Just Life

Basic Anatomy Study

2011-11-17T19:24:00.001-05:00

So the goal of the assignment was not to make perfect renditions but to just practice drawing a portion of the body you feel you would like to become better at drawing. I find I don't have too much trouble drawing feet, but I am not too familiar with the underlying anatomy so I thought it would be good opportunity to focus on that. The top and the side anatomy under the ligament bands I found I was able to learn but under the foot was a little awkward to illustrate since there is a band of muscle that is tucked under the foot so the two bottom drawings aren't my strongest or clearest. I still learned a lot though and that's what counts!

Personalities of the Royal

2011-11-14T20:32:00.001-05:00

So we just went to the Royal Winter Fair and this year we had to draw the animals and capture their personalities, which made it super fun and relaxing.

Also my recent Heroes and Villians project caught the attention of The Wandering Men and I coloured up the bugs for their use :)

Heroes and Villians

2011-10-05T19:05:00.000-04:00

So the assignment was basically take three of your life drawings and create three characters (specifically heroes and villians) and put them in a pose from your lifedrawing. The characters were hinted to be designed more 'animatable' buuuut... I went the detailed route.

Animal sketches!

2011-09-14T10:44:00.000-04:00

I love to draw horses, their figures are so elegant but strong. You can pull off some fun personalities too!

I also love owls, just because they are aaaadorable!

And some sketches for your enjoyment

Welcome Wagon!

2011-09-13T22:07:00.000-04:00

Another summer has gone by, and a new year is starting up! This year we were welcomed with a completely new, redesigned cafeteria! Doesn't sound like a big deal but Sheridan really needed some updating on that.
The animation department also got the go ahead to make renovations to the second and third year studios! Second year studio is fantastic, third year studio is as well but I don't think it's aesthetically AS nice... but that's just me!

Our classes were shifted around as well, I would say for the good! Although there are a few students from my group last year I wish could be with us this year, but hey, whatcha gonna do!

Anyhow, here i'm going to share the last few pieces from 2nd year life drawing that i've been meaning to share, as well as some life drawings from our first week back...

These two here I believe are 10 minutes, or the first one is the 15 or 20 minute we did and the one on the right is for sure a 10 minute... I didn't think it was too bad for our first day back, eh!

And these ones down here are 30 seconds...

And down here we had to draw the figure with our opposite hand of the dominant, so for me it was drawing with the left hand. Actually it was surprisingly fun! and not as terrible as writing with your opposite hand, that's for sure!

And last but not least... 2nd year life drawings. I actually really enjoyed the Cheetah man but Brian liked my horse-like critter instead so it's still up on the wall for the time being.

Thanks for checkin' my post out and if you have any feedback, it would be much appreciated :)

Still Alive

2011-08-28T11:47:00.001-04:00

Yeeeeah I didn't have a lot of time for art this summer because of my full time job at the garden center but August I have off and i'm living back in Oakville with my boyfriend Mike. I have four commissions to do, two of which are completed so here you go!

As a side note, the one with the dragon I did on my Cintique so the shadows were nice a deep with rich colours but when I look at it on my mac and windows laptop it looks desaturated and awful :(
How does it look for you?

Dragons

2011-06-21T22:32:00.000-04:00

So far this summer, these are the first sketches to touch my sketchbook and the first ones to be coloured in Photoshop since my last commission work back in March. Anyhow, these two dragons are done up for the Wandering Men. I have to say, it's certainly nice to do something other than working.

End of the Year

2011-04-19T08:09:00.002-04:00

Over the past month i've been looking for places to live, chugging away at final assignments as well as 5 commission pieces, and finally moving into my new apartment with Mike. Needless to say I was quite busy and stressed all at the same time. Here are the commissioned pieces, I would share school work but it's nothing exciting.

Muzzle & Beak Animation (and more)

2011-03-23T19:44:00.001-04:00

Here you go folks:

Lip Sync: Very fun

Human Dialogue: He shrinks :(

Muzzle and Beak Lip Sync: The first two are just line tests of the characters separately, the last being the final composition.

Character Theme

2011-03-08T18:22:00.000-05:00

We had to design a hero, love interest, villian and comedic relief in a theme so I decided on American Old West.

Sunday Morning

2011-02-13T09:57:00.001-05:00

Awww Valentine's Day is tomorrow... I really should draw something for it...
In the meantime here is a hippocampus.

Muzzle and Beak Design

2011-02-01T23:05:00.001-05:00

Our first assignment for semester two, a muzzle and beak character design. I decided to go with a Canadian theme and chose a Canadian Bobcat and a Cardinal. The Cardinal can't sing, and the Bobcat is vegetarian so neither of them seem to have any luck with the ladies. Below are some of my preliminary workings of the characters and instead of working from memory of the animals, I used reference which definitely helped in the Cardinals design.

And final work...

Sketchdump

2011-01-29T21:00:00.000-05:00

I thought I might as well share some stuff now while school is still quiet.

One night myself and my friends decided to watch Alpha and Omega...

the thing on the far left is a squid from Minecraft

I was thinking of characters for the first assignment of semester two but then we were told no mythological creatures :( The bird is based off a Kookaburra and the bottom doodles are from Mike teaching me how to draw an AK-47

Hey elephant, why don't we play poker in africa?

Too many cheetahs!

...I didn't come up with that, just a page of assorted cats.

He was always a crazy flier, it was only a matter of time...

Plan to colour this someday

Done on the way to our U of T trip

Ponies!

Rendered

2011-01-28T22:37:00.001-05:00

Just some drawings, have a good weekend!

My hometown...

2011-01-28T00:28:00.003-05:00

I love it!

Honestly my thanks to one of my beastest friends, Shelly!
Not only does she provide my need for riding horses, feeding them and all the fun shenanigans with hanging out with her, she is my best friend and I love her! <3
I told Shelly, myself and Mike wanted deer antlers, we looked through kijiji and ebay but it was wayyyy too expensive OR the selection was no good but suddenly Mike arrives to Oakville and he brings antlers on behalf of the Bean! Thank you Shell's, I love you and YOU. ARE. AWESOME!!! <3<3

OH ANTLERS, Y U SO AWESOME?!

Commenting

2011-01-27T19:16:00.000-05:00

Is there a way to get a notification of someone responding to your comment from another blog? That would be reeeeallly cool if there is... if not I apologize in advance to anyone I don't respond to! :(

New Hobby

2011-01-16T15:54:00.006-05:00

So a new little hobby of Mike's is taking Polaroid photos. While it's not exactly a cheap hobby, it's certainly a fun one. In our day of age it's easy to take a great photo thanks to digital technology, but when you take a step back in time and use Polaroids, you don't have a choice of whether the photo you're about to take is going to turn out great, or not turn out at all.

I think the most fun thing about Polaroids is that no matter what you take a photo of, it is bound to be interesting. Even if it doesn't come out perfect, it's the imperfections that make it better.

