For Steve.

I've been using the same Macbook since 2006. It still works.
I still use it every day.

My iMac has become my main workstation. It works almost the same as when it came out of the box, over 3 years ago.

My second mp3 player was an iPod nano.
It was replaced by an iPod touch (Apple used to give students a free iPod when they bought a computer for school).

My phone was replaced with my first iPhone this summer. It has since replaced my iPod, as well as my camera.

It's not just a brand, it's a series of innovative products that just work. Work well. Right out of the box.
I will never use any other.

Never give me hassle, which in turn gives me more time to focus on my art.

Thank you, Mr. Jobs. Thank you for everything you contributed to the world. You will be missed.

Just a quick doodle I did in storyboarding class yesterday.

I work so rough & rarely do any cleanup traditionally nowadays. Instead, I always scan it and work in Photoshop.

Then with a quick cleanup in Photoshop & some colours;

This is a character design I have had since I was 15 years old. He's changed very little over the years. He's been given a few different names, but Squelette always has fitted best.

Cheers
-Max

At the beginning of every summer, I always plan to achieve much more than I'm capable of doing. I set expectations so high that I only end up disappointing myself. This has been my lesson of the summer.

I had set a goal that was just unrealistic and in the end, it sabotaged everything.

I did, however, manage to practice some basic animations in flash, doodle almost every day, and work on a lot of stories... So I cannot say it was entirely wasted. But the fact of the matter is, not much was finished.

I am refusing to say this was a failure. Art will always be a life-long learning experience for me. No matter how frustrating, I have learned a lot from this. I have finally learned what I can realistically do within a day. I can set my goals a little more realistically, and that will definitely help me through the next semester without disappointment.

Here are some things from last semester
(like always, click to enlarge)

These are some storyboards from my final storyboarding assignment. I cropped out all of the template other than where the actual boards were to conserve space... Hopefully it still reads alright. This assignment was a lot of fun.

Final layout assignment, panning up. First try at to doing that fish-eye effect when something pans upwards.

The same layout, just with a bit of tone.

Here are some of my favourite pieces done in character design last semester. Bits from every assignment.

This is a still my lip sync animation, cleaned up. I added colour & a background this summer. Moreso practice than anything else, really.

Some pieces from my final life drawing portfolio. This semester was more about tone... Eugh.


Now, for things done over the summer!

These are just some of the doodles I did & never finished.

Something I started for Shark Week, but never finished. Might get around to it sometime.

An old sketch I finally got around to finishing.

Reworking old characters. Improving on their designs. (yes, that's the cat from my IT KEEPS HAPPENING storyboard)

Fiddling around with pencils & tone.

I did this for my nan's birthday back in June. Experiment with ink & markers.

In the end, it's not much. But, going into year 3, I've never been so motivated to improve and succeed.
Cheers,
-Max

Well, I've been meaning to post this for few weeks, but I decided to wait until I finished all my assignments.

I've been having issues with my hands for the past few years. There has been lots of pain, hand tremors- basically lots of things making drawing difficult. I dismissed it as arthritis or something hereditary, which obviously was a stupid decision.

I went to the doctor, who told me it was pretty clearly Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. They couldn't explain the tremors, but every other symptom fit. After doing a few tests, they told me to get some arm braces and take it easy.

It took me being up late at night in inexplicable pain whilst downing bottles of pain killers to get help. I was stupid, I had symptoms and ignored them. Pushing through the pain to get assignments in on time. This probably is going to make recovery a bit more difficult and lengthy.

Next post will be art. Just felt like logging this.

Cheers,
-Max

These are my Beak/Muzzle character designs I did a few weeks back. The bird was based off of a plague doctor from the Italian plague and the other was an infected plague rat. I'm only posting the bird.


The last character assignment I did was a huge model pack. The characters were to be chosen from a specific historical point- of course I chose Victorian England (It's my comfort zone). Four model sheets and a line up. Clean up done in ink. Another assignment I wish I had more time for.

The "Skeletal Requiem" logo was done by my sister.



This is a layout we did a few weeks back. It was pretty much to copy the storyboard/layout pack our prof gave us. The wonky perspective was in the layout pack and we were not allowed to really fix it. In painting we were to paint this layout in a 'graphic style' using the pen tool in Photoshop.


Lastly, here's an animation I just finished last night.

I've been having issues with my hands for the past few years and I'm finding it a lot easier to work digitally than on paper. So, I decided that for this animation, I should experiment animating digitally in Flash CS5. It seems the industry (at least television animation) mostly uses Flash nowadays, so experience with it couldn't hurt either.

