inspirations @inspir-art - Tumblr Blog

Digital Painting - Sanctus Arboria ~

Painting process I have recorded, to practice organic forms such as clouds and use of lighting. I have a devotion for trees, I see them as mystical creatures since childhood, it is very gratifying to paint them.

The music is “Beneath the Ice“ from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim!

kaijufluffs

I swear artists are magicians who have perfected their craft through time, patience, passion and the odd sacrifice of a small cup of tea to the art goblins.

euclase

I love your paintings and it took me ages to even believe they're paintings but if one zoooooooooooms in they'll see it in the hair or lashes. I mean, your pictures are so marvellous and perfect and everything I sat there for ages finding prove they're not photos. I'm 99% sure now. ;D The euclase defence squad is strong. Please don’t get haters close to you.

It’s so easy to ask for a closeup though I don’t understand haters

if you need to see just ask 💛

stringbing-deactivated20210318

Do you have any advice or tips for solo animators (students, hobbyists, freelancers, etc.)? Especially when it comes to workflow and how to get things done in a timely manner when you don't have a whole team to help you animate?

Hey there! Sorry I haven’t been able to get this sooner - I’ve been very occupied in my work lately.

I totally understand where you’re coming from though. Its hard to get a lot of work done in a timely manner by yourself when you’re pretty much your own boss. I suffer from this still, and from my experience - I do have thoughts to share. I’m going to talk about both freelance work, and doing personal work.So here are my top advices on being professionally independent!

1. Set yourself a deadline, use special events as reference Set a day on when you want/need to finish a certain project. A lot of my friends use events, conventions, and exhibitions as deadline placeholders for their own work. My former mentor and teacher uses things like CTNx to showcase a 2D project he’s been working on so that he can garner thoughts, reviews, and get people interested to help fund future projects. Trust me, when its set on a special day, there’s more reason to finish the work you set yourself to.

2. Organize yourself workbook with a calender, a check list and notes Now that I think about it, I would not have been able to complete my previous shorts without setting myself a calender. You can make yourself a physical book (or an online excel) with a calender, and a checklist of things needed to finish during that day/week/month. Start crossing out the days that go by, and see if you are able to manage your goals. If you don’t make the quota, then its probably time to start thinking of ways to limit the work put into the next shots. That leads to my next point.

3. Understand your limitations, prioritize important parts In a lot of my animated work, there are shots that have high production value, and some that looked like it was clearly rushed. If your client gives you a sequence to animate, start thinking about shots that scream high quality, and then place the shots that don’t seem too important later on the list. For example, you might want to give yourself more time for a shot you feel will be highly difficult, and then less time for shots that can easily be done by you. If you’re still unsure about how to organize this, talk to your client and ask what parts of the animation do they want to have the best quality, so you can start thinking about prioritizing certain shots.

4. Do a pipeline test. Record notes and assess future problems and difficulties.

Depending on what your client asks for, you still need to do a pipeline test to see all the necessary steps you’ll be tackling in the future. Some clients will ask you to do from roughts to the final colors, or some will ask for rough animation only. The reason why pipeline tests exist is to see what future problems you’ll encounter. You should also record how long each step takes; how long it takes you to do certain footage of animation, so when you do plan your quota for the following days - you have a better idea in how to set it up.

5. Constantly check in with your client

If you’re lucky, you might get a client who is very hands on and is constantly checking up on you. This is good because its a good motivator to actually get work done! You’ll have more things work in progresses to show, and they can give feedback. It gives them a clear idea of the overall progress, so they have a better understanding on how long the work usually takes. You guys could also form some suggestions for future obstacles in the work.

6. Gather peers you trust and set up a frequent meet-up to show and share work

This mostly helps if you are doing your own personal work, but when its a project that is entirely under your control: its easy just to chill out and relax (I am highly guilty of this.) Some people can work on their own projects - and not show it to the world; whereas I constantly need to show work to my peers to keep me motivated. I’m the type of person who needs to get feedback and encouragement on continuing a project, so I’ve been showing people I really trust some things I’ve been doing on the side. This also helps keep you working on the project time to time.

7. If all still fails, hire yourself a production manager/personal producer/agent

The top advice I get when thinking about running a production is to hire a production assistant/personal producer/agent. A production assistant should be able to understand the overall process of the animation workflow, and should help you set up a schedule for it. They’ll also be able to organize meetings between your client and/or a team if you do decide to hire that extra work force - because hey; artists dealing with things like organizing conferences, time tables and budget handling is just too much. This can be highly time efficient for you, since you can just focus on the production side of things, while someone else handles the more “business” side of things.

euclase

I don’t have an attractive way of posting this, but here’s some of the stuff that was in my process folder on DA.

zandraart

beware of the fox who can swallow the sky

doggiedrawings

DIY Booklet: Space Etiquette For Dogs

I know I am not alone in this. I have a dog that needs more personal space than other dogs. He is a senior; he is suspicious of unfamiliar dogs and will lunge or snarl at them if they stare at him, or come too close too soon.

And yet every so often, an off-leash dog will come bounding up towards him (or even sometimes, an on-leash dog) and the owner will call out “HE’S FRIENDLY!” without checking with me first if it is OK for their dog to meet my dog.

There is this automatic assumption by most people that if their own dog is friendly, then everything is fine with the world. Who the heck cares what OTHER PEOPLE’s DOGS are feeling? The idea of consent does not seem to cross their minds at all.

My response is always usually “Please call your dog away. My dog is NOT friendly”. But sometimes I can’t say this fast enough. Or the other person ignores me.

My dog freaks out and turns into a murderous beast. To the other person with the “friendly dog”, we look like the bad guy. I wish I could simply say: “Please google SPACE ETIQUETTE FOR DOGS when you get home!”

I decided to make a pocket-sized pamphlet ( a la www.pocketmod.com) which measures 2.75″ x 4.5″ - small enough to fit in your treat bag or poop bag. You could hand this out to other dog owners and they could trash it or they could read it. No pressure.

The information in these pages is adapted from posters which you can view in greater detail via www.doggiedrawings.net/freeposters (Space Etiquette for Dogs, Does My Dog Love Other Dogs)

I am offering this booklet as a FREE DOWNLOAD. All you need is paper, a printer, and a pair of scissors. Select “Borderless” in your printer settings before you print.

LINK TO DOWNLOAD - Letter Size paper (USA)

LINK TO DOWNLOAD - A4 Size paper (Rest of the World)

FOLDING INSTRUCTIONS

Also check out:

Dogs In Need Of Space

Consent - It’s Not Just For People

To Leash or Not To Leash

streetdogmillionaires

This is WONDERFUL.

kingofooo

by storyboard supervisor Erik Fountain

A few years ago, Erik put together these updated AT storyboard guidelines for new board artists and revisionists.

kimdraws

It’s that time of season… unless you’re crazy and you’re a winter camper.

New print for #VanCAF

gbsketch

How you keep drawing every day? Do you never get sick, a cold, nothing?

A few people have asked me about this, so I’ll write out a bit of a longer answer. It’s not that I don’t get sick, I’ve just made this a regular part of my schedule to the point where I’m able to spend at least 10-15 minutes a day on art no matter how much I don’t feel like doing it. Eat, sleep, sketch, these are just Things I Do Every Day™.

I’ll take this chance to talk in general a bit about one of the major lessons I’ve learned (and am still learning) from doing a sketch a day - which is the importance of discipline over inspiration. It doesn’t matter if I’m in the mood to draw or not, I’m committed to practicing and improving, even if it takes a super long time. I think it shows, there are a lot of sketches on here that I strongly dislike because I made them when I wasn’t in the mood, was sick, or just didn’t have the energy to come up with anything good that day. But it’s still important to me that I do something and maintain the project as a whole. Thankfully I’ve never been so sick that I couldn’t physically sit for 10 minutes and scribble something out, but I like to think that even if that were the case, I’d scrawl a stick figure on a napkin or something and ask someone to take a picture and post it, just on principle.

Another reason I think it’s important to continually produce stuff no matter what, is that it makes the times you are truly inspired even more powerful. When the mood hits you, you’re always ready. There’s no rustiness to shake off if you’ve been practicing every single day, you can just jump right in and keep your flow going. I’ve grown to really dislike relying on inspiration, so my thoughts on this are a bit messier, but I still think it’s worth noting.

The only exception I’ve really had to make in the 5-and-a-bit years I’ve been doing sketch of the day is for travel, because there are some cases where I need to travel and won’t have access to a computer/tablet, or sometimes not even reliable internet access. It’s frustrating, but in those cases I will queue up sketches for the days I’m gone. But - even when I’m making extra sketches to queue, I try to space out their creation as much as possible. For example, if I’m going away for 3 days, I’ll do 2 sketches a day for the 3 days leading up to it, rather than 4 on the day before I leave. This way I stay as close as possible to the original intention of this project, which was to force myself to practice every single day.

There’s no magic, no secret source of constant inspiration, my brain is just so used to doing this that it’s easier to keep going than to give up.

euclase

Do you ever go through periods where art just doesn't feel fun anymore? Everything I've been making lately seems awful and I just want to give up sometimes. I'd take a break, but being in art school means I have to work no matter what.

That happens to me if I get bogged down by the idea of product over process. I forget that I’m the most important part of my art. I want to finish and end up with something good, rather than get good at something in order to end up with something good.

Does that make sense? It’s like running a marathon. If you don’t like running, but you run anyway because you want to win, you won’t find joy in anything but finishing. Someone is always going to be faster than you, and you’ll always be disappointed.

On the other hand, if you enjoy running, then you can focus more on running itself, which means you’ll get better at running, which means you’ll win.

I’ve done work for clients and assignments that I didn’t like. When art is your job or your means to a grade, it’s harder to put process over product. Everything becomes about finishing. As soon as a marathon runner gets a number on her back and a check from Nike, it becomes harder to run just for the joy of it.

But of course she still finds joy in it because the only reason she’s good at running is because she knows she’s 100% responsible for being good.

What makes it worth the work is knowing that every time you finish, every drawing you produce, every race you win is 100% because of you. It’s not random or accidental. You were the most important thing the entire time, you worked hard to get better, and you did it because you wanted it for yourself.

I think if you practice treating yourself as the most important part of your art, what you actually make will matter less. And it will become a lot simpler for you to see that your improvement, even when you’re producing something you don’t like, makes it worth the work—far more than ending up with a finished product.

It takes practice to think that way because we’re not raised to think that way. We’re not raised to think we’re more important than what we leave behind. But for me, reward isn’t “I made that” so much as it’s “I can make that.”

I hope this helps you. <3