The Polaroid company had shut down in 2008 but ten of the original staff didn't want to give up and bought up the production machinery from Polaroid. To this day they are still developing the film from scratch and over countless hours of hard work and dedication, they have achieved the impossible.
The Impossible Project

Here are some of the photos Mike and I have taken over the past few days! We're still learning

One thing that sometimes happens with Polaroids is tearing (top of picture).

If you took this photo with a digital camera you would just delete it

because it's blurry and for some of you it's probably just uninteresting.

With Polaroid though, imperfect photos is an art form.

We found out after the fact that UV+ Polaroids won't work under 10 degrees celcius :(

Homemade Christmas Cards

2010-12-25T21:24:00.002-05:00

I decided I would use my artistic talent and have a little fun with Christmas cards this year...

Saved my wallet too :)

Mike and I always wanted a welsh corgi and we would name him Starfox.

My sister has a huge white cat, not fat, just huge.

He enjoys Christmas and gets excited enough to attack the plant in their livingroom.

My dads dog Mischa, when she was a pup she didn't care if the sock was on your foot or not...

This Christmas the Hiltz residence was really into ugly Christmas sweaters.

Barkley has enough energy to pull a sleigh on his own... although that hasn't been proven yet.

My cat is afraid of toys with bells in them.

Lola always gets a scarf wrapped around her or a seasonal outfit put on her against her will. The text on this one was changed last minute to "Don't snoop for gifts or you're a weiner."

Not very clever but hey.

Merry Christmas to all!

Animation Dump

2010-12-15T11:55:00.001-05:00

Just as the title says. Oldest first, newest last.

Wave and Boat with Flour Sack

Not a particularly hard assignment, sorry for bad quality

Weight Lift and Toss

I enjoy the timing on my lift and toss test over the final cleaned up version, although I like the ending of the final one where he jumps into the water. The final version had some corners cut and therefore suffered for it, it was taking a long time to clean up the animation and I just didn't have the patience.

Walk and Run - Highland Dancers

This is one assignment I actually ran out of time on. The run was quite easy to do but I had a lot of difficulty with the walk and didn't have time to fix it. When I reached the interaction stage, I wanted the tall skinny girl to run into the fat one and cause the log to fall but I couldn't figure out how I wanted to do the impact so the ending is rather silly.

Expression Change

I just finished this assignment for the end of this semester, it's nothing spectacular but I like the idea.

Next semester is all animal animation so i'm looking forward to it!

Final Painting

2010-12-13T20:35:00.000-05:00

Well this is it folks, final painting for this semester, and unfortunately the last painting for my animation career in Sheridan... as far as I know. Next semester we're moving onto digital painting so it'll be fun, have to say though i'm just starting to warm up to gouache and I feel like I can work faster with it.

Anyway this painting is pretty simple, nothing too amazing or exciting. I was watching Survivorman and he was in the outback, the bright blue of the sky and the red of the landscape inspired me to make a painting with a similar colour scheme. I then decided I wanted to have my painting with a mythological bird called a roc in it (it's in one of my favourite games from back in the day). I would have loved to paint the bird itself but I liked the idea of just it's shadow too, leaving room for a viewer's imagination.

Anywho hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

I Love You - Leica Reel

2010-12-09T22:48:00.002-05:00

My Leica Reel for the I Love You boards.

Royal Ontario Museum

2010-12-09T12:53:00.002-05:00

A few weekends back, Mike and I went to the ROM and had a fun day in Toronto. Have to say though, by the time we made it home that night we were tuckered out!

We were tired and goofy enough to play with toilet paper.

All I want for Christmas...

2010-12-02T20:54:00.000-05:00

Are drawings of me and dragons, or crazy dragon and if I don't get any i'm going to draw them myself!
Oh and hey i'm back from essay writing! It's done, I coulda been done a while back but I had distractions and often times sat and stared at the screen. I have to say I am rather sleepy.

English Class

2010-12-02T17:24:00.001-05:00

This is the last post of the day, I promise! Because I have an entire essay to write and I want to be in bed by 10 or 10:30. I'm putting this under the label of "personal work" because there really were no constrictions to how I had to do this and I actually quite like the piece. It's for the story of Yeh-Hsien, which if some of you have read it you would understand if I said the fish is used as a catalyst for pushing forward events in the story. Yeh-Hsien's story is over when she becomes chief wife but the fish's story continues, so I illustrated the fish's life.
I'll let you interpret it how you would like.

The flesh coloured balls are pearls and the little yellow flecks are gold. OH and the species of fish is called the Mekong Catfish (they can get huuuuge!)

'KAY ESSAY TIME

Walk 'n Run with Laughter

2010-12-02T17:19:00.002-05:00

I forgot to post my two characters for my walk and run animation! Emslie liked my characters and I kinda did at first... at first. It wasn't until I started animating I realized how much I hated them. Alas, here are two highland dancers for you.

Below is our most recent assignment, expression change. It's pretty self explanatory, really though, I tell you, it took me several times to get the faces right. I'm not confident in drawing people, it doesn't come easy but I think I didn't do too bad for this assignment.

Didn't realize till after but he makes me think of the comic book guy from The Simpsons.

Completely unintentional I promise!

I Love You - Full

2010-12-02T17:06:00.000-05:00

Here is the full, final storyboard for I Love You. My story has changed quite a bit since the * Beat Boards but this has much stronger story. All thanks to Nancy Beiman of course as she helped me a lot in the two WIP sessions. I pitched it today and she liked it a lot and suggested I use it as a portfolio piece.

Anyway enjoy! I hope to have the leica reel posted for this within the next couple of weeks.

AND FINALLY

2010-11-23T22:09:00.000-05:00

I completely forgot to post this, and in case the person this is based off of see's this, i'm sorry girl but when you do things like you do, expect consequences. Especially if an animation student knows you.

I'm not going to get into details but thank you to a friend for finding the below image, it describes a lot.

Christmas

2010-11-23T21:51:00.004-05:00

Here, have a battle Santa.

Honestly though, Christmas is coming and I really really need to start on gifts. I also want to colour this drawing in Photoshop but I don't know if I can get it done in time for Christmas. We'll see!

Also have Sheridan internet. It's a slow, fat monster that is unreliable and has such bad vision that even if you activated your laptop a week ago, it requires you to do it again and maybe a couple more times for extra measure. Once you've been acquainted though then usually your relationship with Sheridan internet is good and friendly.

And since i'm in the gift of giving, have a cool cat, an awkward dog, and an even more awkward animal that had a dip into a radioactive bath.

Animals, Dragons, and Chiefs oh my!

2010-11-23T21:29:00.001-05:00

Here are some fun doodles from my sketchbook.

Below are some random animal drawings. The corgi's are from google image search, and the two bottom right horses are from a dream I had one night.

