Yesterday, The Art of Pho, an interactive motion comic by SubmarineChannel, was finally launched. It’s an adaptation of a graphic novel of the same name by Julian Hanshaw and my first job as an animation director. 

I storyboarded/conceptualized the motion comic, directed the creative process, and did a lot of the animation as well. I’ve poured so much of my creative energy into this thing and worked with a lot of talented and motivated people to create this. Please check out the website and make sure to also watch the making of, where you can watch me awkwardly explain a thing or two about the project :]

We really tried to take a new approach to motion comics with this, mixing different techniques with 2D animation and adding some interactive touches here and there. Please watch, enjoy, check back for new episodes daily, and spread the word!

finally i can announce this: my artwork is in the new ballistic publishing book, d’artiste fashion design!

it features three long, comprehensive tutorials by me as well as a showcase of my art. check out the link on the ballistic publishing page to browse through a preview of the book. and of course to pre-order it!

btw, since people are asking, the difference between the limited edition and slipcase is that the limited edition is leather-bound and embossed (check out this link for more info) and only a limited amount are available, whereas the slipcase is just the normal soft-cover book :]

loish 2012 calendar now available via deviantart prints! buy it here.

new website layout - check it out!

i wanted to doodle something for here but i DON’T HAVE THE TIME! i’m too busy this week with:

• being the art director of a soon-to-be-released motion comic at yellow submarine
• making artwork for a casual game about a badass female pirate
• making tutorials for a prestigious soon-to-be-published book (not my art book!)
• personifying ice cream flavors into charming female pinups for an amazing ice cream store
• planning a vacation to the beautiful island of corsica for the end of this month

i’ll see if i can squeeze a drawing in here or there, but it won’t be today ♡

returning to tumblr

i haven’t updated a lot here lately, i think because i just have an overload of accounts online that i want to keep up to date. a list:

• deviantart - the first place i post my work.
• twitter - where i want to keep people up to date on all of my online activity.
• facebook fanpage - same as above.
• sketchblog - where i post sketches and doodles.
• this page - where i post progress work and also use as a personal blog.
• behance - portfolio site that i haven’t updated in months!
• personal website - meant as a gallery, i don’t update it enough though. 

i emptied out my cgsociety account, realizing that i will never get around to updating it ever again, and am considering doing the same to my behance portfolio… one thing is for sure: i need to simplify and streamline everything! i was thinking of getting rid of my tumblr, but decided against it - i have almost 10,000 followers here! which is just awesome, especially considering how little i’ve been updating. so i just need to get back at it. it’s just unfortunate that i can’t seem to find an option to import RSS (from my sketchblog) regularly into my tumblr anymore. why has this changed??

anyways, i’ve decided to just simplify the tumblr blog to four basic categories - my art, progress pics, news & updates and some random stuff on the side. i think that will make it easier for me to update this blog and keep it more centered around the idea of posting my artwork and things related to that.

long story short: i have returned!

imagineFX

finally got my own copy of imaginefx in the mail, for which i drew an illustration and wrote a tutorial. it’s always awesome to see how my text and progress pics are transformed into a comprehensive, neat looking article by these folks! there’s also a dvd included with a bunch of progress vids. so for those who are interested in a detailed tutorial by me, i recommend just going out and buying this, you also get a bunch of amazing art and extra workshops to go with! all info about getting this magazine can be accessed through imaginefx.com

purchased me one of these…

an hp mini 210-2002ed. it’s got a 10 inch screen, i was hoping there were smaller ones but 10 inch seems to be the smallest affordable kind of mini-laptop! looking forward to being able to travel without carrying my super heavy dell xps around anymore. i’m exciiiiiteeeedddd… oh and i love red gadgets :]

album art i just finished for the cunninlynguists’ latest album, oneirology! click on the image to get a larger version on deviantart.

some details:

busy busy busy!

Hey all! just updating to let you guys know what i’ve been up to lately. i recently started working on a short-term animation project in brussels, at a wonderful studio called walking the dog. i’m working there full-time until christmas, which is quite a change of lifestyle for me! as a freelancer i’m used to choosing my own work hours and now i’m getting up at 7AM to arrive at work on time. however, i’m really enjoying it and i’m also working in a huge cintiq which is AMAZING. i love those things! anyway, the work is for a documentary which will contain animated sequences, called The Boy is Gone (directed by Christoph Bohn), which is definitely going to be worth seeing. i’ll post updates about the possibility of seeing it when the documentary is finished.

on the side, i’m also working in a tutorial for imagineFX (hopefully not the beginnings of another stalker/copycat fiasco haha… i think people will like it) and an album cover for the cunninynguists. both of these will be finished in the coming weeks and i’ll post updates about these things as soon as there’s anything interesting to know about :]

also, i’ll be posting some commission and sketch work in the coming week! so keep an eye out!!

trichrome at klik!

if anyone is in amsterdam the coming week, come check out the klik! animation festival at kriterion in amsterdam. a lot of animation work made at utrecht school of the arts is played there, including trichrome blue which is being played in the student competition block 1 (thursday the 16th at 22:00 and saturday the 18th at 13:30).

new computer

does it make me shallow and materialistic for being this happy about a material possession? my new comp has been up and running for a week now and it’s a LIFE CHANGER. i called it rufus because it’s a lean, mean animation machine (don’t ask me what those two have to do with eachother, choosing names for my computers is a very intuitive process for me haha). rufus is FAST! render time means NOTHING to rufus! which means that me and rufus… well… we’re made for eachother.

no but seriously, thus far this has been the best investment i’ve made. with help from my boyfriend, who actually knows stuff about computers, we put together a list of the parts which i bought separately and he pieced together to become rufus :D some exciting aspects include:

• an i7 processor
• windows 7… at last… goodbye shitty vista!
• 1500 gigs of disk space
• a fucking amazing dell ultrasharp screen which is just mind-blowing!! this is the first time i’ve had a screen larger than laptop format :0

for now it’s housed in my miniscule work room at home which is kind of a disaster because it’s all squished into a tiny space, as above picture shows. i also forgot to invest in a decent wireless card (it’s on the to-do list) so i still have to use my laptop for browsing which is why it’s squeezed onto my tiny desk as well, ahaha. also my entire house is still littered with boxes from all the separate computer parts…

here’s to hoping this computer will facilitate the creation of many a digital painting and animation :D

animating again

after finishing trichrome blue and graduating, i decided to take it easy for a while and let the stress subside. since i had no idea what my career was going to look like (would i get a job? part-time or full time? would i be doing freelance animation or illustration work? etc) i took the time to settle into my working life and now i feel like i’ve reached some kind of stable point for the time being.

this combined with the fact that my schedule is looking reasonably relaxed in the coming months has prompted me to start working on the trichrome series again. this time i hope i can give myself more than two months to crank out a whole animation, haha. anyway, i revived my old graduation-project blog, started doing some tentative research, and made one little yellow-inspired doodle so far. in the coming weeks i’ll be focusing on this project, so if you’re interested, keep an eye out for it! :]

oh and thank you to everyone who follows this blog, all 1400 or so of you! you make the internet a happier place