Way down the path and didn't leave a marker...

Hey there! It has been a long time since I last posted, so i'll feed your brain my attempt at informing all witty like.

I wanted to follow up with a post about 3D Animation, the program I just graduated from, but I'm not in the mood to edit video material/link/post whatever. I'll leave it for a later post.

So yes, I did graduate from 3D Animation. I came to the realization however that if I wanted to go farther in my chosen industry without having to grasp at a worhtwhile position with sweaty palms, i'd have to get even more spiffier.

So here I am studying hence forth again. 3D Game Art is the program, and in game ready video game art is the method. I have learned SO much in the past couple of months, and I'm SO happy for this. It is worth the thousands of dollars (please let it be!).

Along with my new found knowledge I was emailed by CD-ED's Career Guidance office with a suggestion! Getting my name out in the game world may be a little easier by entering into the international VisionFestival! Plus there's a nice cash prize to winners. Here's the site visionfest.org .

I already know what I'm going to do, which was something I was thinking for my resume anyway. For now I'll say it is equivalent to a game intro animation (I'm hoping to at least do something similar to Blizzard's intros), based off of one of my personal character designs. I don't know if I could accomplish it, but I have until the end of July to see this to fuition.

So I'm really excited, and I've done some planning and modeling already. My cousin Trish pointed me in the right direction for CC music, and I'm hoping to maybe find some sound effects just in case I decide to include them. Maybe do some research on proper camera methods as well.

w00t!

Graphic Design Program

Back in 2005 I began a 3 year journey studying Graphic Design at St. Lawrence College in Kingston, Ontario. I knew NOTHING, and when I say nothing, I mean basic conversions of measurement, paper types, or what a GIF was. So, you can say that it taught me all that, and so much more. I gained new understanding, developed great friendships, and a greater outlook on life. I'm including only works from 2nd and 3rd year just because I like them better, and because 1st year focused a lot on traditional Graphic Design work instead of on the computer.

2nd year was the middle, and the easiest. My favourite class was Typography with Neil Laing. He is a fantastic Graphic Designer and all around great person. We had two awesome projects where we designed a menu, mine was called Kiki's Supper Club, and a CD package of a famous artist. I picked Janis Joplin just because at the time our family hippy and friend Nathan was really getting me back into the oldies.



We had Layout with Andrew McLachlan, who was a great inspiration to all of us. And what a story teller! This man could get off track in the wink of an eye, but somehow it tied in with his lectures. I always enjoyed his projects because of the leeway with creativeness he allowed us. Basic design principles were something we needed to understand and employ, but he understood that sometimes you needed to break the boundaries. We had to develop a logo for the CD Package that was unique, and with any type of brainstorming, usually you should come up with words and concepts associated with the idea or word that you are focusing on. Vision: outlook, angle, aspect, perspective, imagination, perceiving, eyes, eyes....and eyes??? That is what everyone 'focused' on it seems, and I wanted to look at a different point of view. I thought that a vision often leads down a 'road' of sorts to a new understanding life. So I graphically represented a road with a 'circular' goal at the end, if you can discern my meaning. Our topic was an art of some type and I chose fantasy art (not surprising). Each circular picture is a work of art from deviants I follow on devianart.com.



We did a packaging project in 3rd year, as well as logo development and advertisement. My package was a little box containing a bag of organic chocolates (which were actually dollar store wax easter eggs.) Throughout my concept procedures, I decided after researching different packaging methods that I wanted a 'cut-out' of a feature. What a bitch! I really did step over the line there, thinking that with an exacto-knife I could somehow flawlessly cut out a vine design. But I did it, albeit a tad shoddy, but nonetheless I was happy with the outcome. What I liked the most was the ad, this version here does not include the picture of the packaging on the front, but I'm sure you get the idea.