Below are some fun giraffe drawings

And some dragons as well as Toothless, oh and Master Chief

Faces

2010-11-23T21:15:00.002-05:00

Here, have some faces.

Inadequacy

2010-11-23T19:08:00.001-05:00

You know, today I was really irked.
Maybe irked isn't the right word, let me try that again...
Today I was really saddened.

To be honest, it's been happening a lot lately. Just seeing other peoples work makes me wish I could be them. The thing is, my skills are with animals, not humans, and as a result I don't think my artwork is appreciated as much. It's disappointing really.

I remember last year, a student in my class (i'm not going to give names) came up to me and said "do you just draw dragons?" and while some people may shrug it off and say whatever, I couldn't. I barely draw my most favourite creature anymore because again, I feel like it can't be appreciated, I feel like it's looked down upon if you can't draw a human being as strong as anyone else.

I understand the only way to get better is to practice and over time I will get better, maybe even surpass those I idolize, but in the meantime, it's a hard battle. I'm not asking to be showered with compliments, I just don't want to be forgotten as "that girl who drew animals."

I have to say though, Shimo in our class made my week last week because she complimented my Royal drawings <3 made me feel really good about my art for once.

Screw it. Have a drawing of Mike and I riding a dragon. ACCEPT IT.

Unicorn

2010-11-12T12:37:00.001-05:00

Despicable Me :)

I Love You

2010-11-08T22:41:00.002-05:00

So we were given a choice for a conflict with a resolution and our class voted our conflict to be I love you, and the resolution rejection! or find another love. I went with the generic idea of love birds, i'll let my beat boards tell you the rest of my generic story.

I honestly do not know how to think outside the box.

Interior Painting

2010-11-08T21:42:00.001-05:00

So we had to do an interior painting! I wanted to do a beautiful living room with exposed dark stained trusses and hardwood floors with a stone fireplace... *sigh* oh I must stop thinking of my dream home. I tried my best to draw out the floor plan and try to map it out in perspective but it just wasn't working for me that day, so I decided to paint the interior of a lung with emphysema > Info

I was painting in a low light room while watching Lost with Mike (my bf in case some of you have no idea who he is!) so when I looked at it the next day, the two infected bronchi closest to us was no where near as dark as I thought they were. We have the time to adjust the painting in Photoshop, which is something I don't like to rely on but I have other things to work on so in the meantime it'll have to do.

Woohoo for crooked painting!... :(

Storyboards

2010-10-25T11:51:00.001-04:00

This took way too long, it also needed to be done week 5 and for all the 2nd year animation students who had to present week 5 will completely understand how terrible that week was so I lost interest in it but i'll share it anyway!

First Painting

2010-10-18T21:37:00.001-04:00

Yep, here we goooo! First exterior painting, next is an interior!... oh boy

A horse

2010-10-18T21:11:00.001-04:00

A horse is a horse, of course, of course,
And no one can talk to a horse of course
That is, of course, unless the horse is the famous Mr. Ed.

Go right to the source and ask the horse
He'll give you the answer that you'll endorse.
He's always on a steady course.
Talk to Mr. Ed.

People yakkity yak a streak and waste your time of day
But Mister Ed will never speak unless he has something to say.

A horse is a horse, of course, of course,
And this one'll talk 'til his voice is hoarse.
You never heard of a talking horse?

Well listen to this.

I am Mister Ed.

Weight Life and Toss

2010-10-05T11:12:00.001-04:00

This is the character I have decided to do for the weight lift and toss, I will have the animation to go with it within the next two weeks!

Poem-boarding

2010-09-29T21:26:00.001-04:00

Story Boarding

Well I can't call it Maury-boarding anymore seeing as its year 2, but these are my first boards for Nancy Beiman. I think she enjoyed them, didn't have many bad things to say but there are a few things that would need to be fixed. These are just beat boards, and i've taken "My Father" and expanded it for the next assignment. You'll see those up here next week!

I'm still alive, year 2

2010-09-14T19:36:00.003-04:00

That's right, onto year 2 and another year of updates! I'm on week two now and it's hectic at first but i'm starting to get my bearings straight and working on assignments. I don't have too much to show you but here are a few doodles from my sketchbook. A fat sloth and some people :)
OH as well as a commission I did recently for someone over on Deviant Art.

I'd also like to add that I have updated my website! You can check it out here: http://laurasloan.net

Rant

2010-06-28T13:26:00.000-04:00

My sister wanted two of my paintings for her new place, so I went to get them framed at Sun Art in Fergus. I knew it would cost me an arm and a leg but it was conveniently close to home and the only framing place I knew of in town.

At first it was great because they were able to get it all done before I went to BC, I kinda left it last minute and only gave them a week to get it done. When I picked it up, I decided not to open them to take a look because they were all wrapped up nicely. Well lo-and behold, I arrive to BC and open it in excitement to show my sister, and I only had one frame for one painting. The other painting had a mat and a piece of glass. That was it.
Confused and a bit angry I decided I would call them and ask about it, because I paid for two frames... right?

I called them and explained there was only one frame where she proceeded to tell me I only asked for the one to be framed and the other just to be matted with glass. Why in the WORLD would I just want that? I clearly said in the store I want the same frame on both of them. I didn't double check with them because I assumed that I would get two frames.

As a customer I feel like I should blame myself for assuming/not clarifying a framing place would understand I want two pictures framed, but it also seems kind of stupid to me. I can't think of any situation where someone would want loose glass and a mat with no frame. Unless you had your own frame at home to put it together but that still seems unlikely to me.

In any event after spending $116 for one framed picture and a three quarter job on the other, I am taking my business elsewhere.

Balcony

2010-06-21T19:54:00.001-04:00

We're really happy to make a concrete balcony look good :)

Summer

2010-06-06T18:54:00.003-04:00

L.T. mooching for my lunch

So fart his... so far this summer (had to keep that typo, it amused me) I have been working at the same job as I did last year, Little Tree! I'm happy to be there because I honestly think it has to be one of the best jobs in good ol' Fergus. Today started out so slow and I reeeeally wished I had my camera. I called my mum to ask her if she could bring it because I knew she was buying her plants later, but by the time she brought it, it was sunny and there were too many customers for me to wander and take photos.
I was able to snap a couple just as we were closing so i'll just share them.

Storm Troopar

2010-06-06T18:20:00.001-04:00

Because mom is cool like that

Hexadragon

2010-05-18T00:26:00.004-04:00

Just an overdue commission

Last Painting - End of Yr

2010-04-22T21:26:00.003-04:00

... Of 1ST YEAR ANIMOOOTION... Wow, I really can't believe that year one is already over. When I look back on it, semester two totally rocked my socks for awesome assignments, semester one kinda sucked because you were stuck doing basic and boring stuff.

All in all though you need even the basic boring stuff! Anyway here's my last painting of the year, I had to take the picture outside to try and get the colour right, also! Here is all the animation paper I used in a year.

Wow. Killed a tree for the magic of 2D life. It's worth it!

Character Pack

2010-04-06T12:47:00.002-04:00

Portraits

2010-04-06T12:44:00.002-04:00

Well, it's supposed to be caricatures, but they've turned out more like portraits. Either way it was so much fun to draw class mates. The first one was done by Mark Thurman of me, pretty sweet!

Replicate a Painting

2010-03-17T21:02:00.001-04:00

So we had to choose an existing background from an animation so I chose Mickey's A Christmas Carol. Mine is so much brighter compared to the original painting D: and I didn't include the snowflakes because I figure that's an animated portion although it woulda been nice.

Daschund Walk (ANIM)

2010-03-16T23:07:00.001-04:00

Animal walk cycle done a week early... now to get everything else done. Sixteen frames in this one and I chose the Daschund because my brother has one and I thought it would be fun and different than the others. Working with the short legs was a bit difficult at first but once I figured it out it was alright.

Character Timeline

2010-03-16T11:53:00.002-04:00

So we were to design a character and put it through the baby, child, teen, adult, and senior age of its life. I enjoyed the assignment, though I had the most trouble getting satisfied with the teen stage so I redrew her several times before deciding on her final pose.

Dover's

2010-03-10T00:38:00.002-05:00

The last image for Greg Dent of his Dover's. I am going to bed now hahah :)
Edit: Now that i'm awake, i've included a larger version, the scaled down looks terrible.

Still Life Paintings

2010-03-07T17:01:00.002-05:00

You know how it is, some school work! The one with the water bottle, face cloth, and perfume topper was done in class. Terrible composition but I love the detail. The second one I did at home of a perfume bottle, a sash and a bracelet, I love the colours in it! Anyway enjoy, there is also a large marker one I did up but it's not so nice.

Check out my Weiner

2010-03-05T22:03:00.001-05:00

Just some photoshop practice without lineart :)

Plants and Mushrooms

2010-03-05T18:03:00.001-05:00

Plants and Mushrooms done up for my commissioner Greg Dent, two more pictures to do for him. I'm really enjoying the work i've been doing for Greg, gets me doing other things.

Charlie B. Barkin (ANIM)

2010-02-24T18:02:00.003-05:00

We had to choose a character that you could easily draw and be able to find character sheets.

I chose Charlie B. Barkin from All Dogs Go To Heaven not because he was easy to draw, or not because he had character sheets (there were barely any), but because I wanted to challenge myself, and I grew up with All Dogs Go To Heaven. I find Don Bluth's style and dark movies (well.. not all his movies) inspire me and it was very satisfying to take such a difficult character and animate it.

As far as the animation is concerned, there are parts I could have done more in-betweening for, I am also missing a frame I had drawn but couldn't find halfway through the line testing D:

Alas, overall I am pretty happy with how my animation came out, it's due on Friday and there seems to be quite a lot of people from other classes who haven't mapped out their head turn yet. That's ok, but too close to the due date for me that's for sure! I wish everyone else good luck on completing their animations, i'm going to school tomorrow to hand in work, go to my last class, and take an early start to reading week. I'm starting to get a cold now so I just want to rest and put my feet up after a stressful last two weeks.

Charlie Barkin (C) to Don Bluth Studios (1989)

In Sequence

2010-02-18T11:36:00.002-05:00

For character design we had to create a character who would find an object, interact with it and have a result. Here I made a gecko of no specific breed, enjoy!

Long post is loooooong.

Ottawa

2010-02-18T10:18:00.003-05:00

So I managed to have a mini vacation before crunch time and it was great! Mike has been wanting to take me to Ottawa for awhile now and this past weekend we were finally able to go. The six hour drive wasn't so bad, well it took probably about 7, close to 8 hours because farther down the 401 there was bad traffic that took forever to clear. We just talked, ate and look through the window to pass the time.

We arrived in Ottawa at about 10, I can't remember exactly, so we went and picked up Mike's sister Mary, where we went to her friends place to stay for the weekend (they were on their honeymoon so we had the place to ourselves). The next day, the first thing we did was eat, get ready and walk on down to the canal. We were there just before 10 (Mike, Mary and their mum don't take forever to get ready like my family) and it wasn't too busy which was nice, and even if it was busy, it was hard to tell because the canal is so big!

After the canal, we took a walk back to the apartment to drop off our stuff, then went to the market. The market was nice, but it was so busy that it was hard to keep your patience. I wanted to go into a candy store, but just from all the shadows I could see through the windows, I didn't want to go in anymore hahah. It was probably a healthier choice for me anyway. We also went and looked at the ice sculptures and there were a lot of dragons (which was cool!)

After all said and done, it was a great trip and I hope to go back again sometime for more than just a weekend. The trip home consisted of sleep and more sleep :)

My Friends in the Animal Kingdom

2010-02-16T22:35:00.002-05:00

"If you wanted to be any animal, what would it be?"

My friends in real life, most of them I grew up with, some are random internet pals.

I think a lot of them don't look like who they're supposed to be because it's not really the animal I would choose to represent them, though I figured it would be more fun for them to choose what animal they would be :)

More Freelance Work

2010-02-15T22:20:00.005-05:00

Just some of the creatures done up for my commissioner, Greg Dent.

Life Drawing

2010-02-09T11:05:00.001-05:00

Just some life drawing pieces from just before Christmas break. Figured I should share some stuff!... And my cat :P

Alien World Painting

2010-02-09T09:55:00.002-05:00

Well we had to paint an alien world and have a warm and cool pallet. I don't think my teacher will like mine because it's basically all cool colours. Ah well, I tried, I kinda consider the far background to be warmish so maybe it works in her books.

Pink Panther Walk

2010-02-01T16:06:00.001-05:00

My pink panther walk cycle... not entirely a difficult assignment to pull off, it was certainly nice for a change since I felt like with our previous assignments weren't challenging enough. Anyway I do see some flaws I would go back to fix but meh, I know what I would want to fix so i'll keep it in mind for next time.
Learn from your mistakes right? Anyway enjoy.

A New Piece

2010-01-25T23:13:00.003-05:00

Spent perhaps six hours on this guy for the Wandering Men. I quite enjoyed this guy, I hope you do too!
Edit: Also just noticed a couple sloppy spots by it's tooth and has been fixed on the original but i'll keep this upload here. I need to head to bed before I update this picture :P

Sketchbook Sketches

2010-01-19T18:00:00.004-05:00

Here are some of my little fun sketches and unfinished pieces that will likely never be finished.

