Ye Ol' Sketchbook

Attack of the Brain Disease!

2012-01-29T22:16:00.002-06:00

Damn. Sorry for the delay. I came down with a brain disease the other day. Okay that's not the medical term but there was definitely something amiss with my head. I woke up experiencing extreme dizziness/vertigo and nausea. But I really wanted to make sure everything was set for a send we had at work so I went to work that day. Which probably wasn't the best idea at the time, and staring at a big bright screen didn't help. Well needless to say as soon as I got home I had to keep the world from spinning by going to bed right away. Only to sleep for 20 hours!! I mean deep, completely paralyzed and removed from the world sleep. I couldn't respond to my alarm, I could barely even muster the power to call in. Also I was in and out of delusions or fever dreams it was really weird.

I called the nurse at my doctors office and she said I may have just had a bug or something that I burned out of my system with sleep. Who knows I call it the brain disease. Oh in better news I received my copy of Eric Canete's Encore! It's amazing over three hundred pages of awesome!!

Well in any case I didn't get as much drawing done those few nights.
started a sketch for my luck of the draw. Sorry it's really rough, a lot will change and be worked out in the computer..
01-27-2012: When Unicorns Attack! Rough layout.

We've started watching Jericho on Netflix. I never saw this show when it was on but it's pretty great I'm enjoying it. Especially Skeet Ulrich. Man that guy still looks good. I mean I thought he was hot since back in The Craft and Scream but he's still rockin' that dark horse look. Any ways threw this out in Flash.
01-29-2012: Welcome to Jericho.

unicorn studies

2012-01-25T00:28:00.002-06:00

So our next luck of the draw is WHEN UNICORNS ATTACK!
It's not really due till next Friday but I figured I'd go ahead and do some unicorn studies for my sketches today. I don't think I've ever drawn a unicorn before. Seriously. I mean I know I'm all about the dragons and mermaids, but unicorns.. not so much. Anywho. I think I'm also gonna start another blog for my geeky rants and raves about all the geek things that make me squeal or just inspire me. Lots of comic stuff and artists. Since this is the "sketchbook."

unfinished

2012-01-24T00:00:00.004-06:00

so yeah totally meant to make stuff this weekend. But we had to do laundry, and I left GRRM's Dance with Dragons at the office. So I since I had the first 3 trades of Uncanny X-force lying around I was like I'll just read some more. And more led to me reading comics for most of my sunday. Good day. I am loving Uncanny X-Force right now. It started kind of slow but definitely picks up, the Dark Angel Saga is pretty awesome. Psylocke and Archangel were one of my favorite couples growing up. Even though everyone thought Archangel (especially as Angel) was a bit of a pansy, they have really given him a cool edge starting in X-force v3. I'm loving it.

So because it's kind of on my mind guess what I've been drawing. The first sketch was on just drawing Betsy asian. One of the biggest issues, she's supposed to be a brit in a japanese body, but very few people make her look asian. haha. which is cool I'm one of those. it's really super hard to draw asians. Probably why I always have trouble drawing Psylocke...

I just started a digital painting inspired by Uncanny X-force. Don't really have time to finish it tonight but I'll put up what I have so far. Just a little thumbnailing.. sorry I'll try and finish it over the next few days.

i must apologize.

2012-01-18T23:28:00.004-06:00

sorry. my full attention hasn't quite been on sketches these past few days. But in good news my cintiq came in, but for some reason wasn't exactly plug and play out of the box. Only because my old tablet drivers were apparently confusing the fuck out of it. But eventually got it working. could only doodle a couple quick things to make sure it's up and running correctly. Now too sleepy. So old. Gotta turn in for some Zs.

01-18: alien?

01-18: um chinese waitress at a foam party?

From yesterday.

