poisongrape's Blog!

Hi everyone!

I finally posted the clown pic I’ve been working on for the past few weeks on my Deviantart! The image can be viewed here: https://poisongrape.deviantart.com/art/Artie-the-Animatronic-Clown-712943684

I originally wanted to post the image on Halloween, but I could not settle on the right resolution to post at. There was a lot of info online: some warned against posting high resolution stuff to prevent art theft, and others were stating that it’s better to post high quality artwork than to post lower quality stuff since the chance of it being stolen is low. I eventually settled on posting a lower quality image, but one at 90 ppi instead of the 72 ppi that people suggested online. I think it worked out well. The delay also allowed me to fix a few things that were bugging me, like the clown’s nose and the background stuff. Here is a lower resolution image than what can be found on my Deviantart page:

I’m really glad I finished something and posted it online. I’m still learning about all the other stuff, like logistics and licenses and all of that, so I won’t be selling this just yet. But maybe soon!

Thanks again for reading, and happy Halloween!

Hello everybody,

The past week I’ve been doing more gesture drawings. They ended up being more fun to do than I thought. I won’t post anymore pics until I gather a good collection of ones I’m proud of, otherwise I’d just flood the whole blog with a bunch of practice drawings.

I’m sticking with doing 20 poses a session. I was doing 60 seconds a pose, but I felt that was too short, so I switched to doing 90 seconds per pose. As I get more comfortable I’ll try setting the timer down to a lower number. Eventually I want to capture gestures quickly, then work my way up to doing full length sessions. But right now I’m happy with what I’m doing.

Also, I finally started working on that clown pic I posted a while back (the one on a post-it note). It’s looking pretty good, actually, I just need to finish coloring it. I also want to add in some sort of effect to make it look extra creepy, but I’ve never done something like that before so we’ll see what happens. I hope to finish that by next week - Halloween! I’m glad I actually started on something.

That’s pretty much it for the past week. One more week to go for spooks! Enjoy, and thanks for stopping by.

So I finally did it - together with my fiance we took our first steps into the world of figure drawing. I watched a lot of tutorials and read quite a bit of material on it, but they all basically offered the same advice: just start drawing. The first few drawings, even the first few hundred, won’t look good at all. And that’s just fact! I can’t expect myself to pump out awesome drawings at the get-go. But still, I actually felt fear and dread once I put the pencil down and stroked out my first mark. It was exhilarating.

We used an online site, https://www.quickposes.com/en, to help us train. We did a set of 20 drawings at 60 seconds a drawing, but I think that was too short in hindsight for us beginners. Still, it ended up being pretty fun. I’m just glad that I actually started instead of just pushing it off until I never do it.

I can definitely tell I will learn a lot from doing this, so I’ll make it a habit to get as much practice in as I can every day. Here are the drawings that came out of it:

I noticed that the first few drawings were very light - I guess was was more nervous than I thought!

That’s all I have to report for now. Thanks for reading.

Not much more to report this past week (plus a few more days). I’ve just been continuing my tutorial binge. I’m learning a lot of techniques, mostly regarding Photoshop. I learned about the nifty masking functionality, which really helps me a lot. Before I was using the technique where I would color large swathes and go over the lines, then erase the extra bits. But that wastes so much time! Masking is such a life saver.

One thing I’m noticing is that I’m starting to follow an old trend: I dive deep down into a bunch of tutorials that inspire me, but then I take on a bunch of stuff I want to learn at the same time. It started with animation, which led to digital art, which led to learning Photoshop as a tool. Now it’s leading me back to strengthening my art fundamentals - gesture, anatomy, etc. But I know me - once my interests start pulling me in all different directions it’s hard for me to pick a starting place, then I get confused, then discouraged, then it’s all a big cycle again and again! I need to pick something to start with and focus on that.

