Regine Francois' Animation Blog

Check out my new tumblr!

noreply@blogger.com (Regine!) — Wed, 29 Oct 2014 16:33:00 +0000

Since its a bit easier to post pictures and update my facebook page easier I've moved to tumblr! Here's the link!

Sketch and Finished Color- Debbie Downer

noreply@blogger.com (Regine!) — Wed, 17 Sep 2014 00:26:00 +0000

I challenged myself to draw something and color it in one day and here's what I did. I woke up feeling sort of down today, so drew and colored this:

I call her Debbie Downer, the name is a bit lame, but it sums up how I felt at the time. I thought she was cute, so I colored her. Decided to go with a monochrome scheme after trying out a few normal human skin tones. Went with bright pink for the umbrella because I thought it would be a neat focal point, and it looks with all the blue.

I'm going to try and animate the rain a little on this one, I've seen pictures with little animated effects and thought it would be fun.

Here's the initial sketch of her.

Random Face Sketches

noreply@blogger.com (Regine!) — Fri, 05 Sep 2014 17:59:00 +0000

So while on my way to work I try to push myself to draw something. Lately I've been either practicing cartoony hands or making sketches of faces. I actually really like some of them and might go a bit further with them a little later:

Chipmunks and Preston Blair

noreply@blogger.com (Regine!) — Fri, 05 Sep 2014 17:35:00 +0000

In the process of creating new work for my portfolio I'm going back to basics in character design and animation. I'm studying Preston Blair's book again because I just really like his style and simple yet effective lesson in the book. I've been doing a lot of sketching when I have free time as well. I'll post those later, first I'll post my chipmunk design.

This is based on Preston Blair's design for the cute and small animal designs.

I'm really drawn to characters with round bodies, they are just more fun to draw. I'm still unsure on where to go with his tail though, I wanted to practice animating secondary action, so giving him a long tail like a squirrel would work.

I went ahead a gave him some ink and paint, I really like how cute he turned out!

Finished Project- Owl

noreply@blogger.com (Regine!) — Mon, 11 Aug 2014 18:51:00 +0000

Ok, here's my finished work for the owl. I think he looks really nice, I might think about adding a background in the future, but I really liked the idea of him blending into the background a bit.

Here it is:

Owl work in progress

noreply@blogger.com (Regine!) — Wed, 06 Aug 2014 19:35:00 +0000

This is a new project I started on a while ago. I keep doing little bits of it when I have a little down time. My brother worked at the zoo for a short while and managed to take a few pictures of the animals while there. He asked if I could do something with one of them.

Here's my work in progress and the picture of the owl its based on:

Finished Work! Janelle Monae

noreply@blogger.com (Regine!) — Mon, 21 Jul 2014 17:14:00 +0000

So I finally got around to finishing this portrait of Janelle Monae. I've been working on this for a while and I finally got it to a point that I'm happy with it. I could probably work on this forever, but its time to move on to other projects now.

I'm working on new material for an updated version of my portfolio, doing a few illustrations as well as animations and character designs. I think it'll show more examples of the kind of work I can create.

Here's the picture:

Life Drawing: Animals

noreply@blogger.com (Regine!) — Tue, 10 Jun 2014 21:57:00 +0000

It has been a little crazy for me in the last few months. I got a new job and have been a little focused on that. During all that I did manage to get in some drawing practice:

More toon boom

noreply@blogger.com (Regine!) — Tue, 22 Apr 2014 13:53:00 +0000

I've done a little more work on my creature, I think it looks really neat. I also think I may have finally gotten the hang of working in toon boom, after getting my bearings its not as intimidating as it used to be. It is actually a lot easier for me to draw and color my characters. Animating in toon boom is great too, I'm going to play around with that part today and post what I did, but first here's the progress on my character.

I really like the coloring tools. I'm going to see if I can make him into a cut out, I've already made him in segmented pieces, so it would be neat if I could make him move.

Toon Boom Practice

noreply@blogger.com (Regine!) — Mon, 24 Mar 2014 14:16:00 +0000

So I'm learning toon boom now. I've downloaded the PLE version from their website, which is a version that lets you get familiar with program, but doesn't offer the licence. It lets you play around with it without spending all your money first.

So far I really like it. It offers a lot more drawing options than flash. I haven't gotten into the animation part quite yet, but I'm excited to use even more tools.

I'm doing a basic project first, which is a walk cycle. It'll give me a chance to use most of the tools I'd be working with without making it complicated. I designed a character based on one that I drew before:

Here's a sketch of the turnaround:

I took the sketch into Toon Boom and fixed a few of the errors that I saw. I think it looks pretty cute!

Today I'm going to look at a few tutorials for coloring tips and continue to work on a walk cycle that I started a few days ago.

Valentine's Finish Project

noreply@blogger.com (Regine!) — Fri, 14 Feb 2014 23:20:00 +0000

After working on it for a few days I finished it, complete with a cheesy line. I showed it to my boyfriend and he really liked it, it was really fun making it too.

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Valentine's Day Project

noreply@blogger.com (Regine!) — Fri, 14 Feb 2014 23:17:00 +0000

My boyfriend and I have sort of a tradition of making gifts for each other for birthdays and valentine's day. This year I decided to do a valentine's day card with a character that he created. My boyfriend is an active D&D player, so I started from there:

This is a sketch of his character "Olenjack the Axe", he's a thief and all around bad ass. I started with sketches of faces first. Its the first real time I've made a male character in a while, so it was a bit of a challenge for me.

I finally settled on a look for him here:

Janelle WIP part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Regine!) — Wed, 22 Jan 2014 23:11:00 +0000

So I think I got the hair to look pretty neat so far, probably going to still mess around with it, but I think its time to coloring and tweaking the face. I already know I'm probably going to redo her nose and probably do something new to the eyes.

Here's my progress:

Janelle Monae WIP

noreply@blogger.com (Regine!) — Mon, 20 Jan 2014 02:32:00 +0000

Ok, here's some progress on my Janelle Monae picture. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how I'm going to tackle her hair. It look alright, but still a lot to do. Decided to play around with gradients and clipping masks to get the look I want.

Bored at work

noreply@blogger.com (Regine!) — Thu, 16 Jan 2014 02:48:00 +0000

So when its slow at work I sometimes draw little doodles of customers that happen to be hanging around. Here's a few from today:

Primetime WIP

noreply@blogger.com (Regine!) — Sun, 12 Jan 2014 19:56:00 +0000

I've decided to get back to work getting better at animation and illustrations this year. I'm working on an animation project as well as this one.

I'm a really big fan of Janelle Monae, I went to see her in concert late last year and it was a blast. Her music inspires me so much, and I find myself drawing little pictures of her in my sketch book sometimes. This project started as doodles I drew while watching her video for "Primetime".

Here's the sketches:

And here's the line art for the second on so far:

I'm going to color this work with a few new things that I've been trying to learn. I think it will turn out great.

Christmas Project

noreply@blogger.com (Regine!) — Tue, 17 Dec 2013 22:20:00 +0000

Its been too long. I've been missing drawing and animating, so I'm going to get back at it.

This project started as a little joke that got started in my family. My mother isn't the biggest fan of the holidays, in fact she's really like a Grinch. I've been wanting to do a Christmas picture or something like that, and drawing my mom as a Grinch was pretty fun. I'll probably end up coloring and inking this picture.

Finished Anniversary Pic

noreply@blogger.com (Regine!) — Mon, 21 Oct 2013 22:04:00 +0000

Ok, my life got a bit hectic for a while there, but I managed to finally finish at least one of my projects. I'm really pleased with the way this turned out:

Here are the reference and work in progress pictures:

Update time

noreply@blogger.com (Regine!) — Tue, 17 Sep 2013 21:01:00 +0000

I wanted to post an update on something since its been a while. I'm still working on my flapper, the progress is slow because of my lack of time to do it, but its coming along nicely. I'll post an update of that when I make a little more progress. For now I'll post a picture of the logo I'm working on for my website.

