“It’s fairly dark and mostly snake free!”
This is an experiment I did for the Crackerland project, trying to feel our way to a style for the show BG’s.
Aih paintified a cowgirl! I was sketching last night and liked the lil’ cowgirl I drew so I decided to paint her in photoshop. I approached it like a water color, moving in sections, paint brush set on multiply onto a water color paper texture. I painted sections on layers so I could lock the transparency and apply shading quickly.
I’ve been focusing more on practice lately and building my core skills. Today I did a few quick (30-60 minute) painting studies focusing on color. The first two were loosely based on photos, the last I just made up as I went. I’ve been doing a lot more brush experimentation in photoshop, the paintings were all made with custom brushes I created. Surprisingly it’s very easy to do and I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to really embrace the practice.
As far as process goes, I worked background to foreground, no sketching or anything, just applied straight color. Usually I go with the darkest color first and build up the details. What do you think?
My most recent contribution to the Crackerland Project. The rest can be seen here. All the parts were done separately in Adobe Illustrator and then composited in photoshop to add the lighting effects.
Two things! First, something actually hand done. It’s been ages! This is a little water color practice I did of Tangled’s Rapunzel.
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Second, it has come my attention recently that people actually visit my blog on occasion. Who knew! So I’m going to try to update it more with things that I’m legally allowed to give sneak peeks of.
Anyway, a couple of great people have talked about me in their blogs! It’s excessively flattering, so I thought I’d brag=)
Lookee!!
First is a review of my Tomorrowland Mug.
Second, for this year’s Festival of the Masters at Downtown Disney I was drawing live to promote Epic Mickey. It was a blast and I met some really interesting people! Here’s one of them.
Thank you guys so much for mentioning me!
I made some art for the Mai Kai recently. I love love love the Mai Kai! It’s amazzzzzing, a real gem. Best tiki hub in the world! I could spend years doing things for this place, but I only had a few free days to really think about it because of my jaunt out of town. What do you think?
Here’s a plush I made, inspired by all the awesome Sandersness floating about in the air. He’s based on a sketch a little sketch I wanted to hug. He required lots of ingenuity, a wire armature and many hot glue gun burns. I decided to do a little painting of him as well, to commemorate!
Here is my little bit of fluff commentary on the new, formidable “How to Train Your Dragon” verses the Shrek franchise.
IMO, Dragon is right up there with (and in many cases exceeds) Pixar quality. Hear me out, this is special, special film. It heralds the triumphant return of writer/directors Chris Sanders and Dean Deblois, of Lilo and Stitch fame. Go see it….NOW! You won’t regret it! It’s quite a ride.
Here’s a quick piece of fan art I made in honor of my friend Michael, and his incredible Progress City USA blog. I highly recommend visiting, unless you, like me: (1) have obsessions that you have been keeping under control (but, at the same time, have been fighting to take over your life) because you (2) need to get things done occasionally, like sleep.
You guessed it, a Tomorrowland mug!
I know, I know… But it’s retro future-y so I’m going to include it. This is part of the Designer Mug Series, one of the two things I did with my actual name on it (very exciting). I had carte blanche to do whatever I wanted, as long as it related to both Disneyland and WDW.
Well, it’s me, and I couldn’t do EPCOT, so in my head the next best thing was Tomorrowland. Given the opportunity again, I would probably do something with the Tiki Room — but I still like what I came up with.
I wanted to commemorate the land’s better days….
I was rather in a hurry (finished on my very last day of work), so I had to limit the detail. I kept everything fairly simple, in both color and design. My first idea was to use the World Clock from “old” Tomorrowland in Disneyland….mostly because the shape seemed serendipitous in relation to my mug. I also made use of the Skyway and Rocket to the Moon.
Finally I inserted some favorite Disney phrases, because I could.
From the Disneyland TV show: “(Tomorrowland) A promise of things to come.”
Meet the Robinsons (among other sources): “Keep Moving Forward.”
Walt Disney/Horizons: “If you can dream it, you can do it.”
Space Mountain Exit Queue: “In the future, you may find yourself off world.”
Carousel of Progress: “There’s a great big beautiful tomorrow, shining at the end of every day.”