01-05-2012

2012-01-15T22:05:00.007-06:00

Oh by the way she is singing. Because mermaids sing. Sirens of the sea. That's not just her "catching flies"

So yeah kind of didn't get around to putting anything up on Friday or Saturday. Sorry. We did find a new apartment though! Hurray, it's in a really nice area very hill-y and covered with trees. We won't have an awesome view, mostly of trees, but we were willing to pay less for a crappier view. We also have like 3 days to move out/in and they fall during the work week so that kind of sucks, but all in all it's really exciting.

to the posts. I did two today to make up for not posting yesterday. Just got around to watching Pirates 4, did not really care for it. Don't like Johnny Depp or Penelope Cruz and was just kind of tired of the usual pirate stuff, Jack Sparrow doing ridiculous and no longer comical feats. That being said, I had to watch because there were mermaids in it. MERMAIDS! There's a couple of things that I cannot turn down in films its mermaids and dragons, and trust me I've watched a slew of horrible dragon movies (I blame sci-fi channel!) because of this addiction.

Anywho. The whole mermaid/cleric thing made absolutely no effing sense and really was just thrown in there for the ladies who wanted a love story. I have to admit to be a sucker for shit like that too. Not that I loved it, but liked the eye candy for sure. The chick was gorgeous and the dude super hot. So yeah the romantic in me was cheering for that little sliver of a story line. Any who I started with just a mermaid and then I was like fuck it I'll just do a doodle of the Mermaid Kiss cuz quite frankly that was the best part of the movie for me. Well maybe aside from the super Catholic Spanish Prince not giving two shits about a fountain of youth. "CHRIST IS ALL YOU NEED" Haha. Sorry for the spoilers. That was pretty funny.

Bring it New Year!

2012-01-12T21:40:00.016-06:00

So one of my resolutions as a slacker artist was to start making art again on a daily basis. Be it a crappy little 5 minute sketch or an 8hr painting. Whateves. So like most new years resolutions I failed within the first week.

But hey I did pick things up the second week, and I've decided to have to post them up on my blog in order to pressure myself into perseverance. Well so I guess this is kind of sketch/paint/drawing/digital thing a day.

Oh also after 3 yrs of saving I am finally going to get a Cintiq! JOY! Seriously I'm ridiculously excited, but as I was shopping around for the cause of my euphoria my computer took a little turn and decided to show it's age. I've got it up and running again. But next up, save for a better machine.

Anyways. So my computer crapped out the first few days I meant to post these up:
01-12-2012: me waiting for my computer to run it's scans.

01-12-2012: we've been watching lots of Buffy/Angel. Crappy little doodle of Spike.

01-11-2012: first time plein-air painting, not amazing, but I'm satisfied with it I was just working on "Covering the Canvas", so mission accomplished.

01-10-2012: tiny wolvie headshot

01-09-2012: quick Fantomex, reading Uncanny X-Force right now.. I think I will have to write a separate blog reviewing that book.

01-08-2012: Thomas in SG-U. My boyfriend started Stargate: Universe. I never watched SG-1, just one of the sci-fi's that I somehow missed. I liked the movie just never got into the show. But I digress. He was very deep in concentration, must have been an engaging episode..

Get back on that horse!!

2011-11-03T00:50:00.006-05:00

After feeling like a huge failure of an artist, as far as not producing, and there for not existing, I have decided to jump back into the groove of things and keep making stuff.

A friend referred me to a great book for those mentally struggling with their art. It's called Art & Fear and it's a great little read. It's really helping me get over all the little things I beat myself up over, and also overcome that fear of being scared of making crap and therefore forgoing making anything at all. Which I have a tendency to do. So sorry if this is crap, but I have to make heaps of crap to get back into making things that are maybe one step above crap.

But you know what. Fuck it all I'm making this shit for me. Who cares what people think. Oh except for the stuff that I'm making for comic-con. Our company got a table at the Austin Wizard World this year and it's kind of what inspired me to start producing art more regularly. Well that and seeing my co-workers continually cranking out work.

I'm so spoiled by computers, cintiqs especially, drawing on paper is so incredibly unforgiving! Sorry for these..

I found a lot of the old stuff I used to take to Anime conventions and realized "Hey I work in watercolors a lot. I should try those again!"
Mystique in watercolors... it's been a while...

It's like I've been teleported backwards in time and my art has reverted back to it's most basically horrible level.
Psylocke

I'll make more, and hopefully better stuff soon...

Updates.

