Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Jen of the Caribbean!


Hello everyone! I'm back from my winter cruise adventure! It was a pretty good time, but its nice to be back on dry land. Being on a cruise ship almost feels like being in a huge human zoo. You sit in your little cabin most of the day waiting for food, and they have a little water pool and places to layout and sun yourself, but mostly your day is spent waiting around for food. And man the food. You can eat 24 hours a day if you want, so you end up spending a lot of time just trying to be hungry for the next meal.

Anyways yeah, the boat was boring, but the nature was flipping sweet. The water! The cloudforms! The beaches! Ahh! Amazing! You'd think with all this inspiration I would have drawn something right? Wrong. I have drawn nothing. My sister even drew more then I did! (I'll have you know *I* wrote Merry Christmas.)

Also I'm reading the History of Brittain for Dummies. I'm up to like King Henry III, around the 1200s I think. History is pretty much a huge mess, but its been fascinating me a lot recently. My goal is to read more nations' historys until I'm the smartest dummy around. My sister even gave me her anthropology book! Yeah!

Ok I have to go do exciting things now like buy milk at the grocery store. Seeya!

Thursday, November 23, 2006

German Shepherds!

In celebration of Thanksgiving I give you German Shepherds!! Well sort of I guess. The two just kind of coincided! I was going to update last night, but I broke the backspace key on my keyboard and spent a whole hour trying to fix it. Its really due to a kitten's ass that I got into the mess in the first place, but it was my own foolishness that broke the key. Now backspace is kind of just hanging there, dangling from one side and when I press it, it sort of sticks to my fingers, pulls up and doesn't register. *shakes head* It is the burden I must bear I suppose.

Anyways I drew these at work after being inspired by miss Heidi Jo Gilbert. They were pretty fun! My favorite part was trying to design the fur patterns and make it feel German Shepherdy. I think the one on the right has the right idea. I like the neck the most. The face is a little weird though. But yeah anyways...here it is!

Also Fried Green Tomatoes is one of the saddest movies I can remember seeing. Not that it even ends sad! It just has these sad parts that....wow....they just make me cry. I cried during the movie and then afterwards when I started thinking about it again! Yeah...ok....now I guess you all know how much of a soggy-faced girl I really am.

OK.....German Shepherds! Thanksgiving! Food.....prep...eration......

Monday, November 20, 2006

Old Story Idea

This was an old story idea I had my third year at school. I originally had huge epic plans to do a fourth year film in cg with these characters, but then griffins and other such things filled my thoughts. (Not to mention CG films are a lot of work!!) So it fell by the wayside. I think about it a lot though and I'd really like to make the film someday. Its kind of this bittersweet thing with this hermit alien guy and this little firefly that becomes his friend. I guess it sounds like boring cheese when I put it that way, but there's more to it then that! I'll probably be doing a bunch of art for it cause I'm thinking about trying to board it. Its going to be a glacially slow project, cause I don't have much free time, but I will try!

Anyways, here's a picture. I colored it on the Cintiq. I'm not sure about the background. It was a lot of playing around. Ok so here it is! I have a few more sketches but I haven't colored them yet! More to come!



Oh and speaking of bittersweet things! This film Kiwi is adorable!! I just find it so charming and sweet. You should watch it!

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Rhinos....One with lips.

I'm back again! I have more doodles for the ol' blog. This time it's some rhino scribbles. If you look really carefully one of them has lips. It's kind of gross....a rhino with lips. Ew, what was I thinking?


Also you guys should check out Patches the horse!! What's even more curious then a horse riding in a car is a horse named Patches with no visible patches. hmm...

Haha anyways, yeah you watch it.

Monday, October 23, 2006

Elephant!

Hey guys!

I've been doodling a bunch inbetween animation renders. I'm actually working on shots for a real movie now guys!! I'm totally excited!! Hopefully I can learn fast and work hard so I can stay on the show. I really hope they like what I'm doing.

