A Merrie Yuletide to You All

the north pole air control!

Hello Bloggerfolk! And a Merry Christmastide to you!

Although it pains me to have missed the hallowed, two-years-strong tradition of a post precisely on Christmas Eve night, I have my reasons... For one, this year's Christmas illustration wasn't ready until 1 AM Christmas Day, despite sneaking in some drawing during every holiday movie marathon. But sometimes you just got to risk Santa's wrath if it gives you extra time to trial-and-error your way through adding highlights (curse you material rendering!!!!) Additionally, I always struggle to find the right balance of pleasant work (this blog, the above illustration, Bearpuncher) and the decidedly non-work (spending time with family, looking at sunsets, The Office reruns) while on breaks. And this year, I have struck out a little more on the non-work side. 

But excuses aside, Merry Christmas! For this year's illustration I bring you Ivan and Holly, two (mostly) tireless workers at the North Pole Air Control. Since they do work at the Christmas HQ, I dabbled in some self-indulgent research of vintage outfits and a warm Christmas palette - (have you guys ever realized HOW GOOD Christmas colors are? if you doubt me, watch Robin Robin.)

Oh, and while you're here... I thought this might be a good time to talk a little about process, particularly the sketching phase! One of my favorite Twitter trends from earlier this year was the #sketchvsfinal, where people would post an artsy "before and after" - first sketch alongside the finished images. While some sketches were suspiciously excellent, many looked like mine, which is to say, unimpressive. Here's what mine look like:

When I drew this, I had just gotten the idea and was trying to record it before it left my head. There's no detail, and only the loosest indications of anatomy or perspective. Heck, he doesn't even have a left arm! But what is beginning to appear is shape and force (the energy "flow" of the drawing). Those are usually the two most exciting parts of the image for me, and I'm willing to bend anything else to suit those factors. Shape and force are how I show the emotion of the character, and the appeal of the drawing itself. It may be different for you, but that's where I personally like to start! For this character, I knew he would be a burned-out, over-tired, call-center kind of guy, so he'd be defined by a big slouch and in a very casual pose.

Once I had this basic idea on the page, the rest of the process becomes sculpting that sketch into something that makes better sense anatomically, has more specific details, and more thoughtfully exaggerated shapes. Justin Oaksford talks about in this tweet the importance of redrawing and refining on top of your sketch, and I totally agree! Although I sometimes get impatient and just do it all on one layer. But for me, drawing is mostly a long process of pushing around the rough, uncarved "clay" of the initial sketch, finding opportunities to make it better through multiple small revisions. This keeps it from feeling overwhelming or that you have to nail it on the first try. (Which most artists CANNOT do! Which is a relief to all of us.) 

Go go draw boldly! And gently! And enjoy the "excess of Chronos" that is this strange, sluggish, reflective week between now and New Year's. I hope you may find friends, family, and/or eggnog close at hand.

merrily yours,

dh

Recommendations:

Nicola Saviori made this incredible reindeer drawing that inspired me to create mine (though his is much less of a desk-jockey)

The song of this Christmas season for me has been the classic version of It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year, I think due to the way it was expertly cut into the Hawkeye trailer (also a good show btw!)

A Full Heart at the End

So yesterday was my last caricature show at Lipscomb. And even though this year has been full of many “lasts,” this one hit me different. The caricature show is one of my favorite events of every year (four years strong!) and as I stand on the far side of my final show, I can’t help but look back with a full heart. The show and the Life Drawing Club have meant so much to me, and I hope to celebrate them richly, before passing them on into the capable hands of the underclassmen.

If it sounds like I’m talking about death, it’s because I am, in a way. Maybe it’s just the timing of this post (Holy Saturday), but I think there’s more here. This year will bring a fitting end to my time at college, and a way of life I’ve practiced for four years. Of course, I expect to see these people and places again, maybe even daily in the coming fall. But my home will be somewhere else, and I will be someone different. And as seniors leave and freshman come, there will be less and less faces at Lipscomb I recognize. It’s already happening now - at every meal, I’m lucky to see even one person in the cafeteria that I know. All year I have used the metaphor of the elves from Lord of the Rings to describe my predicament: although I have dear friends here in Middle Earth, the sea is calling and I dare not tarry longer than I ought. And we’re getting scarily close to the Grey Havens, my friends.

What hit me most was seeing Madi’s wonderful caricatures of the only four seniors to graduate this spring from our program. I could have sworn there were more, and yet here we are. Four graduates who have made it to the end.

Going to college is not a given. And I’m realizing now that graduating from college is not a given either. It’s taken late nights, scrambles for funding, more endurance than we could have thought possible, and yet, we’re here, together.

And that’s why I rejoice. This caricature show was amazing - lively crowd, great drawings, and the first time I’ve seen Jon Densk since the outbreak. It may be the end, but boy is it a happy one. Not all schools are open like Lipscomb, not all hearts are so merry, and not all friends will draw you sporting bright pink or slapping your knees in your apparently iconic laughing pose. 