Like I said before, I’ve been drawing as a hobby for years now. But I think before I try my hand at creating masterpieces digitally, or before I start creating feature length animations, I need to start back at basics. This means not putting focus on creating professional, cool, jaw-dropping pieces of art, but going back and relearning the fundamentals which will help me make better artwork. Now, I’m not saying I’m going to just drop all the digital stuff I’m working on. At the same time, I’ll keep learning about the software and practicing digitally. But I really need to stop trying to create masterpieces and focus on practice practice practice!

So what does this mean? I’ll continue learning what I’m learning. But let’s keep it all basic and focus on a few key areas. For fundamentals, let’s try some gesture and figure drawing (which I’ve never really paid attention to before actually). For animation, I need to keep reading Richard Williams’ book and learning the basics: creating proper tweens, motion, weight, etc. I can also continue learning the software at a nice steady pace, and practicing on the digital canvas and training my hand-eye coordination to work with a tablet. What I won’t do (and what I need to keep reminding myself over and over) is that I won’t be creating awesome looking work! I need to buckle down and learn the fundamental basics.

Anyways, that’s my progress for the past week. Oh, and my walking guy still doesn’t have any arms. Maybe next week...

Thank you for reading, and see you soon.

Hi there, poisongrape here again.

For the past week, I spent most of my time watching tutorials on YouTube. The theme this week for me was digital art and Photoshop. Now, I’ve dabbled in digital art before, but I don’t really have much practice in it. There have been a few techniques, tips, and tricks I picked up over the years, but now it’s time I level up. Even more so now that I have Photoshop.

The only time I used Photoshop for anything was back in highschool (and that was a looong time ago). It was for my ROP graphics class. We used Photoshop and Illustrator to create some graphics for tshirts and logos and stuff. After that, I didn’t do anymore digital drawings because I didn’t have the software. A few years later while I was in college (and still pursuing an art major), my mom and brother got me a Wacom Bamboo tablet, and I used the free software it came with to create a few more digital pieces (which can be seen here: https://poisongrape.deviantart.com/). After a while, I stopped again. I don’t remember why - maybe it was because I switched to a Computer Science major and started focusing on that. Anyways, it wasn’t until a few more years later when I got my Galaxy Note 4 that I started doing more digital paintings with the Sketchbook For Galaxy app (which can also be seen on my deviantart page). However, the number of drawings I produced were still few and far between.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago: my fiance and I got Adobe CC, and I now have Photoshop back in my possession. I really want to create awesome digital artwork, so I decided to give it a go this past week. Man, it was more difficult than I remembered it being! And on top of that, the controls were slightly different than Adobe Animate. I knew I couldn’t continue blindly, so then I watched a bunch of tutorials to help me get up to speed with how to use the darn software. I watched vids from DrawingWiffWaffles, JelArts, Ahmed Aldoori, MisterNinjaBoy, and Brushboost. I also picked up a few tutorials on digital art tips and techniques (especially on how to blend color). I drew a few practice pieces, but I still am not quite proud of them. I have a long ways to go, but that’s part of the fun! Below is one of the pieces I did of my fiance:

(the eyes of an angry a loving fiance)

I tried a different color and blending style than I normally do. I tried to incorporate different hues into the shadows and highlights. The skin turned out nice, but I feel like it’s missing some oomph. The hair I feel doesn’t really mesh well at all. I need to practice more! It was pretty fun though learning about different types of layers and effects and stuff.

So that’s pretty much all I did this week. I still haven’t gotten around to animating the walking man with arms. Perhaps that will be a job for this week.

Oh yes! One more thing before I go. Since it is the start of the Halloween season, I started drawing creepy stuff on my PostIt notes at work. Below are 2 of my favorite ones so far. I really really really want to do something with the clown one. Some sort of animated gif. I’ll see if I have the skills to do it this month.

Alright, that’s all from me this week. Thanks for reading, and see you next time!

Bye bye,

One of my biggest goals is to learn animation. I’ve been studying some lessons from various sources - mainly YouTube tutorials and blog posts, but my biggest source of knowledge comes from Richard Williams’ The Animator’s Survival Kit (which seems to be the book all animators point to for learning). I reached the beginning of Mr. Williams’ bit on walk cycles, and I thought I’d share my progress so far (and yes, before anyone asks, I’ve done some practice  on everyone’s favorite bouncing ball, but I thought I’d share something more interesting for today).

