Allimation!

The End

2008-11-17T22:41:00.003-05:00

Hello readers, all two or three of you:

So this blog is ending. But never fear, because there is a new blog! This one's not just art, because then it would never get updated. This one has random musings, and everybody likes random musings. You're one of everybody. So hustle over to:

The Ivory Cherry

Look, it even has an obnoxious, nonsensical name. Everyone wins. Huzzah!

Fungi

2008-01-29T15:57:00.000-05:00

Before you ask, "Allison, did you just draw a girl who is also a mushroom?", let me just say... yes.

For serious? Is that mycelium hair? Ugggghhhh.

New take on an old favorite

2008-01-29T00:07:00.000-05:00

I redesigned one of my old characters, Chantal. That's her on the left. She is frowning because she doesn't know how Lo is able to contort her body like that and still be smiling. Chantal is a scientist. She wants ANSWERS.

Here's an old version of Lo and Chantal, for reference:

I redesigned her because one day I saw this girl at a café who struck me as looking exactly like Chantal would look, if Chantal were, you know, not a fictitious comic character. She had hair kind of like New Chantal. I'm not sure I'm going to go with it, because Old Chantal has been in existence since 10th grade or something?

Lo, meanwhile, remains exactly the same.

This is late because I got distracted playing DDR, so it still counts as Monday's picture. Another one later today! Drawn while listening to Capsule. I've been listening to a lot of Capsule and the Decemberists' "Picaresque" lately. They're great.

Don't smoke

2008-01-27T21:21:00.000-05:00

Today's picture!

Her name is Emily, and she hates everything. She also seems to need some sleep.

I am so tired of drawing random, pretty girls. Yet it seems to be all I can produce.

It's 42!

2008-01-27T16:46:00.000-05:00

The picture from yesterday, as promised:

She's really excited about answering the teacher's question. She looks kind of Marvel-ish to me, like Power Girl? I dunno. Originally her eyes were ginormous and freaky, so I mellowed them out a bit. Ok a lot.

I will post something later, too!

Webcomics

2008-01-26T23:13:00.000-05:00

I did draw something for today, but my scanner decided to be uncooperative, and so it's not here. Maybe tomorrow? For now, here's a picture of a queen I did about two months ago for a poster design that was rejected:

I was channeling Mucha (again) for this. I did get to use the crown, sceptre, and orb in the final poster, so... yay?

Today I went to a webcomics panel featuring Jeph Jacques, Randall Munroe, and Pete Abrams (my sketchbook now has a picture of hat-guy telling generic-guy that he "fails at internet"). It sort of made me want to start up a webcomic again. I'm hesitant, though; much as I loathe to say it, the potential popularity of my maybe-webcomic worries me quite a bit. I'm not very good at writing funny, which, it seems, has the greatest influence on whether your comic is popular or not. All my stories tend to be, hm... Serious? Dramatic? Corny? Always with the end of the world and such (this comes, I suspect, from playing too many RPGs growing up). On the one hand, I want to be DEEP (which I'm rubbish at), but I also want to be fun, and quirky, inspiring and above all, original. I'm sensing a definite lack of these qualities in the stories and characters I come up with. Or at least, that's what I tell myself, and then nothing gets done.

Oh well. We shall see, we shall see. In the meantime, here are some webcomics that I love (LURVE):

Friendly Hostility. Oh, the characterization is so good. SO GOOD. And it's so funny. SO FUNNY. The artist used to do "Boy Meets Boy," which was a joy in itself, but the Friendly Hostility characters are. Well. They are fantastic.

Gunnerkrigg Court. This is everything I want my comic to be. It's well-drawn, it's funny, the storytelling is top notch – but the thing I like most about Gunnerkrigg is how imaginative it is. I sound like Reader's Digest or something.

Dresden Codak. Beautiful. Wonderful. Whimsical. Love.

That's all. I'm feeling rather dull and uncreative. It's a terrible feeling.

Another Macy's Ad

2008-01-25T23:15:00.000-05:00

I decided to enter this graphic design contest in the hopes of getting a job (and also moolah, of course). This is my favorite of the three designs I submitted:

My friend says this style looks like a Macy's ad. Can't really disagree, I guess.

Also, I'm thinking of setting up a site to sell commissions? Maybe?

COMIC STUFF SOON.

Edit: Apparently I am ten kinds of stupid and the poster said SPING instead of SPRING, but now it is changed!