Worth Posting

2010-01-17T22:48:00.004-05:00

I ordered this December 2nd for Mike's Christmas present, and it arrived later than the ETA. Though! It arrived the Friday OF the weekend we had to leave! I was SO happy, I was afraid he wouldn't get his present from me before Christmas. I also bought him an extra jacket he saw and liked but didn't want to buy for himself :)

DOD SNO! If you like zombie movies, this one is great, although I had to look away from some of the gorey parts. I think it's the only movie that made me feel queezy, other than Cloverfield in the movie theatre, that gave me motion sickness.

Sketchbook Details

2010-01-17T22:29:00.007-05:00

These are just some of my more detailed/finished works in a couple sketchbooks I have here. Unfortunately some were done on paper that is larger than my scanner. Not by much though, some are just cut off because I ran out of space on the paper. Anyway do enjoy! Some of these I still actually really like, but others, meh.

Prepare for an Art Dump

2010-01-17T21:42:00.006-05:00

Newest piece for the Wandering Men... dun dun duuuuuun! Well it's the final piece of my last contract that took too long to do thanks to going to school to do art and then coming home late to do art. And onwards to do more art with them!

ALSO here is a painting I did awhile ago that I don't think I uploaded to Blogger, as well as four textural paintings I have done for Wednesdays class. The last two I lost interest on :/

And what's this art dump i'm talking about? That'll be the next few posts actually, I need some time to prepare.

First Day Back!

2010-01-11T19:53:00.002-05:00

It wasn't a bad day, I am already tired though hahah. Our schedule is actually a little long at the beginning of the week, but Wednesday - Friday is actually really good so I am not going to complain! What was kind of nice was we went right back into the flow of work and I know what assignments need to be done. There is a strike coming up, well it is still undecided whether there will actually be a strike but say there was, I know I have work to do over the time off. Let's just hope it doesn't get to that.
Anyway for those of you who read this and also go to Sheridan or other schools, I hope your day went well too! Feel free to share your day with me :)

Riley on Patch Together

2010-01-03T17:07:00.006-05:00

I've developed Riley so I could share him on Patch Together. Hopefully he's liked and if i'm lucky, he can be made into a designer toy.

http://www.patchtogether.com/designs/designs/view/id/2633

Home

2009-12-22T01:20:00.003-05:00

Just home for the Christmas holidays. As expected there is really no such thing as free time, I have been home for less than a week and I am feeling heavy chested from stress. There's a lot to be done and I feel like there is little time, but I think once I am past Christmas and things slow down, I will feel better and a bit more free to do things. Plus it is basically 1:30 in the morning and being up late generally makes me feel a little more bummed anyway, maybe after some sleep i'll feel better.
Anyway, Merry Christmas everyone, I hope you enjoy your winter festivities with friends and/or family!

Bones

2009-12-12T12:57:00.003-05:00

This is the recent bones assignment we had to do. I shouldn't say recent because we've been drawing these bones since the first few weeks in September. I've included them all here except the supinated/pronated arm as well as the lateral/anterior (I think that's the proper directions hahah) leg because those we just had to copy from another drawing in a book. I actually found that harder to do than drawing an object from life :/

Edit: I also just realized that one of my pelvis drawings are cut off a bit, whoops D: Oh well, you get the idea

Storyboarding Test

2009-12-10T00:13:00.003-05:00

Tomorrow there is a story boarding test, the idea was a new character (or previously designed one) finds a box, but finds a larger one and tries to take it but it's too heavy. In the end your character leaves with his or her original small box.
The fun part is that it doesn't have to be a box, so below is the sequence I decided to go with. Hopefully I can get it all drawn in class in the allotted time frame of 2 hours.

Just Before Christmas

2009-12-07T00:16:00.006-05:00

Well I came home this weekend because I really needed to get some Christmas shopping done! So Friday I came home and visited Mike and his mum a little (had to get my brush from him too!). Saturday mum and I were up early and off to Conestoga mall, which was PACKED by the way. We arrived at 10:30am and the mall parking lot was full, it had only been open for an hour! I guess everyone has the same idea to come early. Anyway, ended up getting most the shopping done but I have a few people left. We picked Mike up on our way home and set up our Christmas tree and played Scrabble with mum. I developed a weird stomach ache that night and felt like I was going to be sick so Mike took a taxi home instead of me driving him. Sunday I went to church where I found out Mike had walked home the night before instead of taking a taxi. I felt bad but he said he didn't mind and that he actually enjoyed the walk because it was snowing and he could see all the Christmas lights. We then visited Mike's grandparents and met their new family member, Barkley! He's a bernese mountain dog, though i'm unsure of his age, possibly 5 months? After that we went back and set up his mum's tree and had a nice roast dinner. I included some photos I took, two being of the grandfather clock, and one is just a little skull on a key chain, sitting on some little sticks. Sunset is a beautiful time to take photos.

Painting Assignment

2009-12-04T08:03:00.007-05:00

So I spent 17 hours on the sucker and might I add the photos do no good to show the details *sad face* but i've included the best one. Anyway the teacher said she expects the students to work the same amount of time it would take her to do the same painting. Fair enough, although it seems kinda silly to compare yourself with a painter who has worked for Nelvana for a good portion of her life. Anyway she looked at my painting, she really liked it, but said she could do it in 8 hours.
$@^$^&#@$)!@%p6792!!!!!

Bah, there was a lot of having to remix paint and go over things again in my painting, so that is to blame for slowness (and Inglorious Basterds). This painting is put on display in the school, but once I get it back i'll try to scan it with the schools large scanners.

More Work

2009-12-02T09:12:00.015-05:00

A few more recent works for The Wandering Men. An ambush bug cross with giant centipede, a leopard cross with a boa constrictor, a walrus crossed with a polar bear, and the last was lineart I had done that was purchased after the fact then coloured in. I was hoping with my new tablet I could get these done quicker but unfortunately I can't use it yet, not until I get an adapter that works with the old macbook.

Wacom Cintiq

2009-12-01T10:26:00.009-05:00

It's finally arrived! While I was sleeping upstairs, I guess the delivery guy brought it over early. And now, a photo story!

Character Posing and Expressions

2009-11-30T23:49:00.003-05:00

So below is my character posing assignment and my character expression sheet (which is handed in tomorrow). For the character posing assignment, I didn't want to do an animal, I wanted to go outside of my comfort zone and go with a human being instead. I received a 13 out of 15 on the assignment, which I didn't entirely believe I deserved.
With the character expression sheet I decided to go with my strengths so I went with a dragon character. You're probably thinking the design looks a lot like a pig nose or Battykoda from Ferngully, and that's probably what inspired me, but how I invisioned the design of this character was from simply zoning out and an image came to mind.
I'm sure some artists can say this happens to them once in awhile, though unfortunately it doesn't happen enough! Anyway, enjoy.

