A congrats are in order for snowflakeinca and Heliodus for making it into the Animation program at CSULB! WOOT WOOT!

Now, to finally utilize this site…hmm.

nail down my fox’s name and character design

Animate Fox: walk/run/play

Have a loose story with others

Nail down other character designs

DRAW DRAW DRAW DRAW DRAW PEOPLE!

LOST BOYS HERE I COME.

We’re going to head down to the San Diego Zoo (FINALLY) on April 21st.  Let’s post up pictures and sketches galore!  (btw, have you seen “How to Train your Dragon” yet?  YOU SHOULD).

Hoping the new semester is treating everyone well!  As we all know, it’s not easy maintaining a steady output of personal creativity when there are professors and assignments galore that are ridiculously demanding and time-consuming.  Hopefully once everyone gets into the swing of things there will be an opportunity to squeeze in at least a sketch or two to channel the creativity that can not be vented through the cookie-cutter school assignments.

So! As I was perusing the list of watch-worthy artists on DeviantArt a while back, it dawned on me that this artist -

http://imaginism.deviantart.com/

- is actually several illustrators who share a username on the site.  I thought it was interesting because they have an official site (see below), but DeviantArt receives so much traffic from the online art community that it’s almost a better way of getting outside feedback on their artwork.  So I thought I would toss in the idea of perhaps creating a Cx3 DeviantArt (or similar website) page for everyone to share — not to take away from the official blog, but as a supplement to whatever ideas are spawned here.  Even if it’s only used as a sketch dump for dead-end concepts or tangents, it might be worth considering.

Of course DeviantArt is not perfect — plagiarism and image-pirating are problems any artist faces with the combined blessing and curse that is the internet — but it’s the only sort of ‘facebook for artists’ I know of, so if there’s a better option, let’s hear it!

Anyway, Back to Imaginism.  Here is their official site:

http://www.imaginismstudios.com/

I love the style of their illustrations…they are very whimsical yet dark and edgy at the same time.  Even the more grotesque drawings have a strange sort of sweetness to them, and their sketches are, of course, quite amazing.  If you haven’t seen their work before, check out the DA page and the official site!

~Snowflakeinca

I apologize for the severe lack of updates to this site.  We have had a rather tumultuous start off for the spring semester, and any time that we can dedicate to this project has unfortunately been whittled down to small minuscule portions.  HOWEVER, we are not abandoning it! So fear not!

What we all have discussed with great interest is a planned zoo trip.  The last trip was a smashing success, and we hope to repeat this venture on a school-wide furlough day at CSULB.  (A good trip down to San Diego is highly desired, since our last planned trip was ruined by the tail-end of the El Nino storm).

Also, all of our group is in the Animation 1 class, and we’re super excited to make pictures move.  It’s a thrilling thing to think that you were able to make your pictures move across the page .

So, I’ll be posting more updates about the zoo trip soon.  Until then guys!

- Heliodus

The new semester has finally started here at California State University Long Beach, after some hiccups with a school shutdown due to flooding and a severe weather alert (tornado, anyone?).   Despite all of that crap, the crew here is back on their feet.

Some things I’d like to address:

First of all, the November project that never got finished.  While I wouldn’t call it a complete failure, it was a bit of a poorly planned venture, and our first attempt at that.  Now that we’re a little wiser, we now know that we should completely nullify any significant project of any kind in the last two months, because frankly, we’ll be too damn busy surviving over anything else.  (That being said, we did get a pretty awesome idea going.  I mean, it has a lot of potential – and I think waaaay too much stuff for it to cram into one month.)

Secondly, I’m still all for the themes of the months.  I’d really like to revisit that idea, because I think that we can get some good work in with a theme guiding our work.  What do you guys think?

Another thing I’d like to mention: I’m a big fan of artist’s books.  Especially when they do exercises, and focus on certain techniques and whatnot.  Let’s do the same!

And, last but not least, let’s regroup and enjoy ourselves!  Here’s to a new semester and a new year guys!

- Heliodus

http://i666.photobucket.com/albums/vv23/murphyslaw1221/P1210193.jpg

http://i666.photobucket.com/albums/vv23/murphyslaw1221/P1210189.jpg

In anticipation of seeing Murphyslaw’s awesome animal book I’ve heard about as well as Monday’s trip to the San Diego Zoo (assuming the weather cooperates), I looked through my sketchbook of the drawings I did on last Monday’s trip to the Wild Animal Park, and subsequently realized I did very little drawing that day.  Boooo.

So here are a couple of my attempts at drawing zoo animals:

And it was practically a semester’s worth of Character Design (and then some) in one book.  So, I decided to look him up online, and Lo and Behold, the man has a blog: http://davidcolman.blogspot.com/

I think this is definitely worth following.  Please check it out – it’s GOLDEN.