In Honor of Day Without Art and in Memory of AIDS Sufferers

There were no art-related posts since wednesday of last week for a reason. As part of Day Without Art, I did not post any art-related things or make any artwork. I hope that on that day your thoughts were with the victims of AIDS and their families.

Mineself

These are pages that I made for the Mineself website project. I figured I would post the artwork up for all to enjoy in its original format before I put together the site :)

World of Wick-Craft Character Profile: Beck

Down-to-earth, nonsensical, and many would say brilliant, Beck is a woman transformed by Wick-craft. Originally shy and naive, this Troll is now one of the most outgoing and extroverted of all. She enjoys playing video games, reading indie comics, and collecting all sorts of weird things that end up taking up residence in her room on the second floor of Townhouse A2.

World of Wick-Craft Character Profile: Kayleigh

Kayleigh seems to have the most together out of anyone and seems to make the most sense. A Goblin, Kayleigh is pleasant to be around, funny, and witty. She is a huge fan of Doctor Who, Tumblr, and TV Tropes, and is the President of Women's Center.

Epic Artist Spotlight: Artgerm

As part of my art blog, I have decided to include little spotlights, showcasing some of the finest in digital art.

Due to his amazing process of taking characters already composed of small pixels and rethinking them in an entirely different way through digital art, I have decided to have this first entry sharing with viewers the amazing video game art of Stanley Lau, (aka Artgerm). Having played my fair share of video games, and read tons and tons of comic books, I really appreciate this artist's work, especially his collection of art made for the online version of Street Fighter 3, one of my favorite video games.

Link to artist's page: http://artgerm.deviantart.com/

Digital Coloring Done right

I am still mostly a traditional artist, but I love to color my artwork in photoshop. Here is my most successful coloring venture. Not only do the characters look very lifelike, but I have hardly any parts that are ruined by photoshop. Hopefully, with this success, I will have the confidence to continue working with digital coloring.

World of Wick-craft

Since I am running out of ideas, I have decided to start up a webcomic, featuring daily shennanigans at my school, re-imagined if everyone was a world of warcraft character.

This first issue didn't come out as well as I had hoped, but I'm still happy with it. It features me as a Troll waiting for a particularly dull class to end.

Protect Posting Freedom!

http://americancensorship.org/

**Late Post

Didn't really have much to talk about, but I apologize for the slightly late post. However, I dug something out of my old files to post up. It is just a quick little background I made using Photoshop.

Interesting New Project

I'm a little confused and yet excited about my newest Digital Art and Design class project. In it, we have to look for things that may tell viewers something about us, like for instance our name, our school, our hometown, and anything else that we can think of. Then we have to form a 5 page website with it. I've never made a website before, although I do know html very well.

Here's a link to the Project if any visitors want to try it out themselves, just for fun:

Imagination: Overload

It is here...

Things I Need to Stop Doing with a Computer: Number 1

Editing the things that people say in comics to make them sound very silly.

You can do this too with just a little bit of either MSPaint or Photoshop. Sometimes on really sad days, it's great to make a much of these and then laugh at them. To all the readers of my blog, just for fun, find a comic you like, pick a panel, and let your funny side take over for a moment. Trust me, it will be worth it.

Also, discuss: are fudge cookies really worth that amount of anger?

What do you do with a creepy photo?

Make it EVEN CREEPIER with photoshop. Happy creating, everyone.

Late posts

I sincerely apologize for making all of my three posts this week on the last day of the week. I also haven't had much time to be creative as it has been a rough week.

One of the most fun types of digital art is cubeecraft. Different artists create all different characters, animals, and concepts as "cubees" or templates that you are meant to put together into a 3D paper sculpture. They are loads of fun and I recommend them to anyone who just wants a little craft that they can make. There are also templates so you can make your own design as mine, above.

cubeecraft website:

Imagination Overload: Preview

COMING SOON...

More Vector

I really enjoy making Vectors. I think I may make it a hobby. This one entitled "Super Kid" came from stumbling across an old adorable picture of my young cousin in her roller-skating gear. I had to make a vector of her because she's just too goofy looking not to.