Anyways! I'm hoping to post more doodles, and not worry so much about making clean finished drawings.(not that you can tell I was worrying about that with my other scribbly posts to this blog! :P!) I couldn't help scribbling in a little tone in Photoshop on this one. So yep! Here's an elephant!

Monday, October 16, 2006

Cats!

About a month ago my roommates and I acquired two crazy babies....KITTENS! And being the animation nerds we are, we named them Squash and Stretch.

This is Squash:


And this is Stretch:


The picture is ripe for some kind of "cat out of the bag" play on words. I'm not going to do it though.


I will do this though: Looks like a "CATastrophe!"


This occurance was so cute it may have cured all cancer with in a 2 mile radius. The picture doesn't do it enough justice, but wow.....it was adorable.


Squash the leg climber:


Just general cuteness:


And finally here's a few cat scribbles!

Monday, October 02, 2006

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Saturday, August 26, 2006

Dinosaurs!

I drew these last night while watching "Last Call with Carson Daly". I don't normally stay up past Conan O'Brien, who is one of my personal heros, and its for good reason. First of all I'd be really really tired for work in the morning, and more importantly "Last Call with Carson Daly" is one of the worst programs I've ever seen, but there's nothing else but infomercials on that late on basic cable. It's physically painful to watch. Nothing is funny and everyone is trying so hard and failing entirely. Also apparently they have to pay the audience 7 dollars an hour to sit through it. *shakes head*

Anyways...I hadn't drawn dinosaurs in a while, so I did. Dinosaurs are so cool. I watercolored it in front of the lodge at Calarts today. It was really peaceful. There's nothing more calming then doing watercolors in a nice place. I've got to make a habit out of it.

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Goats!

There were a few days this summer where I went to this local park/ranch/farm thing down the street to draw the goats. I'm trying to do research for my Billy Goat's Gruff project, which hasn't gotten much attention as of late. I've been animating like crazy, and staying late every day at work. Gah! I'm learning a lot though, so that good. Anyways I really enjoyed watching the goats and drawing them. It was pretty peaceful and I'm sure I'll go back for more. Not to mention animals are just awesome, and goats have really strange heads. They need studying!


Friday, August 18, 2006

Santa Clarita! So glad to meetcha!

Wow, well sorry for abandoning this blog for so long. I've been working hard on my animation tests at work, and at the end of the day it leaves me with little will to do anything else, much less anything on the computer. The blog is taking the hit big time. I have some artwork, but I'm too lazy to get out the scanner. Maybe tomorrow.

Anyways...yeah....here's the lamest update of all time...

Every evening I drive 45 minutes through a bunch of annoying traffic to get back to Santa Clarita, and I hate it every day, but right at the end of my journey I come around this bend and there's always the most beautiful mountainous vista sunset waiting for me. The last 5 minutes of my drive is usually pretty beautiful! So anyways, I took a few pictures last week. Heeeere ya go!





Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Arrrrrt and Also Arrrrrrrrgggghhhh......

Hey everybody!! Well I saw Pirate's of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest!

Yep! That pretty much sums it up!

And also I've got some art. I drew these two baby griffin pictures a couple months ago and I thought they were cute, so I scanned them and colored them on the Cintiq. I think the first one worked out better. Then the third picture is just a griffin sketch from a month back. My roommate Nick left his red colerase sitting out and I was playing with it. It made me feel like I was drawing real professional animation drawings. Oooooo! (Mostly just cause it was a color other then gray.) This is the last of my old artwork too. Now I have to draw new stuff! I'll try not to draw so many griffins. I need to expand! Hopefully I can find some time and motivation. I've got some ideas for some goat characters I'm working on. I think they'll be fun to design, but ....yeah... no time right now!


Wednesday, July 05, 2006

ARRRR!

Well Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest comes out in two days. I really hope its good. I'm so tired of being disappointed. I go back and forth between complete confidence of its awesomeness and a cautious worry that "Hollywood" has screwed up yet another really REALLY fun film series. *sigh* I will just have to wait and see. Regardless of how it turns out though, I'm still excited right now! I have random pictures for you people!

