Halloween-y

Man, this Halloween is TOUGH! I honestly can't figure out what to be. Yet I can plan years ahead for conventions... *sigh*

So last night I had decided I wanted to be a Mogwai.


Daaaaaaaaaaaaw.


Today during lunch I thought "wouldn't it be fun to be Dr. Elli Sattler?!". But I don't think that would exactly translate to something recognizable.


Hmmmmmmmmmmmm

I've got great news!

Awesome article about an "earth like planet" found 20 light years away. I wonder if it is inhabited, and if they are human like mammals...did they screw up as bad as us?

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/09/29/5202633-alien-planet-looks-just-right-for-life

My favorite comment from the lot:
"Great. I'm stoked. Now, how many billions will this take away from education and infrastructure to provide a new pet welfare project for NASA and JPL engineers and science geeks so we can zip right over and see if there's water. Please... spare us all another useless space conquest, or get Bill Gates to finance it." - Stryke

I mean, because education doesn't involve teaching things we heave learned over centuries, mostly via exploration and science, right? ...Ooooh wait a minute.

Hello, Old Friend.

Holy Moley it's been a hot minute since I've updated.
I ended up landing an aaaaamzing job out here in LA and have been working my ass off since, hence the lack of updates or art in general. That and my Mac is still back in the swamp lands of FL. Ick. So yadda yadda, on with the show!

This year I missed my beloved Dragon Con. If you don't know what that is, imagine Comicon, but without the corporate bullcrap. 50K nerds of ALL genres, in costumes, getting drunk.. or as I lovingly call it "nerd mating season". Going to DragonCon is my idea of a good vacation. I get to see old friends and get to geek out to the extreme. And yes, I dress up.
Oh it started small... wearing an old Halloween costume out to the second year for s and gs. But soon the artist in me took over. Drawing the blue prints, sewing, sculpting, painting props. It's everything I love rolled into one art project. Plus when you dress up you are 210% more likely to meet new people. Many people will show up to the convention to heckle us geeks so the "normals" are sometimes avoided. (I suddenly am thinking of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBXyB7niEc0 ).

Since I missed this year I am determined to go next year. And this has lead to two costume ideas, each own it's own scale of massive proportions. One mostly fabric driven sewn piece, and one electronic fiberglass goliath. MWAHAHA. Ahem.

So to keep with the spirit I am going to turn this blogs direction to these projects for the time being. Leaking blue prints, fabric samples, junk yard finds slowly. Part of me wants to keep these plans "top secret" for the surprise factor. And part of me just wants to geek out with readers in real time. We shall see what I decide.

As a warm up, here is just a small sampling of costumes I have loved making, from simple to more in depth.



Overly simple ET costume. This was for the last day of Dragon Con 2009 for when I was sick of gluing on the mustache and putting on my spats (explained further down). And I am being a creep with Doug Jones. I really admire his work and grabbing a photo was on my to-do list.



Heh. Ok. I am an AVID dog lover. This was just me having a bit of fun and taking a jab at your run of the mill lazy zombie costumes come Halloween time. Was worn for Castle Halloween in Ybor <3




Tank Girl for Halloween 2009. Was a last minute thrown together piece. I love the character and had fun being a bad-ass chick for this one.



Crispin Glover's version of Willard. Had a doctor's bad filled with rats as well, but that was an awkward prop. I did dye my real hair for this. I usually go natural hair due to extreme announce from bad wigs.



Marty McFly. Tho seeming simple, I am VERY proud of all the detail in this one. Hot as hell with a t-shirt, button up, jean jacket, and vest. This was the first costume for DragonCon and it was so much fun having people ask me if I jumped ship. and Indiana Jones wanted a picture with me *swoon*. Thus the con bug was formed.



Full shot of my most in depth project to date. Bill the Butcher from Gangs of NY. I don't think I saved all those blueprints but the ENTIRE thing sans the hat base and shoes was hand made by myself. I made sure it was screen accurate from the way the knives hung on the belt, to the size of the hand made tassels on my belt sash thing, to the proper fabric and the right count of buttons on the vest. I painted the knives from a bright green to look more natural, and weathered the clothing some to look more battle ready. SNAFUs included making the shirt one size too small (whoops!) and forgetting that silk conducts electricity and burning my hand while making the vest.




This is a more detailed shot of the prosthetics I had to endure for this. Mustache, mutton chops, eye scar. And I made that damned leather hat which was a bitch. Oh and my horrid hair cut that I gave myself to be accurate. Ugh.




This is my wonderful wonderful group of friends and I for Dragon Con 2009. Everyone had such great costumes and it was just an amazingly good time, albeit the lack of sleep or proper nutrition. God I miss these kids so much! ARGH!

Coming up over whatever time period... Sketches for the first costume, a steampunk inspired super villain.