2011-11-03T00:33:00.006-05:00

I'll probably break these up into two uploads. So here's some of the older stuff:

Poster for the Artist Against Cancer benefit show! Go to ArtistsAgainstCancer.org and help artists struggling with cancer!

More drawings of people from work:
Evgeny our resident Russian

Kellan another new guy

2011-05-25T00:05:00.005-05:00

Just doodling, here's a little Arya Stark. Call me slightly obsessed, especially now that the show is out but Song of Ice and Fire is such an amazingly good series! Watch Game of Thrones on HBO or better yet read the books. George R.R. Martin is a god. I'll probably do more of these since I'm living and breathing Westeros right now.

Oh and another luck of the draw I found that didn't get put up.
Garrus from Mass Effect as per N.C. Wyeth. Didn't quite get to finish this one. It's missing a brush pass.. too soft for wyeth. disappoint.

yeah sad.

2011-05-24T23:34:00.005-05:00

I was trying to post these a while ago and for some reason blogger wouldn't let me on. Then I forgot about them and they were lost to the void that is my lack of internet usage. Any who enjoy!

Zelda a la Klimt.

Sarasavati

Wow.

2010-11-01T21:47:00.010-05:00

Yeah I haven't posted in a while I know. I was trying to limit my time spent on the internet. Amazingly enough it's been working. Except I've neglected my blog, facebook, deviant, and other such sites that am sort of responsible for updating. Anywho just thought I'd catch you up with the luck of the draws. Yeah we've still been doing those if you haven't seen them on our phetchblog. Here's what you missed:

The Once and Future King. This one was draw a traditionally noble character evil.

This one was simply "draw someone in profile" I did a little Wizard of OZ series. (don't ask me why Dorothy is so far over to the left. I must have shifted her and not realized...)

Okay this one was Masters of the Universe in a style of your choice. This one's heavily influenced by Mike Mignola. Oh and I noticed after the fact that his sword is really really short (shhh. don't tell him, it will hurt his feelings!)

God it's been so long all of these catagories are blurry to me. I think this one was just YOUR movie poster. I went with pulp sci-fi.

I think this one was to take TV show and do cartoon versions of them..

Choose a celebrity and create a Flinestones persona for them: Courtney Love

Jake the Intern (we got another person to draw! Although he's already gone back to school. But he was also really into comics.)

LotD: the return of the king....

2010-04-11T19:35:00.005-05:00

Okay so even more luck of the draw sketches have been piling up since last I post. To make matters worse. My computer is having issues. I had to reinstall windows but now some of my programs won't work, or allow me to reinstall them. So I'll need to find time to do that. some day. throw it on the pile of shit to do when I feel like bashing my head into a wall. :)

Anyways. Least my laptop loves me still. Here are some of my older to present luck of the draws from work. oh yeah I should mention that we ran out of people to draw at the studio so we started coming up with a lottery drawing of random themes.

Celebrity Portrait using only Shapes: John Stewart

Mythological Creatures in Mundane Scenarios: Medusa gets a Manicure

Micah the Bubble Boy:

Ronnie and KHAAANNNNN!

Ryan: iToots Poster Boy

Welcome to Fight Club, Brad.

Programmer Love.

more luck of the draw...

2009-11-15T01:11:00.007-06:00

sorry. sorry. I know I've been neglecting my blog. it has been months since my last post and subsequently there have been way more luck of the draw drawings done. So here's a second wave of stuff.... to be honest I don't remember the order that we did these in. some of them I spent less time on and were less happy with so I'm probably going to leave them out... check our work blog if you want to see all of them at: http://phetch.blogspot.com/

So these two were done for 2 different weeks first up was Meg:

..and a couple weeks later I did Sam (who also is a huge Disney fan):

This isn't even all of them. Like I said I kind of left off some that I didn't really like how they turned out, and there are even more to come....

sketches from work...

2009-08-07T00:03:00.006-05:00

so sorry that I've been neglecting my blog. But that doesn't mean I haven't been drawing. I'm working at an animation studio now, yay! So I draw most the day. Well most of it's confidential, but we do have a little thing on the side going. So every week we have a luck of the draw, where one person from the studio is picked and we all do a drawing of them.

So Jason wasn't officially up, but it was his birthday around when this started:

The first week was Krishna, I did two:

Next up, Adam.

then came Jessie.

