What a Year!
I graduated from 8 years of college, found a new job, and now embarking on a new journey with one goal in mind; find a job in the animation industry! Specifically in storyboarding with enough pay for an apartment that suits both my safety concerns and thrifty sensibilities.

After the push for finals and graduation, I was really burnt out. I felt like I had not a drop of creativity left. So, I took a 2 month break to rest up and look for a job. Which I found and am now enjoying. Retail may not be fun, but one has to admit you learn a lot about organizing.

I am currently taking an advanced life drawing class in Burbank, at the Animation Guild of all places, with Karl Gnass. I decided I need to try and explore other art venues outside of Orange County (specifically Fullerton). I'm really glad I made the decision, because not only am I learning under a different teacher, but I am rubbing elbows with people who work in the industry and talking with them.
Not to mention all the models are awesome!

Here are some life drawings I did  these past 2 months.

Pen and Marker time!

These are some doodles I made with my new pens and scrap pieces of spare paper. I have to say, I am quite proud of myself. This is an art style I have been playing around with for awhile, and I am pleased to say I will be doing more in the future.

It's like a game I play with myself, kinda like squiggle. I make one line or spiral, and see what I can design I can make from it. Its pretty fun and freeing! you never know what you would come up with.

This is defiantly on of my favorite, I am usually not a fan of pink, but for this one time I love it!!!

 This is an experiment to see what I can create with just four colors. Stand by for more upcoming trial tests. I am sure I will get it right ...

 This style I am going to try to replicate into a different form. I love the color contrast.

This one is as modern as I can get. I like the hair, but not too crazy about the top patterns.

Her hair makes me think of the kelp beds off the coast. I may do a bit more to her, put in a little more green and maybe some skin tones.

Interesting.... I was worried the yellow would be too saturated, but it looks cool. I am going to play around with this style a bit more...

Oooh, I almost forgot!

I have created a site for my animation portfolio. 

It has my pre-package for my story project, complete with 

character designs, concept art, and the actual storyboards.

Plus, there is my other character drawing, life drawing samples, and an 

extra storyboard!

If you would like, you can see it at:

laurencrumpportfolio@blogspot.com

Jeepers!

Jeepers! It's already March 2012 and I haven't posted a thing! This is my last semester before graduation and things have been sooo crazy! Just getting all assignments done and getting a portfolio together to send out by the end of this month has really put a hold on almost everything else in my life.

But, I did manage to get a few neat pics done between crazy assignments and sleeping. I've always been interested in fashion illustration, though I have never gone and made the garment myself. I hand inked, scanned, and then color them digitally. They really came out well.

By the next post, I hope to have some storyboards and character designs to show you all.

Storyboard

Hello everyone. I hope you all had a good Fall Break and ready for the craziness that is Christmas Shopping!
I had a portfolio interview with Nickelodeon and DreamWorks at my school just yesterday.

My character design was met with ok reviews. Nice style, they said, but need to ply more with forms, positions, and breakaway from keeping everything in porportion. The ONE thing that has been drilled into me since the beginning of my at schooling. So, it's going to be interesting in what  come up with.

The guy from Nick reviewed my work, and said my storyboarding was ok, but that I needed to experiment with different camera angles and horizon lines. I was a bit bummed, but I did go in order to find out if I was on the right track in my storyboarding, and now that I know what I can improve on, my artwork will be that much cooler.

Posted here is the first part of my storyboard for my class. I will probably go back and tweak it as suggested, but for now, it will be posted for your enjoyment.

It's a simple and silly story about a boy who is trying to get his pet unicorn-dinosaur to take a bath. in this first part, the scene is introduced and the pet has discovered a mud pond in the backyard...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CTN 2011

Well, I went... I saw... I learned a lot.

CTNx in Burbank was amazing! There were so many different animators and fellow artists there with the same ideas. Getting there was a bit of a pain (NEVER take the 5 in the morning) but it was well worth it.

My school had a booth there as well; it was a pretty good turn out. I think we got some potential students interested in the school.

Many artists had published art books at their tables. I was so tempted to buy! Unfortunately, my wallet kept telling me to 'Snap out of it; your broke!' But it did let up on me and allowed me to buy a book from the fabulous Brittney Lee, a visual development artist. Her work is very colorful and has a 60's charming quality about it. She also does paper dioramas, which are so delicate and spectacular!

You can see her stuff at britsketch.blogspot.com

I wish I had some pictures to show, but my camera decided to be retarded and not work.

But, if you want to see images from the convention, just go to;

http://www.ctnanimationexpo.com/ctnx-2011

Oh! before I forget...

I have set up a new online blog portfolio. There isn't much right now, but over the next few weeks, there will be more. If your interested, just take a look;

laurencrumpportfolio@blogspot.com

In the meantime, I'm going off for Fall Recess, so I will not be updating this week. So, just to keep you guys something to tide you over till after the break, here's a little something I did awhile ago that became one of my favorite projects and steered me towards illustration. Have a good turkey day!

Finally!

Things have been really crazy at school; every time I try to get stuff done outside of school, something always comes up. First it was assignments and club duties, now it's last minute rush for an internship in the animation industry.

CTNx is going to be next week! I am so excited and nervous! Just going there and making connections with big name companies is just too awsome. I just hope things go smoothly and I don't get too nervous or anything. There is always a big difference between dreaming about having your dream job in school and actually working that job with the big guys.

Graduation is just around the corner for me, so there is that big crazy mess that always seems to happens when you are almost at the finish line. It never is easy to get everything done on time and have a peaceful time doing it. You know, I never heard of someone who had an easy time getting last minute for graduation.

Anyway, here are a couple of pictures I finally got done for all you viewers. The first one a portrait of a character of the story I'm creating,'C.O.D.' (Children of Death). Her name is Spooky Death, a.k.a. Spooky Dee. She is a character who I keep close to my heart; I have found I gave her a lot of the characteristics I had when I was in high school.

The second picture is from a brush ink drawing I did in my sketchbook. I didn't know how it would turn out, but this more modern approach I took was really cool. This is an avenue I'm going to explore more.

Well folks, I wasn't able to keep to my promise of putting stuff up twice a week, but this week I do have some thing really cool; MONSTERS!!!!!

I am working on a story involving kids and monsters. While I can draw kids alright, monsters are a very unexplored grey area. So I tried out a few, and came up with these. They are cuter than I thought they would be. I'm not one to say I do cute drawings, but these are kinda endearing to me.

 The other page is a character development for the story I just mentioned. It involves a small boy who wants to earn money. He lives in a world where monsters exist and are pets. So he is a monster sitter. It's a promising story in progress. Just gotta make a few tweeks here and there...