The final countdown

This is my 'piece de resistance' from last year's Background Painting course. For this assignment, both the layout and the colour key were given, so it is really nothing more than an extremely neat copy. Well, it is good to know that, should I fail as an artist, I can still start a career as a fraudster or a xerox machine.

Halfway this summer I finally got my grading chart. I passed Life Drawing, Cartooning and Storyboarding, high passed Animation Basics, but was really surprised to learn that I high passed Layout and passed with honours for Storytelling. To sum it up, I passed my Second Year in Animation.

Next Monday I hope to start my Third Year, with an intensive two week course in Digital Background Painting. The other courses for this term are Life Drawing, Animal Drawing, Character Design, Animation Basics, Drawing Hands and Feet, and Drawing for Animation. Let's see what happens.

Looking back on Noda

It felt like a place of magic, and I was not really surprised that it was hard to shoot pictures there, as it was dimly lit and I could not stand where I had wanted to stand, to get the composition right. Years after, I decided to turn this Atago shrine from Noda, Japan, into an animation background, and I was quite happy with the result. Here you can see the original picture, the rough and clean layout and, finally, the gouache.