Lady Night

Yesterday I took some time drawing girls. That's what I do to relax. Draw girls. Not much thinking involved, no meanings and no content. Although perspective and proportions aren't perfect, I like the outcome, having used new techniques and seeing how my ability of sight has changed since visiting animation school.

inspired by the great american comic artist Micheal Turner

Honouring the Ancestores

Today I want to use the chance to show how amazing my grandmother was. She died only last week and so I got to see through a lot of her work. She started attending drawing classes when she was 56 years old, followed by water color and china paint classes. I always admired her for her abilities in art and  cooking as well as her good natured heart and alltime cheerful character. Of course she always supported me with educational drawing-books, brushes and colors. What she admird about me was that at a certain point I didn't need any artwork to draw from - that I managed to produce images from my imagination. Still, she improved her skills only in a year and created beautiful portraits and still lifes.
I honestly wish to carry on and improve the "talent" I was given to make a living and make my grandmother proud.

1986 by Lore Koops

2011/ 12 by me

Furthermore, that's how my workspace at the animation school looks like. 

preview to red riding hood

For two weeks now 12 people have been working hard on the first final project: a new version of little red riding hood. Regina Haselhorst is our producer, director, designer and everything . The rest of us does the animation part, coloring, compositing and background painting.
I am part of the team that has to animate the wolf. Here is some first insight!
I am really looking forward to the finished version. A short movie of 3 minutes length, done in 3 weeks - incredible! ;-D

 

New year's big band

A happy new year to everybody! :->
These little birds are a birthday present to a good friend - we once imagined cute, fat little birds and crows playing in a big band.
Mobile phone uploads still challenge me, but at least I get to update my blog :-p

Danny the conductor - rough animation

Last week Fabian Erlinghäuser from the Irish animation studio Cartoon Saloon (Secret of Kells) was our tutor at animation school. We had to animate 5 seconds of classical music by Bethoven and let Danny, the main character from "Cats don't dance", be a conductor. It took me a week (let's say about 5 days) to finish those 5 seconds. Thank you for the great hints and critique, Fabian :-) Now I feel a bit more confident about animating!

revengesaurs take revenge

With Christmas coming up and character design and layout having to be finished, I neglected my blog duties. Well at least I manage to show new sketches once or twice a month. That's worth something, isn't it?

awesome dinasaurs, ey?

Take a left

We're heading in a new direction. We changed our ice-fairy tale a bit and finally get set on a design. So I'll show some of the last development steps we had for our character. What a journey a character design is! New suggestions are made constantly. And the other ones from my group also made designs and so we all pushed us further and further. That was an important experience :-)
Adobe Bridge was so kind to put together the images.
By the way, I had to switch to left again, because the right elbow started hurting again - apparently it didn't heal properly. Or it will just reappear for the rest of my life... at least it seems to get better sooner than the last time.

revengesaurs

Oh my..I forgot to make some posts a few times o.O// It seems I have been busy (sounds more suitable than lazy ;-P). Anyway, here are the drawings from my second visit to the ballet dancers. So I could take revenge. To get back my portrait of the old red haired lady. Maybe you remember.

funny animals and obsolete designs

I saw some funny animals photos in the web a few days ago. As I couldn't save them to my computer I decided to draw them :-)

In animation school our story has changed quite a lot. Here are some of the old, obsolete designs. Again the robins and the bunnies ~

good bye autumn

I really love autumn. The air is fresh and despite the grey, hazy weather, the colorful leafs illume everything. Here in Hamburg, I believe winter soon will arrive, so my fellow friends from animation school and I went to the huge park called 'planten un blomen' to catch the last bits of the beautiful season.

color moods from a few days earlier