So as tradition, here’s the caricatures I drew, and those drawn of me. Enjoy!

josie, good friend and bringer of thunder

eric stars, a fantastic teacher and production manager

brandon, always interested in how you are doing, in a genuine way

kaedan, the only person I know who can really rock a raccoon hat

full page of caricatures from rachel, I'm the one in yellow

so nice I had to post this twice (madi's)

me and (my long lost sibling???) josie - who also drew this

gratefully yours,

-dh

Small Details Intimately Observed

“If a writer stops observing he is finished. Experience is communicated by small details intimately observed.” - Ernest Hemingway

I take a ton of photos on my phone. But if you ever scroll through my photo reel, you’ll find an odd assortment of items and locations: screenshots of internet finds, interiors of historic buildings, exteriors of abandoned buildings (for I am afraid to go in), plenty of flowers and leaves, and lots and LOTS of clouds. Most of these pictures were taken with the hope of circling back to draw them someday, or reference in a future project. This rarely happens, as there’s a decent chance the photo will get lost in my unsorted archive and an even better chance that I’ll just be too busy to bother looking. But recently, I did draw one, and it made a world of difference.

this is that photo

This month’s Character Design Challenge prompt was “Mushroom Fighter,” which even if the idea wasn’t already exciting enough (it was), I ALSO had the perfect mushroom to use. I had snapped a picture of it while looking for birds at Radnor Lake, and this mushroom was the best thing I found that day. Something about the shapes, the chunky volumes, the way it softly exploded out from the tree just captivated my attention. This seemed like the perfect raw material to shape a design from. Immediately I saw this beautiful mushroom as the beard of a jovial, Bacchus-like dwarf. The rest of the design wasn’t really that important - I kept it all fairly simple so that I could better deliver on the recreation of the beautiful mushroom I had seen that day.

mushroom man

After posting the piece, I was surprised (pleasantly) by a Facebook comment that congratulated me for “finding a way not to make the mushroom the top of his head.” Yet despite the overwhelming abundance of mushroom-topped fighters in this month’s contest, I never saw this as a problem to be solved. Instead I was just following what experience had given me, and it ended up producing a different result.

A lot of the time, we design for - we have a visual problem to be solved, so we thumbnail, fail a bunch, and find reference to fill this void. Yet my mushroom experiment showed the surprising richness of designing FROM - taking something known and loved and exaggerating it into something new. While this kind of design is inherently more spontaneous, it feels like a quicker way to a successful result. Real Life has already done most of the work, so as artists all we need to do is add perhaps a couple more ingredients and some packaging.

Why does this work? That Hemingway quote from four paragraphs ago has the answers. Art is about communicating experiences, most effectively done by “small details intimately observed.” I think as artists, it’s easy to get so caught up in trying to impress people that we forget that art is about communicating something real. We can also fixate on originality, not realizing that we have troves of unique observations ready to be developed further. The most widely appealing part of any artistic work is the reality at its heart. After years of drawing for a portfolio, I think I’m finally realizing that a successful drawing is that which communicates a specific idea well, no matter whether it’s loose or tight, colored or 2-tone. It’s about making drawings that tell the truth (to borrow from a favorite C.S. Lewis quote). 

Currently I have painted 1 out of the 2,000+ photos in my phone. But I hope that at least some of these “small details intimately observed” will help me plant experience at the heart of my future stories.


One more Hemingway to close us out:

"I never had to choose a subject — my subject rather chose me."

-dh

Music Reccomendation:

While editing a spot for my voice over class this semester (which features my halfway-decent Fox McCloud impression) I found this amazing orchestration of some of the best themes from Star Fox 64. I've never played the game, but the end credits theme that begins around 3:55 is just incredible. ESPECIALLY the motif that's first heard at 4:45 - if my life had a theme, I think I would want that to be it.

Events Concerning a Horse, a Pig, and Near-Total Lack of Self-Confidence

 Hi all! 

I have been putting off this post for much too long, but as I don't want to be talking about January's news in February, I figured it was time to type a little something up. Even if it ends up being on the shorter side. (Edit: It doesn't.)

I want to talk about this sucker of an image.

his name is CheckMate

He's my entry for December's CDC. You may have seen this image on my Instagram, where it actually became one of my more popular posts, and was even featured by the Challenge on their Insta (which hasn't happened since June). For all intents and purposes, this is a good piece of art, and one of my more recognized pieces. 

Yet this piece really did a number on me.

For starters, the theme for December's CDC was "Robot Arena Deathmatch," which was about as far from my usual subject matter as possible. But I resolved to stick it out, combed through a ton of reference, and even came up with a concept that I was excited to draw - a semi-haunted, goofily-proportioned chess knight robot. I also was planning on returning to a more dimensionally rendered style a la Nicholas Kole. It's a style I used to work in a bunch, and one I used in some of my earlier CDC entries. 

Yet when I reached the rendering stage, everything just kind of fell apart. I struggled to figure out where to place shadows. I couldn't figure out how to add tight details without using linework. A technique that I thought I had a handle on now seemed impossible to grasp, and what seemed to be a routine character design now promised to be a battle to the end. So I tried to adjust, adding back in some lineart to clarify the image a bit, but the shadows still felt wrong. After messing with the design a bit, and showing it to my Discord art group, I realized I had a choice. I could struggle to stay the course, ditching the linework and really trying to figure out the shadows, or I could retreat into a comfortable style of stylized, angular shadows. 

As you can see, I decided to go for the easier route. I just couldn't figure out how to make accurate shadows, and I wasn't having any fun with the image trying to do so. It just seemed to make more sense to do something I knew would work, even if it meant abandoning my grander original plans. And although I finished the image and made something satisfactory, I still felt defeated, and even ashamed since I opted for the easy way rather than striving for something tough and new. As a result of making this image I lost a ton of confidence in my ability to draw. I worried if I had hit a wall, or if I could even make a good drawing again.

gross early attempt at less angular shadows

Of course, these negative self-thoughts were not true. But I figured I would share them with you in case you are feeling (or have felt) something similar. I think this kind of self-doubt is something many artists feel, even if we don't talk about it openly. I for one fear that I'm getting worse at art, or that my next project won't be any better than my previous one, or I just can't make anything good in general. And after making this particular character design I felt those fears very acutely. I was almost afraid to see what would come out of my pencil the next time I started drawing. 

If you're feeling this way I've got two tools that often help me out of such a place. First, I'll look back at my library of work. Usually there's something in there I'm proud of. I'll look at that piece(s) as proof that I can make good things, and that I'm not a failure as an artist. I may have made a particular piece that felt like a failure, but the journey that I'm on is not a failure and has been in fact full of breakthroughs and good art. 

Or (as in the case of this particular bout of art-doubt), I'll make a new piece simply to prove to myself that I still got it in me. I had been reading The Chronicles of Prydain over Christmas break and wanted to do my own version of the the pig Hen Wen. I was afraid to start, but I knew I had to make something to remind myself that I was still a good artist, and that my work was not done. So to rid myself of doubt I drew a pig. And unlike the horse, I was really pleased with the result. The shapes felt strong. The lines looked good. And I felt like I could do (and had done) good art again. 

hen wen, pig of the future

This piece did not do as well on Instagram, but it really doesn't matter. Its primary purpose was to be an encouragement and ebenezer (stone of remembrance) for a time when I thought I didn't have it in me anymore. Art is a struggle, but God is faithful. And here on the Roost I want to be candid about that. It's a fact disguised by social media, which perhaps isn't really the best place to discuss it anyways. But as they say, the struggle is real. I've been rewatching this four-part documentary on Miyazaki which is a timely reminder that even geniuses like him can feel despondent, wracked by frustration and doubt. He says "I can feel it every day, the limit of my ability," which is just how I feel while working on my thesis film. Sure, he's talking about the limits of his 70-year-old physical ability, but as a new artist I feel my limits of my artistic ability - particularly in animation, drawing on model, and rendering. Part of the frustration/joy of pursuing an art is that there's always more to learn and improve. Which means that if you're honestly seeking to grow, you may often find yourself bumping up against your limits. I've definitely been encountering my own recently, and I'm hoping for that breakthrough moment when I can move beyond them into something better. But for now, all we can do is show up each day ready to work, and ready to fight. 

Into the breach!

-dh

Music Recommendation: I've been listening to Think About You a bunch recently - it's perfect for biking across campus, thinking about that special someone, or any other time you're feeling really happy.

Baby's First Storyboard Meeting - and Other Happenings

that's me in the red circle

Hello hello Bloggerfolk!

I'm back with some exciting news - I've just participated in my first story meeting ever :) After years of dreaming and reading about Cartoon Network story meetings where they pitch boards and hash out story details, it was fun to be in a similar kind of meeting - with my very own boards being screened in front of this handsome crowd! Still not totally sure if I'm allowed to say what I've been working on with this team, but I will say that's it's directed by Mike Nawrocki and based on his children's book series... so feel free to do more research if you just REALLY gotta know. I boarded about a third of it which is probably around 6 minutes of runtime altogether! This was my first time seeing my work alongside Naomi Bethel's and Tim Hodge's amazing boards, all with temp voices and music! And it's the first time many friends and classmates have seen my boards at all, and their kind comments have done much to reduce my imposter syndrome. (Even while the drawings remind me how much I still need to work on my draftsmanship... oh dear). I'm looking forward to seeing what my drawings look like when lovingly animated and paired with production backgrounds. Aside from GBR it will be my first time experiencing that too!

Oh and that character design that I was heavily hinting about in that last post is done! Here she is:

featuring the universal skating rink carpet

I've been listening to '80s music all summer so even though there were a few other concepts I almost chose, this one stuck! It was also a good chance to design a female animal character, which I don't often do. And honestly, I've been a little afraid to. There's such a wealth of offputting, uncanny, and flat-out-bad art of female animal characters and even icons of the genre still manage to mess it up (most notably the Blacksad comics). For this character I looked a lot at Shiyoon Kim's Gazelle designs from Zootopia - one of the few female characters that uses natural animal shapes and can still play the part of a stylish pop star. 