In the dog house

So I, or rather my family, have these two dogs. There is Maru the totally awesome Corgi that I love to death and miss soooooooooooo much. Seriously, that dog is amazing. And then there is the beagle, Chobi. Now Chobi is..well.. special. He is sweet as pie and precious, but the poor guy is just not all there. I don't really know what is in his head actually.
If your not familiar with the corgi breed its suffice to say they are hyperactive and on par with jack russels. So naturally Maru is always geared up like the Tasmanian Devil ready to play. Meanwhile Chobi prefers to nuzzle up and chew his plush toy. Seems like a good balance of the force. Untiiiiiiil it's play time. When you throw the ball Maru will chase after it with lightening speed and catch it mid air like a shark (cute!). This however and for whatever reason really upsets Chobi, almost like road rage in a person. Chobi will let out his beagle howl the second Maru even flinches for the ball. But it doesn't stop. Chobi will not only howl, but he will get up from where he is, stand about a foot away from Maru and stiffen his legs like a fainting goat and howl. This results in a extremely amusing bouncing effect every time the beagle howls where he kind of bounces a few inches without moving his legs. It's pure cartoon, and pure madness.

Today I was thinking about this while I installed a program to work on my final background and sketched out this image.


I have to say I was surprised how Disney it came out considering I never do Disney style nor was I consciously going for that style. Then again subconsciously when you think Alice the first thought becomes the Disney version. I want to use these sketches to create a larger piece and include my fourth favorite dog ever, Ella May as the mouse, and another Corgi I've yet to meet, David's Kiki. I don't know when the time will come for that so I wanted to at least post these for now.

And for the cuteness factor, here are my boys Maru and Chobi In a rare calm moment:



Daaaaaaaaaaaaaw. I'm going to take a cue from these guys and go to bed. Its 3:30 AM! Yikes!

Moving right along..

Finished # 2. Unfortunately photographing/scanning gouache is very difficult. I had to color correct the exposure here, but you can still see a spot where the paint was shimmering in the light. I also color corrected the first background.








I have a long day at Target today and wont be home till about 12:30. Oi. Public transit eats up too much time. I have a lot of paperwork to do when I get home and some places to apply to, so I doubt I will get to working on my man made background tonight. Why are there not enough hours in the day??

I'm a little parched

Working on background #2. I'd say I'm 85% there. I should finish by tonight and either switch gears to some storyboard work, or do my man made background via Photoshop.



I dropped the panel as I was fumbling with the door knob. Doh! It dinged the corner :/ Oh well, at least I didn't spill a glass of water on it!

Are we there yet?!

So as of right now, im going to shelf this background as done. I know there is something more that needs to happen with it, but since I can't exactly pinpoint what it is right now I don't want to keep fiddling with it and end up ruining it. I'm going to move on to painting # 2 right now and probably re-visit this one after.




Might I add it is a fantaaaaaaaaaaaaastically beautiful day here in Los Angeles. Man alive.

Man vrs Camera vrs Gouache

Updates on the forest background...Its coming along. Needing some highlights and to re touch the trees in the foreground. But all and all I am pleased.

Since I took these images at night I had to pick between a flash that distorted my colors beyond belief, or slightly blury more true colors. So Im posting both. The bright photo gives you an idea of the detail, and the darker one gives you how it really looks (less Seurat).







And with that... Congaloosh!

Pontoffel Pock, Where the Heck Are You??

Oi!!!
So I've been in Los Angeles for about a month and a half now. I have been working non-stop out here, but not on anything exciting.. more like part time and working on getting a job on this coast. Ive been drawing but not as frequently, which is a bummer. However I did get some gouache the other week and *finally* this week have gotten to work on some stuff.

The first image here is a painting of the Nickelodeon characters Fanboy and Chum Chum. I really dig their title cards, so this I would file this under "Fan Art".



Speaking of fan art. Here is a vectorized Mr. Pink I did one afternoon in a slight haste.



Right on!

So next is what I'm working on right now (As in, Im taking a break to go to bed here in a minute). I went to the observatory with fellow animator and new LA friend David L and we got to talking about goals and stuff. He put me to the test and really grilled me on what exactly I want to do, which is concept design. And that sort of put the WD40 on my gears and I realized the lack of new concept work in my portfolio. Sooo I am now working on that as fast as I can.
I had been working on some backgrounds in Photoshop but using a wacom is no substitute for a cintique and those drawings seem a little les par than I like. Tonight's background is making much faster progress as done with gouache.






Yay!

Oh! And that laptop that you can so voyeuristicly see what I've been listening to tonight, totally died a few weeks ago on my birthday. I really dont know why it died, other than some weird technological spite. But I somehow managed to fix it by taking it completely apart and talking ever so gently to it. I lovingly re-named is "Goodbread's Monster".

That's enough for tonight. I will attempt to make time to photograph and doodles I did since being here and post soon, but no promises on that.

Goodnight!

Commentary

Today's word was "commentary". It brought up the image of Orson Welles so I went with that. I have to admit I was less inspired tonight and feeling rather sluggish. Moving worries, being sick, etc. will do that. I was more curious about different brush options than the figure. I also decided to play around with color using a more spring palette since I wanted to be more painterly tonight and it is in fact the first day of Spring.

Nefariousness

I decided to use a random word generator for inspiration. When I read "nefariousness" this was the image that came to mind. I have always hated Hamburgler since childhood... he was just plain creepy.

Info galore

I am starting a this new blog to post my daily doodles and sketches as often as I can. Not every drawing will be pretty but the point is to draw every day (or 3 days depending on how busy the week is). To see the favored drawings please see the gallery at my website www.amandagoodbread.com.

If you want to buy a print of any of the drawings please contact me for information :)