Daily Sketch #1

Hope I can keep up this drawing everyday thing...that's what I wanted this blog to be for in the first place ~__~

Omg I Colored Something!

It's a miracle that I finished this, given the pit of loathing I was in for not having colored anything in years. Boy am I rusty. :\

BUT I USED A CINTIQ FOR THE FIRST TIME!!! :D :D :D Super funnnn!

Too bad I didn't realize the color profile on it was different from the computer though...can't seem to color balance it the way it looked in the cintiq!! How frustrating!!! :(

Tabula Rasa Characters

I think that girl on the right has already gone through a lot of variations... hopefully I can tie her down soon D:

"You'll look just like Snow White!"

Hopefully I find some time to color this :\ Trying to figure out some new character for that project!

Sleeping Bunnie!

Sleeping animals are cute.

This New Guy...

Some new guy I'm trying to design for some new project I'm thinking up.

Figure Invention for Animation!!!

So I started my Figure Invention for Animation class with my buddy Rad Sechrist, who is an AMAZING teacher as well as a ridiculous artist. REALLY great class. Most of all, I'm finally being forced to draw again and I can start posting new stuff! YAY! :)

Anyway, on the left is a doodle I did during a super long work meeting. Got called out for it by my boss :( Blah.

The girl in the first drawing is supposed to be the same one as the girl on the left...but she doesn't look like it. For the class, Rad is encouraging us to think up poses for our own characters we're working on, so this is the main character of a new project I want to start. Hopefully I can actually MOVE on it this time... all my other projects are really long and time consuming. This is the easiest of them all. You'll probably see a lot of her soon... and also her troupe of weirdos...which will be really fun to design. :)

That guy is Mitch. He's not from the same story as Piper, but I miss drawing him :) Then Macie is down below. Doodle from class. I love my Col-Erase pencils, and how clean the drawings look when I grayscale and mess with levels :D

My Roger's Gardens Halloween Video!!!! :D WATCH IT!

Blackstone Theater: Roger's Gardens Halloween 2011 from Elora Lyda on Vimeo.

It's always fun to compare concepts to the finished product....so even though these are really quick sketches, I still want to post them for my records. Plus it's fun to compare them to the actual video :)



I think the thief costume was the most accurate....I drew these to prove that I was serious about this project, after I approached my boss saying that I wanted to do something "cinematic" with this year's Halloween display. They were all pretty fast and bad, and they were just the general "looks" I wanted for each character since I pretty much had to hunt for these pieces. Thank goodness for Gasoline Alley, this awesome vintage shop in Costa Mesa. :) It was like a dream come true! SO PERFECT!

The part of the diva and thief actually got switched in casting, so the dress and gloves we were going to use was actually similar to the one I drew, but lacier. We ended up using Emily's actual dress (the red one) because it looked best on her and worked out better in the end, but the dress we found at the vintage shop was really nice too.

Sylvr's black dress was a really lucky find after we visited the shop for a 3rd time....it just happened to be hanging there and I grabbed it because it was almost exactly what I had envisioned. PHEW! :D

Spencer's stuff we just bought a vest from Forever 21 and he already had khaki pants. He ended up not using the bowtie I bought since none of us knew how to tie one, and then after his makeup was on, he looked way better without the hat.


Here is my crappy attempt at a storyboard, an effort which I abandoned after it took me too long and I started to just write it out and do walkthroughs of the sets. That helped me a lot more...since I can't really draw backgrounds and stuff. But I thought it was worth showing at least. :)

This was my first project with an actual full-on process like this, so I feel pretty accomplished. :D

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE WATCH THE VIDEO!!!! I put a lot of effort into it, and my actors are amazing! Considering the thief is my assistant, the Director ghost is my SEO guy, and the two other girls are on the Merch team and helped set up Halloween. :) The girl in the red dress actually MADE that red dragon you see in the video!!! AMAZING!!!