Experimenting with Vector

Ok...well it isn't REALLY vector, but rather it's created in photoshop. It's relatively easy to cartoon yourself in photoshop if you have a steady hand, know how to use layers, and do not take yourself seriously. For fun, I made myself look like one of my favorite video game characters, The Fear. Fitting, since it's close to Halloween :)

CD covers

I really enjoy the CD covers challenge that I did for class, and so here is advice on how to do it yourself:
1: go to a random wikipedia page- that is your band name.
2: go to the random quote page- that is the name of your number one single.
3: go to flickr's most popular images and choose the third image for your cd cover.

I hope to spread the fun of this project to everyone. It's tons of fun.

Digital Art as a Statement

This is from yet another contest that I decided not to enter at the last minute. This is inspired by an x-ray, a technology used to identify fractures in bones. I compared the fracturing of bones to the fracturing of a child's psyche when they are bullied. This is a movement that I strongly support, as a person who was bullied as a child.

Photoshop for Cosplay

A little something about myself. I am a huge fan of cosplay, or, the practice of dressing up as anime, video game, or childhood cartoon characters for fun. Not only does it present great photo ops, but it is also a lot of fun to just be silly, or become the character.

Before I decide on a cosplay venture I usually tweak an image of myself in photoshop to see what I would look like as the character. For example, this image I tweaked is of a potential Killer 7 cosplay. I wanted to see how I would look with white hair at first, but then I decided to go all out and make it black and white and heavily shaded like parts of the game. It was a lot of fun, and I actually may pursue this outfit for a future costume.

The Fun in Fundamentalism

“Putting the Fun in Fundamentalism” a presentation by Jane Kaufmann, former Guerilla Girl, was one of the most wonderful art events that my college campus campus has ever had. My friend and I struggled to find seats, and eventually, by the time that Jane was ready to begin, the entire Anderson Theater was full, something that only usually happens with sex ed presentations. My friend and I were simply excited to see one of these women in person, both of us being female artists and her attempting to pursue in the male-dominated world of video game design, but we didn’t expect it to be as amazing as it was.
Wanting to keep the presentation short and open for questions at the end, Jane kept her talk very brief and to the point. The first things she talked about were how the Guerilla Girls were founded and the world for artistic women during their development. Many galleries had one token female artist, but many others had no female artists represented at all. These women were angry about this and decided to make a stand. Posting “critiques” in the form of posters, the women invaded art galleries and graded them in terms of how many female artists were represented. Many failed to meet their expectations. They also posted up other posters criticizing various other issues in the art world and in the world in general, such as domestic violence and education.
Jane then began to talk about her own work, her experiment at putting the “fun” in fundamentalism. Her artwork was brilliantly satirical, taking familiar images, and warping them into political, societal, and even sexual statements. Her matter-of-fact way of speaking when it came to her own work cemented her feelings about it. The audience exchanged giggles and “oos” with each piece of artwork, one more scandalous than the next. My personal favorites were the bipolar Barbie, with a nun’s habit on one side and revealing panties on the other side, and the his and hers towels, which were quite hilarious to say the least. There was also some time for questions and some people, including my friend, even got to talk with Jane. It was a wonderful experience.
It’s very rare for there to be an art event that inspires you so much. As a person who tends to make rather interesting artwork with a statement attached to it, I was inspired by Jane and her hilariously scandalous work. My friend was also inspired, and has even started a movement for our various concerns, including the representation of women in video games. Overall, this experience was a wonderful one, and I hope to see more programs like this in the future.

Photoshop Animation Project: Further Inspiration

I'm thinking of doing an abstract surreal horror short, (It has to be about 30 seconds) which would lend itself well to photoshop. To inspire myself, I am posting some more videos from wonderful artists, (including more Brothers Quay, because they are fantastic).







I'm thinking of a riff off "The Cat With Hands", because it truly is wonderful. Wonderfully creepy of course, but wonderful.

Joan + Joan = ?

This is my Joan Jett + Joan of Arc project. It was difficult to use a drawing and all, but I am very pleased with it. Other people had both a harder time and an easier time cramming celebrity faces together. Me? I wanted to make a statement. With music becoming more and more ridiculous over the years, artists that actually made sense like Ms Jett fade into obscurity, as do our historical heroes, hence the use of Joan of Arc.

