Katy Wu

Book Signing and Gallery Opening at Rare Device SF!

2011-11-03T10:48:00.000-07:00

Hi Bay area people! Daniela, Jennifer and I are having a Round Robin 1 and 2 book signing and gallery show at Rare Device this Saturday from 2-5pm! We will be selling our books, limited edition framed prints, and framed original artworks! Hope to see you there!

Check out our Facebook event page for more information.

Round Robin 2 now available!

2011-10-11T14:41:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone, we introduced our latest book, Round Robin 2, at APE this year!
If you missed APE, Round Robin 1 and 2, bookplates, prints, and tote bags are now available for purchase on The Round Robin Blog.

Special Edition ROUND ROBIN for Japan

2011-03-17T13:47:00.000-07:00

In an effort to raise funds for the victims of the heartbreaking crisis in Japan, we would like to offer a limited number of Special Edition ROUND ROBIN books, and donate all the proceeds to Red Cross. Our contribution will be matched dollar for dollar by the Walt Disney Company.

Each Special Edition Round Robin book will come with an original painting, and will be sold for 65$.
This is a great chance for you to own original art while contributing to a worthy cause.

Below are the first 5 paintings. Please email us your choice, at katy-wu (at) hotmail.com
We will process the orders on a first-come, first-served basis.

Thank you in advance for your support and solidarity!

-Katy, Dani and Jennifer

Artwork by Jennifer Chang:
1.) SOLD

2.)SOLD

3.)SOLD

Artwork by Daniela Strijleva:
4.)SOLD

5.) SOLD

NEW

Art by Katy Wu:
6.)SOLD

7.)SOLD

If you wish to donate through other venues, please consider the "Artists Help Japan" fund, organized by friend and co-worker Dice Tsutsumi and the Give2Asia Organization, or Red Cross.

http://give2asia.org/artistshelp
http://www.redcross.org/

masks

2011-01-10T13:29:00.001-08:00

Just bought this book:

I'm super excited to get it in the mail!

Round Robin now available for purchase!

2010-11-04T10:18:00.000-07:00

We have a limited run of 300 books, get them before they're gone!

32 pages, comes with a bookmark. Each copy is signed and numbered!
$25 + $3 s/h (US). If you are outside of the US please email me first to get a s/h quote!

Please purchase the book from the Round Robin blog site!

Round Robin!

2010-10-02T11:49:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone, me, Jennifer Chang, and Daniela Strijleva have just finished our latest book project Round Robin! Here is one of the paintings I did for the book, Jennifer and Daniela have also posted paintings on their blogs, so go take a look!

It is a book filled with paintings based on a word game, it will be available at this year's APE (Oct 16-17)!

APE 2010!

2010-09-27T10:27:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone, this year's APE is on October 16-17, me, Jennifer Chang, and Daniela Strijleva are making an awesome book called Round Robin! Check out their blogs for some cool WIP!

I will also be selling more Tigerbee comics and silkscreens. See you there!

Newt!

2010-09-09T16:46:00.001-07:00

Hey everyone, checkout some of the work we did on Newt on Disney Pixar's facebook page! The film was set to be released in 2011 but was unfortunately canceled.

Something I've been kicking around

2010-04-20T17:07:00.001-07:00

Painting for my next comic idea. About 1000x more ambitious then my first attempt. Um, we'll see if it actually gets made!

what is this I don't even

2010-03-16T22:40:00.000-07:00

I had fun painting this, that's all that matters! Don't question it dudes.

You get a cookie if you know who this fantastically pink gentleman is, hooray.

Haven't done this in a while.

2010-03-14T19:40:00.001-07:00

Okay I haven't done this in FOREVER.
I've been going to painting workshop at work and I felt like doing something painterly.

You get brownie points if you can identify who these two guys are.

Tiger Bee is now available for purchase!

2009-10-24T19:25:00.000-07:00

Hi guys, Tiger Bee can now be purchased from here if you have a Paypal account (it's super easy to get one). Domestic shipping is a low low $1!
If you are an international buyer please contact me first so we can arrange shipping costs! (it'll probably be around $6) Email me if you have any questions.

30 pages of comic + 4 pages of bonus material (36 pages in all)
8.5 x 11 softcover
A little girl from a group of refugees becomes separated from her family when crossing the Mekong River...

First printing is now sold out! Second printing will be available at APE (oct 1-2, 2011).

APE 2009

2009-10-19T10:28:00.001-07:00

I had a good time at APE, it was an interesting experience and I met a lot of people! I am thinking of doing it again next year if I have something new done by then!

I have some prints and comics left so I will be setting up a way to purchase them through paypal soon. I will have to charge for s/h but I'm going to try to keep the costs as low as a possibly.

APE 2009 (OCT. 17-18)

2009-10-05T17:17:00.000-07:00

Hey guys me, Valerie LaPointe, and Emma Coats are going to have our girlie Pixar table at APE this year!

We're at table 216 so come by and visit/buy our stuff. I'll be selling my comic book and the tiger prints. Whatever I have left will be sold from this blog.

See you there!

Holy smokes batman

2009-08-17T11:42:00.001-07:00

It's a comic! Um, sans text.

...no guarantees this will be done for APE. It theoretically takes place in Laos and has a little girl and a tiger in it. It'll be printed in 8.5 x 11 format and will have about 25 - 30 pages, I think.

The tiger prints below are about 30" x 20". They will look super in your living/bed room. I have about 40 of them and will be selling them at APE in October. Any leftovers will be sold on this blog for $25.

APE

2009-07-28T11:42:00.001-07:00

Hey guys I'm going to be at APE this year selling silkscreens and (supposedly, maybe, possibly) a comic.

Here is a sneak peek of a set I did:

Poisonwood Bible

2009-04-17T16:47:00.000-07:00

This is a painting I did inspired by Barbara Kingslover's Poisonwood Bible. Maybe some of you have read it, but it's about a missionary who travels to the Congo during the 1950s with his wife and three daughters. It's a great read and shows how Americans like to mess with other people's lives.

I didn't mean for there to be any erm, racial sort of undertones to this piece. If anything, the colors on the two characters should be reversed!

I just bought a big fat photography book on Africa, so hopefully that will inspire me to do more of these. I did this painting without proper reference, that'll change once I get my book! :P

Mr. Fox's den

2009-03-30T10:55:00.000-07:00

I did a painting of Mr. Fox's den. I always wanted to finish my Fantastic Mr. Fox project and now that I look at it, redo some parts too. All in due time of course!

Hidden things. Lost things.

2009-02-19T11:01:00.001-08:00

These are mostly lighting keys. That may look something or nothing like the movie. :)

The sisters after their "collision" in act 3.

The world was supposed to turn gray but I think they went with white to make a more dramatic change, since Act 3 is rather dark throughout.

The rocks the cat hides behind in the beginning. Which looks nothing like it haha.

The movie takes place in Oregon, which has a lot more filtered light then in California. It's very cloudy, but bright there!

Bobinski in the tulip bed at the end of the movie.

Coraline in the apple blossoms at night.

Concept art for how the climax scene might have looked.

Let's see if I can find the rest of the stuff....

That's C-O-R-A-L-I-N-E!

2009-02-18T22:05:00.000-08:00

Hi. Long time no post.

I just heard that people are putting up their Coraline work. Hope everyone watched it already, some of these are spoilerific.

I came onto the project pretty late in production and for only 3 1/2 months, so I mostly did lighting keys for Act 3 and a couple prop designs here and there.

This is the "other" world disintegrating. What happens in the movie doesn't really look like this though... It was still fun to paint, having plants, trees, the floor all unraveling, and the sky breaking up.

This image was printed on a cake and I ATE a piece of it. Awesome and weird!

I will post the rest tomorrow, it's on another computer.

A newt beginning...

2008-05-19T11:18:00.000-07:00

Hello again. I'm at Pixar now working with the amazing Bill Cone on the 2012 movie with the newts in it. They're building a really amazing art dept here, I'm super excited to be a part of this project!

Still no new artwork (that I'm allowed to show)! Okay, okay I swear I'm going to get something done outside of work, really. Laaammmee. What happened to this being an art blog? Seriously...

Oh yeah, congrats to those who made it into the Pixar internship, drop me a line, I'd love to meet you.

Update but no artwork!

2008-02-24T13:54:00.000-08:00

Hey guys, I've been at Laika for the last month and a half or so, I'm planning to stay with them till March 31. After that... hmm, I might be finding myself in a familiar place again. Maybe. Right now though, I am working on the stop-motion animation film "Coraline", directed by Henry Sellick. It comes out in 2009 so be sure to watch it then! Youtube has some trailers/leaked stuff on it.

How are you all doing? It's cold up here but getting warmer.

*Whoops scratch that, I'm probably going to be staying up here till the end of April. And then hopefully I will find myself somewhere familiar again!

The rest of the internship work

2007-12-29T21:42:00.000-08:00

Updated the Pixar internship gallery with everything else I did there this summer. It's in the Pixar internship sub folder under illustrations.

Or, just click here.

Hope everyone's had a nice Christmas.

Grad show stuff

2007-12-22T17:54:00.001-08:00

The Fantastic Mr. Fox (original story by Roald Dahl) gallery is open for your perusal:

Here!

Hey I graduated!

2007-12-17T16:42:00.000-08:00

Graduated on Dec. 15. The grad show, I think it was a big success.
No photos or new artwork yet, since I'm at Laika in Portland, Oregon. It happened pretty quickly and I had to fly up here on yesterday but I'll be back for the holidays in a week to update with LOTS of grad show and pixar internship work.

Have a nice holiday everyone.

Grad Show next Friday!

2007-12-03T19:16:00.000-08:00

Hey guys, grad show is NEXT FRIDAY from 6pm-10:30pm at the Art Center north campus. You may have to park in the Rose Bowl.

Please come check it out, we have some amazing artists graduating this term! I'm graduating this term! Ack scary.

Tiny preview

2007-10-29T12:27:00.001-07:00

Here's a little sneak-peek of what I'm up to for my grad show in December:

I hope to out-do myself from what I did during the summer.
Hopefully it'll be... fantastic.

Oh hey an update.

2007-09-02T22:33:00.004-07:00

*UPDATE 9/5: Hey guys Jackson gave me a good idea, which is I should not show all of this until I graduate at the end of this term. So yeah sorry it'll be gone until then. But you get to see the color script! If you saw all the stuff from before, lucky you. Don't worry, it'll be back at the Grad Show.
Jackson lives in Richmond.

-------------------------------------- -- -- - -

Yes, it's the Pixar update. I didn't have time to put anything up while I was there, everyone was working like crazy for the 10 weeks we were there. GOOD JOB EVERYONE. And then I left my laptop in Emeryville. I'm so glad I backed everything up at home otherwise I'd be one sad ex-intern now.

Anyways. We got to do our own project, which was our own version of Hansel & Gretel. They had changed the art internship program to be the ultimate visual development class with Harley Jessup and Steve Pilcher giving critiques every morning, and more critiques from various artists at Pixar every other afternoon. We also got to attend lectures by various Pixar artists, attend drawing workshops, ride scooters, have free cereal, watch top secret Pixar movies, and look at all the pretty drawings. Everyone was super nice and I miss the place already! :(

My version of Hansel & Gretel takes place in the 1920's in New Orleans during the Mardi Gras festival. Enjoy.

Color Script:

Hansel, Gretel, and their family are on vacation in New Orleans:

The kids get lost:

And then are lured away by the witch's candy float:

Parents notice the kids are missing, the witch has just kidnapped them:

Taking the kids to her home in the swamp...

Checks in on them, you get to see her ugly ol' mug.

The witch's house at night, a decrepit old ferry boat in a mardi gras float graveyard. It's a mouthful.

Hansel caged and Gretel in despair...

Gretel steals the key to Hansel's cage, but the witch wakes up.

The witch has poor eyesight so she sets herself on fire and accidentally takes a dive off of her house. And into an alligator's mouth.

Hansel and Gretel escape, the witch's house is on fire. The alligator is full and happy so it gives them a ride back to the city.

Hansel and Gretel are reunited with their family and say bye to the alligator. It's a white alligator. THE END.

