Kjesta's Excellent Art & Animation Adventures

[Velocity Kendall]

after our interesting chat in the lounge i had to come and check out your work again.
youve definitely got The Eye, that ability to measure and the sketch down proportion, light and shadow, and pick out interesting things to study, and obviously enjoy your work, which is the most important thing of all.
sorry to be useless but no crits from me, youre obviously working hard, just keep it up and youll be amazing in no time.
it must be brilliant working with animals too!

"Oh, and I might order my first proper GT soon, a Bamboo Fun Pen & Touch."

i have that one, its great!

love this

[Kjesta]

Velocity Kendall, usually I'd respond with new pictures in tow but I can see already that I'll be staying up till 2 or so in order to get my suitcase packed and folio submitted, so I can only offer a boring old pictureless post in response...

youve definitely got The Eye, that ability to measure and the sketch down proportion, light and shadow, and pick out interesting things to study, and obviously enjoy your work, which is the most important thing of all.
sorry to be useless but no crits from me, youre obviously working hard, just keep it up and youll be amazing in no time.

This means a lot to me, thank you so much. I'm back in that place again right now where I'm wondering what to do with my life and if I really am cut out to be a professional artist, if I even want to - getting some outside affirmation is miso soup for my little soul, thank you. It certainly makes me feel a bit warmer on a really hard day

I've got my GT by now btw! Need to start practicing with it more. And yes, working with animals rocks! It's sad sometimes though, during the winter we lost three rabbits and my favourite donkey, he was only a baby and I never even got to draw him But it's hard to be sad for long when spring is finally coming.

[GoGoJojo]

I tried to draw some geese on the docks today, and I thought of how well you draw animals XD When spring comes, I'm sure there will be beautiful landscapes for you to draw, too! Good luck!

[Kjesta]

GoGoJojo, thanks for popping in! I'll have to work on my landscapes for sure.

I've been very busy with my application to an animation school so I kind of took a break from this SB because I was constantly updating my online application etc. Here's a little of what I've been doing though.

Also, I had my interview with the school today and in the portfolio critique they stressed that I have potential but I really have to focus on volume for the next months or so. It's true! So if anyone has exercises or helpful tips in regards to volume, please share!

Interestingly, they also liked the butterfly girl best of my entire folio, which was very surprising to me - I had included as a sort of last minute piece without putting as much thought/time into it as the other pieces.

[Kjesta]

Here's the story-telling section of my portfolio. Hit me hard with whatever critique you have!

[Kjesta]

Boy, has there been stuff going on in my life! Long story short, I got accepted into The Animation Workshop and am now studying Character Animation full-time. Most intense thing I can remember ever doing, but I'm learning so much and having so much fun! And there's life-drawing twice every week, which is great. I go as often as possible.

Here's just a short selection of school assignments, I'll update more when I have the time.

First up an exercise for construction drawing coupled with acting, then thumbnails we had to do for composition practice (theme: "prehistorical"), a more refined version of one thumbnail and an assignment for design class, illustrating the scene in "Hamlet" where the ghost appears.

[Kjesta]

Some more stuff I've been doing, including some sketches for a creature design assignment and sketches of my current novel's main characters.

[Kjesta]

Over the past two days we had the unit "Introduction to Photoshop". I've hardly done any digital work so far and I don't feel very confident so far, but I had lots of fun! Learned a lot, too. I'm excited to play more with this medium.

Here's what I did. Sketch was done in pencil first, then coloured in PS. Not finished, obviously, and there's a few things I'm not particularly happy with, but I'm still proud of it. (We had to design a monster and place it in an environment.)

[lionheartGFX]

holy crap man you are living the dream id love to just phone you and listen to how animation school is like for hours i fucking swear, and you can just see you are just absorbing all this knowledge right up cant wait to see your future projects!

if you had any spare time, would you bother to check my sketchbook and sharing if i had the basic skills to enter animation?

[Kjesta]

lionheartGFX, thanks! Living the dream alright, although it also forces me to put several other dreams on ice for now. Still, it's so much fun and such a nurturing creative environment!

Here are some more recent pages from my sketchbook. It's kind of bizarre how busy I am with animation assignments, to the point that I find it hard to find the time to draw just for fun. Even life-drawing isn't always possible because there's inbetweening and tweaking to be done, but I do what I can. Some quick sketches of classmates, some studies of horns and antlers (more to come, it's for a personal project). I'm quite happy with those little doodles of rabbits, did them from imagination while missing my grumpy little rabbit at home.

[Kjesta]

Some more studies of deer and smaller design sketches, all for a picture I'm working on.

[Kjesta]

Here's the pencil sketch for the image I'm working on - basically me and lots of animals with horns. Because horns are cool and fun to research. Going to do the watercolour tonight after fixing some details.

[Valyavande]

It's my first time visiting this sketchbook and I'm amazed by the variety of styles and stuff on this page! Many of your drawings are full of life, I love that! (and totally suck at it myself) The first assignment of the Animation Workshop with the constructed guy is one of my favourites. And yay for animals with horns! I love them too. Not much more to say at moment, feels like you're on the right track!

[Kjesta]

Valyavande, thank you! I really appreciate the "full of life" comment, that's something I felt I was lacking for a long time. Still working on it - sometimes it's hard not to get discouraged when I see my classmate's expressive drawings.

Anyway, here's an unfinished ink drawing I did some months ago, not too happy with it anymore... Then some rhino studies and design sketches for a watercolour piece I'm working on. The last one is the sketch.

[Kjesta]

Here's a quick PS test I did for the colouring and the final watercolour. (Final for now, I'll probably touch it up more later, but I have to hand it in tomorrow and have another deadline to make.) It looks a bit washed-out now it's scanned but overall I'm pleased. Colour is REALLY hard for me.

[Kjesta]

Here's a very small selection of a recent croquis session's results. There's croquis here twice a week and I've amassed a lot of drawings, but I tossed out most a few weeks ago... Whoops. Once I find the time besides school assignments I'll go again. (I've also moonlighted as a model twice. It's a tough job, be grateful if you happen to get good models!)

Also, a self-portrait for a class group "photo". I like the original sketch but I'm not much good with photoshop. Yet.

[Kjesta]

A little sketch I did late last night because I realised it's Nikolaus (a German pre-Christmas holiday) tomorrow! Probably going to colour this roughly in PS before I send it to family and friends tomorrow.

[Kjesta]

Here's a quick colour version I did of the sketch. Happy Nikolaus day, even if you probably don't know what it is

Still trying to figure out Photoshop but I'm getting a little better.

[Kjesta]

Some scribbles inspired by Rachel Brice, one of the most influential bellydancers alive. She's very inspiring and has such beautiful lines, so I'd like to make a little tribute to her eventually. Does anyone have tips on how to achieve a clean, graphical, fluid look of lines in photoshop?

[Kjesta]

This might be the last update before I get back to school in January. Here are some studies for a bird flight cycle I did for school, and the thumbnails for an animation of a frog and a fly. I might find the time to put up some of my animation next year :)

[karta tajba]

i am seeing a lot of good things going here, Are you planing to work in animation?

[Kjesta]

karta tajba, thank you! Yes, I'm currently studying character animation. I'd like to work as an animator, but story-boarding is also a great passion of mine.

Phew, so much school work! But I have a few drawings from a gesture session to show off, my fellow animators and I are trying to make these a weekly thing. These are only my favourites. A long way to go still! But I do like a few of them. The poses were a minute each (two minutes for two models sharing a scene) and the focus was on acting and expressiveness rather than anatomy.

EDIT: Ack, huge images! Resized them.

[Kjesta]

Here are some more gestures. For some reason I do better doing pairs than single people, it's more fun to tell an interactive story. My poor draftsmanship frustrates me a bit right now, but well, gotta keep practicing. My animation has made a bit of a jump in the last weeks, lots of flaws of course still, but I'm quite proud of my progress.

There's also sketches of a bellydancer that I designed for a dance animation assignment. She got more and more simplified and streamlined as I progressed. I quite like it.