Skullairy Ink & Design

  It’s hilarious honestly, I swear trying to go in one direction you find out you need to know another thing, another thing, oh and look ANOTHER thing. Maybe I am on Edge because last month or so what I thought was a small visit with the family has grown into a longer stay, and what our family thought was 100% remote work has turned into limited states, as well as office visits. Luckily our son’s main hub for his homeschooling is here so maybe getting him a more stable social life is the blessing I should be focusing on.     (Wow that was a rant, and I apologize.) Come to realize your story can be interesting and hit all the beats to make an awesome pitch, but when it comes down to, in those in-between key scenes is a whole lot of meat missing, specifically the character's table and worth value in character development. When running my tabletop campaigns, the characters had pre-established development but it was my job to introduce challenges to further that developm...

  This post is going to have Irony at its core as I use to run campaigns for tabletop RPGs like dnd & fate. Though I was pretty good at them as most of them were homebrew stories I came up with, and I made massive worlds where players and friends alike would seem to not only enjoy themselves immersively but completely be hooked and addicted.     Even while on the property during the pandemic, I found a way to kickstart an old pokemon campaign I homebrewed via an MRPG chat app. Huge adjustment but still overall a great experience. Deep down kept me awake to ensure our fire stove was burning hot and keeping the family warm. Now the Ironic Part. My storyboards, though a good practice and exercise to enhance my skills. Still didn’t bring an interesting story to the table. to figure out where my creative writing had gone as it just flowed naturally even with the curve balls the groups would throw my way. Then it finally hit me. I have always roleplayed from the hip an...

  So since my fall into figure drawing and discovering Scott Eaton's thorough anatomy course, I was mortified by every close-up camera shot I made the moment I put detail into it. Now I understand one of the things that attracted me to storyboarding was that heavy rendering was not needed. It’s to be fast but accurate, get ideas down quick like that lesson in storyboarding class “how to storyboard if you can’t draw” Meaning maybe I am overthinking my storyboard with all this extra knowledge. Though I learned and thought of ways to make it a career I was in the beginning always using it as an exercise to maximize my learning potential in art. After all, I was cramming Four years of University level knowledge in the shortest amount of time As I could so that I may build something with it all, and keep the digital nomadic lifestyle going as long as I can.         My dialogue scenes looked more than stiff but just like… what are they even doing with their ...

  Another two weeks after the animation, I found myself going back to Proko, Mathew Matisse, and Glen Vilppu and even started more certificate-driven courses all on figure drawings and gestures. Been months of focusing on primitive objects, the foundations of art, and using them in storyboards and the 4P playground exercise, and even though gesture sketching was already a short routine since I first passed through Proko, I felt it was time to hone in on this skill to make my routine more structured and knowledgeable, but also to dive my storyboards the characters they deserve.     This was a deep rabbit hole I did not expect and came to find out it is one of the longest to master skills as traditional artists can be paid good money for understanding, proportions, anatomy, and likeness. It was time to lay down the chalk and begin using a real sketchbook. Especially if I was to start proving my work outside of Linkedin, I suppose no better time than now to sketch for r...

  A little early in a Posting but the last couple of weeks I went on a full sidetrack when it came to Storyboarding. I was noticing how my frames, though showing the progress of the sequence, still looked.. Off. Going through the masters and Mentors list I have come up with. I have realized I need at least a little understanding of animation for my frames to look more alive, especially these more action-specific scenes.     This leads me to a Shout out to AlanBecker and his youtube tutorial series on the principles of Animation. Credit to Frank Thomas & Ollie Johnson. Armed with the following principles. -Squish & Squash -Anticipation -Staging -Straight Ahead/Pose to Pose -Follow Through & Overlapping Action -Slow in & Slow Out -Arcs -Secondary Action -Timing -Exaggeration -Solid Drawing -Appeal     Armed with these principles and adding them to my sequential storyboard Practices along with a solid understanding of Keyframes, the true m...

