Not the One with Arnold Schwarzenegger

The stop-motion Christmas special that I worked on at Bent Image Lab premiered on national television last Friday! "Jingle All the Way"! The one about the husky puppy. So cute! It was really cool to see my character animation on t.v. for the first time EVER :) The credits went by too fast for me to even see my name, but it's there!

Here's a link to the trailer:

http://hallmarkchannel.com/microsites/videos.aspx?simscode=419-32176&pageid=3253&pn=689237cfbdf7440997ac2538c6777710&pnlist=689237cfbdf7440997ac2538c6777710%7C

Here's a photo that's been seen in a few places on the internet so far. This picture makes me laugh because we never see Santa's face in the show, but it's shown here. Hahaha!

Duck Strip

Here's another comic that my boyfriend drew and I colored:

And here's just the gun shot panel without the line work. I thought it looked like a cool abstract painting. And that is the only time you will ever see me type the words "abstract painting" and "cool" in the same sentence.

Red Hulk

I woke up sick this morning and couldn't go to work. So I drew a Hulk.

Buffs!

Here is something I drew after being inspired by all the buffalo I saw when I visited Yellowstone recently. I was also inspired by all the stupid people that got out of their cars to take pictures of the buffalo from like 20 feet away.

I was amazed at how dumb people are when it comes to wild animals. Especially when they gave out this exact flyer at the entrance gate to Yellowstone, along with a newspaper about the park and several other forms of warnings about the wildlife:

I just redrew the sign to be a little more humorous.

My First Paying Job

Here is what I have been working on at Bent Image Lab since June. It's my first job since I graduated from college in March of this year. My position was Puppet Rigger/Wrangler and eventually Assistant Animator. Yes, I got to do a bit of animation!

http://www.cartoonbrew.com/biz/hallmark-channel-announced-original-animated-special-jingle-all-the-way.html

This was a lot of fun because I got to work with some people I already knew as well as meet people that worked on Coraline AND The Nightmare Before Christmas!! I love stop-motion.

Deadmond Does It!

Here is a cartoon that my boyfriend drew and then I colored.

This is based on a real, hypothetical conversation.

"The Box Game" Premiere!

Back in April, there was a gallery set up in the Art Institute of Portland that displayed all the puppets, props, and sets that we used in the film, as well as photos of the film in various stages of progress. Here are a few photos of the gallery and film premiere of "The Box Game":

















Hopefully soon, I will be able to post the film on my professional website: www.artofsteele.com. The editing team just has to get together again and export a version of the film for the web.

NW Animation Festival

So, I got to work on a stop-motion short for a whole year at the Art Institute of Portland before I graduated a couple months ago. Roles I served on the project include student director, writer, animator, puppet and set fabricator, rigger, and compositor. With the help of about 30 fellow students of mine from the Art Institute of Portland, we created "The Box Game".

I've been submitting the short film to festivals for the past month, including the Northwest Animation Festival happening right here in Portland, Oregon! They accepted our film along with 77 other films from around the country and world. "The Box Game" will be showing on the third day of the festival, this Sunday. Pretty exciting!

Also, we had DVDs made specially for the cast and crew of the film. Complete with commentaries! I designed the DVD case cover and disc art using images from the film. Take a look!

Job Hunting

I found this drawing on my boyfriend's desk and decided to paint it in Photoshop. This is what it feels like to look for a job.

Hayden Bug

I have an idea for a children's book...

Blog Banner

I finally made my own banner for this blog, as you can see above. Here's the original way I designed it:



And here's what it looks like after I adjusted it to fit better up top:

Figure Drawing Improvement!

I took an advanced figure drawing class from one of my favorite teachers (Za Vue) during my last quarter of school, which ended only a few weeks ago. She is an amazing artist and taught me a lot about figure drawing. She started back at the very basics and rebuilt what we all knew about figure drawing from there. It was one of the best classes I've ever taken, mainly because I became a much better and more confident traditional artist. Here are some of the drawings I got from that class:

Drawings from my sketchbook

1 or 2 minute gestures

5 minute poses

10 minute poses

Chainsaw vs. Super Hipster Part 2

Here's the clean up drawing I did by hand:

And here it is colored in Photoshop CS5:


And here's a black and white version just because I think it looks cool: