Extra Video for our Character Design Live Class!

As an added bonus we've decided to rope in Disney artist Shane Lewis to start our video series off right. Shane is going to record a "Character Design: First Steps" before our Power Day and anyone who has or will purchase the Live class before Dec 14th will get this one for free - we still have space left.

Shane has taught character design for BYU and brings a unique method of creating unique characters that have proper emotions, gestures, stance, costumes and details that are appropriate for your story - he goes deep getting into the psychology of the character. At Disney he creates characters and story boards for some some of their games like Cars 2 and Toy Story 3. Jake Parker and I will get together with Shane to make this video in a conversation style - we like this format because we can challenge each other to bring clarity to the principles that Shane will teach.

So this is what our lineup looks like:

Shane Lewis: First Steps - psychology of your character
Jake Parker: Design principles, shape, gesture & keeping consistency in your characters.
Will Terry: Exaggerating from Life, simplifying form, & proportion
Brandon Jeffords: Character design demonstrations
Jake Parker: Action & Emotion

This extra video will only be included in our LIVE class. It will become available for purchase after the class as a separate video in our SVS store. Our goal for SVS is to develop a video library that will give any student the tools needed to continue their personal improvement. We plan to constantly create new classes to challenge artists at affordable prices. 

If you can't attend our live session you can always pick up the recorded version to watch at your leisure - our early bird discount ends when the class starts on Dec 14th 2013.

Check out the class right here.

Artists Should Always Have A Personal Project

I've wanted to make this video for a while - the idea of having a personal project in the works at all times during an artist's career. Personal projects require a different kind of thinking than satisfying an assigment or commission. In the video I make a few cases why you should push yourself to create your own creations and how to go about it.

How To Make A Story App - Step 6

Record the voice narration.

On my last app "I Eat You" I used the iPad app "Tiny Vox" to record my own voice - making all the crazy fish voices and generally making a fool of myself. It was fun but now I'm in app making 2.0 and for Gary's Place I decided to hire a professional! But back to Tiny Vox - wow! what a cool app for only a couple of bucks. If you're on a budget you can get good clean sound tracks with this little gem. The built in noise cancellation leaves the front and back end of your sound clips hiss free.

But I got really lucky that I ran into Tabitha Thompson from our SVS classes. She was looking into the whole process of leveling up her illustration skills as she's already a talented writer. I mentioned that I was looking for voice work and she said she would love to provide a sample - it was amazing - I only found out after the recordings that she was trained professionally.

Tabitha Thompson has an advanced-level degree in theatre from Cambridge, England, and has worked as a professional actor, singer, and dancer since 1989. You can contact her at tabitha.voiceact at icloud dot com.

Then I worried that I wouldn't be able to afford her - but her rates were really reasonable - so I paid for 3 hours of her time which included driving down from Salt Lake. Then I paid for an hour of time with a sound studio. Since I'm in app creation 2.0 I wanted to leave no stone unturned. My goal in making this app is to give reviewers, moms, dads, kids, peers, very little to find fault with. 

I tried to give as little input as possible during the recording since I'm really just an illustrator. I told myself, "Let Tabitha feel free to explore her art as you enjoy being left alone to explore yours." The result was really fun. Being the professional she is -she nailed it on the second take. I only asked her to re-read a few lines twice for a few reasons she wouldn't have understood without seeing the illustrations.

The sound guy (Ryan Haldeman part of the “kid history – youtube” team)  used wetransfer.com (my favorite large file sharing site) to send me the voice recordings. Then I used Audacity to cut the long sound files into page segments. We all thought it would make a better product to have Tabitha read the entire manuscript – rather than break each page for my convenience. I think it gave her a much better flow and rhythm...and it's super easy to cut the file on your PC or Mac.

Audacity is a free program you can download and you can learn what you need in about 20 min by watching various youtube videos. Want to learn how to cut a file? Just ask youtube: “how to cut file audacity” then watch a 5 year old lay it out – could you have predicted this 20 years ago? Ha! Oh – one little trick with Audacity. You'll want to export your files in mp3 format (if you're working with Kwik) – BUT Audacity can't do that for you because of the pesky royalty Audacity would have to pay to let you do that – instead – try to export to mp3 from Audacity anyway – Audacity came up with a link when you try to save that takes you to a 3rd party web page where you can download a tiny program that works behind the scenes with Audacity to magically create mp3 files – in fact after you install that second program you can just export mp3s right from Audacity.

Stay tuned as I'll keep sharing my progress on "Gary's Place" which I plan to submit to Apple, Google, Amazon, etc. in a few weeks. I'll continue to blog about this process even sharing my sales stats when it hits the various app stores! If you're wondering where the first steps are I started this project back in September 2013 - check these links:

Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
Step 4
Step 5
Step 5.5
Step 6
Step 7
Steps 8 & 9

Breathing Life Into Your Characters

I'm very excited to announce our newest SVS class - "Breathing Life Into Your Characters".

Like our Painting in Photoshop Power Day that we had a few weeks ago this will be an all day event on Saturday December 14th. There will be a limit of 25 seats for the online LIVE class which will be recorded for those who can't get in. Some have asked us - "If I attend the LIVE class can I still get the video recordings of the class?" - yes - they come with the tuition.

Our headliner this time is Brandon Jeffords - head of story at Sony Pictures Animation. He worked on the animated film: Cloudy With A Chance Of  Meatballs 2 which came out in September. Brandon is an awesome artist and communicator and will be demonstrating how he comes up with expressive characters full of life. This class will be a little different as Jake and I will both be in the classroom with Brandon...we'll be monitoring the chat, helping attendees ask their questions, and of course coming up with plenty of our own questions.

 

Jake Parker and I will share our working methods of creating characters for children's books, story apps, collectibles, and comics. We've worked out a schedule to highlight each others strengths while assisting each other in each session. Creating memorable life like characters is one of the first steps in creating great story art and this Power Day is going to be a ton of fun!

To check out all the details for this class just click here.

How To Make A Story App - Step 5.5

Finish the artwork. (for earlier steps keep scrolling down)

Shoooeeeee - that took a while!

I'm not going to even try to explain how much fun I've had with the art work in this story app...it was like...nope...not going to even try.

Of course it has been an incredible commitment and sacrifice. Lots of work with little or no guarantee of financial reward. I even had to turn down PAYING work to have enough time to work on it - which will cause some to question my sanity. But those same people will probably say it was a good move if this pans out financially. Show me any thing of value in this world that didn't come with some crazy idea and a lot of sacrifice? For me the journey is worth it alone. I'm content because I'm seeing my idea come to life. How many people can say that? Will it make money? We'll find out as I plan to publish all my sales figures right here on my blog.

Check out the other 5 steps:

Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
Step 4
Step 5
Step 5.5
Step 6
Step 7
Steps 8 & 9