Granted it's not funny, showy, or anything flashy. But it makes a statement, and that's what art should do.

moving digital art

We'll be progressing to photoshop stop motion animations next week, I believe starting tomorrow. To get into the animating spirit, I am posting one of my favorite stop motion animations. Granted, it's not done in photoshop, but it will certainly provide me with the inspiration that I need. It is called Are We Still Married, and is made by the people that I consider to be the masters of stop motion, the Brothers Quay.



I plan to make something surreal for my photoshop stop motion, so it will serve as a very strong inspiration in my own work.

Gary Mayer: More Sinner than Saint

The artist’s talk “Gary Mayer: More Sinner than Saint”,was a showcase of the artwork created by Detroit-based artist, Gary Mayer. Many different kinds of things influenced his creative decisions, including medieval art, which featured elongated graceful figures that were not quite anatomically correct, Pablo Picasso and other abstract artists, and, most noticeably, religion. Many of his paintings feature saints, visions of hell, and religious landscapes.
The artist went through many of his major pieces, explaining what influenced him in each. He went from completely abstract artwork, to pieces where figures could easily be distinguished, and then back to more abstract forms. He had many periods of specific influence, including his time in New York City, where he became very interested in the swirling motions of water and edgy but lyrical forms.Gary also was interested in a particular image that seemed to be repeating throughout a section of his work; that of musician’s heads with instruments coming out of their mouths atop stacks and stacks of boxes and books, almost as if they were incased from the shoulders down in these prisons. Overall, the Gary’s discussion was somewhat stale. He seemed to think that the audience could simply understand his work for themselves, before explaining it. He also seemed to be trying to impress the audience with his work, rather than explaining it to them. What I especially didn’t understand was how upset he seemed by the hiatus that he took from art to raise his children.Perhaps including stories that the children made up, or their antics in his artwork would create some happier and brighter pieces. Gary seemed to want to evoke the idea of the brooding artist, one that believes that true art is depressing, offensive, and bizarre, but I believe that that type of artist is not taken seriously now.

Transforming Identity Project- Planning

So for my latest digital art project, I have to take one person's face and put it on another person's body. A challenging task...and many different ideas have been floating around in my head about this. Here are a couple of ideas that I have been contemplating.

• Joan Jett + Joan of Arc (This is the one that I think I might do because it would make a statement about infamy, female power, and the outcast.)


• Gene Kelley + Gene Simmons (Societal statement...oh fun)

Face on Body Practice

To get the hang of putting someone's face on someone else's body, I messed around with a picture of my cat, Cervantes. I found a picture of a woman with a sombrero and I attempted to make it look like my cat's hair. I then made his face and body look more human-shaped and added some "makeup" to him. I'm somewhat pleased with the results, so I'm really looking forward to the actual project.

Transforming in Photoshop

Our next project will be to put a celebrity's face on another celebrity's body, essentially warping them and changing their identity. Well, I did a similar project that involved changing something's identity. I chose a picture of a cat from the website http://www.icanhascheeseburger.com/ and toyed around with it in photoshop until it resembled an owl. Granted it's not the best it could be, but it was my first experiment in transforming one thing into another.

Happiness in Three Parts

This is my latest project in the world of Digital Art, a Triptych. A triptych is a grouping of three related images. At first you might ask "what does a kitten, a little girl, and a turtle have to do with anything?" Well, you see, my theme was the many escalating expressions of happiness. The turtle with his tattooed, ragged back and above the clouds soaring represents tranquility and contentment. The little girl represents joy, as she runs up the rainbow to greet her parents. Childlike joy is one of the greatest emotions in the whole world. The last image represents ecstatic behavior and overenthusiasm. The little kitten is so happy that he has three mouths to smile with. Also note the appearance of the rainbow, it grows larger as the level of happiness grows larger as well.

CD Covers

This was the first project in Art 213, (Digital Art and Design). I LOVED it and had a lot of fun.