(stuff was here)

We compiled all of our work and formatted them into portfolios on the last week. And then since we had all of hour work pinned onto large blackboards, we had to pitch it to some art directors, production designers, and other Pixar employees on the last day. Talk about nerve wracking! And then it was over. I hope to go back there soon!

The other art interns:
Lorelay Bove
Olga Stern
Bridgette Barrager
Kevin Dart
Everyone should have posted their work up by now, so go enjoy it!

My mentor Noah Klocek

I'm glad I got to take this internship, I learned a lot. School starts again in another week, I plan to make the most of it before I start working!

2007-09-02T22:33:00.001-07:00

I said I'd upload these before I left for SF, but I ended up getting a pretty bad cold. So here are a couple of pages from the children's book I did in spring term:

gouache + paper cut outs.

Painting

2007-06-02T02:15:00.001-07:00

It's been quite a while since my last post. I did this in painting workshop yesterday:

And I got an art internship at Pixar this summer! I will be leaving next Saturday for Emeryville, I'm so excited! Expect new work next week!

End of the term!

2007-04-18T19:05:00.000-07:00

It's over, yaaaay!

And another comic panel:

I'll upload parts of my children's storybook later.

Finished!

2007-04-17T22:05:00.000-07:00

MD1 Final:

Animating is hard...

Color comps

2007-04-17T06:15:00.000-07:00

Color comps for the previous image and one I am working on right now:

This is the size I paint them in. I haven't altered the new one yet for printing purposes. If you compare the second color comp with the it's finished image, there were some changes (both aesthetic and for printing purposes).

Pg 1!

2007-04-13T07:13:00.000-07:00

Still trying to figure out the text font, speech bubble placement, and panel outlines.

It will be about... 70 PAGES IN LENGTH!?! O___O

MD1 Final

2007-04-10T22:43:00.000-07:00

Erm, not finished but it will (hopefully!) be finished next week.

Quality isn't really good either, I'll see if I can do something about that next time.

Aaand the monster creatures in better quality:

Adv. Vis. Dev. final

2007-04-07T22:07:00.000-07:00

Night of the Hunter. Uh, the animated version.

more comic stuff

2007-04-03T15:49:00.000-07:00

This is an enlarged frame from the comic that I fleshed out:

..I'm going to have to redo the previous one now.

2007-03-01T06:25:00.000-08:00

Environment piece I did for my independent study with Will:

Mostly inpsired by vintage animation backgrounds, I was trying to combine some flat painting with line art. The printer was being super finicky with the printing on this one, so the trees are more orange then yellow, and the buildings are more gray then purple.

Oh, and the color lecture went pretty well I think, maybe I'll do it again after I reorganize my notes.

I also posted the first two themes on our sketchblog, so start sketching!

Color Theory Lecture

2007-02-22T04:50:00.000-08:00

I'm going to be doing a color theory lecture that covers er, COLOR and how to pick colors in Photoshop the following Monday in Richard Keyes' color theory for entertainment class in rm 207, 2-7pm. Hopefully I'll be able to answer any questions on color and how to effectively apply it to environments.
Feel free to drop by whether you're in the class or not, it should be about an hour long.

Also, have some yawning turtles:

And random kids:

Remember that rat kid? The one that was always picking his nose and wiping it on people? Ever wonder what happened to him?

2007-02-21T04:30:00.000-08:00

Assets to be used in my Motion Design 1 midterm:

Yeah it's in b/w, shocking isn't it. It'll get more colorful as the story progresses.

I'm working on a children's book on FASHION HISTORY. Yeah, seriously.

tigers

2007-02-15T07:44:00.000-08:00

Laughing. At you. Can you blame those magnificent bastards? I think not, you bald ape!

I couldn't stop snickering when I was drawing these. Animals are more fun to draw then people.
I think I should sketch more. Next topic: Yawning turtles. Or maybe enraged witches? Feel free to suggest something. :D

More After Effects

2007-02-13T23:40:00.000-08:00

This is a rough part 1 of my midterm. The story of a white witch who restores color to the world (which is flat on a wall) with the help of her shadow spook!

I'm going to redo this since I learned a bunch of new stuff today, it's really rough in some places... There will be four? parts in all I think. Maybe I'll have them done by the finals?

After effects assignment #2

2007-02-07T17:57:00.000-08:00

Listen to it with the sound on! Yeah it's dorky.

And here's the full drawing of the little pinata boy:

Personal logo

2007-02-03T01:22:00.000-08:00

My first After Effects assignment in motion! Expect more dorky cartoons soon, this program is great!

after effects

2007-01-29T17:17:00.000-08:00

I'm taking motion design 1 this term, so this means I'll be learning how to use After Effects! This is part of the first assignment, design a 5 second logo. The alligator's mouth opens and closes, and he blinks! Mostly basic stuff, I think it would've been better if I could insert wavs. Oh well, we'll learn that eventually! I can't wait to start doing some cool animation shorts, it's like a new medium of story-telling for me.

I'll upload the mov. file to youtube once I get a good copy of it (toast titanium ate mine).

more sketches

2007-01-10T15:42:00.000-08:00

More already?!

A first rough pass at redesigning the female character below.
The designs below are the ones I originally used for the storyboards, there wasn't anytime to improve on them during the end of the term:

And here are sketches of a new character to be added to the story. It's a spotted Daschund, I've actually seen one that was black and white in the mall. It was so cute. And it was on sale. I couldn't buy it. :(

Sketches

2007-01-10T12:29:00.000-08:00

Design overhaul for the new secret comic! It'll have a 60's feeling to it. Eventually. And it'll be done by scholarship. (hopefully)

I don't sketch enough, so expect some more this week!

...I'm on some kind of sketching high. So, grannies. Hey isn't that the lady from the Matrix?

Character Designs

2006-12-18T17:18:00.000-08:00

These are the designs for the last character design project, based on "Journey to the West". Yaay it's finally break~

Colored storyboards

2006-12-11T12:03:00.000-08:00

Hey finally some stuff from my storyboarding class! These are 5 panels (out of 219... ouch) that I chose to color. There's also a high probability that I'm going to comic this story over break since I like it. The dialogue's been deleted to keep it SECRET.

2006-11-05T17:35:00.000-08:00

Here's the Ben Gunn design from Character Design 1:

I won't be posting the Captain Smollett design because that one needs some serious tweaking.

And what I'm working on in Visual Development, I've already blocked in a b/w version of these. Now I'm figuring out the colors:

I came up with 2 moods for the first painting and decided to keep the second more golden color comp for my second painting.

Finished Character Designs

2006-10-23T09:33:00.000-07:00

The first character design 1 project is over! The are the final character designs for my ancient China themed Treasure Island.
Our next project is "Journey to the West". ...and I just did China! Oh well, at least I have a lot of research already, my characters are based on China in 700 AD, which is the approximate time "Journey to the West" took place!

2006-10-15T04:37:00.000-07:00

These are some character expressions I did for character design.

...the text was added after Kevin's critique.

..Pervert!!

Some old oil paintings

2006-10-02T11:32:00.001-07:00

I finally got some good photos of some of my favorite oil paintings. Some of them are pretty old, like this was from 2nd term when I was in Mike Hussar's head painting class. Good times.

This was my best painting I did that term because it was the only set up that was ridiculously colorful (I think it was one of Charle's setups). All of Mike's setups were desaturated with gray backgrounds, and I learned to paint with a pretty desaturated palette. It helped in the long run though, it's easier to see subtle color shifts now.

The other 3 paintings (in the illustration gallery under traditional work) are from sometime in 3rd term. And then I kind of painted less and less because I became busier with scholarship work. I'd love to go back to the workshops but this term is proving to be super crazy.

Character Designs

2006-10-02T09:00:00.000-07:00

From Kevin and Hong's character design 1 class. We're doing Treasure Island as a periodical piece. So mine takes place in China during the Tang Dynasty (800's).

Last week we had to draw 3 drawings of Long John Silver and 3 of Jim Hawkins. And yes, they are in gray scale. Sacriligeous! I could've used value more strongly in my designs, but everything is kind of mid-value because most colors I use are in the mid-value range. I find I dislike working in strictly black and white.

I came up with a theme for each of the characters, I need to work on presenting that though.

Here's Long John(s):

This was the favorite:

Although people liked this one a lot too, I'm going to combine some stuff from both of them:

And this is the first Long John I drew:

On Long John, I worked on pushing the two-sided nature of his personality. So I used things like the moon, tides, and yin-yang to describe that.

3 Jim Hawkins:
I originally intended Jim to be a boy, but this guy turned out looking girly, so I pushed that.

I like this guy's face, but other then that he's kind of boring.

I like how this Jim's clothes is different from the others:

Since Jim is the main character, he's the most boring guy. So I tried to make him into a more intersting guy, like a monkey! The flower one is kind of gay but I still like the sleeves.

2006-09-21T07:40:00.000-07:00

Another color comp:

The composition was meant to be horizontal, but I wanted it to be the title page for the comic.

Rough color comps

2006-09-11T05:17:00.000-07:00

These are some rough color comps for the Flight comic. Once I get these straightened out, they become good starting points - almost like a mini color key for each setting.

2006-08-29T04:01:00.000-07:00

I've been pretty busy working on the Flight comic lately, and I can't post any of it but I guess I can leave you guys with these character designs:

The cute little Prince in his pajamas:

And his steed. Her name is Winny:

I've been landscape painting, I'll put up photos later.

Preview for the Flight comic

2006-08-17T15:05:00.000-07:00

Went more painterly with this one:

I'm not very happy with the way the lilypad leaves came out, the colors there got pretty desaturated because I used a brush that wasn't completely flat and colors started to mix and gray out. I might redo this with a more simple and graphic appearance, but I want to keep some painterly elements too.

...I'm finished with all of my finals!

2006-08-09T14:48:00.000-07:00

The last of the lifestyles series from drawing concepts 2, old models living out the rest of their lives. Or something like that. Babies are now optional accessories.

I like the colors on this one more then the last one. The colors on the last one were very tame, orange/yellow/blue. Here, I started out with red and green as my main compliments, but eventually branched out to orange and blue as my sub compliments, and somewhere between all that some yellow slipped in as well. I think what makes this piece work is most of the reds and oranges are very saturated and warm, while most of the blues and greens are desaturated and more neutral temperature-wise.
The color of the month is toothpaste green (seen in the bg here). I find it works real well with most reds, or most colors that have some red in them. And my printer actually prints this shade!

Drawing Concepts 2 HW

2006-07-26T06:01:00.000-07:00

For the lifestyle final, "old models living out the rest of their lives".

Tried out some new brushes on this one.
I originally intended the colors to look like this:

But my printer couldn't hit those rich golds so I had to push the red-oranges and ended up using the colors from this modified comp:

I think everything worked pretty well in the end.

More traditional work

2006-07-24T13:15:00.000-07:00

I uploaded some more gouache paintings I did from last term. Most of the landscapes were done last fall or summer, the figures are from last term.
This landscape was done last Friday with acrylics at Eaton Canyon:

I'm still pretty rusty all around, but I want to continue landscape painting at least once a week (if I can find people to drag along).
As for the colors, they weren't captured very well because of my ancient digital camera. ...They'll probably all need to be re-shot once I get a better camera, a lot of the blues and purples were grayed out.
As for this landscape, I noticed I was playing it a bit too safe and sticking to pretty tame greens, oranges, yellows, blues, and purples. Next time, I hope to add more tertiary colors like magenta, which I remember seeing in the shadow of the tree. The value of the cast shadows is too dark as well...

Contrary to popular belief...

2006-07-21T01:47:00.000-07:00

Yes, I still do paint. With REAL PAINT:

This is an in-class painting I did in David Luce's Drawing Concepts 2 class. Good class.
Done in acrylics over newspaper collage on illustration board.
I think I should be more bold with the electric blue stripes in the background, thicker stripes. As for the colors, everything is actually pretty accurate, I think. (Except for the cheap colored skin...) There was a bright pink background and the pad on the floor was a nice neon green. The couch was more of an orange kind of brown, and I pushed it more towards a maroon. So in the end the picture is mostly reds and greens, with hints of orangey reds and some electric blue.