First of all I hate Superman Returns. A lot. Bryan Singer left X3 to rot for this piece of garbage?! Pffft! I'm really looking forward to watching Pirates II blow it out of the water this weekend at the box office. Yeah! I made this image to express my emotions:


I wanted to do picture of Superman actually being blasted out of the sky by the Black Pearl, but such a picture was not to be found, so I had to settle for this instead. Maybe this is more..... tasteful? Eh?

And also, (and this is less stupid) last summer I went down to San Diego with some of the other Dreamworks story trainees and on the way down we spotted this on the 5 freeway:


Upon closer inspection it seemed to be some kind of morbid movie prop. Here's a high-res photo for you:


One year later I see the trailer for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and what do I see?! The same morbid movie prop!!! So awesome!!! It's totally the same thing, check it out!




Every once in a while its pretty awesome to live in L.A. (And by "in", I mean "near", because I don't actually live there. I'm Jennifer Hager and I don't endorse lying.)

Ok this was a completely geeky post. I'll have some art in the next one!

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Baby?

Here're some baby griffins I drew a few months back. I have a griffin addiction! I can't stop drawing them. It is probably my most common doodle, so sorry if you're bored by my endless stream of griffins. Anyways, I spent a while trying to get really cute scratching poses. (Ah...the goals we set for ourselves!) The biggest challenge was trying to get all the limbs into good positions silhouette-wise. I started trying to color them with my wacom at home, but it was too lame, so I stayed late at work to color them on the Cintiq. Yeah! I have a few more drawings I didn't get around to coloring. So yes, fear not! More cuteness is on the way!

Also nerdy fun fact for today:

I realized early this morn that Pirates of the Caribbean II will be released exactly one year before J.K. Rowling puts out the 7th and final Harry Potter book on 7/7/07. Ruminate on that my fellow nerds!

And also... I don't remember who was debating this with me, but the definition of ruminate is:

1. To turn a matter over and over in the mind.
2. To chew cud.

So you can do either of those things to my fun fact.

And now... GRIFFINS!



Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Grrrrraaaaagggghhhhh!

Well sorry this hasn't been updated in a while. I've been pretty busy, and it's kind of nice to be busy for a change! Animation is going pretty well. I'm starting to figure this CG stuff out. We're doing a dialog test and its pretty challenging, but I'm slowly making progress.
I've got some art I want to put up, but its taking me forever to color it. I've only got maybe an hour a day or so to work on it. Hopefully I'll get it up later in the week, but until then I have THIS:


Adrian Molina did this drawing for me last year. I found it stuffed in one of my sketchbooks the other day. Haha, it makes me laugh just looking at it! I don't remember what spawned it. For some reason Hermoine is getting sucked up into Hagrid's gross tangled beard just like San got sucked up into that boar's gross wormy warts in Princess Mononoke. He even has eye boogers!! *shrug* Thank you Adrian!!

Ok that's it for now. I'll try to post more!

And also ...... know that its taken me over an hour to type this. You know why? I've been watching Pirate's of the Caribbean. I forgot how awesome this movie is. I can't taken my eyes off the screen whenever Jack Sparrow is on.

Friday, June 16, 2006

Road Tripping Again

So the art is kind of on hold here for a bit while I'm learning animation. They gave us real animation rigs in class yesterday and its pretty intimidating. My assignment was to do a walk cycle with two steps and I couldn't do it in time! I tried though. The teacher understands. It's cool. I'll learn this pretty slowly, but I will learn it and then it will be really fun! I really do love animation. It's just so awesome bringing things to life!

Ok so I did another road trip with Heidi last weekend. It was pretty fun, and also a completely new drive for me. We went from Salt Lake City to San Francisco. The coolest thing we saw was the Utah salt flats. Man such an alien looking place! Anyways, here are some pictures:

Here's The Great Salt Blue Line


Soon after we passed The Great Salt Lake we passed this big pile of white stuff. Here was our conversation:

Heidi: I wonder what that is.
Jen: Yeah, I don't know.