  I have to say after a month of watching Master Animators like Aaron Blaise and then finding my next SHout-out artist Mark Simon. I began to see a massive benefit turning thumbnailing practices into storyboarding instead, since it was just adding additional skills to be practiced simultaneously, thus being effective for muscle memory control. Aaron Blaise's fluid animations of a flour sack were something to aspire to. My fundamental perspective blocks were no match for a well-armed flour sack! Storyboards use all the fundamentals and incorporate other exercises such as sequencing and gesture sketchings. I saw it as a way of moving from one big Idea to another without being tied down to its permanency. Just as the chalk was to the pacific northwest rain. It demanded me to be brave and forgiving of every stroke I made. If I was to ever make the “perfect” routine course to maximize my life potential in this profession. It’s clear Storyboarding needs to be an Artistic Ritual.  ...

  References, References, References. These are the wise words of Marc Brunet and Aaron Blaise. Both of them are getting special shout-outs this month.  Marc is a former Blizzard Artist now a full-time Art instructor for his Youtube ArtSchool series. His knowledge of how the process of learning works, the science behind it, and how to effectively hack it to improve has gone unmatched across his platform space. Armed with this knowledge I feel I can make Proper use of my study time and dramatically improve my results. One of his biggest key takeaways is that I always have a reference, and the more the merrier, because without information to go off of there is no learning being done.  Aaron Blaise is my Disney ANimation Idol has the same takeaway but with life. Go out in the field for raw references to draw from. Zoos, parks, and aquariums are all good places to go just for a sketch at something giving you raw information.  These are all perfect lessons as now in the m...

It’s been over a month of just non-stop fundamentals lessons from a lot of the role models from last month's masters & Mentors blog post. Specifically, in the realm of fundamentals I mean as follows; Shape         Form             Perspective LIne Weight/Confidence     Dynamics   Light & Shadow So my first shout-out will be Mathew Mattessi as he is a great instructor when it comes to these fundamentals. He teaches a new way of thinking when it comes to lines and their representation of Shapes and forms through the forces and mechanics to which the worlds are tied. Giving new ways to push shapes more dynamically without losing. Shape The premise sounded simple and it was in ways. Basic shapes are circles and Triangles, and lots of them.  Some say square goes in that category, but I say rectangles and squares are just two triangles loving on each other. The most accurate use of the ...

    It comes as no surprise that after all this time the rusty muscle memory is real. The first few drawings I was working on with chalk all looked great until I noticed how much flatter and disproportionate everything was. I truly felt like I was starting over from ground Zero. Normally this would depress me. Thinking of the years wasted and wondering if it was gone forever. Instead I was in a position where the opposite felt more true. I found myself excited, I thought to myself. “With what knowledge and skill was lost… So were the bad habits from the past, therefore starting at a blank state gives me nothing but improvement. I could map out and plan ahead of time what art directions I needed to focus on vs whatever the flavor of the week is I got from school. IF I wanted to do this right, I am going to ned the right influences in my style, habits, and workflow. Throughout this research I came up with an extensive list of individuals, all whom provide some sort of train...

  Since the last time I posted I pondered on this for a while “ what to post, how to post, and even though I have already initiated my first post, you wouldn't think that I could still feel like the first post. So what better way to start the blog than a small trip into my artistic Journey… or just a quick montage of me growing up. [Insert pic] Okay maybe just a tiny bit more info than that. SO for the majority of my childhood, I was always told I had a talent when it came to drawing. Yay all parents are proud. Even if it wasn’t my most passionate thing to do at the time I had fun doing it none-the less. Every year and semester from Kindergarten to becoming a senior highschool student. I made sure to have a art class. Still dto this day I remember there names, and a quick shout out to them for if not for our Art teachers that were there while were were still being raised, we may not have the passions or skills we have now. To Mr. Fritzler, Ms. Foot, and Ms. NAME.. My memory is vagu...

  Me at the playground at a local park using chalk on the ground to keep my mind and hands busy while my son enjoyed the company of other kids. I have not done anything to creative since my short lived game design school experience. Even before then was a dry spell of creativity since 2009 drafting up a flag for my MOS class.  I believe the last true art experience before this was highschool and the past is best left to a separate post I may do if I can’t think of what else to write. It is here when I placed the chalk on the cement slab of a ping pong table that the ancient dopamine receptors began to reawaken.     This chalk is finally an opportunity to further something I nearly forgot I loved. Art. It was cheap, nondestructive, and portable. Perfect for the current minimalist lifestyle. The stick felt rough but the adrenaline of reentering the creative world of art pushed me through. [During this upcoming year the wife and I decided to camp and live remotely ...