Cut-out Animation.

I realized I used exclamation points in quite a few of my titles, so I decided I needed to tone it down a little with the excitement.
Not everything is that exciting.

So here is a cutout animation I had to do for homework. The materials used were thick, black construction paper and that blue tacky stuff you use to stick things up on the wall. I used the tacky stuff instead of string so I could do that thing I did at the end without having to create an entirely new arm.

This, for whatever reason, doesn't play from the beginning. The actual thing is about 21 seconds long, but this is only 14 seconds. The only thing you're missing is her walking in and sniffing the flower.
I'm convinced now that the issue is some sort of mis-communication between blogger and quicktime. I'm gonna experiment with that.

If I could have changed anything, I would have made her "AHH!" arms go a little faster, because right now they kinda look more like a hold up than her being scared. Also, I would've made the monster a little more movable.

My Muse #2

.I feel like it's time for another installment of "My Muse".

I wanted to save this one until a later date, but I'm on a kick right now and want to talk about it. Anyone more knowledgeable than me is more than welcome to jump in and correct me or whatever.

Today's muse is: 

Self portrait (1623)

Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598 - 1680), 17th-century Italian sculptor.

A Faun Teased by Children (1616-17)
Attributed to both Pietro and Lorenzo

Bernini was born on December 7th, 1598 in Naples, Italy. His father, Pietro Bernini, was also a sculptor. He never quite reached the same fame as his son, but he was still incredibly talented. As much as he may have denied it, Lorenzo learned a great deal from his father. Also, a lot of his collabourations with his father were more like "Here, now you try!" sorts of things until Lorenzo got the hang of it.

Since I'm not going to be talking about Pietro anymore, I'm going to go back to calling Lorenzo "Bernini". 

Bust of  Cardinal Richelieu (1641)

Bernini spent pretty much all of his adult life living in Rome, which is where you'll find most of his works. I believe he only ever left Rome once in his life, and that was to go to France in order to do a portrait bust of King Louis XIV. He really never had any desire to leave Rome, and would often require international patrons to send him portraits so that he could do the portrait bust in Rome, and then send it on out to whatever non-Roman destination it needed to reach.

As a person, Bernini was...interesting. He had what's known as a choleric temperament. For those who don't know what that means (like me pre-google), it's basically means that he was very energetic, liked to give orders, and was generally kind of high maintenance. He had a sizable sweet tooth, and he also really liked fruit. The biography I read on him really stressed his love of fruit.
So you don't understand just how much this man loved fruit.

Apparently Bernini also suffered from chronic migraines. That's the exact thing you want to have when you're a sculptor working in a loud studio with glorious sunshine reflecting off the bright, white marble. He apparently had a bit of a temper on him. I can't, for the life of me, figure out why this man would have a short fuse. Just give the poor thing an Excedrin and an apple. However, since such miraculous drugs didn't exist back in Bernini's time, I feel like his next hobby probably helped him with those migraines:

He had a healthy libido.

Bust of Costanza Bonarelli (1636-37)

His most famous lover was a woman by the name of Costanza Bonarelli. She even got her own portrait bust, which remained in the Bernini household long after their fling came to a (bloody) end. Costanza was the wife of one of the workers in Bernini's work shop. So really, Bernini had no business sleeping with her. Neither did Luigi, his brother, which is how the entire thing came to an end. When Bernini found out those two were sleeping together, he took that "I'M GOING TO KILL YOU." thing siblings typically do a little too seriously and almost killed his brother. Costanza's face got slashed as was apparently not too out of the norm for adulterous women...? The pope had enough of the nonsense and forced Bernini to grow up and get married.

Now, aside from the general public, Bernini had a rival. Borromini was an architect at the time, also competing for work in Rome. Normally, sculptors and architects don't really cross paths too often. However, Bernini didn't just sculpt (he dabbled in architecture amongst other things), and therefore was competition for Borromini. It wasn't the sort of rivalry where they'd duke it out in the middle of Rome, but they certainly took their turns taking shots at one another.

"The Ecstasy of St. Theresa" (1647-52)
...I mean, just look at how crappy it is.

Bernini also had a habit of being super critical of his own work. In response to what is probably one of his most famous pieces, "The Ecstasy of St. Teresa", he regarded it as the "least bad" work he'd done.

Least bad.

Not "this is good."

Least.

Bad.

Because it wasn't complete crap, but it was still crap. 

Hopefully I didn't lose anyone there with my sarcasm.

It's getting to be much later than I thought it was, so I'm going to round up this post. I belive, just by looking at the few things I showed you, why he's one of my muses.

Even though I'm not entirely sure how well I'd get along with him as a person, I still really admire his talent and the hard work he put into making all these things.

He's just absolutely ridiculous and I'm obsessed.

I could honestly gush for days, which is why I was kind of sparse on the images. There are just far too many good ones to choose from.

Rotoscope!

So as I was perusing my computer, looking for nifty things to show you guys so you don't think this blog is dead, I discovered this rotoscope from last semester!

I know. Everything is "last semester". Not for long.
Anyway, the scene is from "White Christmas". No matter what I do to try to fix it, the audio always cuts out at the end. I've settled on blaming quicktime and shaking an angry fist at it. The word it cuts off is "sisters".

Hopefully blogger is kinder to the quality than another website was. I tried to upload it, but the quality was absolutely terrible.
So if the quality of this is awful, as in, it's all blurry and crap, I don't know what that is. It looks lovely when I play it in quicktime and it looked lovely when I played it for the class.
Which was also in quicktime, actually.
I feel like there's just something about quicktime...

The messiness of the colouring and stuff was a style choice.


EDIT:
Upon uploading two different versions of this, I have come to terms with the fact I need to save it as something other than an .mov and hope it looks better. For now, though, it's gonna look like this. Once I've figured out how to make it look better, I'll upload a better quality video.

A personal project!

The other night, I suddenly found myself really inspired to draw a viking.
He's not incredibly historically accurate.
As a line drawing, he actually really reminded me of St. John the Baptist, so I've been calling him "Johnny".
St. John the Viking.

He's not done yet, but I do have some progress shots (excuse my cell phone-quality images):

I tend to jump around a lot when I work on things-- especially portraits or other fine arts pieces. I find that when I work on one specific area for too long, eventually it all just sorta...looks the same.

When he's completed and if I'm satisfied with him, I might get prints made so I can sell a few copies while keeping the original as a portfolio piece.

Fun with photos.

I am, in no way, a photographer.
However, I still enjoy having fun with photography. I had a couple of models who decided that sure, this would be a fun way to spend a Friday night.
I'm still getting used to this camera. It's (possibly obviously) not a DSLR and really seems to prefer outdoor, sunny weather over everything else. But that's why I'm still learning my way around it: so I can make it do my bidding.
Anyway, we set up a makeshift "studio" in my apartment by pinning a bed sheet over a doorway, shutting off all the lights, and using a lantern as a source of light. We did a few shots standing, then I brought out a stool and I found that the photos became less blurry.
I ran the photos through photoshop.
Unfortunately, my camera was still set on super small photos from when I did the gifs, so half of the photos are small (640 x 480). I caught the error and was able to make the other model's photos larger. I offered to reshoot the small photos, but she didn't mind.
So, without further ado, the photos:

Would it surprise anyone to find out I adore baroque art?

For those who don't get it: It's the lighting.
I really like dramatic, high-contrast lighting.

Figure Drawing (NSFW)

Every Tuesday, my school hosts a free figure drawing class. Tonight, as per professor's assignment, I went.
 I haven't had a figure drawing course in years (I transferred universities), so it was really awkward getting back into the swing of things. Showing you these drawings will reveal to you my greatest secret:

Feet and hands are the bane of my existence.

I'll definitely do more studies in regards to those parts of the anatomy, however, and then everything will be copacetic. I'd also like to go to these figure drawing sessions more often, but that's entirely dependent on my schedule.
Anyway, here we go!

First, five 2-minute poses:

Okay, so this one I completely botched.
I have no idea what my issue was.

Then came the two 5-minute poses:

She's looking down, and the stool was actually behind her.
I probably should have put more environment into this one.

Finally, two 10-minute poses:

STUPID, STUPID HEATER THING.