Yuletide's Greetings

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERBODY!!

Just wanted to draw a little something for you as a gift and to wish you some good cheer with a purty deer. Reindeer are just so cool - glad Santa chose these guys instead of pigs or something like that. Wait - a sleigh pulled by wild boar would actually be pretty rad. So maybe pigs would have been ok too.

Also, Saira Vargas must have heard that I was drawing reindeer cause she just dropped these INCREDIBLE designs that just blow my little doodle clear away. You've just got to see them (here's my favs):

how is legal for someone to be this talented

Like these drawings are so good that my stomach is actually in pain right now. Saira has just art-punched me in the gut. On Christmas Eve. I WILL be as good as you someday, Vargas. Just you wait.

I'd love to stay and fawn over these drawings some more, but I've got to get back to watching the Muppet Christmas Carol with my family. I hope you're snug by a fire and have been good all year! Regardless, I wish you peace and the knowledge of Christ's love in these coming festive days!

Merrily yours,
-dh

Fanart. Lots of It.

Hi everyone!

I've just submitted my last final project for the term and I am now only three short semesters away from graduation (whaaaat?) For the past few days I've been settling into a consistent pattern of working and sleeping with brief breaks to eat and to Christmas party. So it's weird not to be in the art lab right now and not to have anything particular to do - I still have this nagging feeling that there's at least one more storyboard that needs to be drawn and timed out. Cause that has been my LIFE recently (well that and CG animation splining, but I really don't want to write about that. Don't ask.) Even with all the work I did before break, my final animatic for Storyboarding 2 was still quite the task to finish on time - but I'm happy with how it came out! It's a absurd murder mystery comedy, but I don't know when I'll be able share it here. There's a chance it could be made into a Actual Short Film and so I'm not sure if I want to spoil it before it's all colored and pretty. Anyways, the project is at a good stopping point and I figured now's as a good a time as ever to eat a TON of Takis and talk about the other work that I've been doing:

If you're one of the people who follow me on Instagram (a hearty crew) and you also happen to be reading this now (a happy few) then you maaaay have realized that I've been posting exclusively fanart since Halloween. I'm a little conflicted about this - I'd rather it be original stuff, but fanart has been just so fun recently. Since I'm doing original storyboards during the day, it tends to be Pokemon and Disney Channel amphibians that flow most easily onto my iPad at night. And these pieces also tend to be in color. I haven't gotten a lot of chances to work in color or make much "finished" work this semester. I'm only taking two animation classes. CG Animation, not surprisingly, doesn't include a lot of drawing, and most of what I do for storyboarding is rather rough and black and white. And DANG IT, I MISS COLOR! AND SHADING! 

musharna (pokemon)

I've also been doing some serious style studies/fusions of my favorite artists, and fanart allows me to focus on the technique/form rather than worrying about the subject/content. Studying Saira Vargas has been incredibly helpful to me, and I've been practicing her style in my fanart. I've been combining her half-lineless style and dynamism with some of my old favorites - an artsy gumbo, if you will:

yubaba (spirited away)

polly and hop pop (amphibia)

Both of these two pieces were made for contests, another reason why I've been doing so much fanart recently. I guess when it comes down to it, fanart is a happy meeting of fun and learning: fun, because you get to draw what you like and it's easy, and learning because you can absorb good design and experiment along the way. You also get to celebrate beautiful things and call attention to the good - which is kinda our job as artists and people :P 

But I still can't get past the feeling that drawing fanart is kinda like playing covers of songs - worthwhile and career building, but not something you want to be known for. I don't just want to be a fan, I want to be an artist too - to create rather than purely iterate. So although I am for sure gonna be drawing some fanart during this Christmas break, maybe it would be good to draw some new stuff too? I'd really like to do some designs of literary characters, maybe from A Christmas Carol or Lord of the Rings. I know that's halfway fanart, but I've got to have some kind of prompt to bounce off of! Or this month's Character Design Challenge sounds fun too: "Axolotl Adventurer." Who knows!

In the meantime, I plan on catching up on everything I missed/forgot to do during finals: baking, reading books & blogs, movie watching, rest, general merriment, and drinking eggnog. My Christmas spirit has been high this year and I'm hoping it stays that way until at least the 25th. I also hope to be here on the Roost more often! The end of the year is approaching and I feel a sense of reflective retrospective-ness coming on... which means we're in for a post. The Roost is about to turn one year old and I'm excited to take stock of the ups and downs, and God's constant faithfulness throughout 2019. I was looking through my Instagram today and it's crazy to think where I was just last year! 

So see you soon! And an Merry Christmas to ya!
-dh