Illustration: 1915 rue de la Visitation

 Finished another building I see on my walk to the gym. I will do the one next door as well soon, it's more interesting building. As usual, I HATED this until I was almost done. Then I was fine with it. maybe it says something about not giving up or maybe I'm just not looking at the process of doing these in a positive way. I like the end results and I guess that is what matters. 

Poster Project: The Day the Earth Stood Still (finished!)

 

After about 35 hours of work this poster is done. I thought I was done earlier but I rewatched the film and noticed some robot details I missed. After drawing the elements in Affinity Designer I moved them to Affinity Publisher and composed the poster, added the title and other information. I made a 1940's- 50's style earth that was to go under the hand of Klaatu but it didn't look right and didn't really add to poster for me. Gort, the robot, was a bigger challenge than I thought as he is smooth, reflective the costume lacks some details, his superman undies always look a little goofy to me but I knw why they are there from a practical costume making viewpoint. 

I would like to make a "war of the Worlds" poster from the George Pal movie but I have come up with a decent way to pull it off. I might have to make a 3D model of the spaceship, the creature, the martian probe... maybe all of that and work out my composition when I see what looks good or not. 

Poster Project: The Day the Earth Stood Still

 I have been drawing a local house recently and, as always, until I reach I certain point I HATE it. Every single house drawing has been like this. To give myself a break I became obsessed with doing a poster for The Day the Earth Stood Still. I am drawing the elements separately and will arrange them in Affinity Publisher when they are drawn. I am using only vectors in Affinity Designer. I would like to maybe try a realistic portrait in Designer and all or mostly vectors and this Michael Rene shows me... I'm not there yet. I do see my getting there though so it's a good step in that direction. 

Below is an "Xray" view of the drawing that shows the lines some light greyscale but not the shading and tones. some invisible elements like the mesh show the entire mesh of that before I distorted it. This took 15 hours to drawn and the Xray image makes it look WAY too easy! 

I would like the poster to have an art deco feel to it and I had a composition in mind but after an online search I saw someone else had done something very close to what I was thinking so I will have to come up with something else. 

Gort the robot will be next. The saucer is already done. I still have to decide on the logo design and how much information like cast, studio etc I want on the poster. 

Animation project_ The Paranomral Challenge

 Lots of issues came up over the last week on this project. Rendering any animation crashed Blender or worse, the entire OS. I planned to use the less precise but much faster Eevee render engine but it looked pretty bad. This was a disappointment after all the new improvements to it and having found it excellent on my last animated short. Cycles, the more precise engine was going to take 14 minutes a frame over the 30 seconds for Eevee but I managed to find ways to cut that down to 1.5 minutes a frame and they look pretty good I think. 

Before I can go too much further I have to record the voices. I hope to do at least my part this week and set up a date with Mike to do his. I think the delivery box is a too smooth so I might rework that and I have written what will be a VERY complicated site gag that will involve going from 3D to 2D and I have only the slightest idea how to do that. 

Festival win: The Hound at the Dunwich horror festival.

My film, The Hound, won an award at the Dunwich Horror fest for September! 

Animation project: The Paranormal Challenge

 

Working on my second Blender film. I hope to make a few funny shorts about a skeptic offering 200 000$ to anyone who can prove they have supernatural powers. Of course they are all crazy and try his patience. The first I have the somnambulist for the silent classic "Cabinet of Dr Calligari" predicting the skeptic will die before dawn and they have to sit there all night to see if he is right or not. 

I have spent a good month on the street and interior set. It has taught me more about using Blender and I hope will get me farther along in using the program. 

photography: Canal lachine

Got on the bike before sunrise so I could be further along my path when the sun came up. This lets me take morning light photos on some of the prettier parts of the bike trail outside the city.I have a light for the bike but it's not exactly the safest thing to do as the trails often have hard to see potholes and sometimes there are other cyclists without lights you can't see until they are about to hit you. Lately there isn't anyone else out there, which I prefer so this was pretty quiet and peaceful.

Do you need a boat to get to the other boat?

I love black and white and there was also still a light fog even an hour into my ride so I was able to capture some of that. You can see light rays coming through the trees in one of the photos. 

Aprt from the morning light, another reason I wanted to leave early was the last week the wind has been very light and the canal is often like a mirror. 

 

Illustration: Acrobat de la rue 02

 The last acrobat drawing in a while unless something weird happens. Didn't get much in the way of references this summer. There are a few acrobatic acts I would love to draw but unless I can get acrobats to perform for me I don't think I'll see any of that in the wild as the free shows get shorter and less acrobatic as the years go on. 

Drawn in procreate, I added some tone to the pants for not real reason but I like how it looks. The curly hair was fun. 

Illustration: Morning Clouds

 So this is a nothing painting really. it is sort of something that would be the background of a more complex painting normally. I was walking the dog and the sun was rising and there clouds were interesting to me me so I decided to paint them in Procreate, very free form and loose - a word never associated with my art! 

Illustration: pride dansers

 The boy is from this year, he was marching with the black and white drawing dancer I posted not long ago. The Drag on stilts was from last year. I have been unable to decide what to do with her. I started as a colour, then though maybe a loose watercolour but couldn't get into it then made a detailed outline and that is where it stands now.