Petunia

This is a little cut-out of a wee Labrador-collie cross for a friend of mine. I helped mind her a few years ago when she was still a puppy, before she became a full blown unholy terror.

"Home Sweet Home"

Hi all!I know it's been quiet here the past few weeks. I have finished teaching the PURE Wicked Animation Filmschool with Pádraig and Carol and am in the throes of putting all the films together for the showcase


Whilst down in Wicklow I was able to put together a little piece for an upcoming charity auction, Animation Art Show, which is taking place this Sunday July 29th at the Science Gallery in Dublin, from 12:30-16:00. The show was put together by Simon Kelleghan Bianca Beneduci and Estrela Lourenço, and is in aid off the Children's Sunshine Home and the Laura Lynn Foundation.


Here is my piece, called "Home Sweet Home"

It is ITEM 11 and features in LOT 1, bidding begins at 13:30, but be sure to get there early to sign in!


Here's how I went about making it:

After figuring out the designs in pencil I digitised them and made a quick colour study, adjusting some things for scale. I then used the monitor as a lightbox, tracing the scene onto paper and transferring it to cardboard.

I then cut out the characters and glued them together. Inevitably many minutes were spent looking for parts that went missing.

There they are now all put together. Yep.

Once I had decided on a frame size I made the background to scale, with a little bit of layering to give it some depth.

Be sure to check the Animation Art Show blog for a full listing of the items and the bidding times.
Thanks for reading and I hope to see you all at the auction on Sunday!

The rumours of his demise were greatly...

Goose.

Here's Goose laying nice and quiet in my hand.

Hey look! Turns out Leroy is cat safe...

If I was any way smart I would have painted the top bit of the neck black for this angle...

The only reason that there are rocks here are cause his arm stretches forward and needed something to rest on. Cop out.

*SNIKT*

I used fishing line for the whiskers, being bereft of invisible thread.

The fishing line is quite a bit thicker than the thread would have been, so it looks a bit weird.

And here he is in his new home, about to fall over.

Here is a birthday present for a friend of mine. This guy mysteriously disappeared for nearly three weeks, but no less mysteriously turned up again yesterday.

Birdy

Here's a birdy I made for some friends of mine who got married today.

Kayaking

Here's the fourth wedding related thing I've done so far. Spent a good chunk of last weekend and the start of the week getting it wrapped up between other jobs. The background panel size is 110mm x 110mm, which might help give you an idea of the character scale. I've probably got all the kayak accuracy wrong but sure, been a while since I was in one meself. Them knees should be concealed I've a feeling, but lets say that they are relaxing mid kayak.

Here's a composite sketch I made up first for reference, I changed the guy quite a bit so he did not look so disapprovingly at the lady not rowing, but otherwise tried to keep it fairly tight. The Islands in the background are modelled off the Gulf Islands off the coast of Vancouver.

Though my hands are quite big, take it from me that these were quite small and tricky to do.  Where normally I would glue on the eyes, they were in this case too small so I had to draw them onto the 'face,' with a 0.05mm pen mind.

Thankfully the paddle/oar looks straighter in the final thing, but the stem itself is about a millimetre thick so it's still quite wobbly.

Here are the two finished characters. I made them complete, as I wanted to 'sit' them in the kayak properly. They are each about 25mm high.

 The boat has depth, with a flat back and curved front that's kind of pillowed, to allow the characters to sit inside the seat wells. The kayak was tricky in another way, the lines across the boat are supposed to be a kind of netting, which I was going to do with thread. That however proved problematic, as I just couldn't get it to hold it's shape properly and didn't want to have to smear the whole thing with glue.

You can actually take the fella out of the boat, though the lady's hand is unfortunately glued to the 'water'

I had to wait until they were placed in the kayak before I could do their pupils.

 Had to make sure they were looking in the right direction, him at her and her at the water.

You can see a little bit of the 'pocket' form of the kayak here.

I think this shows best the depth of the piece. Though I imagine it's gonna be a bit of a paint to frame or hang at the right angle hah...

Here is the flawed scan.

While scanning these I discovered some quirks my new scanner has which the old one didn't. I had a Xerox scanner from... maybe 2005?... and I used to get a great light drop-off from these layered cut out pieces, but everything would still be in focus. Unfortunately after using it to make some salt animations all the electronics kind of went kaputt. Seems with this new Canoscan LiDE 210 I got, it doesn't have any real light drop off, but it has a really shallow focal depth, as you can see it in the image above. Guess I gotta photograph all these yokes now instead of scanning them. At least we'll have sunlight for the next few months.

I hope you enjoyed this rather lengthy post about not much, and I hope all the pictures weren't total overkill. I am available for commissions if you'd like to contact me: eimhinmcnamara@gmail.com