Happy New Year (again)!

Eeek, my enthusiastic posting has moved my happy new year post to the back page, but we are still very new in the year, so here it is again.

WIP - iPad drawing of Storm

iPad 2 drawing of Storm (click picture for closer look)

Storm as a kitten

I have many works in progress. This is a drawing of Storm that I started on the iPad (Brushes for iPad) and have yet to finish. The truth is that I loved 'painting' Storm, but became thoroughly bored of painting the background.

'Painting' on the iPad is ultimately just finger painting, as unless you have a stylus, it is just you and your index finger. I now have a Cosmonaut capacitive stylus that looks like a big crayon, but at the time I drew this, I did not have a stylus. The stylus has a relatively large tip (honestly, looks as large as those big, big Crayola crayons for toddlers) as the iPad anticipates a finger tip touching it and demands a similar stylus 'footprint'. I think the stylus works by transferring energy from your fingers, as again, the iPad anticipates the heat/electrical input from your fingertips to register a touch. I will have to google it.

Frankly, there is a certain amount of cheating going on in this drawing as I did use my original photo as an invisible/barely visible layer to allow me to trace some of the main shapes/folds and to give me a good colour reference. With the dropper function on Brushes, I could simply select the colour off the photograph itself. That said, it doesn't quite work out to be as easy as you'd hope because the colours were too dull on the original (shadows darkening Storm's bright eyes and making the red sheets on the bed look a muddy brown). Also, just like a painting, the more you cover up your original guidelines, the less useful they become. Needless to say, but even getting this far took hours.

Starting point for short animation

This was the quick iPad sketch (on Brushes for iPad) that gave me the idea for the little animation.

Storm and Mouse, whose antics inspired the sketch.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!  May 2012 bring good fortune to you and your loved ones.

My New Year's Resolution: To be creative every day.  

If this sounds a bit unambitious, it is because I am bored of failing to keep up my New Year's Resolutions.  Adding just a touch of creativity in each day seems manageable.  As a start, I've linked my first, crude animation made using AnimatorDesk, a brilliant iPad app.