Allimation ANIMATION!

2008-01-07T17:34:00.001-05:00

So this blog is called Allimation, but thus far has been devoid of animations. Here is the first! Be warned: it's my first animation, it's not very good, and if I had more time I would tweak a lot of it (such as the stills that go on for too looonnnng), but it was due today, and I only have so much energy to give in a two-day period of mad project-finishing.

(It will probably be the last, as well.)

EDIT: The music should be louder! Ah well.

An angel came down to me from Heaven in bright red shoes.

2007-12-27T01:03:00.000-05:00

Started this several weeks ago, just now finished. Experimenting with another style. Whee!

A Retrospective

2007-12-26T18:41:00.000-05:00

Three months after I proclaimed that I was alive once again...

Everytime I come home from school, I pull out my old binders, stuffed full of pretty much every drawing I have done since junior high. Every story idea I've ever concocted is documented in these drawings, and while I often redraw old characters (yays nostalgias), this time I decided to do what many artists have done before (I am le originale): put my old drawings next to the new ones. So here you have it: An Allison Retrospective!

This is Noel, from a gargantuan project/story I developed all throughout high school. The story, called "The End," was based on Norse mythology and involved some sort of Samsara-like, endlessly repeating cycle of the world being destroyed and recreated... and everytime the Norse deities would have to replay their horribly dismal and angsty melodrama. Noel was from the future (huh?) and was supposed to be some sort of Messiah-like figure who was to save the world, prevent it from being destroyed, ending the bloody cycle... okay. Standard hackneyed high school stuff.

I don't remember quite everything I came up with, since I never wrote anything down, for some reason... but I think Noel was supposed to be soulless (left it behind in the future, I guess), and thus represented humanity in its most pure, unsullied, primordial form – she was sweet, kind, angelic, beautiful... etc. (How optimistic!)

The art kind of speaks for itself, I think. Improved anatomy is good. Still don't really draw noses, though. Noel was one of my favorite characters to draw for a long while. She has since faded away... so the new one doesn't really have her "look."

Und nummer zwei:

This is Chiori. The story she's from, "Mukashi," was something I made up on a fly so that I could draw comics for this AOL mailing list from way back when. I actually drew TWO pages of it. That's more than... pretty much everything else I've come up with. Sad.

Mukashi was supposed to be a love story set in the future, in a world where the cities have grown so tall that most people never see natural light. The main character, Clear, becomes inspired when she hears a DJ at a local club – apparently music is made entirely by "DJs" who hook themselves up to some crazy machine and create music straight from their cerebral cortex or something. The guy's name is Hajiime, though his DJ name is Regime. So obviously Hajime and Clear fall in love (dur dur dur)... Chiori here, another DJ (CODE NAME: CANDY!), happens to be infatuated with Hajime. Wacky Hijinks Ensue.

I don't have anything deep to say about the art, except... if you draw more, you get better. Woot!

In other news, I got new glasses today! Joyysssssssss.

This was a long post. Tune in next time for more retrospectives (maybe)!

Koronides

2007-09-04T19:07:00.000-04:00

I'm alive!

For my friend Michael. Orbited girls! Menippe (purple) and Metioche (red).

The Birth of Helo

2007-04-09T23:10:00.000-04:00

Oh how exciting! I plan to get a domain name soon. Here is a larger version of the picture of Mira (who is not the title character, Helo). Click for bigness!

The Alpha and the Omega

2007-04-07T03:00:00.000-04:00

Since the last post actually has a drawing from yesterday, the 6th (and earlier; winter girl was actually drawn towards the beginning of the semester), here are pictures for today, the 7th.

Kosmos and Telos from the Xenosaga series, respectively. I couldn't find any good resolution pictures of Telos, so I kind of made up a lot of her costume (and I took some liberties with Kosmos' as well). I like the Kosmos one quite a bit, but I'm a bit iffy on Telos. Drawing her made my hand hurt.

Spring and Winter

2007-04-07T00:13:00.000-04:00

Oh, how I wish Spring would descend upon chilly little Cambridge.

Click to see full-size versions. Apologies for the scan quality; I drew these on the back of my chem notebook, and it's not the flattest of surfaces.

I'm not dead

2007-02-24T23:14:00.000-05:00

Really. Work, of course, has been dominating life. Here's something I drew on the 29th of January.

Some sort of satyr?

