Turtle Ride

Little Alina enjoying her ride through the jungle on her giant turtle Sam.

Juji & Goro Episode04 - The Cold

Wohoo!

When I was browsing through my folders, I've found this.
I used to do some collaborative images with Stephan Stoelting (a great concept artist and fellow student from the German Film School).

I opened up photoshop and started to blog in some shapes and passed it over to Stephan.
He continued adding shapes and colors. Then he passed the Photoshop file back to me again and I continued....also known as Photoshop tennis ^^
We continued taking turns until we switched the painting 5 times. And the painting was finished. It was really fun cause we didn't know how the painting will turn out.

For example: Stephan blocked in the silhouettes of two buggies jumbing over a hill from right to left in the second step. But when I got his picture I interpreted those silhouettes as some kind of flying saucers. He was really surprised when I gave him the new file. 'what did you do to my buggies!? ^^' he said... ^^;

At the end we where really glad how it turned out. We called this painting 'Wohoo!'
Hope to do more collaborative paintings in the future.

Lightpaintings Vol. 2

I made some lightpaintings again. It was fun and today was a good day. I could paint better than usual today. I made a 'best of selection' out of all lightpaintings I did until today. The first two are made with a friend back at filmschool with two different flashlights. The last two are those I made today.

For those who haven't seen the previous, here is an explanation how I do it.

Juji & Goro Episode03 - The Cookie

Frog Catchers

I don't know why I paint those guys...^^;
Mabe just because I loved to catch frogs when I was little. I think I'll paint more of the Frog Catcher series. I kind of like em.

Quick Studies

Did some quick figure studies today.
15min. each

Chopstickgirl ^^

A quick little sketch before bedtime...

Kart

Just came back from Kart racing. I used to go there with friends a couple of years ago. Today was the first time after many years ^^;
We where 4 poeople racing together: A friend of mine, me and some guys we didn't know. We had a lot of fun but I forgot how exhausting it is to ride a kart. 10 minutes qualifying and 20mintues race. I made it to the 2nd place but now my arms hurt like hell^^. The circuit is 600 Meters long and has quiet some tricky curves.
This is the map of the circuit.

My max speed was about 46km/h. But I think you could drive like 50km/h if you're good. Anyways, very exhausting but pretty much fun!
Tomorrow I'll have sore muscles forsure T.T (it hurts already....)

Kodakku alias Enton and Goll

A friend of mine is a huge fan of a pokemon called Enton ('Enton' in German, 'Kodakku' in Japanese). If you enter his room you see enton figures everywhere. It's really incredible. He even has a Enton Costume ^^;
When I was in Japan this year I wanted to buy him some Kodakku figures. Since I didn't find anything of Kodakku in I went to the Pokemon Center Tokyo ^^; (it really exists...) here is the proof

Anyways, I finally found a tiny litte figure of Kodakku in this store. It was the only thing I could find....I came back to germany and gave it to him but guess what? He already had this figure! Hehe but he said that he couldn't get enough of those anyways and was happy about it ^^

Did a little Painting to increase his collection.

Color Perception

I've seen a couple of those color perception illusions but this one is the most powerful illusion I've ever seen. An identical color can be perceived totally different when it's placed on a different background. Now that doesn't sound that odd but if you check out the link you'll be surprised how diffrent they can be perceived. 0_o

Color Perception

StumbleUpon

A friend told me about this tool. StumbleUpon is a browsing tool for finding Great websites dependent on your personal interests. After you Join you will be asked to select topics which interest to you. Nearly 500 topics are available.
When you install it, you get an extra navigation bar. And then you can simply click on the stumble button and StumbleUpon will take you to a random site. It's almost like watching TV and zapping though channels. You just stumble through different websites instead. Another great feature is that you can rate the sites you visit. You can rate any web page that you find on the internet – whether you "Stumbled Upon it" or found it through another method such as a seach engine. There are two choices for rating websites. 'I like it!' or 'Not-for-me'. Your opinion will be used with the ratings of other members to determine each site's relevance.

I just stumbled through several sites and I have to say it's really cool! I already bookmarked several great pages ^^.

Check it out! StumbleUpon

Corpse Bride

I finally got to see Tim Burton's 'Corpse Bride'. It was so amazing. This is definetly one of my favourite animated movies. And all stop motion??? The animations are so smooth and lifelike, awesome character design, very adorable characters with a lot of personality, great music, fantastic songs, extremly well chosen voices, amazing lighting and camera work, awesome set design....wow...This will be in my DVD collection forsure.

The Piano scene with the Bride and Victor is one of my favorite scenes. There are many scenes that I'd like to see again. Wow...so stunning!

Mailbox disappeared...

I had to send a Character Reference to London for a friend. So I took the envelope and went to the Mailbox close to my place (about 200m walk). But when I got to the place, the mailbox wasn't there....it was removed T.T
I don't know when they removed it. Everytime I had to send out mails, I used that mailbox...
Fortunately there is another one in almost the same distance. So I walked another 200m to the other mailbox. This one was still there ^^V
Just a little discovery...

For details, click here

Traditional Media

Today I used traditional media for painting. It has been a long time since I did it the last time cause I only painted digitally the last few years.
Painting traditional was a lot of fun and I'll do it more frequently I guess. I used Gouashe colors and flat brushes.

Skintones again....

Went through another training DVD today. "Painting the Adult Male Head: Color". Just another fantastc DVD by Bob Kato.
I have the feeling that I started to understand how skintones work. After watching this DVD everything was very logical and easy to understand.

Thnx Bob for those wonderful DVD's!

Values and Proportions

Wow...I can't stop watching those training DVD's...I can learn so much from them.
Today I watched 'Painting the Adult Male Head: Monochromatic' the second DVD of Bob Kato. I was just sitting there watching the first two tutorials with my jaw dropped on the floor. While the other tutorials were running, I tried to apply what I've just learned on my own painting. And I have to say, it worked pretty well. I felt very comfortable painting this head fom scratch.


Key points:
- Starting out fast and loose
- Start with a midtone
- Use an average dark for the shadowside
- Use a darker dark for the darker shadows
- Use a average bright for the highlight areas
- Use a brighter bright for the brighter highlights
- Make soft and hard edges and add details

I also learned a lot about proportions again.

Drawing Heads...

Today I watched the "Drawing the Adult Male Head" Gnomon DVD by Bob Kato. I have to say wow...this guy is amazing...
I drew in my sketchbook while the DVD was running. I think I learned a lot today such as working with simple lines 'hard edges' and 'soft edges'.
I also learned a lot about leading the eye in a drawing. 'Where is the focal point', 'Where do I have to add detail' and stuff. It is a really great DVD and I can recommend it to anyone who is interested in drawing.


Todays eye opener: Keep it simple ^^

Don't Shoot Birds ^^!

I just did a little flipbook animation. Check it out by clicking on the image below.

Juji & Goro Episode02 - Juji's Fate

Yet another episode of Juji&Goro. We were chatting about sun burn. Cause when I'm sitting in the sun, I get dark within minutes if I don't use sunblocking lotion. Juji is the exact opposite. So here are Juji and Goro at the beach.
Enjoy! (it's only one page this time ^^;)

Goroilla

I participated at cgtalk's daily sketchgroup again. Today's topic was 'Draw yourself as a Monkey', and so I did. I'm actually not fat at all but I like Gorillas ^^*. If you know me, I guess you can find some similarities.

FLIPBOOK!

Found a funny little tool on Spline Doctors
You can do flipbook animation online.

Have fun!
FLIPBOOK!

Hamburg Animation Award 2005

I recently got a message from a fellow student of the German Film School. He said that I should go to the Hamburg Animatinon Award (November 3rd), cause their short film 'Rough Approach' was nominated and made it to one of the best 10 short films out of 60 submissions. Since I live in Hamburg I decided to go to the movie theater 'Streit's' where the event was going to take place, knowing that I could enter only with an invitation, which I didn't have.

At the entrance I talked to the bouncer and said that I studied together with the makers of 'Rough Approach' and that I came to take photos for the German Film School. He hesitated a bit but then he said that I may not enter but I could wait, and hope that there will be some seats left. And after a while, when the show was about to start he let me in. There where a couple of free seats left. The show started immediately with an opening speech. After a lot of talking, the moderator said that there should be a list of the 10 nominated short films next to our seat where you could vote for your favourite film. I took it out and looked at the list...and guess what. My thesis short film 'Interview with Carl Hawkins' was nominated as well ^^. I actually didn't know that and was really surprised. I didn't get any information about that. So my lying at the entrance was not necessary ^^; And surprisingly the animated short 'BBQ Beast' (I animated some scenes for that short)was nominated too....
'Rough Approach' made it to the third place! Congrats to the Team, it was well deserved!

I also met some familiar faces. It was a nice get-together ;)
I had a great time today full of surprises ^^ The world is sooo small....

Juji & Goro Episode01 - The Mantis

I was talking to my friend Stacy (alias Juji) in msn today. Since the version 7.0, msn messenger has a handwriting feature included. You can write or paint with mouse or graphic tablet directly in the chatwindow. So I doodled around with her today. More drawing then chatting. Then suddenly we started to build up a story out of nothing ^^. We went on drawing taking turns. Finnally we had a cute little comicstrip that we put together to a pdf. Click on the image to see the comic strip. May be there will be more Juji & Goro Episodes. ^^v
Ah- I just love the handwriting feature of msn!

My Red Colt

So this is my old red friend. My Mitsubishi Colt, year of construction 1992.
Now he slowly shows symptoms of old age. His front left tire loses air. I have to refill it at least once in two weeks. But that is only the smallest problem. Even he is a bit old he has a anti-theft device installed. So I have to push a little codekey in a key sensor to disable this device. It used to work the last 3 years. But since the beginning of this year it seems to have a loose connection. I have to move and twist the codekey in the sensor many times to disable the device...Anyways I wanted to refill the front tire today. I jumped into the car and plugged in my codekey. But nothing happened. So I began with the twisting. This time I needed over 10 minutes to disable the anti-theft device! Then I wanted to start the engine and you'll probably know what happened...the Battery was empty....I coudn't even start the car T.T
After a little pause I tried starting the engine again...now the anti-theft device was activated again...and I nearly exploded. I tried to disable the device for another 5 minutes but without luck. So I just went inside again.

I'm greatful that my COLT did manage the last 3 years though ^^
I think I owe him at least a new battery.

Hiker