Solid State Studios

more project progress gifs

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Sparks) — Sun, 05 May 2013 09:27:00 +0000

I've got a bunch of acrylic paintings to take photos of, plus some other stuff, but this (at least in a rough form) is due this Wednesday (I've got the last sequence to get through...just five shots or so? but I've no idea how she's actually going to beat the boss yet....gotta figure it out tomorrow; then it'll be sound and editing things together, shouldn't be too bad, really) so....here's everything so far: (EDIT: and....finished? maybe? to be refined, certainly but...yeah. so sleeps)

(sorry to people with low bandwidth D: )

Fusco

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Sparks) — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 23:57:00 +0000

new and improved: using multiple brushes in a single piece :D

three sequences and a couple of other things

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Sparks) — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 08:36:00 +0000

I completed the following two before this one and am still working on the first two sequences, but this one makes me think I might want to go through and make the whole thing silhouetted and sketchy, pull a Limbo on it.

started mixing it up, using brushes from another set that I downloaded ages ago. Help, I like them....

Vikings: you should be watching it.

coupla new ones

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Sparks) — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 20:05:00 +0000

More line tests+some fanarts

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Sparks) — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 07:15:00 +0000

Quick test to see what I could do with the brush I usually use for painting. It's pretty interesting so something to revisit, but it'd be hell for a full minute of animation

This'll probably be the style I wind up going for--it's important to be honest with yourself, and I lean hella toward the sketchy end of things by default.

playing with some open mouthed inbetweens, but it just turns out looking like she's beatboxing? I'm ok with this.

And now for something completely different: Supergiant has announced their new game. Transistor. Oooooh my god it looks so good. It'll be out sometime in 2014 and I just......aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

The main character is named red and she has a giant talking sword and the enemies took her voice and AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

I JUST LOVE TO DRAW AND PAINT HER ALREADY

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I also finally got around to playing Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP last weekend. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

I haven't been so creeped out by my responsibility in bringing the narrative to its natural conclusion since I played Braid. I can't really say much about it since it'll ruin the whole thing but the general conceit of games is that the player character is the avatar for the player, right? Yeah, not so much.

Ok, back to work.

Platformer post the first

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Sparks) — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 07:47:00 +0000

I mentioned in my last post that I'm going to be doing a more involved animation project that includes things like backgrounds and character designs.

Well, I'm gonna slap stuff up here as I finish for your delight/feedback.

A quick sketchy ref of my main character, currently (and perhaps forever) unnamed

The first background, on which I will be animating uh....tomorrow? hopefully?

A quick line test. I did the keyframes and the first section before I left for break and then finished it up when I got back. A couple things changed in between: a few small details of her design and I got way more comfortable animating in photoshop, leading to a looser, sketchier animation. It is a little choppy where I held the keyframes for odd lengths, but I figure that that's part of the learning curve.

Because I am only an intro student currently (oh woe, that I did not have access to traditional animation classes during my undergrad) and because I'm notoriously impatient when it comes to coloring things (esp. flatting things....augh, tedium) I'm thinking of animating her/the enemies in a loose grey pencil like this. I figure that she'll still stand out against the backgrounds, which'll be kept both tight and colorful, and I can sketch-fill her in with white for more contrast if I need it.

Adventure!

Object Oriented 05

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Sparks) — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 22:09:00 +0000

Two posts? In one day? WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT? Well, hold onto your pants, there may even be a third, depending on what else I get done today.

To be fair though, the last post was just because it took me a couple of days to get the video on the interwebzzzzz. Speaking of which:

Object Oriented 04

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Sparks) — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 14:52:00 +0000

Sorry I've not been around much recently--spring break was last week and I decided to actually use it as a break rather than a block of time to keep working through (novel, I know.) Getting back into the swing of things this week. I'll be focusing primarily on my animation independent study in the coming weeks, so expect snippets/background/concept art from that.

In the meantime, I've decided to return to a concept that I flirted with a little bit last fall. I ran into a problem wherein I couldn't figure out a way to explain why I was combining the things I was combining, but then I figured it out. You guys. Still lifes and the coding languages I use? Object oriented. It's a pun. Puns justify EVERYTHING. Muahahahahha.

