Rigging Doodles 4

Today's break doodles 

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

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.   

Happy Mother's Day 2013!

Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there, but especially my own. My mom is one of my best friends and I can't wait to be road tripping home with her this summer. This year she requested a cat picture, so I did a color sketch of a line drawing I did while observing some of the Savannah cats. Happy Mother's Day mom!

Also, be sure to pick up a copy of my new animated e-book "The Pick-up Princess" available now! animatedchildren.biz

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

6!!!!! Featuring Paloma Schultz

ONLY 6 MORE DAYS UNTIL OUR APP LAUNCHES! Wow! Today's post is brought to you by Graphic Designer Paloma Schultz. She was in charge of adding the words to the book and creating a fantastic Title logo! Be sure to check out more of her work on her portfolio site! http://www.behance.net/Paloma_Schultz

"Growing up in the South with the name Paloma couldn't have been good for my child psyche. I was fidgety, loud and obnoxious (fortunately I have overcome these afflictions...maybe). I had a rag doll named Myrtle that I took with me everywhere! She always seemed to be as big as I was, but in all actuality she was probably only about 2 feet long. Despite toting Myrtle with me everywhere, I tended to neglect her for a more exciting task. Myrtle was definitely worse for wear after 2 or 3 years and she had to be retired to the shelf in my room."

There are many areas in which I am incapable: rocket science, hula hooping, anything that involves physical activity, etc. However, I have a special kind inability for typography. Thank goodness that I kidnapped found Paloma! Thanks for all your work, Paloma! Stay sassy! 

10!

10 DAYS! There are only ten more days until the children's animated e-book "The Pick-up Princess" launches on the app store! I am so happy to be able to say that, this has been a long time coming. 

To celebrate, I will be posting an image done by a member of my crew each day of the countdown about their favorite toy from childhood. 

Starting the whole thing off is myself: Debbie Scheller: Director and miscellaneous tasks person

14 DAYS!!

Hey everyone! 14 DAYS UNTIL THE LAUNCH! We're so close now! The anticipation---GAHHH! I thought I would share a story this week...because...well...I didn't have time to draw anything. So sue me. I was genuinely doing a happy dance for a month after getting the contract in the mail, though. It was so official that I felt like one of those real human adult peoples for a second.

In other news, it's midterms week here at SCAD, so it's probably a good thing that The Pick-up Princess isn't launching quite yet. On top of my school work I also have some very intense freelance work that is keeping me jumping. It's going to be a stressful week, but a good one...I hope. There will be the 10 day countdown to look forward to. The Pick-up Princess crew has a very special surprise in store! So don't turn the dials that no longer exist today...more things should have dials.

19 Days and Counting

Just 19 days until the animated children's e-book "The Pick-up Princess" is released! It's hard to believe that after all this time, it's really happening! 

A Very Late Princess Update

As we're heading into the final turn, things have really picked up and I'm afraid I have neglected my Princess Update Duty! However, today holds some exciting news!

My friend Paloma is doing all the lettering for The Pick-up Princess and just got 10 pages done. In about 3 hours. Yes. She is a goddess. A goddess of lettering. Anyway this means that 10 pages are officially ready for publication! I've sent some things off to my editor to see if we're good to go. As long as the last few scenes get done this week, we should be in business in no time! :D It's hard to contain my excitement!

Pictures taken from Google, please don't hurt me for using them... 

Princess Update

8 scenes down and 6 to go! The team is really starting to cruise through coloring. On top of working on the book, I did some experimenting with Toon Boom puppets. It's certainly different from Flash, but not in a bad way. Working with the new software was a lot easier and more intuitive than I expected. I'm definitely going to have to play around with it a bit more to see what I can accomplish with it.

Princess e-book Update

In my mad dash to finish all the clean-up for this project, I ended up accidentally putting the wrong outfit on one of the characters. Oops. So this week has been spent going back and fixing everything. Sigh. It's my own fault, but finding out about it made me feel like a woman in an old horror flick. All I could really do is strike a pose and scream. On the bright side, I'm almost finished with it and two of my colorists are in the end stages of their most recent scenes. So this setback hasn't hurt production too much. Phew!

e-book update: SOUND!

This week I met up with the author and her mother of the animated e-book The Pick-Up Princess in order to get the narration for the book done. Originally, Katrina's mother was going to be the only one doing the narration, but she thought it would be fun if Katrina did a reading too. They both did a really great job, so I thought I would share a little slice of our work today! (note: the images in the videos are ones that I threw in because I couldn't post an mp3. They are not the final images attached to the sound. And for some reason they messed up when I posted them here. So just listen and ignore the strange visuals.)

The above is done by Katrina's mom Lisa.

This next one is done by the author herself.

We still haven't decided which narration we're going to use for the whole book. Katrina is the author and did a really great job reading, so it makes sense to use her. On the other hand, her mom has that nice motherly tone that goes great with a children's book. I'll probably end up cutting both and seeing which my editor likes better. 

Princess Update: The Start of Summer

Last week I finished finals and traveled back home for a well deserved break. My boyfriend and I are celebrating by watching continuous episodes of my new addiction: Game of Thrones. Unfortunately, this has also made me a bit lax about working on my animated children's e-book "The Pick Up Princess". I'm still hopeful for a launch sometime this summer, but I doubt much work is going to get done before I head back to Savannah for my summer classes. Long distance boyfriends and family sometimes take precedent.

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.

video intro

See what I did? An intro that matches my business card. Eh? Eh? Yeah, now that's classy. 

my card

The back of my card, that is. I don't think I could handle the pressure of putting all of my contact info up on the off-chance it's viewed by an axe wielding maniac who then wants to hunt me down and wear my skin as a fashionable ascot. Can't be too careful.