So that's what I have right now. There have been more since posting this, but I haven't put them on my home computer yet. So more to come. Although they seem to be getting worse as we've gotten more and more busy at work... :p

sunday sketch...

2009-05-03T18:00:00.003-05:00

So it was a beautiful day today. I was working on some lip-syncing animation, but after staring at my computer for a while with the sun pouring in from the window I decided to take a break and get outside. Went for a jog. Took in the lovely breeze, and the simple joys of nature. Yeah I live in an apartment area, with an apartment complex on every corner, but there is a plot of land behind us where I sat down and was inspired to do a quick watercolor sketch of the bridge/storm drain thing...

Hopefully I'll get around to doing more. Because it's fun and relaxing, you get to be outdoors, and you are being artistically productive. Hooray! :)

For Nate..

2009-03-11T23:05:00.002-05:00

So I finally got around to making that request for Nate. I know it wasn't much, all he asked was that my next sketch be one of Cable... but for some reason I just never got around to sitting down and making him one. I'm not a huge Cable fan, but I like him well enough. It's odd because I now have both Cable and Domino up here. I don't know what he looks like now, but from what I remember he had big shoulder pads, glowy eye, and lots of pouches.. yeah. but mostly shoulder pads.. oh and big guns...

What else is new. I'm working on several things at once it seems. I started a script for an animation, but may have to put it aside, because it looks like the start of a feature length script.. yeah. May go for things a little less ambitious for now, keep working on that script and then maybe try and option it out once it's finished... I'm also trying to get back into painting.

life drawing...

2009-02-19T00:39:00.002-06:00

so aside from work not too much has been going on art wise. my mom is kind of in and out of treatment so I've been traveling back and forth to Dallas a lot more than usual of late. A bunch of the guys from work and I have started trying to attend figure drawing classes on a regular basis. which is what you're seeing here.. I saw Coraline, it was amazing. Ean from MICA works at Laika and apparently did storyboard work for the film. that's awesome... and Kirsten is still making a ton of animations and art, all the time. I'm totally jealous, and inspired by her work. I can't believe I went to school with such talented kids.

more figure drawings...

Domino, ready for action!

2009-01-27T23:53:00.004-06:00

Okay as for the title. Back when I was young and we used to pretend to be X-men characters one of my best friends would sometimes play as Domino, and for whatever reason she would always say "Domino, ready for action!" and flip her hair. It's usually the first thing I think of in association with this character.

Well anyways so in the vein of hour sketches and in combination with watching the first couple episodes of Wolverine and the X-men I decided to draw Domino...

Now Domino holds a very special place for me. Because as a child the Marvel Masterpiece '93 Domino was the 2nd comic card I ever owned, Wasp being the first. But I have stared at that card more times than almost any other, and I was so in love with it that I tried to copy the drawing several times as a child. So I think you can say it had a great deal of influence on my current artist status...

Well anyways. She's often looked over, and yes even forgotten by me. Until the people behind the Wolverine & the X-men cartoon decided to put her in the Brotherhood. ??? Well I'm not sure where they are going with that, I guess she is a mercenary after all. But I was just elated to see her with a rather big role! And she looks badass! Fuck yeah! Anyways, her costume is kind of a combination from what I remembered from the cartoon and her old costume from that card... And the guns are wonky I know. But hey it was done in an hour and I didn't get a reference like I should have...

show sketches...

2009-01-20T23:51:00.004-06:00

So I've started work at an animation studio, and the people there are just amazing artists. It's actually really depressing and inspiring all at the same time. They constantly draw, I mean all the time and they are sketching people all the time... Me being a bit rusty on the art side tried to doodle a bit to get back in the habit of it, and in sketching in general.

I wanted to work on the cartooning and caricatures like they do, but I think first I needed to work on just making a person look like the people I'm drawing... So these are some random little doodles I've been piling up in my sketchbook... that I thought I'd put up. Sorry they are so terrible, but I feel bad not putting up work as often as the rest of the world.

These are just some doodles I've done of characters from some shows I watch. the ones of Six & Tigh, from BSG, and the Claire ones all had references. Kate & Daniel of lost were done from memory and maybe one or two peeks at them.

quick sketch for ben...

