Pucking Fainting...

So.... spent all weekend on my 2 paintings for my first painting assignment of the year. I quite like how my first painting came out, the desert/canyon one, but not totally happy with the forest/swamp one.

Anyways, here's some crappy pictures of them lol. Enjoy!

More Walk, Less Talk

So I finished Duke's walk cycle and I'm pretty happy with it; it's too perfect and fits him so well lol. Hope you guys enjoy it!

Walk Cycles :3

So here's the preliminary walk cycle of the Pink Panther for animation class. Have to show Michel and have her "approve it" but it's essentially done.

Obviously isn't done yet, but I like how it's turning out.

Kecleon Costume Update

Here's an update for Kecleon! I haven't taken a decent picture of Buizel's updated head but figured I'd wait until the tail was done. Please keep in mind this costume is NOT made for me, it's being made for a friend who's a bit taller and skinnier than me so it may look a bit odd. Enjoy!

I'm SO thrilled with this tail. First time for this type of armature for me, and it turned out great. It bounced when you walk or move, and the middle swirl also moves independantly.

Happy Birthday Pup :)

To those who know me, you probably know that my animals are my whole life; they encompass my whole world, moreso than my art, my costume making, my writing, everything else that I love. A year and a half ago, I lost my pup after a long battle with mouth cancer; he died in my arms after nursing him for months and he was just too far gone to let him suffer any longer.
I adopted him when he was 8 years old and was with me for 4 wonderful years, and even though those last few months nearly killed me watching him suffer like that, he made me a better person and he'll always be with me, heart and soul.

It would've been his 14th birthday today :) Happy Birthday Butch. I love you more than anythng and that won't change any time soon. R.I.P buddy <3

Absence of Quintessence

Yes, crazy title but I felt it suited these two. My character Marek on the left and Neilizza's character Caeleigh on the right. One slowly dying to an incurable illness and the other born with only one wing; just a random collab we did before Christmas break. Enjoy! :3

Updates about other things:

School's started again, which I'm both glad about and not. I really could've used another week to relax and do things I wanted to do ie: costume work, but alas, that wasn't going to happen. Costumes are further along since last post about them. Buizel's head was fixed; more foam added to cheeks to cover the jaw mechanism and to make it look good with it's mouth open. Kecleon's tail is also now done foaming, and the head only needs it's jaw mechanism and bottom jaw and it is also done. I will upload some pics in the near future.

Beauty and the Geek?

Hope everyone's holidays have been good so far. Nothing too exciting to report other than the family and I went to see our yearly Ross Petty play downtown. Every year the same troupe puts together a different spinoff of a famous story, Disney usually, and makes it hilarious and all together an amazing production. I've been going every year for as long as I can remember and seen one's such as Robin Hood, Cinderella, Aladdin and many more. This years' was Beauty and the Beast and, as I said, they usually tweak the story a little; for example in Aladdin, Al was a skater boy and instead of a flying carpet he had a flying skateboard etc etc. This year I was really curious how they would pull off the beast; whether it would be the typical crazy creature with candlestick and clock etc. It was incredibly different from the typical Disney version but I absolutely LOVED it.

The basic premise behind it was the Prince, Prince Zack, who's a huge geek, has his own band, complete with bandmates Antonio, stereotypically spanish matador looking guitarist, and Bert, an English rocker that plays the spoons. Prince Zack is hopelessly in love with Bella, a smart, lovely girl who lives with her Aunt Plinky , an inventor, (who's so obviously played by a man it's just hilarious) and her sheep Baa Baa on the outskirts of town.

In order to gain her affections he signs a contract with Baron Barnum Von Cowell, our resident magical evil doer, in order to be a rockstar; he is turned into "The Beast" and his bandmates a human guitar and a human spork (lul) The Baron has a bad habit of turning woodland creatures into famous popstars, and turns Baa Baa and a wandering beaver into the most famous popstars in the kingdom; Lady Baa Baa and Bustin Beaver (lol yes, you can guess who they're named after)

Random Side Note: I think the Bustin Beaver character was definately my favourite among the cast; she looked like him, sang like him, acted like him, and had hilarious facial expections; just loved that character, buck teeth, little furry ears, huge beaver tail and all.

Sadly, Bella, through a series of unfortunate events, is also turned into a Beast and Zack must quickly share true love's kiss with her to save her from losing her mind and becoming a mindless Beast forever.

Overall was a great play, I honestly would go see it again in a heartbeat. It was only running for a few weeks sadly or I probably would have gone to see it again lol.

New Year Update !

Hope everyone had an awesome New Year's and is enjoying our far-too-short break :3

Just wanted to do an update on what's been going on lately. I've pretty much been art-drained for the past few weeks; have only drawn maybe once or twice and been kinda lollygagging around most days, working on costumes when I feel like it. Haven't continued to work on my extra animation or even started studying for the bone test :x Oh well, I'll be fine.

So! Without further adeu here is some costume progress!

So this isn't exactly something I made recently, but I've had it on my dresser for quite a while now and never gotten around to photographing it. I made this probably 3 or 4 years ago as one of my very first cosplay related projects. If any of you know the anime Blood +, this is "The Phantom's" (Karl's) mask.

It wraps all the way around my head and is pretty sturdy. It's made off a base felt mask which I then attached cardboard to to get the shape and then used plaster strips. Of course it was then sanded and painted to match the real mask's colour. I'm still quite in awe that I did this so long ago lol. Still love it

On to the recent stuff~!

I'm doing quite a few costume this year, either completely on my own, helping other people with their first ones or teaching people how to do it and stepping in to offer help/supervise/blah blah. This one if Kecleon, from Pokemon, and is obviously his tail. I've tried a lot of new costuming techniques for this years' costumes, one of which being thermoformable pvc, in this case to make a springy armature.

I've uploaded this guy's head before but I basically redid the whole bottom half this break to replace his jaw with a new mechanism of my own design. I just wasn't happy with the reliablility and look of the elastic jawset and so I designed my own with pvc sheeting.

Right now it's just taped in but this is basically how it will look. :3 I'm pretty excited about it and I think it's going to be what I'll stick with from now on.