There's a lot of talent at Roger's Gardens, and I feel SOOO grateful to be a part of it! :) I loved working with these people who I never really got a chance to talk to until recently...and I really got a sense of what Roger's Gardens is capable of.

When people ask me where I work, I say the easiest way to describe it is a Garden nursery....but it's way more than that. Please watch this video to understand. What these people do is very "Disney", and I'm just blown away at how AWESOME they are at it! I wanted to finally show that off in video form, to try and do justice to all the hard work that they do in just 2 weeks. Go check out the website! :)

I've only been Marketing Manager for 4 weeks now, and this will forever be known as my first daunting task as Roger's Gardens Marketing Manager. I did this in 3 weeks, and am very proud of myself for it. :) This is the kinda stuff that happens when you put me in charge...I don't think anyone here was expecting it.

I Missed This

Dang. After doing video for such a long time I really missed drawing. Wish I could stop mindlessly doodling women though and start drawing men -___-

Board Bunnies!

This is the result of tutoring Amanda today :) :) :) I'm helping her make characters for her skate/snow/surf company she's making for class. SUPERRRRRRRR SUPER FUN!!! ANDDDDD I'm getting paid! WOOHOO!~ :D

Also...how was I ever scared of using Sharpie for drawing? IT'S AMAZING! <3 I like the roughs so much more than the cleanups -__- Sigh.

Mitch & Macie

I have class today and naturally am freaking out because some turnarounds and expressions sheets are due... thank goodness I managed to pull this one out of my ass this morning. Still got a long way to go though before 7:30 tonight. Hopefully I can squeeze some stuff in while I'm at work SIGHHHH.

UPDATE: I MADE IT FOR CLASS (At the very last minute...) :D Added the little girl (just named her Macie) in here too...since this was all one assignment. Macie was more rushed, since I was scribbling her down at like 5:30 after work and I thought I'd be late. Thank goodness I finished :) It was a very heavy critique day, so I'm glad I was able to get my stuff up on time so Shiyoon could provide some great feedback. I really love these characters, so even though the assignment is over I'm gonna keep working with them. These 2 are siblings... and along with their parents, they definitely fit under the assignment title of a "dysfunctional family". I'm really thankful that my character design class really forced me to explore so many different character variations and personalities. All my previous anxiety and frustration trying to come up with something original really paid off in the end, and taught me a lot about what it takes to be a real character designer. I still have a long way to go with these guys, but at least I've got their personalities and looks tied down. Definitely don't want all this work to go to waste. Already got 2 projects in mind :D EXCITED!!!~

Intro To Character Design Week 5 Homework! (ALREADY?!)

Wow it's already 5th week of my Intro to Character Design class... can't believe it! I feel like I've been learning a lot, but I haven't really been applying it well enough, until NOW! YAY! :D I've been really depressed and frustrated lately because everything I've tried doing has been utter crap. With these drawings though I feel like maybe I'm finally coming out of my super long slump. HOPEFULLY! Maybe I just really love this character (because I do!) :) This is still for my dysfunctional family homework. She wants to be a magician.

Let's go back to 2009 now, shall we? :)

Today I took a nostalgia trip back to my Winter 2009 Interactivity class...the class I was most scared of ever in college. Now, I'm no programmer, and I'm not proud of much, but I think what I managed to pull outta the air for this class was pretty good. And even if it's not that good, it sure is fun to look back at. :) So I thought I'd share! If not for you, then for me...in the future~ You're welcome to interact with these projects :D Especially the alphabet book! If they don't work... sorry :\


Click here to play! :) My favorite one :D



This was my choose your own adventure game I made. Our teacher gave us a bunch of these scientific images and we had to make a game out of them. So naturally... I turned my amoebas into heroes. :)
Click here to play!




This was my final project, StarStar Phone Home. It actually doesn't work too well...so I never really finished my final :\ But at least my teacher said I had good graphics! :D Check it out :) At least for its cuteness

And here are all my projects for the class :)

The Uncrappiest of the Crap

So I finally feel like my character design class is sinking in a bit. The lecture this week was greatttt :D I really learned a lot from seeing Shiyoon's process and watching his demos. I realized that I care too much about messing up my sketchbooks, so now I don't use them anymore...just loose paper like people have told me to do in the past. I should've done that earlier... I'm way less worried about what my doodles will look like. :) And I draw WAYYY more.

But anyway, after like over 50 pages of crap, I decided I've already reached my goal of drawing everyday. I think I've gotten into a good habit, which makes me super happy! Never thought it was possible! :D But yeah, I'm so not posting everything I draw anymore, like I have before... it would be too much. Instead, these are the best of the worst. :)

I think I'm starting to notice a change, or maybe I'm imagining it. -__-

Rawrhaha!

Here's some last ditch effort to have something for class yesterday. I actually did the super rough of this on the freeway on the way to class, when I was thinking about this GIF.


HAHAHA SO GOOD!!!! This has to be like one of my fav gifs ever!! It always makes me crack up! xD


This one's pretty good too though! :) AWWWWW!~ Always brightens my day! :D :D :D

Anyway. I don't particularly like that drawing, but I thought it'd be interesting to post since I'm going to do some major designing in the next couple days and it'll be fun to see the progression. :)

Mmmmm....Sundae Bear :D

Whenever I try to do my homework, something like this happens.

Androgyny

This was supposed to be a guy. Vince thought it was a girl. Now I don't know.

Damn now I need to draw something really cool to make up for this -__-

This Used To Be Me

Today I took my little sister to this festival run by YMCA and her after school coordinators. They had a bunch of performances done by little kids, and the first one I really enjoyed. A bunch of little kids just kinda jumped around and moved their hips to some hula choreography that they weren't really expected to follow, because you know the main purpose of them is just to be cute. :) And that they were! Especially the girl on the super far end who totally did NOT want to be there. It was hilariousss! xD Everyone noticed her too because she was just standing there looking really angry with her arms crossed. She didn't move the whole time except to roll her eyes! SOOO CUTE.

And then I realized why I loved it so much...and it's because I was ALWAYS that girl. When I was a kid I never wanted to participate because I thought everyone was an idiot and I didn't want to be one too. Sometimes I still think that, but I don't really care what people think of me anymore. It's always more fun to participate anyway :) I think now I'm the total opposite, I'm more like that guy on the left xD I remember graduating from high school and going to our IB Dinner Dance thing. My AP US History teacher played us that "I Hope You Dance" song by Lee Ann Womack and told us that no matter where life takes us, she hopes that we dance, and actually do things rather than just sit around...since you know, you only live once. I really live by that now. I'll basically try anything once because nothing lasts forever, no matter how embarassing it is, and also usually when I'm doing embarassing things, people around me don't even know me, and those who are my friends will still like me no matter what I do :)

Anyway. That cute little girl brought me back. I could completely feel her pain.

Faeries

Lately I've been obsessed with faeries (and yes I spell it that way!), and I know I suck with markers. I've always been terrified of coloring with markers because I hate messing up my drawings, but I ordered some tombows anyway because I figure I should try sometime... This was actually my very first drawing that I attempted to color with marker, so that explains why it looks this way. Even though I don't really know how to use them yet, they're a lot of fun!!! :D I hope I can get better with them soon!~

Pickle Turnaround (First One Ever!!!)

So this weekend I got to work on some long overdue Gnomescape stuff, which is a BLAST btw! :D I'm having so much fun with this project! Anyway, I got the logo done, which is here in black and white, but I do have a color version too (YAAAYYY!! :D), and I did my first turnaround!!! :D This is Pickle, the main character! It's really great that Jann is entrusting the whole look of this game to me...kind of daunting but, it's really a dream come true. :) I have to pinch myself sometimes to make sure I'm not dreaming.

I'm starting to feel like a real character designer!!! :O!!! :D!!!

More to come! :)