Ellen Hawkins

Travel Illustration

2015-04-01T18:50:00.001-04:00

If you follow me on instagram, you may have noticed that I’ve been doing a lot of paintings lately with acryla gouache. Here are some of my favorites, they are all based on photos I took while we were in New Zealand in 2013.

A Long Awaited Update

2015-02-19T19:03:00.001-05:00

Well I’ve done it again. I’ve let almost a year go by since I last updated. Although I’ve been completely silent here, there has been a lot going on in my life lately. Last summer I worked at a flower shop in Boulder, met a bunch of awesome new friends and built a small portfolio of chalkboard signs that I created for the store.

Then I went on to work as a technical artist at Real D, helping with the development of their TrueImage technology and brushing off my kick ass Nuke skills (basically a complete 180 from my summer job!) More recently as my time is needed less and less at Real D, I’m changing up my schedule to be part-time with them and I’m starting part-time back at the flower shop this spring. So I’ll be working two part-time jobs this summer.

I’m always active on Instagram where I post photos of everything I’m up to and I’m also on Ravelry and GoodReads for knitting and books.

Here are a few of my chalkboard creations.

First Time Quilter

2014-03-17T14:32:00.000-04:00

I got the sudden urge to sew a quilt a few weeks back, even though I’ve never made one in my life. I bought a few quilting magazines and picked out a simple project from Quilts and More that uses only triangles and plotted out my color scheme in Photoshop. Here are a few of the designs I came up with.
I had a hard time deciding which one to go with, I had so much fun making all these designs! It was like coloring pages in a coloring book. I eventually decided on the top left design because it fits best with our living room decor, which is where the quilt is going to live.

I didn’t end up taking a lot of process photos, all I did was follow the directions on the pattern and look up YouTube videos for help when I couldn’t figure something out (this is pretty much the way that I learn every new craft). And while the results certainly are not perfect, I’m very satisfied with the way that it turned out.

Denver Comic Con Fabric Design Contest

2014-03-10T13:38:00.001-04:00

I randomly found out about the Denver Comic Con fabric design contest when I was looking at the DCC website to find out about purchasing tickets this year. I thought it might be a fun thing to try, so I worked on a design for a couple of weeks and then submitted it to the contest.
My goal was to come up with a design that has something for everyone, so I drew loads of caricatures of popular characters from movies, TV, comics, anime and video games and arranged them into a repeatable grid.

I received an email last week that I won runner up in the contest! They are going to print my fabric and make it available for people to use to make outfits for the convention. I also won a free ticket to the con and a commemorative pint glass! I’m so excited! I can’t wait to go to the convention this year and see what people have created with my fabric!

A Late Valentine

2014-02-20T12:22:00.000-05:00

I designed and printed some little Valentine’s Day cards to send to friends and family this year. The cards feature an illustration of my dog Louis wearing a valentine sweater!

Original sketch

Buckbeak

2014-02-12T13:28:00.001-05:00

I’ve been re-reading the Harry Potter books since early January and I forgot how much I love them! So I made some fan art.

Hamlet Poster

2014-02-04T19:38:00.001-05:00

I really enjoy doing pencil drawings like these. I think I’ll do more. :)

Middle Earth High Art Collab

2014-01-28T15:06:00.001-05:00

Here’s my submission for the Middle Earth High Art Collaboration hosted on Twitter by @allaloam. Boromir as a band geek, playing the horn of Gondor with the marching band! More characters at http://middleearthhighartcollab.tumblr.com/

Geo Horse

2014-01-15T13:42:00.001-05:00

I made this new illustration for my society six shop! I think it makes a rad t-shirt.

Simple Photoshop Tricks

2013-10-07T18:59:00.001-04:00

I’ll be the first to admit that I take a lot of photos that have less than perfect lighting, but through trial and error I’ve found a pretty quick and easy way to salvage these imperfect photos using a few simple Photoshop tricks.

As you can see, the starting photo is very dark. I want to brighten the whole photo and bring out the color of the flowers.