A major problem I run into when I animate is that I constantly want to keep everything structural and (somewhat) realistic. It's so limiting and gets me really frustrated. For this assignment, I decided I was going to abandon that thought and just go as extreme as I could push it.

Audio is from Invader Zim. I had no idea how many people animate to this until I looked on Youtube. I guess it's a popular clip.



That's all I guess for now.

There has been a ridiculous epidemic of carpal tunnel syndrome in the second year- I think I'm getting it too. I've been dismissing these pains as arthritis and after talking to a friend who has it, it's starting to sound more like CTS than arthritis. Fuck.

Cheers
-Max

Oodles of in-class doodles & art trades.

Trade with Sheldon

Trade with Kaitlynn Ritter

Happy New Year!

This is just going to be a short art dump. I got the expected art-block over the holiday and didn't draw much (the same one I had last year).

Here's a compilation page of some of the things I sketched over the break. The plague-bird I actually finished & painted as a quick Christmas gift for my mum. The rest is pretty much trying to draw through the art block & figure out how to draw animals.


A few nights before I came back to school, I attempted to work with digital painting. Using several references from Pokémon: Best Wishes I came up with this. Yay, new starter Pokémon!


Now some school work.
Here are the beat boards I did for my group assignment.


And these are quick concept sketches I did last night. I need to do a model sheet for a bird and something with a muzzle- I've chosen a doctor from the bubonic plague (the bird) and an rat (one of the carriers of the plague). Definitely need to add some boils & infection to the rat, but it's a start.

That's all for now.
Cheers!
-Max

As I'm pretty much done this semester, this will be my last art/work dump for a bit. This semester has been a mix of good & bad. I've learned quite a bit and feel I've gotten better in some areas, but alas I still feel I need to improve a lot to be up to par with what the programme demands. Definitely something I want to work on over my winter break.

This is my Christmas card for the year; It's a lino print I carved a few weeks back. I still haven't gotten the whole 'printing' process mastered, so I keep having lots of little 'speckles' in each print.


My final assignment in 'literature' was to illustrate a scene from The Yellow Wallpaper.
This assignment was familiar, as I've done this before. However that was 3 years ago and it was absolutely dreadful. If you're into bad art, you can see it here.


For my last layout assignment, we were to take five sequential scenes from our storyboard/leica and build these boards into proper layouts.



This project also overlapped into painting, where we took one of these layouts and painted it. Watercolour pencils, watercolours, markers & Photoshop.


The beatboards were also another painting assignment. Watercolours, watercolour pencils, markers & a hell of a lot of Photoshop.


Over the semester we were required to keep a sketchbook of caricatures. We were allowed to draw from video, so, I drew a lot of my favourite people from television. There are some friends & family mixed in here, but there are definitely more Doctor Who people.



This is the end result for that storyboard I posted the beat boards & character line up for (IT KEEPS HAPPENING). A lot got changed since then & I'm unsure how I feel about it. It definitely keeps the integrity to my morbid personality.


To end this off, this is the final animation I did for the semester. It was a character's expression change whilst interacting with something/someone. I chose to use my old character 'Hecate' & have her with a spider.



That's all for now. I have a few more assignments to finish up & I'll be heading home for the next three weeks. See you in the new year.

Cheers
-Max

I've been meaning to update here, but the last few weeks have been really rough (with lots of assignments & life).

Not really art related, but last Tuesday I got the opportunity of a lifetime: to attend Tim Burton's masterclass in Toronto! It was being held to promote/commemorate the Tim Burton art exhibit at the TIFF building, so they invited several animation colleges to attend. I've been majorly inspired by Burton for the past ten years, so there was no way I'd pass up this chance!

I even managed to get tickets in his actual lecture (instead of watching it in the overflow live-feed theatre) because I signed up early enough! So I sat for 2hrs, about 100 feet away, listening to Tim Burton talk about animation, Hollywood, and whatnot. It was beyond words!

Lawlzy, Me & Aunt Jamila

Back to posting art...

Here is my latest character design assignment; it was to draw a boy & girl in the assigned expressions from the waist up. They had to be based on caricatures we've done over the semester- it was an exercise in breaking away from 'generic' characters.

I was an idiot and put this off. Wish I would have given myself more time. Some bits I like, others I'd love to have fixed.

Transgender Day of Remembrance.

This is a cause very close to my heart. I wish I could have gone to pay my respects at one of the events being held worldwide. Official site.

I'll try & update with some school work next week.

-Max