*pause*

Jen and Heidi: Oh.


Mrs. Incredible says "Heck YES!" to the salt flats!


Here I set the timer on my camera to take a picture of Heidi and I in front of the salt flats, but as I was running into place I lost my shoe, and I didn't want to go back for it cause it would waste too much time, so I kept going, pathetically hopping along, but it was too much for me, so finally I yelled "I GIVE UP!" and started to throw the frisbee down in a white hot rage, and then the camera went off.

Behold the magical glistening salt flats!


Frisbee on the salt flats! So. Awesome.


Yeah, and THIS is how we decided what CDs to play on our road trip. I'm not going to explain it. Just know that anything involving two 20 sided dice is two nerdy for explanation.


Yep. There is is.


And finally, we put this Cars image up in our window just to be dorks. We realized it was upside-down after about two hours.

Friday, June 09, 2006

More Trolls!

Hey everyone! Well these have been a long time in coming, but I've had lots of training this week, so I haven't had much time to just sit around coloring. Training is going well, and I'm pretty excited about animating! Next week we're going to do a bouncing ball and a walk cycle test. It's going to be awesome! I'm a little worried about how long my learning curve is going to be with the CG software though. Doing CG at calarts was pretty frustrating for me. Oh well, I'll have to work hard, but I'm sure it will click eventually. Anyways! Here are some more trolls! I'm planning to do some goat designs next and then start messing around with some Billy Goat's Gruff vignettes. It'll be fun! I got kind of gross with this trio. They ARE goat eating trolls, though. They're bound to get a little gory now and then!

Monday, June 05, 2006

Trolls not Trollz!

Hey Guys! Well I decided my next post should probably be artwork, and not me geeking out about something. There needs to be a fine balance of art and geek on this blog. So I took the time this morning to scan and color this drawing I did two weeks ago. I've been thinking about that Billy Goat's Gruff fairy tale a lot lately for some reason. I think partially inspired by Bert Yoon's film, "I Love you Kitty," which was totally awesome! I decided trying to design some trolls a few weeks back and this is what I came up with. I colored them on the Cintiq. I really wish I had a Cintiq all my very own. It's so awesome! It's like coloring with watercolor or marker or something, but with all the "ctrl z" power of the computer. Ok, so here it is! I'm going to post another sheet of these guys tomorrow if the coloring works out.

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Back from.... Adventure!

Wow, well folks that was just about the craziest week I think I've ever had. It sure was a whole heck of fun though! I've been to four different states in the past 7 days, been on 3 airplane trips, 2 road trips, and even one boat outing. Heidi and I woke up and went to sleep in different states almost everyday. It was exhausting, but totally worth it for.....adventure!


DAY 1 - California to Maryland

Ok so we get up early and get our butts down to Long Beach in time for our flight to Washington D.C. It was long and painful sweating the 5 hours in the middle seat between the grannies, but Ipod and Gameboy Advance saved the day. Not to mention "Escape from L.A." staring Kurt Russel, which was playing on the Direct TV screen embedded in the head rest in front of me. Wow, that movie is amazing. So amazing in fact I could only watch 15 minutes of it. So we get there, and as an added bonus, Heidi finds out she's gotten the Pixar internship for summer. WHOA! Huge bones to her and everyone else. Huge. So after some intense Mille Bornes playing in which I lost every game we went to sleep.....in Maryland.

DAY 2 - Maryland Bums

So we wake up at 12:30.... in Maryland. We bum around, buying things like Froot Loops with mini Lightning McQueen toys, Cars Bumper Bites graham crackers, and Captain's Gold Pirates of the Caribean M&Ms with awesome pirate skulls instead of m's on them. We also see this awesome Cars dodgeball:


And we ate at Chick Filet for the first time in months. Mmm. The day wasn't that exciting, but the anticipation was thick for Friday. I also found out that night that Ed, Court, Alex and Shawn got jobs at Laika for the summer. Also a huge bones for them! It was quite a peculiar thing to hear all this news of jobs and internships during my crazy vacation. It made it even crazier! I'm sad everyone's leaving for the summer, but glad no one will be bored and poor.