I came up with this:

I think it looks neat, but I'm stuck with how I'll actually use it. I think it would look really neat on a business card

Anniversary Pic-WIP part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Regine!) — Mon, 09 Sep 2013 02:36:00 +0000

Still slowly working on my flapper project when I have the time. Everyone once in a while I'll work on other things when I get inspired to do something new. I've been wanting to learn more about illustrator. This technique involves taking a picture and tracing over it with a custom brush to give it a more sketch look. I tried it out with a picture from my anniversary:

Here's the original:

...and here's the work in progress:

I'm going to go in a tweak some of the lines and add a little color later on. I'm really pleased with it so far.

Flapper Dance Update

noreply@blogger.com (Regine!) — Wed, 28 Aug 2013 01:04:00 +0000

Not much of an update, but I'm working on the background for my character. I'm going with her performing on a stage. I'm going to add in some characters playing instruments and the background music much later. Now just to finish the animation itself and clean it up.

51 Great Animation Exercises

noreply@blogger.com (Regine!) — Wed, 21 Aug 2013 22:58:00 +0000

The last year I've been really anxious to improve my animation, its something I'm always thinking about. I practically jump at any chance I can to get better. I've been discussing how to do that on the ASIFA group on Linked In. Someone suggested this website to me, and so far its going pretty well.

Animator Island- 51 Great Animation Exercises to Master.

This is a great way for me to revisit the principles of animation and a chance for me to understand them a lot better. This is also great because its an opportunity to just practice and not get too caught up in a project that gets too troublesome later one.

I've done the first to exercises on the list already this week:

Ball Bouncing in place, no decay (loop)
Ball Bouncing across the screen

I did both of the exercises about 3 or 4 times in a row, every time I thought I was done I would look at it again and start over. Paid more attention to timing and archs. I did some squash and stretch because I think it makes everything look a little more interesting.

Flapper animation update!

noreply@blogger.com (Regine!) — Thu, 15 Aug 2013 01:35:00 +0000

I got to animate this scene a little more tonight and finally got to work on the motion of her dress. So far it isn't a complete disaster but it still needs more work:

Still haven't quite worked out what to do with her other arm, I tried animating her hand resting on her hip, but I didn't like it all that much. I'll keep at it until I find something I like.

I also found background music that I like for this project. I went with Jazz since it fits the time period, here's the link to it:

Flapper WIP, hair

noreply@blogger.com (Regine!) — Thu, 15 Aug 2013 01:28:00 +0000

I finally got a little time to work on my flapper dance. Also did a few little sketches of how I want her hair and dress to look during a little down time at work:

I did a little research on women's hair style during that time period and decided on the finger wave style. I have her a little hat with a feather in it for a little more secondary action. I'm going to have fun doing the ink and paint for the character.

Line Art and an update!

noreply@blogger.com (Regine!) — Sun, 04 Aug 2013 22:50:00 +0000

I've been wanting to give my portfolio site and blog a more professional look, so I'm working a new logo and background design for my websites. I think I've thought of something pretty cool, I did a few sketches during break at work yesterday:

I want to do something that plays off my name, that means "queen" and also something to do with animation or illustration in some way. What I thought of was a silhouette of my head. I incorporated a peg bar to represent animation and around it will be a fancy border. I've come up with a nice color scheme and I've been doing a little work with it today. So far I really like it.

I wasn't planning on redesigning my blog, but after playing around with some new techniques in illustrator today I'm going to give it a try. It will tie into my portfolio website with the same theme except it will look a bit more like a sketch.

I also worked a little on a sketch I drew of a woman on the bus, I did the lines for her. I'm probably going to give her a little color and a background too when I have more time.