The assignment: http://www.culturerecycling.com/hartwick/213_Proj-1.html

The Magic of MSPaint

How did I get my start in Digital Art, you ask? Why, my good old friend MS Paint of course. When I was a teenager, back before I knew what Photoshop was, I would sit there for up to 8 hours at a time in MS Paint creating all different kinds of things. The image at the very bottom here was one of those. A person had a preset human figure and ran a contest based on how much someone could alter it. 8 hours later I emerged with an algae covered fishman with a conch shell on his head. I actually took third place in the contest even though I didn't use Photoshop at all.

After I discovered Photoshop and was still clinging to my pixel enthusiast ways, I would roughly create an image in MS Paint and then alter it in Photoshop, as shown with the image above that. I was not very proud of these and felt my interest in sitting there doing things pixel by pixel fade away...and then I got a scanner so I could actually post some of my real hand drawn art, as the pencil and paper are my forte.

Just last week I had an epiphany...what if I went a MS Paint in a bare bones go get 'em fashion? No premade forms, no Photoshop, no anything...just MS Paint. Still without a tablet, I grabbed my mouse and went for it, and created a pouty faced angry looking woman with weepy willowy hair in my own actual artistic style. It felt great to pick up an old tool again, kind of like visiting an old friend, and so I encourage other artists to pick up a medium that they haven't used in a long time and try something new with it. You may be surprised with the results.

My Experience in Digital Art

I'm not a digitally-inclined person, so taking a Digital Art class was a blow to my subconscious, sort of. I'm more of a traditional artist, using pencil and paper to create my own worlds. I actually had some negative associations with Digital Art originally, thinking that it wasn't really art, but rather just an enhancement of art. You know, you take a photograph, you alter it, and then you say "Hey look what I made!". But DID you really make it? It's only been 2 weeks for this class, you know, and it's already changed. I see how creative the process for creating digital art can be, after making some fun CD covers, (which I will post in a later blog :) )

This here is one of my first ventures in Digital Art that I made for an Alice in Wonderland contest on the horrible, but functional site known as deviantArt, (and then didn't enter the contest anyway because I thought it was terrible). It's alright, but it's clearly beginner work. Hopefully by the end of this semester, I should be able to modify this and make it actually look decent. Still, this is a starting point, one step above simply coloring and creating lineart in Photoshop, to actually working on something completely in Photoshop...albiet rather awfully.

What is Digital Art?

While contemplating what I should write about, I thought of a question that would be extremely important to this blog, in which I will be discussing quite a bit of digital art. But what is digital art, anyway? The artwork that I posted could be considered digital, since, although I drew it by hand, I edited and added things to it in Photoshop. Digital art can also refer to things made with 3D modeling programs, or made entirely in Photoshop. The way I see it, digital art is any kind of art that uses technology in its creative process, but here is Wikipedia's entry if a more "professional" definition is warranted: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_art

I will be researching many things about Digital art in this blog, including some burning questions that I have. Why do people assume that Digital Art must be high-tech or realistic looking? Why do we even use computer resources to help us when we have pen and paper? These, and many more, I hope to answer.

Is it Summer Again?

Today's weather was a welcome change from last week, where it rained so hard that people had to be evacuated from their homes, the college closed, and general havoc broke loose. Today it was warm, very warm in fact, reaching the 80 degree mark, and it was bright and sunny.

To commemorate this very pleasant day, as well as Day 2 of this blog, I have sketched a Troll out on the beach soaking up the sun.

Hope that everyone had a great day, and, although tomorrow is forecasted to be rainy and cold, at least we had a flashback to summer today.

Welcome to De Blog

For my Digital Art and Design Class (Art 213) I was asked to create a blog about pretty much whatever I wanted. Because of my nature, it will probably consist of art posts, talks about life, and whatever else I'm interested in at the moment.

So why all of the Troll metaphors? Aside from being referred to as a "troll" by people who do not like what I have to say, I play one of them. So let's make this first post about Trolls shall we? Since my professor says, "Oh, say whatever you want on there, as long as you post a video, a link, and an image". Perhaps that was a mistake for him to say, perhaps not.

That in the corner is a Troll. His name is Jelzerzak and he is an artist and outspoken speaker of jibberish, just like yours truly. Jelzerzak will be a common fixture in some of the art I post, since I find him an interesting subject to draw, (unless I post something from class, that is).

My Livejournal: http://dracotheferret.livejournal.com/

The magnificent Troll dance for your viewing pleasure: