day 27: leverage & pixar

What an interesting book you have there Mr. Jimmy Fallon.

Here's another installment of things I've been listening to. I go through phases, most of the time it's music, but sometimes I'll get on a talk show kick and listen to Jon Stewart or Letterman or Conan or Jimmy Fallon while working. I can't generally listen to plot-driven shows. I will just stop working and watch. But talk shows are great.

Flavia de Luce. Great illustration by Brigette Barrager.

Sometimes I will listen to audio books or podcasts. All time best are the Ricky Gervais podcasts. Right now I've been listening to The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, the first of the Flavia de Luce books. Set in England in a big old estate in the 1950s, 11-year old Flavia loves chemistry, her passion is poisons. And of course there's a murder and she has to investigate. It's a fun book. I once saw it described as Lemony Snicket meets Nancy Drew, which is pretty accurate. I'm about halfway through, but taking a break for:

Leverage! Okay, so I geeky love this show. If you've not seen it, it's a higher-tech classier version of the A-Team. Former bad guys help the little guy by taking down The Man. I just got the Season 4 DVD yesterday, so I'll be listening to the audio commentaries this weekend. Audio Commentaries in general are hit and miss, but the Leverage commentaries have been universally interesting and entertaining. John Rogers, the head writer, show runner, co-creator, guy in charge, is a great story teller, offers interesting insight into their process and keeps the pace going. Looking forward to getting a lot of work done.



And finally a couple Pixar-related things I listened to this week. The first was a Google interview with Brave's director Mark Andrews. It's always interesting to hear how these guys got to where they are, plus what they were thinking when they were making the movie.




Here's Andrew Stanton's Ted talk about story. And finally since I'm at the Ted site, if you haven't listened to Elizabeth Gilbert's talk about the creative genius, please do. Here, I'll embed it for your convenience!

day 26: the baroness

The Balinaka Baroness

Story time! Are you wondering why this blog is called Blog o' the Baroness? The easy answer is that I am a Baroness. But how did that happen? Regardless of your sincerity of interest, I am going to tell you. Also, this will wrap up the little walk down Lucas Learning memory lane.

Back in 2002, life was a little crazy. We (at Lucas Learning) were still reeling from the economic fallout of September 11. The CD-Rom market had dried up; we were exploring what sort of business models would work online for educational software. We discovered we couldn't use our ace-in-the-hole: the Star Wars property. That was the domain of starwarskids.com. So where did that leave us? Nowhere, actually. After going from a 65+ employee company down to 30ish and then to 14, we finally got the word in the spring of 2002 that Lucas Learning would go into "hibernation." Those that still remained were laid off. This actually left me in a great position to barrel full-steam into pursuing a freelance career, which I did.

I jumped into working on a children's book portfolio since all I really had was game art and concept art. But sitting at home alone all day, I kind of started to go into Star Wars and co-worker withdrawal. So I signed up on one of the Star Wars Fan Forums. But first, I needed a name. I'm terrible at names.

Backtrack to Anakin's Speedway, my first project. We had three planets for the podraces. I had been looking through any and all Star Wars reference books looking for characters for the planets. It was in some obscure Star Wars role playing book that I found these crazy polar bear people things that lived in the snow called the Balinaka. We put them on our ice planet. They would pop out of the snow when you flew by and do a Snoopy dance. They were one of my favorite things in the game.

Dance Balinaka, Dance!

So I thought a name with Balinaka would be good. And cool character Lando Calrissian was a Baron, so The Balinaka Baroness was born. See image at the top of this post.

That was all well and good, and I enjoyed hanging out on the boards and meeting people and chatting Star Wars. After a while I was referred to as just Baroness. I don't think anyone else had a clue what a Balinaka was, plus that was maybe a mouthful and a pain to type.  (Remember: bad at names.) Then one day I stumbled across (no idea how other than I spent way too much time online) one of those Buy a Real British Title sites. I immediately needed to buy one. But I held off, cause really, what a super silly thing to waste money on. But the idea wouldn't leave me alone, and late in the middle of the night, like all good impulse buys, I bought myself the title of Baroness. Now I was officially a fake Baroness instead of just a fake fake Baroness!