Ogre--full fifteen seconds

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Sparks) — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 23:56:00 +0000

Admin

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Sparks) — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 01:01:00 +0000

Little ogre

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Sparks) — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 20:58:00 +0000

The first half of a fifteen second character animation project. Still some bugs to work out, I think, but so far so good.

title of post is good title yeah

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Sparks) — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 03:15:00 +0000

Almost forgot to upload this! Anyway, I think that this is the kind of painting I was desperately trying to paint a couple of years ago with no success and then I just kind of accidentally did it today?

Progress.

WEBSITE UPDATE

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Sparks) — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 13:40:00 +0000

I did a pretty major overhaul, so now I'm here to show it off:

so pretty, so pretty

I'd put a picture, but all the pictures are there, really, so go to them.

BRUSHESSSSSSSSSS

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Sparks) — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 22:10:00 +0000

I bought some photoshop brusheeeeeeees! Get the pack here if you're interested.

One of the new things in the brush pack: a really good pencil tool.

There are lots of really great inking brushes in the pack, but I think I've settled on this one.

Combining the pencil brush with the one I usually use for painting

Aaaaaand what I once thought was purely a pipe dream: some clean digital inks.

Oh and did I mention that there're also a really good blue and red drawing pencil? Mmmm...so good.

two walk cycles and an emotional sack

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Sparks) — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 01:51:00 +0000

Portrait of a Monster

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Sparks) — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 02:14:00 +0000

Sometimes, you just gotta do fanart :3

Oh, and also video:

Idled too hard

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Sparks) — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 02:01:00 +0000

I wanted to make something like an idling animation in a video game.....but I went too far. TOO FAR.

STOP ME BEFORE I KILL AGIAN.

Morph01

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Sparks) — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 01:00:00 +0000

This week we were working on morphing animations. I was given a starting frame by the person to the right of me, and passed my last frame to the person to my left so that they could start with it....hopefully when we get to class tomorrow, everyone's work will link up nicely.

And yes, that does mean that I passed a unicorn on to a relative stranger. Muahahaha.

PEAR

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Sparks) — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 02:32:00 +0000

...if someone makes me a conjoined lamp, I will paint anything you want for you.

Lifting a heavy box and another jelly cube

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Sparks) — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 00:04:00 +0000

Note to self: go in and duplicate that last frame so that it holds longer.

Self10

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Sparks) — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 18:50:00 +0000

Jelly Cube

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Sparks) — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 22:28:00 +0000

It squishes! It bounces! It sticks to things!

I will be adding another one to this post just as soon as I get the frames in and all working--this one was a little too short for the needs of the class, so I did two :3

Leaf 02

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Sparks) — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 01:17:00 +0000

The big lesson of this one is: be verrrrry verrrry careful and check to make sure that the batch scanner hasn't eaten any of your frames.

I'm missing four, here, which is why there are a couple of really really weird jumps.

Aaaand that wiggle at the end just needs fixing in general.

Guess who's taking an intro to animation claaaaass?

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Sparks) — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 19:10:00 +0000

That's right! It's me!

My second basic ball bounce--it's meant to be looping. I was gonna put in blue and orange portals buuuuuut I'll save that for another time.

First ball bounce. Sooooo slooooow. And I think I lost a couple of frames in the middle due to the batch scanner eating them.

Pencil drop!

This line is pretending to be a leaf on the wind but it is moving much too fast--I'll probably do another of these before class on Wednesday.

sparkselart.tumblr.com

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Sparks) — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 05:20:00 +0000

Long time no post!

Sorry 'bout that. I'm back at school now, though, so I should be writing more frequently in the months to come.

In the interests of spreading the love, though, I've set up an art blog on tumblr: sparkselart.

There's just something so pleasant about the tumblr...thing. It's so soothing. And it's usually easier to upload to from different devices, so that's a big big plus.

A few recent pieces, all done on the new iThing: