Wild Dogs and Jumping Girls

My old friend Era

Sketches of an old character of mine, Era (and Huan in the bottom image). Just wanted to try some redesigns on her outfit. No one should live in clothes designed by a 7th grader forever.

(c) me

bear and boat and thing and what?

just something weird as a break from my senior film work.

Crab Tree and Bunny

I decided to participate in a contest for the comic Nice Teeth. You had to design a character that would live on The Island. Check it out: http://niceteethcomic.com/

for those who can't read that small of print:

"Crab Tree is a spicy lass from the depths of The Island. Kind Islanders label her stature as “toad-like”, unkind Islanders just call her fat and short. Crab has a bad attitude and persistent frown, but she does get along with a few islanders. She appreciates the “honestly stupid” and regards the “uppity types” with contempt. Especially those who read. Crab can’t read (who cares about a bunch of swirling letters?). She isn't stupid, but she only trusts her own mind, and believes that those who trust in books are people to watch out for.

Crab met Bunny when he was just a tiny Tree Thing. Tree Things, native creatures of The Island, usually only grow to be 27 inches. Bunny, however, somehow managed to grow the size of the trees Tree Things are supposed to inhabit. Crab and Bunny are best friends as he is very often the only one who will listen to her three hour rant about the benefits of toast in every day life. They live together in a comfortably large house Crab built with Bunny specifically in mind."

more rigging doodle breaks

The skin weighting continues.

Rigging Doodles 4

Today's break doodles 

Toad Patrol character (c) it's owner which is not me

Rigging Doodles3

More doodling during my rigging breaks. 

Rigging Break Doodles 2

Yesterday's break doodles. Just a bunch of nonsense.

Rigging Doodle Breaks

I've been working on some rigging in Maya for my 3D senior animation film and to keep myself sane, I took a couple of doodle breaks. Here are the results. 

Space Kids Sketches

edit: you can look at the sketches a bit closer on my deviantart page 

I've been working on a lot of different story ideas this summer and this is one of my newer ones that has quickly gained a lot of favor with me. I love sci-fi and I've always wanted to do my own sci-fi series that focuses more on the children of a starship than the adults. That's kind of what I have going here. The main character is a young alien girl who is new to the corporate starship. The starship belongs to a very large energy corporation that requires some of it's industrial processes to be done in deep space (partially to expel the waste product into deep space away from inhabited planets and partially because the refinement process needs to be done in zero gravity). On top of it's industrial production, the ship also takes on other company contracts (so they might pick up something for another corporation if they are on the right side of space). 

The main story doesn't focus on the ship. It focuses on a few of the children on the ship and their every day lives as a part of this moving lab. The new alien girl eventually befriends the human girl that I have also sketched here. While the alien girl is trying to be a bit more conformist and safe, the human girl is a wild child who wants to stand out. The main conflict with the alien girl lies in the fact that she is a part of a race that has been recently known to commit acts of terrorism. So her mom wants her to fit in with the other children and be seen as unthreatening, while some of the other children are a bit frightened or angry at her for what a few of her people have done. 

It's all very much a work in process, I haven't quite nailed things down yet, but I'm really excited about some of the ideas I've been coming up with. Hopefully there is a future for these characters, so far they've been a blast to work with. 

all characters (c) Debbie Scheller 2013

The Trio

These are three characters from a story I'm currently developing. It's sort of Wizard of Oz-esk. The toad was actually a prince that was turned into a toad by a witch at a particularly boring party. He's trying to find the witch to be turned back into a prince, or at least a frog (which is way more kiss worthy than a toad). Following him are his two companions: a fish that wants her memory restored and a large cat who wants thumbs so that he can at last fulfill his dream of playing the violin.   

Just like Dad

I'm allowed to post this now that Father's Day is over. It's an illustration I did for a client who has an adorable little boy who wants to be just like his dad!

We've been featured!

A big thank you to columnist Andrew Heller for his article about me and my work in the Flint Journal this past Sunday! http://blog.mlive.com/flintjournal/aheller/2013/05/andrew_heller_little_things_ca.html

I'm truly blessed to have supporters in Michigan. I did this sketch of him to say thanks the best way I know how. Thank you everyone and be sure to pick up a copy of The Pick-up Princess today!

Pick-up Princess website: http://www.animatedchildren.biz/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BalloonCatAnimation

Happy Cat

Warm up animation from the 16th. Flash has been giving me problems with exporting things lately, hence the late post. I'm not extremely happy with the movement, but it at least helped me get into the pose thinking stage so that I could go animate my homework better.

The Leviathan Scene

On the upside, I finished another scene this week, so I only have one more scene to clean before everything goes into the color stage. The downside is that the last scene I have to clean up is a crazy mess of lines with 120 separate drawings that all need to be subtle and precise (you can see a few of them just above the drawing of Mom and Princess in that timeline). Through out the whole clean-up process, I've been working on this scene off and on. Every time I try to tackle it, I just get frustrated and move on to a scene I know I can clean quickly. This is my great white whale. Hopefully my story with this mighty beast ends better than Captain Ahab's.

The Clean Up Process

A great presentation by Blue Sky yesterday kept me from posting a Pick-Up Princess update until today.

I've mentioned before that I'm at the tail end of clean up and about to begin color, so I thought I would share a few examples of what that is and why it is necessary before any coloring can happen.

The animation that my crew helped me out on was the rough animation. This is where all the movement is worked out and the pacing is established. While the animator needs to keep the basic shapes of the character consistent, they have more wiggle room when it comes to keeping the character looking exactly like the character sheet and in a first pass, it's not important for them to be very clean with their lines. Rough animation is all about gesture, moving your lines, and letting expression control your hand. That's what makes it so fun.

Clean up is all about precision. The scene is about to move into color and the colorists need to know where to put that color. So not only must the lines be clean, but the character must match the character sheet to remain consistent through out the piece.To maintain consistency, I am doing all the clean up for this project myself.  It's a tedious job, but a necessary one.

Here are a few examples of the two:

rough animation by eric monchello 

 

rough animation by margaretta westerman

rough animation by debbie scheller 

 

The Pick-Up Princess--Character Sheet 2

Another update! Here is the character sheet for Princess's Mom. 

As far as production is going: right now I am in the clean-up and coloring stage. Unfortunately, I won't be able to meet the Easter deadline that I had hoped to meet six months ago (every production has it's hiccups), but I'm nearing the home stretch! 

With luck,  I'll have some screen shots of a few fully finished scenes next week. Stay tuned! 

Princess's Mom is caring but can only handle her daughters mess for so long. It is her parental duty to teach Princess to manage her things, lest they take over completely!

The Pick-Up Princess--Character Sheet 1

For the past six months I have been working on an animated children's e-book called The Pick-Up Princess. The project has been pretty hush-hush for the most part, but I just got the ok from my editor to start posting some sneak peeks and updates! My hope is to keep the updates coming each week, so stop in to see what's new. 

Here's the basic story: A little girl finds creative ways to avoid cleaning her room. 

Princess Character Sheet 

Princess is your average little girl with no desire to clean her room. She is fun, energetic, and a bit of a klutz. She's sweet, but she feels she has better things to do than pick up.