…not “Yer-anus.” (but it still fun to say.)

Here’s some sketches of Ms. SmartyPants…

Uranus reminds me of my Mom sometimes!!

Over and out,
Mother Earth

I’m worried I’m getting a little boring lately with the sketches. So here is the mother of the sketch- the thumbnail! I’m currently building a catalog of character art of the Galaxy Girls. My goal is to have 5 poses of each girl– that’s 55 poses in all! So not only do I have to try to keep from being repetetive (how many poses of a girl skating with one leg up can you tolerate??) but I also want to evoke the personality of each girl. The other obstacle I’ve given myself is to make sure each girl has at least 2 poses in motion– which is harder than you think. How do you evoke the attitude of, say, a smarty pants (Uranus) in a skating action pose? How about a self-absorbed singer? A kooky artist?

So anyway, here’s where my thought process begins. I just sit my tush down and start drawing really, really fast. Usually I get 2-3 good poses out of every 20 I draw. Some are rougher, some are cleaner. Some are bigger, some are smaller. It really just depends on my mood.

Click on the image for a larger view. Please. They really do look better big…

Over and out,
Mother Earth

I spent all day yesterday building these in Illustrator. I’ve never done this sort of thing before– I usually stick to characters… and pencil and paper. But I think they turned out neat.

I never realized how much yellow I use. Hmm. Maybe some day I’ll find a good use for these.

Over and out,
Mother Earth

After staring at it for the last couple weeks, I decided I didn’t like this drawing:

I mean, it’s fine I guess, but I felt it was deviating from the style I’m trying to establish. It’s the eyes, mostly. I felt the influence of the feature films I used to work on. My old habits coming back. Since I’ve been working in TV—and specifically because the people I’ve worked with–I”ve gotten a little more graphic. My husband would laugh. Compared to him these drawings are nowhere near being graphic. However in the past I would have been much more concerned with keeping in elements of real anatomy. I would have been really worried about exactly HOW those eyes were sitting in that head. Now I’m more aware of shapes– and again, not nearly to the degree of so many of my talented colleagues, but a lot more than I used to be.

Here it is now.

I like it a lot better– more dynamic. I have a weird subconcious rule in my head that the Galaxy Girls’ limbs always have to be super straight, but while I was revising this, her arms just wanted to be curvy, so I listened to my instincts. I think it worked!

Which do you prefer?

Over and out,
Mother Earth

THREE– the number of Annie Awards Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends won last night!! Martin Ansolobehere (who designed my planet graphics) for Production Design, Jim Venable (who’ll be writing some Milky music someday soon) and Jennifer Kes Remington for Musical Score, and Foster’s in general for Best Television show!

THREE is also the amount of times Foster’s has been nominated for Best Show, so I guess third time’s a charm as well!

Congratulations to everybody! VIVA FOSTER’S!!!

Over and out,
Mother Earth

Here comes The Sun, do do do doooo…

Over and out,
Mother Earth

My carpal tunnel hurts….

Click on the picture for a larger view.

Over and out,
Mother Earth