When I first read through the walk cycle portion of The Animator’s Survival Kit, I didn’t completely grasp the full concept of the walk. However, I was excited to try my hand at it, and this was the following result:

I animated this on twos with 5 frames a step (10 total to reverse the legs and arms for a total of 20 frames a loop). I was quite proud of it, but then I noticed a few things. For one, it’s kind of choppy. I didn’t feel the weight of the character as he was stepping down on each foot. The character is also moving pretty quickly across the screen.

This wasn’t the kind of smooth character walk cycle I see in professional animations, but I thought it was a good first shot. However, I knew I could do better. So, a week later, I reread the bit on walk cycles, and I understood a little more than before. I tackled on another basic walk cycle, and here are the results:

There’s much improvement here. The character flows better - not as choppy as before. There’s a bit more weight in his steps, and the body and head have a nice arc going throughout the animation. I animated this on ones this time with 16 individual frames (32 total for the reverse). When I compared this to the previous one, I was quite pleased. But after a while I noticed a few things were off. For starters, the lines were a bit wobbly. His head looked like an egg being scrambled - there’s quite a bit of wobblyness going on there. And his arms looked a bit stiff and jerky.

At first I didn’t know what I did wrong, but I reread the basic walk cycle chapter again, and then I found out what went wrong! I had drawn the key frames of the walk cycle: the contact, the down, the passing position, the up, and then another contact. These were missing in my first attempt. But it was the tempo that I was missing! I didn’t set the keys on the correct frame numbers, which led me to having sloppy inbetweens. I also rushed on the line quality (adding to the wobbly wobbly that’s going on), and I didn’t really know how to tween the arms correctly. I had to try again, so fast forward one more week and here are my latest results:

I’m very happy with it. The animation and the character look much smoother. Notice I haven’t done the arms yet - I tried, but they ended up looking rather grotesque. I’ll have to give the arms another go in the near future. But this should do for now. The character feels weighted, and there are some good arcs going. This one was animated on ones with 16 individual frames (times two for the good ol’ copy-paste-reverse). I created a tempo by setting the keys on Williams’ suggested frame numbers - 1, 5, 9, 13, and 17. This gave me 3 inbetweens between each key, making it easier to calculate where to draw. The line quality is a bit better too - not as squiggly as before!

I’ve still got a lot of work and a lot of practice before I can get some good walk cycles down, but I’m happy with my progress for now.

Between now and next week I’ll keep practicing the animation. I’ll maybe try doing some illustrations. I feel like doing something creepy since Halloween season is practically here already. Thanks for reading, and see you next time.

Hello everyone,

This is poisongrape, and this is my blog.

I wanted to start a blog to document my journey in strengthening my art skills. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always loved drawing - anything I could think of, from games to cartoons to the wild imaginations that my brain dreamt of, I drew it all down. Drawing was a part of my life. All throughout my schooling years, from elementary to college, I took art classes and lessons. I was on my way to getting a major in art, but life took some turns and I ended up as a software engineer instead.

But the art bug never stopped biting. Wander into my cubicle on any normal day and you’ll find hundreds of doodles on sticky notes, all scattered about my desk. My soul was yearning to do something, anything, with art! So I decided to go back to it on my personal time.

I want to strengthen my skills and learn new ones along the way. My interests lie in illustration, character design, figure drawing, and 2D animation. It was always my dream to be a character animator - I love the idea of taking a drawing and giving it life! I never learned the craft of animation, but I’ve started learning.

So that brings me back to the purpose of this blog. I want to use this blog to document my process. Who knows what could happen? I could practice every day, improve, draw amazing things, animate anything I could ever imagine! Or I could waste my time and stay stuck where I am, always dreaming but never doing. Whatever happens, this blog will be a record of what’s to come.

I’ll set a goal for myself: update at least once a week. And no matter how scared I am, I’ll keep going.

Thanks for stopping by,