Royal Winter Fair

2009-11-30T23:24:00.007-05:00

So every year the animation students go to the Royal Winter Fair, this year, 2nd and 1st years went on a Friday, where we are to draw three pages with 6 drawings each of short gestural drawings, so anywhere between 30 seconds to 5 minute drawings, as well as three pages with two drawings each of detailed observational drawings which should take about 10 - 20 minutes. It was quite a fun trip, Mike came along with me, though unfortunately he was hit hard with allergies (and the flu a day later). So here are my drawings! My friend had gone to extra life today and informed me a page of my drawings are on display, it's quite pleasing to hear, i'll just have to wait until tomorrow to see which page it is!

So School

2009-10-02T16:20:00.003-04:00

I've been making friends now, i'm trying to be less shy and more open. Then again, i'm going to be with the same people for four years, so there's no rush heheh, but still, nice to be able to hang out with people once in awhile when you're not swamped by school work. Speaking of school work, we're handing in our animations next week of a bouncing ball, bowling ball and balloon, and then four paintings, uhm... that's all I can think of for now, i'm just a bit tired to think at the moment :)
Here, art! HUAH! *throws at you*

Back to School

2009-10-02T16:06:00.006-04:00

Right so i'm in animation now, in case anyone didn't know or was curious. I have lots of new art to post, especially stuff in my sketchbook but we'll get to that in a bit. For now I want to share some of the work i've done for Wandering Men's game Untold. These will be made into cards either by December or next spring, but it depends on some things. Anyway enjoy!

Nature of Nature's Art

2009-06-03T09:12:00.002-04:00

I can't remember how I found this guy, I think it was another artists favourite comic or something. Anyway, Zachary Braun is the creator of Secretary and 10%+, comics about animals who go into a college to unleash fighting skills. Sounds a little boring perhaps, but his style and the personalities he has given his characters are beyond any comic I have read online. Then again, any other comic I have read has been comics of humor like VG cats or Dr.McNinja. The artistic style of Nature of Nature's art is really cool, Zach really know how to portray mood through colour, and composition. 10%+ is full of colour, and I quite enjoyed watching how he told the story through images, as for many panels, there were no words, yet you understood.
Secretary focuses on small rodents, and has a very loose style. Zachary explains that rodents movements can sometimes not be seen by the human eye as it's so fast, so by exaggerating his lines, he is mimicking this fast movement, making it difficult for the reader to totally see what is happening.
Lucky for me, 10%+ was completed by the time I found it, though Secretary was probably only around page 50 (now at 151) and i'm checking every single day for an update.
Here I share one of my favourite pages from Secretary so far, I think you guys should check it out: Nofna.com

And the image:
(too big to put on my blog :P )

Oh Gosh

2009-05-28T15:54:00.002-04:00

Uhm don't worry folks, i'm still alive, just not really around. I'm been busy with work and seeing people that I haven't really had any time to art sooooo.... yeap, i'll try to update as soon as I can.

Back 2 Back

2009-04-14T23:00:00.009-04:00

So I was bored last night and really felt like drawing, so I asked Mike, "What should I draw?"
and the response was pretty much instant, "draw us back to back, firing MP5Ks, bullets flying."

Drawing humans are bad enough, but drawing humans that are supposed to look like someone in particular is worse. I still tried hard with this one, I am satisfied with the outcome but I think I could have done better if I wasn't so enthusiastic about getting it done for my hun. Oh well, maybe next time!

And the backgrounds, credit goes to the photo takers over on deviant art. I searched underground parking and found these two I liked the most.

What are we shooting at? ... zombies? ghosts? Idk... we don't need a reason to be intense.

Note: If they don't show up full view after clicking, just right click and then click view image.

School Trouble

2009-04-08T15:54:00.004-04:00

Well it's not really trouble, i've just been in a bit of a hooplah and running around in a circle in the span of four weekdays. Basically I was offered a conditional offer to Animation. At first I thought this just meant it's only conditional because I haven't accepted the offer yet. So lah dee dah, over to Ontariocolleges.ca, fiddle around for 40 minutes to figure out my password and get a new one sent to me then finally, phew, accept my offer.

I thought it was all over and I was happy and celebrating!...

too soon Laura...
too soon.

I don't have four U or M level credits from highschool so I have to pass Art Fundamentals successfully instead to get in. Easy, great isn't it?
Well it would have been great had I been able to get into my english class when they were offering! I didn't worry too much at the time cause I was like ok I can't get in, but that's ok, they'll use my highschool transcript!
Nope, my transcript failed me.
Pooh.

So now I have to take english in the summer. At first I was really bummed about it, but really, it's once a week, at night in Oakville, assuming I can't take the same course at the UoG instead. I'll just have to get my boss to schedule my days off during when I need to go in for class.

*sigh*

In other news, happy easter everyone. I know it might not mean much to all of you, but at least enjoy pigging out on ham plz?? And here is my week 3 bi-weekly art submission. The rule this week was: "Either A) combine two or more characters/elements of two or more favorite content material, i.e. comics, games, movies, cartoons, etc. Or B) Amalgamate two or more characters/elements of two or more content material."

So I chose the snipers from Team Fortress 2 and Killzone 2, and stuck em' in Disney Land.

Desert Runner Complete

2009-03-31T20:32:00.006-04:00

It's finally done folks and i'm quite happy with it! This is the first sculpture project I have ever really tried on. Sure i've attempted sculpey before, but it didn't take long for me to give up.

Anyway enjoy, i'm sure there are flaws and what not, but hey, i'm new.

Edit: OMGOSH LOL, I posted the same picture twice in the 2nd picture collection there. Oops!

Desert Runner posts:

http://bumberparty.blogspot.com/2009/03/news-desert-runner.html

http://bumberparty.blogspot.com/2009/03/desert-runner-update.html

Desert Runner - Update

2009-03-31T11:38:00.001-04:00

So the glass goggles and the vest is complete! All that is left to do is to paint him!

News & Desert Runner

2009-03-26T21:31:00.002-04:00

Well big news everyone...
I have been accepted to the Animation program at Sheridan. Those who watch me already know since i've put it on my Facebook and my deviant art a few days back. Anyway, I want to share the progress of my 40% project for 3D. He's a desert runner, which is based off the following concept:

Unfortunately i'm not skilled enough with the sculpey to make it exactly the same. I also wanted the skin to be smooth, however the teacher wants texture, so this dood has been overloaded with scales, and a small scale texture along his tail made with my sculpting tool grip.

The saddle vest, and reigns I am going to attempt to make with pleather. The saddle vest will be modified to be removable though. Wether I can pull this off or not, we'll see, I want to make it work. I also have glass cutting tools at home so i'm going to get coloured glass and cut circles to go on top the goggles. I'm very excited for the end product, colours are something I have yet to decide on, though since my oven burnt his horns, it gave me an idea to keep those black.

Bi-Weekly Art

2009-03-25T14:28:00.008-04:00

An online pal of mine does a bi-weekly art challenge where he picks a topic and you draw it. You don't have to participate if you don't want to, but I quite enjoy it because it gets me drawing different things.