I also uploaded a couple of old gouache landscape paintings from last summer/fall in the illustration gallery, under the "traditional work" folder. I'll upload some more recent ones, I have about 3 wc sketchbooks full of landscape paintings, and even some figures in gouache. I also uploaded an old photo of my first scholarship setup from 3rd term. Only half of the work is visible though.

And awful photographs like this remind me that I really, really need a new digital camera.

Digital Illust. Painting hw

2006-07-14T20:18:00.000-07:00

So here's the finished product:

And here's the little comp:

There's a bit of a difference in the colors between the two, I had to make the ground lighter in the final because it printed too darkly.

For this image, I wanted to use really off colors, like salmon, teal, cyan, magenta, light toothpaste green etc (which is now my favorite color). The colors still work together because salmon is close to red, and teal/cyan is close to green. But both colors are also close to orange and blue, so it's like a... tertiary compliment? The colors are still compliments, just not primary or secondary.
The sand is salmon colored because I got sick of the gold/yellow-ish colored sand, and I had already used that in Seedling, didn't want to be repetitive.

With that established, what works with salmon? I wanted the trees to be a cooler color, so it's around the blue-green area and that works as a compliment. The sky is actually a really light green, because blue skies get boring. This'll probably mean the shadows are a bit greenish, but then this planet has like 2-3 suns, so light is being bounced everywhere. Which might just mean all the colors would get mussed up with all the reflective light, but that's not really the case because there's some atmospheric dust in the air to calm things down, you can kind of see it in the middle ground/background.

The print-out was almost fluorescent, which is neat.

I thought I'd start explaining how I get my colors since a few people expressed interest in that. I usually start with one color, like the salmon colored sand (we're talking invented color here, of course), and then things go from there. Uh, more on my next post, which should be my Drawing Concepts hw.

The gigantic scholarship update

2006-07-02T22:45:00.000-07:00

Yeah, so after the last post, I finished up the 3 comps I posted and I did 3 more images. The comic was bound, the sculpture finished and painted. Too bad I forgot to take a picture of the entire setup! So the entire show consisted of 8 poster images of varying size, 1 new book, and a sculpture. Nearly 2.5 times more work then last term (last term's comic panels don't count, I just needed those to fill up wall space!)

So without further ado, the sculpture, painted. It now hangs in my room, since I can't just leave it lying around somewhere, it's kind of delicate. Transporting it to the Wind Tunnel was a pain in the ass, especially with the sweltering weather. Hot weather = soft sculpy. It was... bendy. But now it's okay.

I also started up the Sultan Stan series of images. It's a children's story I wrote in Children's Lit, I think two terms ago. The story is still incomplete and already 4 chapters! I'm going to have to finish it before next term's scholarship, since I want to illustrate it as a children's comic/book.

And never before posted:

The double page spread, whoo. And just to clear things up, Stan is a BOY. ...with
a gay haircut. I think he looks cute, so nyeah! ...he's wearing a TUNIC.

Some sneak peak images I did for the Flight comic. Probably the only public stuff I'll post of it until it's (hopefully) finished and published. New style, new story, new everything. I did these Tuesday night, before I finally finished setting up.

And lastly, the finished, bound comic book. Titled Seedling.

I think I did an okay job on the binding, things got a little loose in some places but the book holds together just fine. My first hardcover! The second chapter, Strangeling, is being planned and will probably be out next scholarship along with the Sultan Stan children's book, and the Flight comic. Although my priorities go like this: Flight comic, Sultan Stan, Strangeling, and Red Rose (secret!).

And for the record, katywu.com should be up in uh... after I do some proper post-scholarship-crashing-catching-up-on-hw-and-sleeping. Give me a week or so.

2006-06-18T23:38:00.000-07:00

I finished another Stan pic, but this blog is going to go on a short hiatus until AFTER scholarship (2 weeks). Can't go around spoiling everything, can I? :P

New illustrations

2006-06-18T05:02:00.000-07:00

For Sultan Stan (a children's story I wrote in class):

Stan meets Alphonse the (gay) baker:

Using the scatter option causes PS to keep CRASHING. I might have to switch over to Painter and use the pastel tool.