(While random, I always loved that Space Mountain quote. It made me feel very immersed in the whole ride experience.)
So, without further ado…
Tada! Here’s the final product. As far as I know, they are still for sale all over property. Tell your friends, because now is the time! Now is the best time! Now is the best time of your life — to buy one of my mugs!
In 2007, I interned at Disney Design Group. During that time, the majority of my work was done for Hong Kong Disneyland. However, I managed to get a few jobs here and there to do for fun, outside of my team. Most people who know me well, are aware of the fact I harbor a deep passion for all things EPCOT Center. Luckily, due to the popularity of EPCOT’s 25th anniversary, and the public’s willingness to spend money on throwback merchandise, I was able to snag a few jobs paying tribute to my favorite memories.
Early in my internship, I made a point to bug the pin team until they gave me an assignment (anything!). My first pin was in honor of………wait for it…….High School Musical 2! A girl has to start somewhere, at least I got to draw characters. After that, several of us non-pin interns were able to cut our teeth on awesome jumbo monorail pins, thanks to the generosity of full timer Monty Maldovan. Unfortunately we didn’t get the credit, but it was still a great opportunity.
From that point, my goal became to coat my work in as much retro EPCOTy goodness as possible. Old logos, fonts, color schemes, attractions, anything that gave the park it’s original signature look.
My monorail pin was to be Figment themed, and I was thrilled to find out they didn’t mind if I went old school with it. I started by taking elements from an illustration I had made the year previous, while practicing my Adobe Illustrator skills.
I did a really rough mockup and proceeded to ink it all out.
And here’s the final pin!
My favorite accomplishment, and the next bit of merch on my EPCOT journey, was a 5 pin set dedicated to EPCOT Center…actual EPCOT Center, not “Epcot.” This I scored because of fellow intern, Maria Clapsis, bringing my name up in a pin team meeting. I was so so so excited to get this assignment, it was to be my magnum opus.
I pretty much had free reign to go any direction I wanted, and settled on theming each one to a different future world pavillion. The worst part was only have 5 pins to work with (you mean I don’t get 12?). I’m still a little unsure as to whether I made the right choices. I figured I wouldn’t be able to make everyone happy, so I went with attractions that meant the most to me growing up.
Pin 1: Communicore
This was a fairly easy decision, hardly any merch for Communicore existed and it had a lot of cool visual possibilities. I went with the somewhat obvious choice of using SMRT-1, and later used him again in my Vinylmation figure.
Pin 2: The Land
This is the pin I had the hardest time choosing a pavilion for. Originally it was going to be for World of Motion…but honestly I don’t remember WoM that well, and Kitchen Cabaret was a childhood favorite. The other reason I abandoned WoM was that I just couldn’t get a good concept going, my heart wasn’t really in it.
This is the only version of the World of Motion pin I have in my files. It wasn’t going to be this cluttered, I promise! These are all of the elements I was considering. I quickly mocked them up so I could move them around, try things out, etc.
Pin 3: Journey Into Imagination
Easy choice, Figment, Dreamfinder, Rainbow Corridor, good stuff.
Pin 4: Spaceship Earth
This is an homage to a sweet button from the 80′s.
Pin 5: Horizons (of course!)
Last but not least, my favorite all time attraction, Horizons. This was the most fun and ended up being easily the most popular. My one regret is that I couldn’t fit the actual names of the locations on the “choose your own ending” portion. Sorry Brava Centauri.
The final piece for this post, is my SMRT-1 Vinylmation. My little purple Mickey-bot was a product of an open call among DDG artists, to submit ideas for the first set in the series. I submitted a couple other concepts, but this is the one that got picked. Because it was early in the Vinylmation process, no one really knew the limitations of what could be printed on a vinyl toy. The possibilities were seemingly endless.
Part 2 tomorrow……
Here are a couple pieces I made for the Crackerland Blog. Freddie (the flamingo) was painted using a combo of painter and Photoshop. Alligator Rides was made primarily with photoshop, and the characters were inked and colored in Illustrator.
This is something I doodled during a class on some origami paper.
I’m in the process of trying to visualize the perfect tiki bar.
Contact Me:
celestecronrath@gmail.com