2009-01-12T20:48:00.003-06:00

ben caught me on facebook and told me to draw him phoenix in one hour... actually he said "the most badass phoenix ever." unfortunately I don't think I made the most "badass" one. but I tried my best in the time allotted. so here it is..

I also wasn't sure whether he meant the comic character or the bird, but since he didn't say "A phoenix" I went with comics...

The stuff dreams are made of...

2008-11-04T17:35:00.003-06:00

So I finished another digital piece. Probably the last one before my vacation/move out. Mainly because I'm really busy packing and spending time with all my friends here in Austin. I really like how this turned out, it's nice to do some illustration again, after all the animating I've been working on. It's inspired by a nightmare I had on right before Halloween... I tried to get it done to have it up for Halloween but got caught up working on costumes and such instead. But anyways here it is... and uh, Happy Halloween.

better late than never, right?

2008-10-10T01:31:00.005-05:00

So many many months ago, Christmas of '07 to be exact. A friend of mine asked me for a picture of his favorite character, Morpheus from Vertigo's Sandman, as a X-mas gift. Well with the loss of my dog, work and then the animation collaborations with his roommate I never got around to completing that image... until now. So nearly one year later I finally got him his gift. Hoorah! I feel sort of bad, but he didn't mind me constantly pushing it aside for other projects. I also featured it on my illustration page. I'm quite happy with how it turned out...

The Legend.

2008-09-10T21:06:00.004-05:00

Did a digital sketch/illustration today, well started it yesterday and finished today. It's Sarah Connor from Terminator 2. I seriously love Terminator, and she definitely is an idol of mine. She's just one of the most kick ass female characters ever created, and her transformation from the first film to the second is just astounding. Mad props to Linda Hamilton, and of course James Cameron for creating such a fantastic series.

It doesn't feel pity or remorse...

2008-09-09T04:00:00.002-05:00

So my computer just crashed the other day. Well I wasn't home at the time, I had to hear about it over the phone. But sure enough when I got home to inspect it it was dead. Well not dead, my smaller boot drive works fine, but my storage drive, the one that holds basically everything, has called it quits. Taking basically everything with it, I've tried using a program to salvage anything, but it doesn't look like much can be saved.

I am beyond frustration now. Not to mention the loss of so many things all at once has me a bit out of it as well... I'm just completely stoic now. I realize what a loss it is, yet the only thing I'm grieving at present is my inability to finish watching Lost.

demo reel is up..

2008-08-27T23:22:00.003-05:00

so I've been working on my website. Not really changing the look, because I like it as is, but I went ahead and made it more text based so it's ten times easier to edit.. hooray. So what's new? Well for one my demo reel and a clip reel for the animation from Wishing Well are up on the Animation page.

Oh more good news, Wishing Well got into another film fest; The Los Angeles International Children's Film Fest. Yea us. Well back to the website. I also added an "Other" section that features more of my photoshop/design work that was done for my job. And of course there is a link to this blog. Well now that that's done keep an eye out for more art. :)

nice night for a walk, eh?

2008-07-06T04:00:00.003-05:00

Our short film got into the UFrame film fest in Portugal. Hooray. Too bad it's so far away. But we'll see how it does. I'll be trying to re-work my site a bit before that happens, as well as help my friend (the director) build a site for himself.

Now I've got less than a month to try and crank some work out for Comic-con. I don't know what the hell to do though. I guess I'll just work on the other pages for my old mini-comic, since it would take me too long to write out a whole new comic...

Well we'll see. I'll keep you posted.

What's up doc?

2008-06-28T03:33:00.008-05:00

So it's been a while. But I managed to finish my animation on time, whoo-hoo. It was nice to be doing some animating again, but I have to admit I'm glad it's finally finished. Now my friend whose film it is featuring it in is pitching it to different film fests. So hopefully it will be out there. I'll try and cut together a selection of clips soon so as to let people see what I did. Can't show you the whole short though. Save that for the 'fests.

in other news my computer has been running a bit slow lately. I'm sad. I don't know if I've just got too many programs on it or what, maybe I'll re-format it and start from scratch see if that helps. If any of you know what to do in this situation let me know...

