Ghosts of Halloween Past

 Above: From 2002 or 2003, human body parts.

 Above: Time exposure of the front yard. In reality, it wasn't this bright.

 

 Above: Time exposure of the Hanging Man.

 Above: A little Photoshop texture on the skeleton.

 Above: From the 1990s, Annie and Ximena check out the dry ice in the witch's pot.

 Above: From the 1980s, playing around with a skull mask and lighting.

 Above: MORE BRAINS!! We had a brain-shaped Jell-O mold too.

 Above: Our first Halloween graveyard that we used from 1990 to 2000.

 Above: Sure, the ghost looks a little lame but we got it to hang on a wire over the graveyard.

 Above: 2002's  Alien Abduction theme.

 From 1985, playing around with time exposures to make ghost images.

 Above: More Photoshop trickery with our mini Grim Reaper.

 Above: The Butcher Boy, an extra (neighbor) we recruited to help. He's all grown up and running expensive golf courses for the rich now.

 Above: The Reaper with the glowing eyes.

 Above: Joan of Arc from the 1990s (with Photoshop effects). She's all grown up, just got married, and has her doctorate from U.C. Santa Cruz.

 Above: Dry ice effect.

Happy Halloween!

Well, I've had a few Halloween-themed pencil sketches done this month with the hope of getting them all inked and posted before the big day but that didn't happen. I'm still in the process of inking these three ones and will post them in the future. But I couldn't let this day pass without posting SOMETHING Halloween related.

I thought I might have time today to work on them but probably not. I have to get the yard ready for the evening festivities. Nothing too big though, just some extra lights on the fence at the front of the yard and I might attempt to put my large inflatable glowing pumpkin on the roof if I can tether it down correctly.

The days of my big Halloween production jobs might be over though. Ten years ago, I was taking days off to work on the set up, we had flying bats, two fog machines, music, and needed at least three people to run the thing. It became too much work and Halloween wasn't fun anymore. But I did have some memorable times like when I converted the front porch to look like the inside of an alien space ship and then had human body parts in specimen jars. Without a doubt, Halloween is a time that appeals to the creative types!! So maybe I'll do another post featuring those old photos from past Halloween set ups.

Figure Drawing Marathon

To help raise money for the Diablo Valley College art department, a figure drawing marathon was held this weekend. I always love me some figure drawing but, lately, it has been relegated to quick sketches with my Moleskine while waiting for doctor's appointments or whatever I dream up out of my head or from looking at photos. But there is no substitution for real life drawing.

While searching for some larger paper for the marathon, I found a half-used drawing pad. Inside, apparently, were some drawings from some of the last figure drawing sessions I had....way back in April 1999. Ugh! We are already a decade into a new century. Has it really been THAT long?? Apparently so!

Fortunately, I wasn't as rusty as I could have been because of all the drawing I have been doing over the last year. We had a good group of about twenty of us and two models splitting the day. The second model of the day was Tyler who did a few long poses. I guess I am so use to doing quick drawings now that the longer poses were a challenge (this was the complete opposite when I was young). With the longer pose, when I found myself with a good drawing with decent structure, I found I then went in and over-rendered the drawing like above on drawing number two. As a result, I then start to loose the structure lines. I did the same thing with the Frank Cho drawing session back in May.

To break up the long poses, I decided to do some shorter studies, usually portraits. Above is when I switched to a marker.

Our first model of the day was Judith. A lovely model. Both models were extremely professional and good.

Below are quicker 5 minute and 1 minute poses.

 

 

Below: More over rendering? Perhaps.

Storyboards from the Invasion from Planet X

Poking around my desktop, I found a folder for storyboards that I did for my Adobe Flash project from a year ago. I completely forgot that I did some storyboards for it. And since I'm in a storyboard mode lately, I figured I'd post them.

Some things did change by the end like the monster which went from a vicious thing to a passive little insect. Mostly because I didn't have time. By the end of the project, I was happy with most of it but thought my little alien animation was stiff. So that started me on my journey in 2011 of taking an animation class.

The final Flash project is still up at my site at www.rrwerner.com

A Trip to the Past

Storyboards for the Time Machine for Story Beat #4 where the Traveller tests out his time sphere (shaped like a gyro with operational rings). Unlike the novel, I have the Traveller doing a test flight back to the year 1666 where he tries to stop the Great London Fire of that year. In classic time traveling irony, he helps to create it but that is another story beat.