Sketch Blog

I had to take an unexpectedly long break from Modo. For two reasons, my Desktop was damaged during the storm years ago and my Laptop was getting old and slow. It just couldn't handle the wonderful power of Modo. I used Modo indie for a while but I quickly outgrew it. So now I have to basically pickup where I left off. This is not the first time I've had to relearn Modo after long periods of time without using it. But this time around it was much easier to use. With a lot of changes and updates and a new PC, Modo is even more pleasant than before. Below are two current works. Please don't be impressed by the human model. That was done with MakeHuman so I could have a face to paint and texture and checkout how UV's work in Modo. The cup however, I modelled. The texture isn't completely symmetrical yet but it will be. It's a simple and modest tea cup. Soon I will make a second version, turning it into a cappuccino cup. After playing around with the face, ...

My newest timelapse has been posted. I said all I had to say in the description. Hope you guys enjoy this one!

I've started to use Krita again in preference of photoshop. My only gripe is that for some reason my brushes won't export from my laptop properly and I only end up with about half of the brushes I put into the pack. It's very frustrating. Well anyway, there's really not much to say. This was an unplanned work I managed to record on livestream.

Ghosty Process Timelapse from Draconian Rain on Vimeo . It's no secret that I love everything bright and flashy in my art and I have a terrible habit of making my paintings and animations too busy. Which you will see happening in the timelapse video above. My goal was simple enough: Animate a simple ghost in no more than 15 frames at 12fps on loop. For whatever reason I couldn't get Ping Ping loop to work and a few times I tried copy, paste reversed and that was ok, but in the end I used motion path and made sure the movement was fluid enough to not need ping pong looping. I had planned out to keep everything super simple. A basic background or blank background, a simple cartoon ghost. But I couldn't help myself, I had to make the inner body look magical and like it had spiritual energy. Then I had an idea. A while ago now, I watched a TVPaint video where someone created animated brush strokes by holding CTRL while drawing on a series of empty instances. And no ...

The purpose of this animation was to use the gradient tool with a colour set to fading out into transparent. I chose to animate steam from a coffee cup on a still painting. It was very interesting, simple and fun.

Felt kinda down so I created this in tvpaint to cheer myself up. I just wish I had of thought of the type of brush I was using a little more thoroughly because it made painting quite difficult. Live and learn I suppose.

I've been experimenting in TVPaint for a while now and I only just figured out how to get the gradient tool to work. I had a lot of fun making this. There have been countless times where I have wanted to animate my artworks to express more emotion or atmosphere and with TVPaint I feel that I can. Wonderful to work with and fabulous to paint in.