Next Project..

2008-02-22T18:31:00.002-06:00

Well if you are wondering what has happened to me, I'm currently busy working on an animation for my friend's next short film... so yeah. I'll be sure to put it up once it's all finished. by deadline.. which is roughly around end of April.. craaaappp.

"about the artist"

2008-01-06T11:17:00.000-06:00

So recently my friends were shooting a short film, titled "about the artist." My friend approached me and asked if I could make some paintings for the film... about 5 of them. I agreed, but unfortunately due to the thanksgiving holidays, script-revisions, and a cast that well had not been cast, my time frame which I thought would be 2 weeks turned into 4 days...

So in lieu of the short deadline I had to work in acrylic, which I haven't done in a long time.. but it was fun. The first three were relatively easy, and for the last two, I did need to pull an all-nighter to complete... but I got them done...

So there they are...

The last one of the couple in bed had paint thrown over it at the end of the film...
but I don't have a shot of it with the large paint splatter...

well I think that was mainly it. I'm now working on a Christmas gift for a friend. who wants a painting/drawing of Sandman...

revised panels for One.Six: Prelude Part 1

2007-10-13T02:19:00.000-05:00

So as I mentioned earlier I finally picked up my comic again, and while revisiting it I noticed some crap backgrounds, and panels in general, that I had thrown down in the first run. So I went through and did some editing and re-drawing of panels. There are a few small ones but I'll just put up a couple that had some major changes...

So this was a re-drawn panel for page 10.. um there is a better establishing shot panel but I don't think i'll put it up..

The old one just had this really bad background building that didn't really work out. Also a few things changed story-wise, it's no longer so far far out in the future so i tried to adjust.

Another one. Again same thing the clothing was adjusted to fit the change in time...

If you are interested in seeing the old, un-edited comic you can see it at my site. www.stephaniemccrea.com in the comic section. Hopefully it loads right, the javascript was being twitchy earlier.

So now really I'm trying to figure out about the coloring, and inking, if I decide to ink. But I guess that will have to wait 'till tomorrow...

On a side note I'm also going back and stretching my 3D legs. So perhaps you will see some of that in future on this blog... just a heads up. I'm trying to learn more Flash and After Effects as well. Combustion too.. possibly. We'll see. I need more time to do all these things, damnit!

Revisiting One.Six

2007-10-02T22:26:00.000-05:00

So on a whim of inspiration I went back and dug up my old comic, One.Six (that's One(Point)Six)... anyways I dug it out and decided that I would work on it. I did a 14 mini-comic prelude back during spring break my senior year, which was to be continued. Well I decided to start that I wanted to re-do a couple of the shady panels that I had just thrown down for the sake of getting them done. So as soon as my scanner gets back online (ie. as soon as my sister comes back with her laptop) I'll post some of the revised panels...

I'm still debating on whether or not to ink them. I'm thinking of digitally coloring them, but we will see...

the now...

2007-08-29T13:08:00.000-05:00

So I've been catching up on all my Naruto manga reading. Damn it's so good! and inspiring! I wish I could create something that kick-ass... I need to re-write my comic. :(

earth day...

2007-08-23T19:15:00.000-05:00

dude. wtf was I smoking last night when I wrote that last post? anyways. a semi-new piece I was working on back for earth day. it won in a little contest and i got a gift card. hooray. I've been meaning to color it, but never got around to it.

first blog..

2007-08-23T00:08:00.000-05:00

well while in a freak accident, as my plane was going down just over the flat planes of texas, I managed to grab a parachute. Unfortunately the chute didn't open correctly. Suddenly I was hurtling toward my impending doom, blinded by the excess cloth of the faulty parachute. Luck as it would seem was on my side because a moonwalk that was put up for a rich Plano child's birthday just happened to break my fall. The speed at which I fell however, caused me to bounce right out of the backyard and land sorely on my ass in the middle of a damn bandwagon. I don't know who the fuck put that bandwagon there, but I think it just saved this artists' life...

in any case I just started this blog because everyone else was doing it...

um this is an old sketch.. but I didn't have anything else on hand...