Celebrating Milestones

I was lucky enough to witness two major events in family members' lives this year. First, my boyfriend's sister got married. And second, my dad celebrated his 60th birthday. I was heavily involved in both events mainly because I designed the invitations. I like doing graphic design projects more and more. I usually only do them for personal things, but I would love to start doing actual client work.

This is the front and back of the wedding invitation for my boyfriend's sister's wedding:

I collaborated on this one with my boyfriend. He's an artist as well. I did the text and layout while he did the illustrations. The three ovals in the middle were sticker designs that were printed out and stuck onto the bags of Costa Rican coffee that were given away as souvenirs to all the wedding guests.

And here they are printed out:

Not the best photos, but I just wanted to include this. They look great in person. Roughly 5"x7".

Here are the invites I made for my dad's surprise 60th birthday party:

I did all the artwork and layout on these ones. And here they are printed out with the green envelopes I bought to go with them:

By the way, the surprise was a huge success. My dad is a smart guy but not very observant at times, so it wasn't too difficult to keep all the planning hidden from him. Great times were had by all!

Portlandia!

I just updated my stop-motion animation reel! I did a lot of animation on the rats sketches in season 3 of Portlandia, and I finally got the footage to add to my reel. I did a lot more than what I included, but I only want to show the best! Most of my shots involved character acting, and I saw a lot of improvement over about a two month time span of animating every day. It felt really good to see such significant progress in my skill set!

To view my reel, follow this link to the video on my Vimeo page: Steele Reel 2013

And just because, here's my website: www.artofsteele.com

Buddha Genie

Here's a papercraft birthday card I made for my little sister. She turned 20 in June.

Birthday Card!

Here's a colored pencil birthday card I made recently for my mom. She likes giraffes.

Rediscovering Colored Pencils!

Here's some stuff I've been doing lately with colored pencils/regular pencils:

I'm in love with Ryan Gosling. His nose makes me swoon. Look at that bump down the middle of his bridge. Gorgeous.

This was in a nightmare I had recently. I drew it so I could get it out of my head.

My nephew and one of my nieces have birthdays within eight days of each other. I made them 4.5" x 4.5" birthday cards this year, complete with sentimental notes on the back in red ink. The one above is for my niece and the one below is for my nephew.

First Paper Craft Project

Here are some photos from my first ever paper craft project. I made this for my big sister as a Christmas present. It's a caricature of my youngest niece, Hayden. I got really inspired by a lot of the paper craft artwork I saw when I went to the Creative Talent Network (CTN) Conference in Burbank, CA in 2011.

Hayden seriously has that hairdo all the time! So cute :)

POW Fest 2012

The short stop-motion film I worked on in college, "The Box Game" was accepted into the 2012 Portland Oregon Women's Film Festival! In order to submit a film to this festival, it had to be directed or co-directed by a woman (myself). I am proud to say that we had 6 women in lead positions on our stop-motion film crew! The festival happens at the Hollywood Theater in Portland, Oregon from March 8-11. I'm not sure what day my film plays yet, but it will be screened during the animation portion of the festival.

I am pretty excited about this one. I felt a rush of excitement when I read the e-mail during my lunch break at work today :)

Here's a still from the short. Trivia: That's a painting of me on the wall in the background.

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!