All hail the Baroness!

This certificate currently sits in a lovely velvet-matted gilded frame on my fireplace mantle. It came with a booklet of how to use the Title to my advantage: better seats at restaurants and other perks of fine living. I think there even was a card I could keep in my wallet. Because that would surely convince people I was part of the gentry. heh. I choose to use it to claim my little Barony of a blog, my tiny little corner of the internet: the Blog o' the Baroness.

Very sincerely yours,
The Baroness.

day 25: podracer popsicles

I mentioned yesterday that I used to work at Lucas Learning. I started there in the fall of 1998 when everyone was in the thick of working on Episode One. I was the Lead Artist for the 4-6 year old podracing game that ended up being called Anakin's Speedway (working title was LLLCoolJ).

One of the things we did early on was a lot of kid testing. I made these puppets and we took them to a school to let the kids play with them. All the kids liked Anakin the best, mostly because he was the only human. They didn't love Ben Quadrinaros as much as I thought they would. They did like Sebulba as he was obviously a bad guy and cool. I thought they'd like Mawhonic. He was super friendly waving "Hi." But the kids all hated him. Like really really hated him. We finally worked it out that they found it super creepy that he had three eyes.

And since I know you're dying of curiosity, we picked Anakin, Sebulba, Gasgano and Ben Quadrinaros as the main characters for our game. I think Ratts Tyerell and Teemto Pagalies were runners up but cut for time. Btw, Boles Roor is a big fan of the karaoke. No lie.

day 24: old-school 3d illustration

Look what I found! This is the kind of stuff I was doing when I graduated from BYU. I love the constellations, well...the mythology of them. I actually took Astronomy at University thinking we would learn the stories and how to identify the constellations. Luckily I did alright with the physics, but all that math was definitely not what I was envisioning. I sometimes have these weird lapses of logic.

On a side note, I also just found the sketches I did of a revised more accurate constellation sky. I had started building a second more elaborate version of the above but never finished. Hmmmm.

Butterball and the Troll Hag. One of those gruesome old tales where cherubic children get eaten for wandering into the forest. For some reason the Troll Hag would carry her head under her arm and stuff her neck with twigs. Why? Who knows why Troll Hags do the troll hag things they do.

 

From 1998 to 2002 I worked at Lucas Learning. Such a great little place to work, I loved it. One of our producers was expecting her first baby and ended up on bedrest for a good portion of her pregnancy. I was charged with making a we-miss-you-best-wishes-etc gift. Since Julie was a Shoe-a-holic and we were working on an Episode One game, this is what I came up with.

So there are some samples of my old illustration style before totally switching to digital. I'm happy to have found these, it's reminding me of ideas I still want to execute. They are definitely back on the To-Do list... after the latest batch of deadlines is done. And maybe a trip to Vegas.

day 23: o pioneer

Happy Pioneer Day!

day 22: mitzi

This is Mitzi, the nearly toothless wonder. She is my cat.

Way back in the early dawn of time, I had an internship in New York City. I worked for illustrator Steven Guarnaccia and went on many studio visits to illustrators and designers all over the city. It was an amazing summer.

By the end of the internship, I took away two important characteristics of the successful illustrator. One: have a collection of folk/primitive art masks hung in your studio. Two: own a cat.

The first item, I've had no problem with. I've got some lovely ceramic masks from Mexico, as well as lots of collections of folk art and toys and things. Collections are very important for an illustrator to have and in the words of Steven Guarnaccia: "One or two of something are just knick knacks. But once you have three it's a collection!"

The second item, the cat, was a little more of a problem. It wasn't even an option until last March when I took the plunge and finally bought my first home. Then it took me another year to be certain I really truly wanted a cat.