Adjust the Curves
To start, open the Curves Editor by pressing Ctrl+M

Pull the top right point of the graph over to the left a bit, then place a point in the middle and pull that up to create a rounded curve. This will significantly lighten the entire photo.

Note: By pulling the top right point to the left you are essentially losing color information, so it’s important not to pull it too far to the left or the photo will have a noticeable lack of detail in the white areas of the photo.

Change the Channel drop down to Red and pull up the middle just a bit.
Now change the Channel drop down to Blue and lower the middle a bit. This will give the photo a warmer (yellow) tone. This might not be something you’ll want to do for every photo, but I use it a lot because I just really like the way warm toned photos look as opposed to cool toned photos.
Adjust the Saturation
The last adjustment I made in my flower photo example is to adjust the saturation level. This is also something I don’t use on every photo, but it can be fun to play around with.

Open the Hue/Saturation Editor by hitting Ctrl+U. In the drop down where it says Master, change that to Reds and increase the saturation by about +4.
Then change the drop down to Yellows and increase the saturation by about +5.
What makes this different from the Curves adjustment we did earlier is that instead of affecting the entire photo, we are now just focusing on specific red and yellow areas.

I chose to increase the red and yellow saturation because I wanted to bring out the colors of the flowers a little bit more. Depending on the content of the photo you’re working on, you may want to increase or decrease the saturation of other hues in the photo.
And that’s it! Just a few quick adjustments and you’ve got a vastly improved photo.

Sketch Dump

2013-09-26T15:23:00.000-04:00

It’s been a while since I posted sketchbook sketches, so here’s some.

Animated Birthday Card

2013-09-24T13:56:00.000-04:00

I made this for fun last week using Illustrator and After Effects! I'm going to send it to everyone I know on their respective birthdays. :D

Knitting!

2013-09-12T08:45:00.000-04:00

In order to keep myself sane during that most trying of tasks: the job search, I’ve decided to take up knitting again (never mind that it’s September and still in the high 90s). And I have to confess I’ve become a little obsessed. I’ve made 6 projects in the last month and I’ve got my seventh one started. What can I say? When I’m interested in something, I have to immerse myself in it. I’m thinking of maybe opening an Etsy shop to sell some of my knitted pieces… maybe.

This sweater for Louis is my favorite thing I’ve knitted so far. Possibly my favorite thing I’ve ever made.

Blog Design

2013-06-06T19:25:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago I busted out the water colors and created a blog design for a gardening blog. I wanted to give it a slightly messy feel and really bring the tactile quality of gardening into the design.

The most fun part was creating all the hand lettered text. I just wrote the words a bunch of different times on a large sheet of watercolor paper and then cut and pasted the ones I liked best together in Photoshop.

In the future we will all travel in tubes

2013-05-31T09:30:00.000-04:00

Get the scientists working on the tube technology.

Illustration Friday: Tension

2013-05-29T09:30:00.000-04:00

The new Mrs. Draper and the old Mrs. Draper in an elevator together? That’s a recipe for tension right there.

The Handmaid’s Tale

2013-05-28T09:00:00.000-04:00

I read The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood last month and I was really inspired by the imagery in the book, so I used it as a jumping off point for a small personal project that I’ve been working on for the past few weeks.

Using the book cover illustration by Fred Marcellino as my concept art, I designed my character, then modeled and rigged her in Maya. I used nCloth for her sleeves and skirt and her hat too. After animating the character, I did a few multi-layer EXR renders and composited the scene in Nuke.

I had a lot of fun with the trickier parts of the project which were modeling the hat and comping the character and her shadow over the matte painting I created.

Tend Your Own Garden

2013-05-08T18:31:00.001-04:00

I made this illustration for fun this week. “Tend your own garden” has been a mantra for me lately as a reminder to focus less on what other people are doing and focus more on what I’m doing.