The faculty often approaches non-profit organizations that are in need of some Graphic Design work, and the students help with ad campaigns that are marked based on the criteria of the 'clients'. There were 3 different organizations to choose from, and I chose Kingston Writersfest because I immediately had an idea of what I was going to do. While Andrew pitched our project, I started to draw the head below, making words flow out of her mouth and into her head symbolizing the transfer of the written word from the author to the reader, so to speak. The following pieces are the 3rd year exhibition poster and the front page of my flash website (which no longer exists).



Neil only taught during 1 semester of the 2nd year, otherwise all of our Typography education came from Don Niven. Most considered him an odd fellow, me included, but I enjoyed developing and refining logos, typefaces, text, etc,... in his classes. He always had a lot of up to date resources, and seemed like a hoarder of Graphic Design, finding, implementing and showing different flavours from all time periods. We were given a project outline to do a business advertisement campaign for a brochure booklet. He always gave us categories to and names. I ended up with Floorits, which was an imaginary company that manufactured floorlights. It was quite difficult to find resource images for the vector graphics we had to incorporate, but eventually I persevered. It was by far my most favourite project, and the one I most let myself go while still remaining within the boundaries of design concepts.




The 2 first images were redesigns from 2nd year of exhibition posters. The first I wanted to try my hand at using stock brushes and the second I wanted to use a fairly minimilist approach, although I'm not sure I succeded. The 3rd was a poster for a conference (and I wanted to try using the glass graphics idea).



I had an array of other classes including Branding, Illustration, Art History, etc,... While it helped me to further my goals, I don't feel that they contributed as much as in the classes mentioned above, nor the people that helped to realize those goals. There is so much I could cover about those 3 years, whether it be the concepts I had learned or the personal feelings I have, but I think I've wrote a lot already.

I just graduated from 3D Animation and will soon be studying 3D Game Art, of which in later blogs I'll post some of my work. In the next blog I think I'll be covering some more of my personal artwork.

Kristine

"Copyright infringement: it's like me going to your house, ripping off your face, strapping it onto my head and claiming it as my own."


My very first post...

...is to SHOW YOU ALL MY AWESOME NINJA ARTIST POWERS! Allright, just joking. But I am going to post some images. I think I am going to go chronologically, from past to present, adding everyday, or every few days as I have time.

My interests varied during my younger years, but they were always centered around fantasy, sci-fi, and things that we just could not experience but in an ethereal sense. I remember drawing hundreds of 'long-necked' dinosaurs riding on each others backs for my grandmother.



To the left is a demoness I designed. She wore many outfits over the years, and had many names. I drew this when I was about 14 (circa 2000).




It quickly evolved to unicorns and then dragons. As my drawing became more detailed, I started designing my own characters. Eventually, I mentally created an entire world where my characters resided. Even to this day I can recall every single detail of each character's life, the world they live in and the powers each have. Very few have survived in my artistic endeavours today. I started creating them when I was 12, and I am 23 now.


As mentioned above, that particular character had many outfits, below is a couple of different renditions (1997-2000).









Eventually, new characters popped up, I needed allies and enemies for my heroine.




Although I grew up watching many cartoons, and yes I was heavily artistically influenced, I never really grew a huge obsession with fanart. I have always preferred to do it my own way. But I have touched on certain genres and subjects, and in a later blog you will see some more of my recent fanart.









Soon I started branching off a little more... the first image with the wizard and the dragon was featured in my highschool newspaper in 2000.









After I had my son, I was always tired. I tried to pick up a pencil and draw the way I used to, but didn't have the will. I only drew while I was in art class, and I felt forced. Everything was and is still centered on my son. Eventually I got over the hump of late night bottle feedings and changing diapers, and as he grew, I also returned back to drawing. The first image was done in 2002, second and third in 2004, fourth and fifth in 2005.



This was just the beginning, you could say. By the way, the formatting on this blog site is a bitch, I had to pull out some html skillz, and I tell you, I am NO coder.


Kristine


"Copyright infringement: it's like me going to your house, ripping off your face, strapping it onto my head and claiming it as my own."