And even I messed up - there's a fully inked drawing of this character (that you will never see :) ) where she basically looked like an animal head on a human body. Gross. Somehow this alternate pose just worked better, and allowed me to show off her animal elements more - namely that long neck and hooves. And I would be remiss not to mention John Loren, who saved the rendering and color of this piece with a crazy good paintover(s). In a period where I've become increasingly frustrated with my rendering ability, I'm thankful for someone like John who can step in and make my life a little easier and my work a lot better. It's a big reason why I, now more than ever, recommend getting into a solid art-community, whether at a school or on Discord! 

In other recent news I've fallen hard for Lackadaisy, and binge-read the entire thing last weekend. Like many of my other tastes and interests I've stumbled upon it perhaps a decade too late, but I'm here for the party (which in this case means bootlegging cats in an alternate 1920s St. Louis). With all the buzz about a recent animated film coming up I figured it was finally time to test out the source material, and it did not disappoint. In particular, the dialogue is so smartly written - I don't know if it's due to jargon of the period or just the writer/artist's impressive command of vocabulary, but these cats talk GOOD. They also have great acting and expressions, especially for animal characters. And did I mention it's a story starring animal characters? So it's probably no surprise that I like it so much ;)

And this weekend I got to go on a little trip to Burgess Falls, actually my second time going there, but I don't think I've talked about it here before. Some friends and I had a lot of fun relaxing in the creek and small waterfalls, all while trying to avoid the rangers who were very much against that idea. We also explored Cookeville, which I've driven past dozens of times yet never bothered to visit. And who knew it contained this amazing neon sign!

so retro in the best way possible

As my friends Parker and Olivia can attest to, I stared at this mesmerizing sign for probably much too long on multiple occasions. And we were even blessed by a nighttime thunderstorm which when combined with this sign made me feel like I was in a noir movie. All that was missing was a trenchcoat, a haunted backstory, and a dozen egg creams... 

What else have I been up to? I went to church in person for the first time since quarantine started. We had a (very small) welcome back party for a friend who got out of quarantine/isolation. And I've been going to the farmer's market every Tuesday night! Lots of nice little things amongst these lingering tides of quarantine. 

I've also been catching little bits of Lightbox Online when they've fallen through the cracks of my otherwise packed schedule - Nicholas Kole's been doing some great talks and I plan on listening to the recordings over the next few weeks as I draw. And speaking of drawing... that's probably what I should be doing right now. I've got a pile of color thumbnails and the ever looming work of thesis still to tackle. But thanks for letting me share my decidedly niche interests in animal character design and tales of feline bootlegger-y with you today! 

Hope you're continuing to weather these times with grace, courage, and creativity!

-dh

Music Reccomendation: Aedan recently showed me Josh Ritter's "Be of Good Heart" and it's so good I cry almost every time I hear it. Vintage, autumnal, with well placed... oboes?? anyways it's real good

More Ducks. Further Tales!!

Did I hear somebody say MORE DUCKTALES??? No? Well this is awkward. Cause I kiiinda already went and made more fanart and whoops!

Now it's on the internet. No undoing it now.

Yes, I've still been watching Ducktales, though less recklessly now. Maybe I'll slow down a bit and try to savor the last few episodes before I launch myself back out into the Show Void (or just rewatch more Ducktales).

I've just come out of a kinda weird week - I had the chance to spend each morning watching my brother and his classmates deliver their senior thesis speeches (online, of course) which was good change of pace but a killer for my productivity. I felt like I was mastering quarantine two weeks ago - making a piece for the Character Design Challenge, exercising, and even taking an online class on perspective drawing (my old enemy). But last week (although I did complete all my major goals, barely) I still felt a little off each day, maybe due to starting work around 2 PM or maybe even burnout from the week before. And it didn't help that my final assignment for the perspective class came up pitifully short of my expectations, despite all the cubes and planes I had been drawing the week before. Comparing these weeks (in addition to watching Ferris Bueller's Day Off) has led me to consider what really is the best way to use all this quarantine time. On one hand, this is an incredibly rare time in American history where productivity isn't a priority. We're encouraged to stay home, dabble in new hobbies, and watch brothers give amazing speeches on astounding topics. What a gift! But the competitive side of me considers how much more I could get ahead if I use this time to better myself and my craft. Get off Twitter, read quality literature. Stay inside, and take online classes. Maybe I can use this time to set myself up better for a career. Maybe I can exit this summer/covid break with a defined and impressive resume of achievements and learning. Surely that's what the people I'll be competing with for jobs are doing? If I don't will I fall behind? Even when life gets put on hold, the worries of someone aiming for an artistic career keep on going :P

And as I wrote a few weeks ago in this post, there are better and worse ways to spend leisure time, but can you leisure so hard that it becomes work? Whether in times of quarantine or no, I strive to use each day wisely. And as in most things, the wise way is probably the intermediate between slothfulness and busy-ness. I've noticed the days are passing by almost as quickly as they do in college (which is a super busy time for me). So maybe it's time to find ways to appreciate the moment. But I also do earnestly think that this is a great time to create, and learn, and (just possibly) draw in accurate perspective. That last one may not happen, but I have HIGH, 3 POINT HOPES. And so I'll keep doing those things too. I've been trying to read good books and watch good movies (which at this point means Return of the King and Kung Fu Panda 2) which feels like a good mix of leisure and learning - filling the mind with good things and experiences that I can draw on once this whole thing comes to a much anticipated end.

Speaking of that glorious moment, I cannot WAIT to go to a zoo. Is this just me? Cause I really miss it. Drawing animals, the earthy and somewhat bad smell, the themed areas and architecture - I am so ready to get back into it all. Who knows when that will happen...

But until then, and hopefully after, I will be here, rambling about things and hoping they're at least somewhat helpful to you :) Oh and before I go here's that Character Design Challenge piece I was talking about earlier:

a big thanks to nurses, past and present!

May you continue to weather these times with grace, courage, and creativity!
-dh

A Little Win :)

Hey! What's that? That piece next to the bear butt? 

IT'S MY ART. 

I'm featured on THE Character Design Challenge Tumblr!!!!! I'm just so blown away right now. It's just crazy to see something of mine up there in between so many heavy hitters! The little capybara that could. I'm so proud of her :)

I feel like I'm frequently seeking validation of my art skills. And even though I try to toughen my skin, every internship rejection and Character Design Challenge loss (that Fenrir piece lost btw) still hurts and reminds me of how far I have to go in my art journey. That I'm just not good enough yet. That I'm not to the point where I can consistently make professional or remarkable work. But then something like this happens! And I'm not saying that this little win proves that I'm some great artist or am industry level yet, but it is a little win! And I'll take that little win! And share it here on the Roost, as is the custom :)

Hope you're finding those little wins amidst this time of quarantine. 
-dh

The Binding of Fenrir

Hello again! I'm back, and much sooner than you expected, no?

The past few posts here on the Roost have been very much life-updatey, which is totally fine. There is a lot of life stuff going on right now that I feel a great need to set down on digital paper. But I claim to be the proprietor of an art blog, so I think it's time to talk about some art as well! To be honest, talking about the art/philosophy side of things scares me a little bit more, cause it takes more thought and preparation to write, and sometimes I just don't want to put in that kind of effort :P

But today is different. Cause today I have something to show! So let me give you the pitch and origin story for this piece I'm calling The Binding of Fenrir -

It's a little bit more grim than your average Daniel Haycox piece, and perhaps not as grim as it should be (I'm aware of my limitations, somewhat) but I'm pleased to present it to you and to have made a substantial piece of personal work despite being home with the ever-present temptation of the Nintendo Switch. For those wondering, it took about four days of sporadic work.

This piece is my entry in March's Character Design Challenge. For those unfamiliar, the Challenge is an international contest/facebook group where everyone can contribute one design a month based on a particular theme. Although I don't anticipate becoming a character designer someday (many others are much more gifted for that task) the Challenge provides some helpful structure to my personal work and a reason to create other than "just making something cool." Which, ironically, was essentially my motivation for making this piece. I've given up the idea of winning the challenge - I have no idea how they judge this thing, winners are sometimes far better and other times about as good as what I can produce (I'm aware of my limitations, somewhat). But the Challenge nevertheless provides an arena where I can display work in a community, and that is still worthwhile in my book :)

The Challenge theme for this month was Norse Gods - which I was excited to try. Despite my familiarity with the myths, I don't think I've ever actually drawn one. Due to my recent study of Anna Scott's work and canines (seriously, I'm working on an uncommon amount of dog projects right now) you probably could have guessed that I wanted to do a take on Fenrir, the monstrous wolf doomed to gobble up Odin and be A Pretty Big Deal In General during Ragnarok. But I wanted to depict him at his lowest moment, when he's finally bound by the gods using the magic ribbon Gleipnir. It's this really cool contrast between a delicate, unassuming ribbon that's holding back the strongest, baddest monster. And although that's where I began, the emotional element of the piece started to become about betrayal. Even though Fenrir probably would have eaten Odin anyways (that's the problem with prophecies) I imagine that the gods' betrayal and treachery is actually what cemented the badness in Fenrir's heart. This idea runs through Neil Gaiman's telling of the myth, which I referenced a lot while making this piece. Although the story should be a moment of triumph over a monster, Gaiman's telling is pervaded by sadness, especially because he builds up a friendship between the god Tyr and Fenrir. (That's Tyr's hand in Fenrir's mouth btw. Hard to recover from something like that.)

There were several things about Gaiman's telling that I could not use, and I took significant artistic license in general when concepting the piece. For one, Gaiman describes the ribbon as nearly invisible, which would obviously not be a great pick for a visual representation. I chose a light pink ribbon instead because it more directly communicated the delicate idea I was going for. Also, Fenrir should have been bound into the ground, not hung, but I felt like the hanging symbolized Fenrir's helplessness in this moment a bit better.