When I Saw Pocahontas for the First Time

2013-02-27T05:18:00.000-05:00

Golden Globes Ladies

2013-02-10T14:43:00.001-05:00

Yikes, it’s been a while guys. I’ve been totally slammed at my new job, working lots of late nights and weekends so I haven’t had a lot of time for fun things like drawing and sleeping. Anyway, as a result I’ve become more active on Instagram and Twitter. You can follow me there if you’re interested in my less artistic pursuits… Hopefully I’ll get more free time soon to dedicate to personal projects.

Here’s some ladies from the red carpet at the Golden Globes this year. Bonus points for anyone who can name them all.

The Sketchbook Project (finished!)

2012-11-18T21:40:00.001-05:00

This post is a bit picture heavy, but I dug deep this weekend and finished up my Louis sketchbook for The Sketchbook Project. I am so excited to send this in before the deadline at the end of the year!
On the last page I wrote some fun facts about Louis.
And lastly I drew a title page and put some doggie doodles on the front cover.
To see all the sketchbook pages click here.

The Sketchbook Project

2012-10-03T12:38:00.000-04:00

I realized that I’m falling a bit behind with my Sketchbook Project sketchbook. I’m a little over half way through, but the deadline is coming up at the end of the year so I really need to get a move on. Here are the most recent pages.

Figure Drawing

2012-10-02T12:23:00.000-04:00

These are some of my drawings from the last figure drawing session held at DD Florida. On a positive note, I’ve taken a job offer in California and Brian and I are packing up and shipping out to Burbank next week! I seriously cannot wait to get back to Cali.

Portfolio

2012-09-13T12:39:00.000-04:00

I love animating and I am always looking for opportunities to work with a team to make awesome projects. I am proficient in Autodesk Maya and Mental Ray, Adobe After Effects, Photoshop and Illustrator. I have experience cleaning up mocap data as well. Take a gander at my current animation reel below.

I worked with the VFX department while at Digital Domain creating crowd simulations for a project called Heads-Up Display. Working with one other animator, we animated over 100 individual variations of fans cheering, sitting, clapping, walking, talking, eating etc. to fill the stands in a baseball stadium. We used mocap data to start, cleaning it up and creating variations from it, but our director wanted more options so we ended up creating a lot of keyframe animated fans as well.

Animation Credits:
HUD (2012) spot for the Mets baseball team

Animated Short Films:
The Extraordinary Story of Lily Lily (2008)
Best Friends (2007)

As for my day job, I have four years of experience in the stereo 3D conversion industry working as a senior artist and project lead on major feature films. I have a highly trained eye for stereo and an in-depth understanding of the entire stereo 3D conversion pipeline. A sampling of my stereo work can be seen in my stereo conversion reel below (anaglyph glasses recommended).

Stereo Conversion Feature Film Credits:
Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon 3D (2011)
The Smurfs in 3D (2011)
Thor (2011)
Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland 3D (2010)
Disney's G-Force in 3D (2009)

Other Stereo Conversion Credits:
Undisclosed game release for Sony Games (2012)
Amazin' (2012)
Space Command Commercial (2009)

LinkedIn Profile

Digital Domain Florida Closes It’s Doors

2012-09-11T18:44:00.000-04:00

When everyone at Digital Domain in Florida got the news on Friday morning that the studio was shutting down and we were all being laid off, it came as a total shock. Though there were some worrying stories in the press about DDMG’s low-performing stock and our CEO John Textor, we were assured in an all-hands meeting on Tuesday that everything was fine and we had nothing to worry about, our jobs were secure. Then Friday came and they dropped the bombshell, we were all out of jobs and we had a few hours to clean out our desks and vacate the building.

As I’m putting my resume and reel out there to other studios, I’m still kind of in shock. It’s really scary when this kind of thing happens and it makes you realize that no job is ever really secure, no matter how comfortable you get. The silver lining in all of this is the amazing support everyone in the Port Saint Lucie community has been offering and the support of my former co-workers. In a weird way, being laid off has brought us all closer together.

As for me and Brian, we’re really hoping that we will be back in California before the end of the year. We’ve spent two years here in Florida and though it’s been an amazing experience, we have both been homesick for California for a while now.