Happy New Year!

THE SIMPSONS NEWS

Back to work this week.  Went to sleep early Sunday in order to get up early on Monday.  Got up at 4am and made my way to work.  There was no traffic, which was nice.  I was in early.  A little after 6am, I think.  It was odd  that there where no cars but mine.  Usually there are other cars, but then, it HAD been a Holiday.  Some people had not yet come back from where ever they went.  I went to my office and got to work…well…mostly just reading email and looking at some websites.  THEN after that I started work.  I took a bathroom break and noticed that even though it was 7:30am, the place was still very quite and no one had shown up.  Coming out of the bathroom, I met a coworker who asked me where everyone was. I told him I was wondering the same thing.

“Does work begin today?”

We checked our Holiday memo.

Tuesday was our first day back.  We were there a day early.  Feeling like a dope, I called my wife, telling her I was on my way home, packed up and was out of the office by 8am.

Oh well.

TUESDAY, I worked on the Couch Gag I was assigned before the Holidays.  I was dreading coming in to work.  The Couch Gag is a fancy one and it had some problems I needed to solve.  Problems that I was much too tired to solve on Friday.  I just wanted to come into work and mindlessly draw.  I suppose if I wanted that job, I should have picked a different position.

Knowing it would do me good to try to solve the problem BEFORE I actually went back to work, I set my mind to work on the problem on Sunday.  In about 20 minutes, I had come up with a solution.  Suddenly the stress was gone and I didn’t feel so bad about coming back to work. I guess the time off did me some good.

I executed my solution and found that there where problems with my solution, but since I had gotten the ball rolling, I didn’t mind the work of solving the issues.  In the end, I was happy with what I came up with.  The director took a look at it, made changes, I redid the roughs as he wanted and am in the process of cleaning it all up.  It felt good to be doing my job.

FAMILY

Spent New Year’s with my family at my parent’s house.  We had a great New Year’s meal of El Salvadorean food (Pupusas, Tamales, Plantains, refried beans…etc.). It was awesome!

We popped some popper with the kids, instead of fireworks. They played and had a great time.

Even us “grown ups” got a board game in.  We played a game of Liar’s Dice.  My brother won by one die.  We had a great time.  It’s been a while since I got a game in.

ART

A few posts back I wrote about Steve Silver’s Pose Book app. Well for those of you who don’t have an iPhone, iPad, on Android, but would like something similar to use to draw, here are some links to some sites that might help.  Though these sites aren’t exactly like Steve Silver‘s app, they are still handy to use.

PIXELOVELY.COM is a site that allows you to quick sketch right off the site.  It allows you to put in how long you want the poses to be and then a photo comes up which you have to draw within that time limit.  The site allows to you pick between nude or clothed models, Male or Female as well as animals (but I think all the animals are nude).  It’s great for practicing if you can’t get to a figure drawing class, workshop or zoo.

ARTSYPOSES.COM does the same thing as pixelovely and even shares many of the same photos only it’s searchable.  This comes in handy when you’re looking for reference for a costume or pose.  The animal section doesn’t really have any animals in it yet but I’m sure it will happen eventually.  Just as Pixelovely, Artyposes, has a bar on the side where you put in how long you want the poses to be and then a photo comes up which you have to draw within that time limit.

Hope these links come in handy.

ART

Even though I fully intended to work on my thumbnails over the Holidays, I didn’t .  I just wanted to relax.  I did other creative things but not on this project.  Turns out that it was a good thing.  On Tuesday, during lunch, when I sat down to thumbnail, I was totally in the zone.  I didn’t want to work on my project but, man, once I started, I didn’t want to stop.  I was really having fun.  Turns out that break did me good.

Here’s what I did, can’t wait to continue:

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