It also gets me drawing stuff other than school related work so it's kinda nice as a change. Anyway the first week we started off with 'Get in the Game', which basically you draw your original character in your favourite video game. I chose Halo 3, and decided to take a realistic approach to it. Perhaps not realistically drawn, but the idea is more realistic in a sense that if the humans found some sort of anthro dragon, they are not going to trust it.

The second one is Week 2, Gender Bender. Choose a character in a video game or movie, or an original character, and switch their gender. I think the only reason I chose the Tank from Left 4 Dead is because it would be absolutely ridiculous. I asked my sister if I should add the garders and stockings and she was like "Totally! Do it!"
so she had her part in the creation of this as well. Anyway hahah, hope you ladies and gents enjoy this.

New Blog

2009-03-18T09:31:00.005-04:00

Well i've decided from now on, personal posts about what Mike an I do, what I do in a day or random things, will be posted over here.
Artwork be it school or personal will remain on this blog here.

In other news, my next personal project is to draw chibi versions of the Wrecking Crews spartans.
In a way I can't wait to start, but I realize this will no doubt be a pain in my aft.

Teeth

2009-03-06T19:12:00.003-05:00

Whoah what's this? I have teeth!
In other news i'm back to Oakville, n' back to school on Monday. I'll just work on homework this weekend. And lately it has been crazy warm and i'm enjoying it! Lets just hope it stays this way.

In the art world I have entered a contest over on Newgrounds in hopes of winning the first place prize; a wacom tablet! I already have one, but the one i'm trying to win is shinier and possibly free so what the heck, worth a shot!
You basically just had to draw the artist naked and if you have humor to it then you have a better chance to win... why I decided to base it on Marilyn Monroe's skirt blowing photo, I don't know, but here it is.

Reading Week

2009-03-02T22:09:00.002-05:00

I'm on it.
So mom and I took Mike grocery shopping yesterday, then drove him back to residence. I was sad to see him leave, I had gotten so used to waking up to him every morning, making breakfast, enjoying our time in front of the fire. We didn't think about what we wanted to do because there was so much time, I mean we had 11 days to do whatever the heck we wanted. We played Left 4 Dead, I did homework and portfolio stuff, we sat made smores in front of the fire, collected fire wood. We helped by washing dishes together, cleaning my room, watching movies and t.v.
It was just so perfect, and now I am sad to think that we won't have another opportunity like that for awhile. Though I have to say, my dad has officially bought B.C. tickets for this summer, and Mike is coming with me so that will be another opportunity to kinda live together again, hahah.
So anyway, now that i'm back in Fergus, i've already had a hair appointment and a root canal. Tomorrow I say good bye braces and hello stained teeth i'm gonna now have to work my arse off to get white again.

You know I used to have really white teeth, and i'm not trying to boast, no no, i'm just being honest. Though since the braces, they are yellow, and since my one tooth died, Mike and I started calling the tooth 'The G-man'... because the tooth is grey and creepy just like G-man.

So back to the braces removal thing, yes, i'm totally celebrating by chewing a whole pack of Hubba Bubba. I will probably drool so much, specifically on the side of my mouth where my nerves haven't healed from surgery yet. Lets just hope I don't choke because if I choked and died on Hubba Bubba after all that, i'm going to be royally pissed.

Apart from all the other appointments i'm going to get done, I gotta try and see a few palies before I go home on Friday. So far i've spent some quality time with the cat, he follows me around as usual. It's only 10:30 and i'm getting tired. Is this a sign i'm getting old? It must be, hah, kidding! Anyway tootles until next time, my portfolio is handed in and hopefully by the end of the month i'll know if I made it into the animation program.

Over a Week

2009-02-22T11:06:00.009-05:00

So Mike is on his reading week and is down here with me for just over a week. Unfortunately I can't skip many classes because my reading week is coming up so teachers are loading us with homework plus my portfolio is due this Friday.
I guess I should pay for my portfolio fee! It's actually the first three days of March you have to hand it in, but I gotta get teeth work done so a friend of mine has to hand it in for me. I think I should buy her something to kinda thank her for doing that for me.

In other news, Mike and I stayed up a bit later last night playing Left 4 Dead and when I looked outside, it was so bright! Well, bright for 11 at night. Figure because there was a low cloud cover that it was reflecting the city lights. The pictures don't really show what the real lighting conditions were like but you can see how easily it was for the camera to adjust the lighting.

It was really neat to see the sky like that and how light it was. So now it's Sunday, i'm going to be doing homework later today, i'm just chillin' for now while Mike plays some of Counter Strike and Team Fortress. I've got a cold so I feel a little slow and tired all the time, but i'm getting better!

Sunday

2009-02-17T13:26:00.006-05:00

My mouth is so frigged in this picture but i'm showing it anyway.
So Sunday morning I went to church with Mike, his mom and his sister. At the end, I was given a red flower as there were leftovers from the valentines breakfast previous day.
From there we went on over to Mike's grandparents where we celebrated his cousin's 3rd birthday, and his grandpa's birthday. We had pizza for lunch along with salad and a Care bear cake for dessert. Gifts were opened and the best part was when Faith, Mike's cousin, opened her gift vigorously from grandma and grandpa, it was a beautiful doll with a white cotton jacket with pink trim. Well Faith pulled it up close to her face, furrowed her brow, and threw it at the ground with as much anger and strength a 3 year old could muster. Everyone laughed but I felt bad for his grandparents because they were a little confused, though Mike's uncle explained Faith hates babies and will eventually get used to the doll. After wards we all hung out for a bit longer, Mike's mom couldn't open the gifts for her because she had a meeting to get to, so I drove Mary and Mike home soon after his mom left.

We hung around for about two hours at Mike's place after that, then headed over to my moms to spend some time with her. We ordered pizza from Domino's Pizza (I know we had pizza for lunch but we wanted to try Domino's! And when Mike and I picked it up, we almost got ran over by the delivery woman who was in a rush. When we returned, we watched a movie called The Secret Life of Bees, which I don't think Mike was interested in but he was good about it. Didn't stop us from making the odd joke at the movie.
After that we just watched tv. I was hoping to play Skip-Bo or something with mom but it seems if you want to spend time with her at night you gotta just watch tv.
Oh well, we had fun. Monday I went over to my friend Eulalia's because her and Kirsty were home and I managed to spend some time with them. After that it was back to Oakville! I went to class today and it was pretty fun, had the whole class to paint the model and I think mine turned out alright, I handed it in to be evaluated so perhaps I can show it to you next week.

And sorry Mike but I think this picture is cute so i'm going to share it! Ah hah! He won't really find out anyway, he has no reason to read my blog because most of it is about what we're up to or art I showed him already hahah.
Anyway this is him playing his cousins Bratz guitar while i'm curled up in the corner of the sofa, amused by his antics.

