It’s been a while since I’ve updated, and I felt like I should post *something* to show I’m not dead!

Here’s a quick screenshot of what I’ve been working on lately. I’ll present it in full when I’m finished!

This year I got into Krita. It’s truly an amazing piece of free software, and I believe it’s the easiest all-inclusive program where you can digitally paint and animate stylistically, including with chalk-y, painterly or sketchy styles, and even pixel art!

So far, the majority of my students whom I’ve introduced the software to have been really enthusiastic about it. The brushes included in it are very customizable and it feels like it’s doing half the work for you to make your artwork more stylized and polished.

And here’s a quick gif prototype-ish thingy:

I feel like my students have really been motivating and inspiring me. I’ve been pretty stoked about this project, and got some of my students hyped about it so sometimes they ask about it. If I haven’t been working on it, I feel kind of guilty, in the same way that they would feel guilty if they tell me they have no new work to show for my classes (to which I say most of the time “that’s totally okay!” if there are no major deadlines :P)

Since I haven’t been using flat colors and the animation is actually textured, it’s going to be taking me a lot of time. I even want to animate a bunch of little objects and the lighting, not just the owl, to really bring this whole scene to life. The older version of myself would have been like “but it’s too much work!” but then I think, “What would I tell my students though? Should I really be showing them that it’s okay to be so intimidated and then too scared to take on a worthy task?”

So now, I want to signal to them that they really should not be intimidated, that every extra additional minute they put into making an animation look more developed, colored and polished, is completely worth it, and people will love it. Viewers are so much more likely to click on a thumbnail of a colored animation than an uncolored outlined one. All the time you put into a confidently executed animation will give back to you later in the form of other people’s appreciation for it, years down the road.

Happy art-making!