After a lot of dithering, last February I went to the local shelter and got Miss Mitzi. She is a fantastic cat. She's a little older, very mellow and very sweet. She's got some sort of crazy auto-immune disease (best guess by the vet) that makes her allergic to her own teeth! So far she's had three pulled. They thought they were going to take the rest, but after a few weeks of antibiotics, she seems to be okay. I just get to brush her teeth and give her kitty mouthwash forever-more. Yes. She is spoiled.

But Mitzi has embraced her role as Studio Cat. One of her favorite spots is to sit up on the shelf in my studio by my paints and brushes. Now maybe I will finally be a real illustrator. Work your Studio Cat Magic, Mitzi!

day 21: channels and some bull

toro photoshop painting from Maryn Roos on Vimeo.


It's tutorial Sunday! And since yesterday's toucan video worked out so well I decided to make another. I have to paint these icons for work anyway, so may as well record it.

This is mostly about Channels. When I first learned how to use them, it was the best thing I'd ever learned in Photoshop. It's still useful even though I don't scan in my drawings anymore.

To better understand what Channels are, think of them like a silk screen. Where there is black, no paint can get through. Where it's white, you get full color. Shades of gray equal the amount of transparency, so 50% gray means 50% of your color bleeds through.

Here is a pencil drawing of a bull. I actually found a pencil! Couldn't find a pencil sharpener though so had to use a pocket knife.

Once the drawing is scanned, I first make the drawing grayscale by opening the Hue/Saturation dialog box: Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation... or cmd+U. I then slide the saturation bar all the way to gray. Next I open the Levels box: Image>Adjustments>Levels... or cmd+L. I adjust the sliders until I get a decent black line.

Next, I click on the Channels tab. It is up by Layers tab. I click on the dotted circle at the bottom of the Channels palette. This selects the WHITE area.

Next I go back to the Layers tab. I create a new layer then invert the selection: cmd+Shift+I. Now the drawing is selected rather than the space around it. I pick a color (I'm using black) and fill the selection: alt+delete. And finally I turn on the Preserve Transparency button. That is the first box at the top of the layers palette after the word Lock. With this on, I can paint where ever I like, but if a pixel is 100% transparent it will stay 100% transparent, 50% transparent stays 50% transparent. It is a great way to color your lines. I've turned off the scanned drawing layer so you can see the pencil drawing is now on a transparent background.

That was basically the tutorial. The rest is just to show you the steps you see in the video. Here the bull is still in three layers. Two layers of color and the line layer, all with Preserve transparency on for easy coloring. To fill in the area of the bull, I selected outside the bull lines, then expanded the selection by 2 pixels, then inverted the selection, then alt+del on a new layer to fill it in. It's not perfect, but faster than using the lasso tool around all the edges or painting it in with a brush.

Here is with the lines colored. Maybe not the best example since it's mostly dark so it doesn't look that different from the black lines. Once the lines are colored, I merge the layers and start adding the details.

Lines and color cleaned up. It's essentially done.

But I wanted to add a little texture and a little more color. The quickest way to do that was to command+click the layer thumbnail to select the bull and then make a new layer. I can shade and add texture without going outside the edges. The reason I didn't put it on the same layer as the bull was so I could adjust the layer properties: change the opacity, set it to Overlay or Soft Light, etc. Sometimes I do some of the painting on a new layer because I'm not sure what I'm doing. If the experiment fails I don't have to revert or undo, I just delete the layer.

So that was a quick painting of a bull in Photoshop. I don't spend too much time on these little icons since they are meant to be about an inch tall on a monitor. Let me know if you have questions about Channels or anything else I mentioned. Happy to clarify and answer!

day 20: tucán

toucan drawing2 from Maryn Roos on Vimeo.

Just a little test to try recording a painting in Photoshop. Here's the same image as in the video so you can see a close-up of the finished icon.

day 19: the flower shop

Here's a blast from the past. That's me in the blue dress looking diabolical. When I was little, my mom worked at a flower shop. I remember spending a lot of time there: sleeping in the back office when I'd stay home sick from school, decorating the Christmas trees for the holiday season, making my own flower arrangements and corsages from the scraps on the floor. I've always thought there was something in those memories that would make a fun children's book. And maybe there is. I got as far as a rough draft and some character sketches. I even talked with publisher about it. I think they told me to cut the story back to taking place on one day rather than going through the seasons.

Anyway, found these while looking for something to post instead of the exciting icons I've been working on (table! lime! lightbulb!). These are from June 2002 (crazy) which means I would have just been starting out doing freelance full-time. That probably also explains why this never went any further. Shortly thereafter I got busy and stayed busy.

 

Rosie and her finch pal Bambi. There was a giant store-length bird cage inside the shop full of all kinds of finches. It made for great background noise.

Mom, have you even ever seen these?

Kind of fun to find this. Maybe someday I'll rework the idea, redesign the characters, who knows. I think it still has potential.

day 18: needle felting

I keep not blogging about what I am actually working on. Mostly there isn't anything to show. At Imagine I've been working on bug fixes or game art. I don't think it's appropriate to show my in-progress freelance work until after it's published. And I've been too busy with that to do any personal work. I do have a little snippet of something I will show in a couple days, but in the meantime, more random things from me!

A favorite TV show: That's Clever. Not on anymore which makes me sad. Each episode shows three craftspeople making a project. They show the gamut from glass blowers, metal workers, ceramic artists, scrapbookers, to woodworkers, bookbinders, soap makers, etc, and etc. (This is where I discovered encaustic painting.) I love watching people be skilled at their craft. I learned about needle felting from this show and had to give it a try. So I made some Christmas gifts a couple years back.

A deer for Jim, an avid bow hunter:

Kringer for Nate, fan of fans of He-Man*:

And an "envelope" to hold a gift card for my mom to get herself a new coat:

It's a pretty fun craft. The instructions are essentially: take a loose wad of wool and keep poking at it with a needle until it turns into something cute! 

 Here are some beautiful skeins of natural wool roving.

Brightly dyed wool.

 Felting needles. The little barbs catch the the wool fibers and lock them together.

So the more you jab at it with the needle, the denser the wool becomes and it holds its shape. Look! I've made a Kringer hairball!

Thanks for joining me for Maryn's Crafty-times!

*PS - Nate posted some epic news for himself yesterday. Congrats Nate, the ol' castle never looked better!

day 17: early influences

Yesterday at Imagine Learning we had our first group discussion of Steal Like an Artist. I hate to be so evangelical about it, but it really is an inspiring little book. At the end of the discussion we went around and each named some of our biggest artistic influences, who we admired, and who we "stole" from the most when starting out. Here's my list:

Mary Blair
One of my favorite illustrators ever. I love her sense of design and rhythm. It's whimsical and colorful and of course it's freaking cute!

William Joyce
Admittedly, this was the illustrator I flat out copied while in school. I was especially drawn to the pre-WW2 and 1940's aesthetic and he has the best robot and vehicle design. I also admire his use of space in his illustrations. He paints scenes like they are from the epic golden age of hollywood movies and I learned a lot about space and using foreground elements from him.

If you haven't seen The Fantastic Flying Books of Morris Lessmore (won Best Animated Short Academy Award earlier this year) at least watch this trailer.

Richard Hull
This is the guy who taught me how to paint. I think everyone in class copied his technique. Richard's paintings are full of fun little details, beautiful color and intricate composition. I got really good at noodling tiny details because of Richard.

Drew Struzan
I always kept trying to figure out how to copy his technique. I used to paint with acrylics, then I tried combining that with colored pencils once I researched how he worked. I never quite got his technique down exactly, but I came up with my own thing by trying to learn it. Which is entirely the point.

JC Leyendecker
The predecessor to Drew Struzan, this is the guy Struzan tried to copy when he started out. Leyendecker's illustrations are luxurious and shiny and elegant. I love the sharp angles and bold brush strokes. I could never come close to imitating him, but he was my favorite of the old school illustrators.

NC Wyeth
Favorite of the Brandywine illustrators (Howard Pyle's school). Great composition, great drama, beautiful color.

A few other artists I love: Jessie Wilcox Smith and Rose O'Neill and Minerva Teichert