

Next I tried to do some quick lighting and shading. I want to add highlight to the shoulder and under chin to use up some of the excessive facial region and body that I blocked out earlier.

In the process, I also added as much detail as I intended. Here is the final result:

Final cat by Heidi Bada

There you have it. A completed digital pastel drawing. Didn't cost me a penny, other than buying the drawing tablet. I started to enjoy using the device nearing the end. Using blend modes and adjusting opacity is a great digital feature in Photoshop or Painter, and opens up new kinds of images I can make. So I shall keep busy practicing my drawing and pastels, while also studying digital art and using my imagination to apply these modern tools appropriately for goals.

Cartoon characters from my high school notebooks made fresh from memory

A couple decades ago, my notebooks in school were filled with doodles. One particular character appeared frequently. As I'm trying to perfect my watercolour, pastel, and digital painting techniques, I thought drawing this little character anew was a useful exercise.

Knowing that the character itself is etched in my memory, I plan to create several versions, different variations and poses, and some storylines of activities or interactions he gets into. There's also a she version in my mind.

My initial results with watercolour follow.

Fuzz character with smirk by Heidi Bada

Baby version of fuzz character