Valentines Day

2009-02-16T17:57:00.006-05:00

So Friday night, Mike's mom and sister picked Mike and I up from my place.
During the day I had decided that I would make Mike's mom a birthday cake since we weren't around for it. Unfortunately I hadn't taken a picture of it, I wish I had because it turned out pretty nice. I made a second cake with the left over mix and 'painted' Happy Cat onto it.

The next day I picked up Mike for breakfast and took him to my place, where I made pancakes and bacon! The pancakes were a little weird but I think it's because the batter was possibly old so didn't turn out fluffy the way it was supposed to.
I'm just glad I put chocolate chips into them to kinda help with flavour.
Then Mike and I went to Zehrs to pick up groceries for dinner!
By that point his mom and sister were done with their breakfast at church and we headed back to his place. From there we went to the mall because Mary wanted to get some stuff, which I wasn't complaining, I was enjoying being out of a house for once.

Mike and I did our own thing while they did theirs. We got ourselves an Orange Julius and a poutine from New York fries. I was happy to get more food into my stomach because earlier in the morning before I picked Mike up, I had taken two normal Advil cold medication in hopes of stopping a cold before it got me (I had an extremely sore throat when I woke up so that's a sign a cold is coming).

Usually when medication says 1 - 2 for children and adults, I take one because of my weight. Though I figured because this wasn't extra strength, I would be ok and took 2.
I felt sick and woozy for the most part of the day, but by the time we got back to Mike's place, I was all better.

So lets just skip the next part about my nervousness with making mousse from scratch and go straight to dinner. Mike made a wonderful dish that was absolutely delicious! He made two shrimp for each of us which was pan fried in garlic, lots of butter and lime juice! There might have been something else but i'm not sure. Then the pasta he simply boiled up and served with a line of pesto basil ontop. The pasta was interesting because it was white on one side and black on the other, though in the photo you see its grey because it was left in the pot a little too long. Even still it was perfect texture and tasted good! (Tasted like pasta lol)

And my mousse... it turned into Trio basically. It separated into three layers, top was foamy mousse, the middle was a dark chocolate chunky nightmare of un-melted chippits, and the bottom layer was wiggly pudding and jello hybrid of chocolate.
Needless to say I was quite disappointed in my failed efforts at dessert, I think it was because I used 1% milk instead of whole, thinking it would be ok.

Oh well, for the rest of the night we lounged on the couch and then watched The Holiday on Woman's network with his mom and sister. That was brutal because there was an hours worth of commercials, but Mary wanted to watch it and I wanted to lounge next to Mike so we all managed to finish the movie at midnight.

Sam the Koala

2009-02-11T12:27:00.002-05:00

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25038852-661,00.html

"Carer Jenny Shaw said she suffered burns on her paws and was in a lot of pain, but was on the road to recovery.

She was put on an IV drip and is on antibiotics and pain relief treatment.

"She is lovely - very docile - and she has already got an admirer. A male koala keeps putting his arms around her," Ms Shaw said. "She will need regular attention and it will be a long road to recovery, but she should be able to be released back into the wild in about five months."

"Mr Tree said he was surprised by the reaction to the photograph, which was snapped by Mark Pardew - a fellow CFA volunteer - on a mobile phone.

Mr Tree said he was in the middle of backburning at Mirboo North when he saw the stricken koala.

"I could see she had sore feet and was in trouble, so I pulled over the fire truck. She just plonked herself down, as if to say 'I'm beat'," he said.

"I offered her a drink and she drank three bottles.

"The most amazing part was when she grabbed my hand. I will never forget that."

Mr Tree and his brigade then received an emergency call-out to save a house, but minutes later Sam was picked up by wildlife carers.

She is one of 22 koalas, 14 ringtail possums, several wallabies and eastern grey kangaroos that have been handed into Gippsland carers.

Some Art

2009-02-11T12:16:00.003-05:00

Well Valentines Day is coming up, and I think it should be something everyone should celebrate! Sure it's a 'Hallmark holiday', and people think it's just for couples, but as I told Mike, "It's not about gifts, but about celebrating the gift you already have."
Friends and family should just spread love and give a few hugs to show their appreciation for each other. You shouldn't need a time like Valentine's Day to do something like that, but we don't always have the time.

With that being said, I share you some of my latest pieces. The first is a collage we had to do in our painting class. I didn't exactly like what we were doing because I felt a little lost, so instead of thinking I simply let my brain and hands go forward and do whatever the heck they wanted. That benefited me in the end because my teacher enjoyed it and chose it to be one out of the 6 examples.

The next is a picture I did in life drawing a few weeks back. It is by far my most favourite piece of done in that class so far.

Apple Pie

2009-02-09T18:17:00.001-05:00

I WANT IT.

Omgosh

2009-02-04T22:12:00.003-05:00

So here I was talking on MSN right, talking with my dad about the dog beach in BC. I was talking to my boyfriend Mike, and my best friend Kirsty. Kirsty was telling me about how she had the best lecture the other day. Then she sent me a link to this beauty.

Now how she got from telling me about her asthma lecture to a Hello Kitty Darth Vader, I don't know, but it certainly made me grin.
I wonder if he does birthday parties?

LAN Followup

2009-01-31T19:54:00.002-05:00

So the lan was pretty fun! It wasn't so bad. When we first got there we picked a row where we could all be next to each other, then started to crack open the energy drinks.
The organizers of the lan have to set up Steam* to all the computers once the LAN is initiated, however, that took them over 2 hours to do.
I am more of a console gamer, the PC gaming left long behind me since I didn't have the money to keep my computer up to date graphic wise. With that being said, when Steam was up and running, I didn't feel comfortable enough to play alongside people who have played PC games all their life. I did attempt to play the original Halo PC, but my reaction times were off and my co-ordination was just shot to shit by other players.
With a sigh of frustration and a few colourful words, I resigned and played Bejeweled 2 and Tetron. I did play a round of rock band on the wii, but they had it set up with hi-def cables and hadn't calibrated the tv so everything was delayed.
If there was an xbox 360 and Halo 3, I would have loved to sit down and kick ass.
Alas I wasn't so lucky so I enjoyed watching Mike play games. There was one particular row that just reeked of B.O. but it didn't really bother me, probably because I was sitting no where near them XD
So overall I had fun, by the time 10:45 rolled around, Mike and I were ready to go home. I was tired and feeling a little sick but we managed to stay awake until 1:00am until we finally passed out.
Would I go back to a Mohawk LAN? If I was invited, yes, if there was an xbox 360, yes, but probably something I wouldn't go out of my way for. It's not like a real LAN where you play the games you want with all your friends for days in comfortable couches, but it was still an experience I soon won't forget.

Steam: A library but for games. Installs on a Windows computer where you have access to the 'store' and you can buy PC games. Much like iTunes but for games.
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/ManxClan < That's Mike's clan