And from there I was off to the races! And by that I mean the incredibly daunting task that is Making the Thing. I tried to find some sad music to listen to while I drew, but my music taste is so incredibly upbeat that the closest thing I could find in any of my playlists was Jess Ray's "Humble Heart." So I listened to that a couple times and then just tried to make do with other stuff.

I've been in an interesting place with regards to style recently, and I wanted this piece to be a real step forward into something new. I've been most influenced by Saira Vargas recently which has been a huge help to my art, but also leaves me feeling like I ought to branch out and do more detailed, rendered work. So I've been studying Anna Scott, who has such a natural sense of detail and texture without losing simplicity. In particular she has these glorious wolf characters with such rich and subtle hair textures - which you may very likely see some callbacks to in this piece.

The problem is that rendering terrifies me. I don't really know how to do it, and I'm worried about over-doing it. I also like knowing if the piece is going to work pretty early into the process, which is actually doable when working very simply. But rendering pushes that "yes, we're not gonna die" moment later into the process which is very uncomfy. But I can't stay in the boiled down, simplified zone forever. Time to move. So this piece ended up becoming a fusion of Kole, Vargas, and Scott influences, which hopefully produced something very Haycox by the end - but you'll be the best judge of that. I've prepared a couple graphs to show what I mean:

It also does this:

Which maaay prove a problem as I try to enter the industry. I just love the simplicity of TV and the richness of feature design! And perhaps in personal work like this I don't need to try to fit myself into one of the two hirable boxes, but just explore a little and figure out what the Haycox style should look like. And draw some wolves with dude's hands in their mouths. Cause I guess that's what I do now. That's my brand. 

Just kidding. Style's a weird thing, and the best metaphor I've found for it comes from a Nicholas Kole interview in Character Design Quarterly:

"I like to think of artistic style in the same way as dress-sense: with clothes, you give yourself permission to go through phases. You might try new looks as your tastes change, and shed old age-inappropriate items as you grow. All the while there will be colors, cuts, and looks that you continually gravitate towards even as things change, things you just know feel 'like you.'"

I think about this a lot when it comes to discussions of my style or others', and hopefully it's a helpful metaphor for you too! A lot of people stress about style but if you see it as something natural and already a part of you, then you can focus more on nurturing and growing it without a big sense of urgency. Also, Nicholas, if you read this blog, let me know and I'll try to avoid so many fanboy moments in the future :P That's one of the problems with writing for the internet... you just have no idea where this stuff lands! 

Hope this post finds you well, weathering these times with grace, courage, and creativity.

-dh

P.S. Comments should be working now on this blog, let me know if y'all run into more issues. 

THE MARCH 4 ROUNDUP: yee haw

Hey bloggerfolk! 

Been a while since I visited the Roost. Looks like I'm going to average about a post a month this year, and that's ok. As long as that pace is due a good kind of busy-ness rather than just slothfulness. And boy have I been busy! But since the functional animation lab on campus is currently an asbestos danger zone (one of the not-fun parts of sharing space in a 50+ year-old science building) and the cintiqs in the other lab (yes, we now have two labs!) are more buggy than an ant farm, it seems as good a time as any to stay in my room and write. Since last post was a nice venture into the philosophical, this one will probably be more life update-y and art share-y! 

First - I may have mentioned before that I'm directing a short film now?! So exciting. It's based on my storyboarding final from last semester which you can check over on that Storyboard Portfolio tab. Since my end goal dream job would be showrunning for TV, it's been a great experience to lead a team and make some cartoons. While learning to cope with a TV-length production schedule! And by that I mean that it is SHORT. We're going from storyboards to final film in about 2.5 months, to meet our nearly divine mandate to finish it for the 5 Minute Film Festival here on campus. It's been great to see the team really rally and make some amazing stuff: Aedan Peterson crushed it on the background art, and Jon/Joel/Hayley E./Lorna have been making some incredible animation. It's the first time I've seen my boards transformed into something bigger and better and it's amazing to watch! It's also incredibly humbling because I feel like most of my non-directorial contributions aren't measuring up at the moment. I've been trying to animate this one shot for the past couple weeks and am feeling super rusty :( I think this whole thing is also causing me a lot of background anxiety?? I just get this gross feeling in my stomach sometimes and I don't really know why. But I think it's because I want to make this film really good and really on time and those things don't always go hand in hand. But we will do it! And I will recover my animation mojo! And you will see this film on March 26th! I'll probably tease it on Instagram pretty soon but since you guys read the blog you're getting this info first!

Overall the semester has been really frontloaded and March is the time when things will finally start to wrap up. I already wrapped on a month long comic coloring gig (I'm doing freelance now! Yay :D) I'm nearing the end of internship applications - really hoping/praying for the best this summer. And as I mentioned earlier the short film will be complete by the end of the month too. I'm looking forward to having time for my other classes again and actually being able to do some meaningful work on my senior film independent study. I've discovered that one man cannot serve two short film masters and so my senior film has been unfortunately pushed to the backburner... 