Illustration Gallery up

2006-06-18T00:26:00.000-07:00

Link is on the right!
And I'm going to get my homepage set up sometime after scholarship (which is on the 26th!!!)

And some quick color comps:

...gay baker.

I'm not really happy with the colors one the first comp, but I'll probably do the second comp first since I feel most confident about it. And then I want to do a good job on the third comp.
Everything needs to be pretty white, because all the buildings are described as white/pearl in this story, which means I just have to get creative with the coloring.

I need to start these soon and finish them FAST. That seems to be the ongoing theme when scholarship deadline is closing in.

pg 21 - Finished!

2006-06-17T01:01:00.000-07:00

The last page:

A tad bit cropped at the top and bottom to fit the page format. Okay, now I have to go back and do little revisions on all the older pages.

2006-06-15T16:31:00.000-07:00

Okay this was an interesting experiment. Except as a print out it failed miserably, colors were wrong it didn't read well at all.

...it's not even a self portrait. WHATEVER.

Color comp

2006-06-15T01:12:00.000-07:00

Color comp for digital illustrative painting:

This is usually how all of my digital paintings start out. I use a large brush and block in all the colors. Squint, and hopefully it looks finished. I think the colors are alright here, I always have to stick to printer friendly colors which is pretty limiting. Sometimes I just want to use an obnoxiously bright sea green, or a purple. It can't be done. :(

I'm thinking of doing this with Painter 9's pastel tool. Doing it in Painter 9. It's due tonight. Yeah.

Seedling pg 20

2006-06-14T03:06:00.000-07:00

ONE MORE PAGE LEFT. And it's not even a comic page, it's a poster page to wrap things up for the chapter. I'll do it over the weekend, it'll be a pretty important piece. In the meantime, I need to actually do some HW, geez.

Check out that action pose. Totally ruined by falling like an idiot.

I've learned a lot from working on this comic, especially working with flat, graphic shapes.

once more with feeling

2006-06-13T22:40:00.000-07:00

It's that nasty ol' Gimp!!

I just wanted to capture that nasty, warm-in-a-squelchy way lighting in this piece.

I'm thinking of using these for scholarship, but I'm not quite sure how to present them. I though of maybe sticking them into old books so they look like illustrations for them. I might go buy some old vintage books, or I'll just make very thin ones myself. I don't think these are meant to be framed though, and yet they don't feel like they should be on foam core either...

more pulp fiction

2006-06-13T21:27:00.000-07:00

The scene near the end:

I'm not really happy with the red of the chairs, but it could still work. I generally like to choose all of the colors on the right side of Photoshop's color picker (ie, colors away from gray.) If I have to use a gray or brown, I try to make it either very cool or warm, away from neutral. Although I find the neutral looking brown of Jule's skin to work because it's next to some really warm red browns around his ears and nose.
I like how the comps so far don't read as realistic in terms of color, they just look cool. Hmm, and I should have put something on Jules' shirt. In the screenplay he's supposed to be wearing a "I'm with stupid" shirt, though I don't think that made it to the actual film.
I need to do one more of these tonight. Thank god for Coffee Bean and their delicious mocha lattes.

pulp fiction

2006-06-13T01:25:00.000-07:00

This is the scene where Vincent gets stabbity on Mia.

I composed it before watching the movie so it isn't exact, obviously. But then I watched the movie afterwards because I wanted to. :P
Hw for david luce's drawing concepts 2 class. Uh crap I need to do 2 more of these (and last week I boldly said I'd color ALL 6 of the comps. aha. haha. yeah. 3's good enough.)

pg 19

2006-06-11T20:01:00.000-07:00

Argh, I accidently did that thing where I saved it after it was flattened, so I lost all of my layers. >__< ...guess I won't be editing this one ever again, hopefully I won't change my mind about how it looks anytime soon.

Seedling pg18

2006-06-11T14:17:00.000-07:00

Dude I hope I finish this soon, I'm getting sick of working on it. Well at least the changes in color continue to interest me, but other then that....

Okay, only... 3 more pages left. I just bought supplies to make the book today.

Hey

2006-06-10T15:08:00.000-07:00

Finished pg 17 last night. Only... 4 more pages to go, yay!

Oh, first post. Hi.