DAY 3 - The Best Day EVER!


Wow guys. Wow. This day was awesome. We get our butts up at 7:30 and start driving to North Caralina. It takes about 7 hours to get there. We eat at Chick Filet... again. Mmm. The forecast calls for rain, but the skies don't look it. We amuse ourselves with general road trip silliness for the whole trip, and in the last 20 miles we hit massive gross traffic. We navigate our way through it and finally the glory of Loews Moter Speedway comes over the hill!




We freak out for like 10 minutes and Heidi takes a lot of photos of the side of the building, but then excitement dies down as we sit for almost 2 HOURS in a block's worth of traffic trying to get into the speedway. Not to mention the black storm cloud, lightning and sudden down pours that seemed to surround ONLY the Loews Motor Speedway. The show was supposed to start at 7:00pm with "entertainment" beginning at 6:30. We finally get the car parked at 6:35 and run into the stadium. We also come to realize we're not aloud to take cameras in, and I chickened out and didn't sneak it in, so I have no photos of inside. "It exists now only in my memory." (Do you guys know what this quote is from? You're a girly dork if you do! :)) So we get in there and run to our seats. Everything's wet and dripping, but the storm seems to be clearing up. The speedway was HUGE!!! I'm sure it was miles long! You felt like a tiny pion sitting in the bleachers. There were 30 thousand people there and we only filled up like a fourth of the bleachers. There were four huge 75 foot screens set up in the inner circle of the track, a stage with a giant cars logo, and a bunch of smaller screens broadcasting images from the red carpet. Here's some pictures I found online:





It's still drizzling and I in a panic run back to get the apparantly free rain ponchos we completely bypassed at the entrance. We sit in our dorky rain ponchos clutching our pillows waiting for the "entertainment" to start. Nothing. They're driving these incredibly loud blow drying trucks around the track trying to dry it off, and that's about it. Finally the guy comes over the intercom telling us that the rain is slowing things down, but to be patient. So we wait. Finally they bring some Nascars out and announce all the drivers and everything. Then they do the National Anthem as fireworks shoot off and F16's fly over our head. F16s!!!! This is an f16:


Then they do a real fake Nascar race that was so loud and awesome! Then Larry the Cable guy comes out and announces John Lassater and Paul Newman and the movie stars and some race car people and stuff. Then BRAD PAISLEY comes out with his paisley guitar and fiery red wolf shirt and plays country songs for us!! This is Brad Paisley:


And then as if this parade of awesomeness wasn't enough they start the movie!! The PIXAR movie, CARS! I had a weird feeling like I didn't want them to start the movie cause I'd been anticipating it for so long and I felt like if they started it my heart, lungs, and liver might all simultaneously explode and then.... well and then I wouldn't be able to watch the movie. But it started nevertheless and it was awesome.

Man I know a lot of people think this is going to be Pixar's weakest film, but its totally not! At least not to me. And maybe its because I love cars and country music and road trips that I love it so much, but I don't know. It's pretty awesome. The opening is really cool. I mean REALLY cool. Then you kind of have to settle yourself into a world that's populated by only cars, and its a little weird at first. You're not sure not to feel about it, but the movie keeps going and showing you things that you've seen before, but never imagined quite like this, (New synapses, people! New synapses!) and then before you know it you're in love with the characters, the world, and the story! And I guess its not as fancy and high-tech as The Incredibles, but there's something delightfully John Lassater about it. I mean its talking cars, for gosh sakes! I teared up quite often during this film. There are really just some beautiful moments in there. And not to mention the way it looks. Geez Pixar!! The backgrounds are beautiful, and the cars are so solidly cars, but they have so much human personality. It's amazing! They do such cool things with the tire structure, man so clever. In fact there's so much cleverness and artistry stuffed into every shot it was hard to take it all in. I need to see it again.... a lot. I could probably go on for quite a while about this, but I need to encapsulate the rest of this journey. Maybe I'll post more later.

Ok so the movie ends, and there's some HE-larious stuff at the end while the credits are rolling. I won't say a word cause it will spoil it, but its pretty durn funny! And then they shot off a huge load of firewords to Rascal Flatts' cover of "Life is a Highway", from the Cars soundtrack. Heidi and I bought the song off Itunes for a dollar and had been listening to it on repeat most of the trip, so yeah it was pretty sweet to see an elaborate fireworks display set to the song we'd been obsessing over for the past few days. YEAH! So we sat there geeking out hardcore as the 30 thousand people left the stands. We both decided it was the best 10 dollars we'd ever spent, and we left and it was like 2:00am so we crashed at a Comfort Inn somewhere in North Carolina.

Day 4 - Road Trip Back to Maryland

I think the decision to premiere Cars at a Motor Speedway in North Carolina was so incredibly genius. I mean the movie is about seeing life as a journey and enjoying the trip, and in order to get to North Carolina you had to journey in someway. Having this in LA would have been totally inappropriate, I mean seriously. It really felt good to have to drive the next day. And drive we did, back to Maryland for another 7 hours. We ate at Chick Filet again. Our thrice visit. Mmm. Then we get back, take showers and my parents take us and my sister out on the boat for a BBQ. I hadn't been out on our boat in like two years and it was really nice to be back out on the Chesapeake Bay. We go to sleep none to happy we have to get up at....

Day 5 - Maryland to California

5:30. Ouch. It hurt, but my parents drove us all the way out to the Washington DC airport and we got on the plane. We flew all the way back, and then drove all the way back to good ol' Mountain Terrace. We were so exhausted we napped until the evening. Now you would think this would be the end of the adventure, but no there's more! Heidi has to drive back to Utah the next day, and I offer to go with her cause her mom doesn't want her driving alone, and plus road trips are awesome!! So Heidi has to pack. I help her and we don't finish until like 1:00 am. It was pretty exhausting. We also played Street Fighter II an hour or so before the packing and I believe that's when I may have, "thrown Ryu out of a dragon puch. out the air."

Day 6 - California to Utah

Heidi and I actually both get up before our alarm goes off and pack up the car. It was jampacked, and you couldn't see out the back, but we did it. We take off for Utah through the desert. Driving through the desert is awesome. It just really feels like a road trip when you drive through the desert. Most of the day is spent searching for a Popeye's, but we end up going to a Long John Silver's instead and getting these ridiculously huge root beer floats. We see various cool things along the way. A tow truck just like Tow Mater:


This ridiculous McDonald's billboard, which I simply can't get enough of:


These diner seats that look like the Cars' logo:


So we get to Utah and go to see Heidi's dog, her brother calls me an idiot and then we go to sleep.

Day 7 - Nerds in Utah


So we get up and eat "Colassal Crunch", and "Kong sized Apple Jacks", then be lazy for a while, then eat Cafe Rio, which has the most delightful Mexican salad thing I have ever eaten! We go see X3 with her brother, which was better then I thought it was going to be, but still pretty terdish. Then we shop for cowboy magnets with no success, before having dinner at Heidi's sister's place and then playing a huge game of ultimate frisbee and freezing our feet on the cold grass. I hit a guy in the face and tripped over my own foot. It was awesome. So then we go back and go to sleep, sad that's its the last day of our adventure.

Day 8 - Jen is Really Tired

So we get up at 4:30am. FOUR THIRTY!! It was so painful. And I flew out of Utah, flew into Long Beach, got picked up by Ed, and drove all the back to my apartment all before I'd normally be awake! Then I got in my car and drove all the way to work and "worked" the rest of the day. I felt pretty hardcore. And then the adventure was over.