Over the past few months I've gone into survival/going through the motions zone to get stuff done and it's not been particularly fun. I'm not opposed to a solid routine, but it's hard to make those special college memories when your weekends are filled with internship apps and long hours in the lab... But perhaps this is a season of preparation so that I can have some really cool experiences this April and beyond. Cause I can't get an internship without applying. And I can't get a short film without months of work :P And perhaps this glum pre-spring time is the perfect opportunity to get that kinda stuff knocked out. And the end of the tunnel will be here soon enough. 

Some good news - I'll doing some official stuff for Zeldathon! (That's a dream list item, in case you forgot). They put out a call for artists a few weeks ago and they like my stuff, so I'll be making a few pieces for them that you can win if you donate! I'm very excited. 

I'm now an official "Featherhead" which means I'm officially approved to talk to anyone and everyone about the upcoming re-release of The Wingfeather Saga. The new edition of the book series features the work of two of my favorite illustrators (Joe Sutphin and Nicholas Kole) supporting the epic tale told by Andrew Peterson. My feathers were initially a little ruffled by having a childhood favorite get such a significant update (I'm rather nostalgic for the old look) but after seeing the new books in person I think it's for the best! So if you like fantasy, fangs, and getting emotionally invested in the lives of characters then check it out! It's a great read aloud book if you've got a family or another group of people that you read to. And it's a great brothers story! Which means I CRY.

Also this past weekend was our big guest speaker weekend for the semester, featuring animator/showrunner Bruce W. Smith! His Friday night talk was very lively and full of great stories - he kept having to censor them due to there being "kids in the audience" which made the stories even more mysterious since we couldn't have all the details... As animation director on Space Jam he had a lot of fascinating stories about the basketball players who were on set and his infamous match with Michael Jordan. 

bruce smith

A couple days before Bruce's visit, Professor Tom had offered us the chance to get our drawings critiqued by Bruce if we did a character design based on a certain prompt. The prompt was something about a 35-year-old bartender who was losing his edge but still thought he's "got it." This was a kinda awkward prompt since I don't think 35 is really that old and also because Lipscomb students shouldn't be very familiar with bartenders (no student is supposed to drink here. No matter your age.) But I still wanted to get my drawing in front of Bruce. So I gave it a shot! ;) I tried to do a human at first but was getting frustrated with the design/pose. And I wasn't having fun. So I hopped back into my fun comfort zone and drew an animal character! I was looking a lot a James Wood's stuff here, and his spontaneous sense of linework - something I've been trying to work on since my final lines often look very dead. 

At the Saturday workshop this drawing was on screen for approximately 20 seconds. :( Most of the drawings did not get a critique (not really sure why). And mine was one of those drawings. BUT when it was flashed on screen the crowd reaction was great! And Bruce commented that he liked it. So critique accomplished? Regardless, it's given me more courage to do these kind of quick designs for the Character Design Challenge (CDC) and really get some non-fanart work out into the world. On Sunday night I was even able to get jammin' and finish a piece for Februrary's CDC which I'm really proud of! But I'm not going to post it here yet - sorry for the tease :P

Nashville actually just got hit by a major tornado two nights ago and it feels weird posting my stock of light-hearted fun-times art when social media is appropriately mourning the destruction that's happened across our fair city. I'm ok, Lipscomb's fine, and today was a beautiful spring day. But there's a lot of photos on the news that are quite sobering - including the damage to a favorite hangout spot, the Soda Parlor. And one of our dear animation professors, Eric Stars, was near the worst of the storm and while his house is ok, he's still having to sort through a lot of other details. It's just not something you ever expect to happen, even though we usually have at least one tornado warning each spring. 

So stay safe, bloggerfolk! And stay inspired! I'll be back soon with that Character Design Challenge post I promised, but until then I wish you strength for your daily struggles and victories. 

-dh



Music Rec: 
Louie Zong just released his jazz album which I've been looking forward to for a long time. I don't know enough about music to really say what it's about but... it's got all the good and complex jazz stuff with the unique Louie instrumentation that updates it for a geek like me. Hope that makes sense :P

Art Flow - Alebrije, Ghibli, and Generally Pleasant Stuff

Hey everyone,
I've been an particularly strange mood recently and have needed somewhere to gush, which as usual happens to be the Roost!

 I feel like I've been in the opposite of an art block recently, which is very weird. No one ever talks about this kind of thing, and I don't even know if there is a word for it. But it feels like riding high on a wave or simultaneously eating and cooking something delicious. Art flow maybe? I can't remember ever feeling like this before and so I thought I'd try to capture some of it here in words before it drifts away. 

One reason is that I've been making a lot of art recently, and mostly stuff that I enjoy doing while being uncommonly surprised by the number of pleasant outcomes. I'm working under a schedule that feels motivating but still allows time for rest, and I've been doing a lot of personal work. The Ipad has definitely made doing good looking (read: colored and fussed with) personal work easier, but I'm more pleased with the fact that I actually got something of portfolio quality done that wasn't for school. I'm still working on the discipline needed to do high quality work that isn't for a professor - while working on other projects that are assigned by a professor. I'm just not super great at keeping personal deadlines when there's no immediate consequences for breaking them and when there's Smash Bros to be played...

But I did it! I was accepted into the Character Design Challenge group (yay) and contributed to this month's theme, "Alebrije Creatures." The prompt promised the chance to draw animals and also do a creature design, which was good since I've been putting "creature design" on a bunch of resumes despite not having any actual designs to show yet. I immediately hit on the idea of a character that was ethereal, haunting, and dark while still being elegant and not-totally-evil - kind of a mysterious beauty kind of thing. And although I tried other options, nothing seemed to work as well as a fantastical peacock. Along the way I added in some crane, magpie jay, and luna moth elements, keeping a crescent moon motif as a central "beat" of the design. 

The pose was directly inspired by a sketch I made at the zoo! It's fun that God allows us to play with his creation on paper - an act of "sub-creation" as Tolkien would put it. Like legos made of animal parts. EW GROSS IMAGE BUT TRUE

less gross image (top left pose)

 first drawings where I felt like I hit on something good

figuring out motifs and floof

It didn't win anything, but I'm hoping the challenge will still feature it on their social media! And even if it doesn't, I'll at least have one legitimate creature design for my portfolio.

And that's not all! I've been doing a some various fanarts, caricatures for the upcoming show at Lipscomb, and life drawings. I'm also helping with background art for the Juniors' short film, working in Audrey Wagnon's wonky style adaptation of Frederick Gardner. Most of this stuff will be posted soon here and on Instagram.

Portrait of a Cursed Young Businessman

All this art has been especially fueled by the enormous amount of inspiration I've been digesting over the past month. I'm still on a big Breath of the Wild kick, which continues to be a source of wonder and exploration and fanart. I'm actually thinking about making a BotW art book for sale full of digital "plein airs" of Hyrule and some sketches at the end. I think it would be a fun project and have a chance at selling copies? I really want to table at conventions but currently don't have anything better than stickers to sell. Let me know if this sounds cool! And for those who care or just like to make fun of me about this, Ambrosia is still doing fine and running swiftly, though I was a little peeved that the game designers have made it impossible for her to traverse several major parts of the map. "Open world" does not always mean open to horses. 

And as a result of BotW, I've been in a very Ghibli mood too, which conveniently coincided with my History of Animation class studying Miyazaki. I went to watch Howl's Moving Castle for the first time, at the theater by myself. Although it sounds lonely, it was actually a very peaceful and independent experience, and it was nice to have some time to think upon the movie before feeling obligated to talk about it with others. It's a very delightful and gentle movie, made most enjoyable by the characters of Howl and Calcifer. I guess it's odd to call a movie featuring an air raid "gentle," but the overall impression and pacing of the film felt that way, and it was definitely less epic in scale than Spirited Away or Mononoke. I watched the English dub, and Calcifer's comedy and voice acting is so spot on and consistently funny. Which merited a drawing inspired by Miyazaki's watercolor work:

After watching the documentary The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness I've grown even more impressed by Miyazaki and his work. What dedication! And humorous/insightful old man curmudgeonry!

I've rediscovered the artist Ieafy and have been doing a lot of work in her style - I love the colors and how unapologetically bright and digital it is. She has such a unique eye for light and color that I'd like to be able to learn. And her Zelda pieces are very cool and very topical for me right now. 

Ieafy's Zelda art

I've used the caricature show as a place to experiment in Ieafy's style which means I can't yet show any of my work here, but they will arrive in about a week! And of course I haven't forgotten Nicholas Kole - his work continues to be a guiding star and the base that I mix all other style inspirations into to create something that feels right. But recently I've been listening more to Kole rather than looking at his art. He had a great podcast with Bobby Chiu which inspired me to go hunting for other interviews with the man which led me to one that he did with a concept development club. It's fun to hear him talk to an audience specifically of people my age! I've been learning more about Kole's early and low points in his career which has been reassuring, since as an ALMOST JUNIOR the future seems very close and scary. I most definitely expect the first years out of school to be rough, but it's nice to hear from a fellow Christian that things will work out for the good! I'm also now an official patron of his Jellybots project, meaning I'm now able to support him in a more helpful way than my previous Major Fanboying (but I will still Majorly Fanboy).

I'm not too worried about my style right now, though I do feel that group of artists that inspire me is becoming more clarified in my mind. Although I always want to be improving, I do worry that I'll lose some of myself if I draw in a studio style for too long. It's been a thought on my mind as I work in another's style for that short film project and hope to be at a studio sometime soon. I guess I'll just return to these artists again and begin the discovery process anew!

All of this has been very bright, very wonder-full stuff which I think has helped contribute to my good art mood recently. I plan to savor it and remember it when art block visits again. I just feel very full, which helps to make the art spill out more easily! It feels like a good balance of making and consuming, which is rare for me. All my internship applications are sent, and while I have not gotten any yeses, I still feel that God has been incredibly faithful. I got to pretend to be animation faculty and go to a recruiting dinner with Tom! I'm on the cusp of getting my first commissions ever! Spring is here! With finals around the corner, I hope I can ride this wave at least until May, and hopefully further.

I hope your heart is warm, if not, watch some Ghibli!
dh