Buzzkill

2007-01-26T13:53:00.000-05:00

Not that anybody reads this blog, but my hard drive has died, meaning I can't really do anything until it gets fixed and I get my hands on a copy of Photoshop again. Woe.

So until some undisclosed time,
A.

Celebratory Odori

2007-01-23T18:04:00.000-05:00

Drawn with pencil, marginally inked, and then "colored" with bits of origami paper. And then... heavily adjusted on the computer. Yay for end of finals!

Intermission

2007-01-15T16:28:00.000-05:00

There will be a brief pause until my finals are over (scheduled to be the 23rd). I may pop in with some drawings between now and then, but don't be too optimistic.

Also, happy birthday, Jacobo :)

Drop-waist Tunic

2007-01-14T15:07:00.000-05:00

Don't they look so cute together?

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The Rab Cafe

2007-01-14T02:05:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the late post. Think of this as Saturday's picture.

Sometimes I draw stuff like this and wonder what I've been smoking.

Also, space bunnies? Am I sensing a theme?

Space bunnies as evil world-dominating adversaries, space bunnies as dinner... so versatile.

For Sunday I'll try to draw something more classy, less on crack.

Space drama!

2007-01-12T18:05:00.000-05:00

I call it, "Nicoletta Strange versus the Devil Bunnies from Space."

Fee Maiden

2007-01-11T22:28:00.000-05:00

A Fée girl, with avian hair ornaments. The limbs and ears of the Fée are stretched by the outward pulling of magical forces (or I just want an excuse to draw what are, essentially, elves).

As always, click the picture for a larger version.

Journey's Beginning

2007-01-10T23:47:00.000-05:00

Our heroine with a Fée boy, riding on a jaguar to who-knows-where.

Apologies for the terrible editing job. I'm tired.

The Girl Who Aged

2007-01-09T23:33:00.000-05:00

A tentative story for Léasspell is in the works!

A young human girl is whisked off to the fairy lands by an errant fée. Though by all rights those who dwell in the lands of magic shouldn't age, this girl somehow manages to.

Mushroom Gathering

2007-01-08T23:48:00.000-05:00

Bear with me. The pictures will be craptastic for a while, maybe even forevah.

A fairly rotund not-quite-a-rabbit collecting some 'shrooms from an unusually diverse mushroom patch. I think he's a medicine-making shaman, but maybe he just wants to get a wicked high.

Rebirth!

2007-01-07T23:56:00.000-05:00

So I've decided that I may be interested in pursuing a career in illustration, and not, well, chemistry. But at the moment, I suck too much. Ergo, I am going to make a conscious effort to start drawing everyday again.

Wish me luck!

Today's imahge:

A fairy. Page one from the newly-designated "production sketchbook" for Léasspell.

A pair

2006-08-29T21:38:00.000-04:00

Girlies!

Glamour Paramour

2006-08-28T22:20:00.000-04:00

Celia.

Surrey

2006-08-27T22:29:00.000-04:00

A strange girl with circles under her eyes. Another character from the comic-in-production.

XY

2006-08-26T21:48:00.000-04:00

A boy. Gasp!

The breeze, the sky, the water.

2006-08-26T01:14:00.000-04:00

I never draw backgrounds! This picture is a milestone. I love the sea.

Racerback Tanktop

2006-08-25T01:53:00.000-04:00

Heroine of my latest comic-in-production, supposedly.

Today's post brought to you by the colour "pink."

2006-08-24T00:30:00.000-04:00

What's better than a random doodle? TWO random doodles!

Blue blue baloooo

2006-08-22T21:46:00.000-04:00

I've been meaning to draw Kosmos for forever. Here she is! I'm actually rather pleased with the coloring, which is rare. The pose is boring, the anatomy is screwy as always, but I like the coloring! (My favorite part is the gradient in her hair.)

I may do portraits of all the Xenosaga characters. Ich liebe Xenosaga :).

Kosmos

2006-08-22T02:22:00.000-04:00

Finished/color version, tomorrow.

Here we go again

2006-08-20T20:46:00.000-04:00

Yet another attempt at a daily art blog. Perhaps this time it will continue beyond a week or so? Time (and encouragements) will tell!

Once upon a time I had a fantasy story called "Forward Serenade" filled with elves and magic and all manner of similar, silly things! There were many races of people, including the one to which the weird long-eared panda-girl you see above belongs to.