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More artwork for the art intro to Kira. They’re individual because we used a sort of 3D layering process in AfterEffects to composite them into a scene.

These were originally sketched (during classes, oftentimes) in my sketchbook. Then I traced them with pencil onto tracing vellum and applied a grayscale inkwash to them. The inkwash gave them the real-media quality I was looking for.

Colors were done with PaintTool SAI and my eight-year veteran Graphire3 tablet. SAI is a godsend, especially as the recent Photoshop editions have not scaled well against my four-year old laptop. So lightweight, not a RAM-whore like Photoshop. It also provides a more “painterly” set of tools that would send me to CorelPainter, but for a fraction of the price. I highly recommend it.

While I had originally intended upon coloring the work with watercolors, after several tests I found that the primary colors of the tribes clothing ended up looking flat. Real media does not work as well with high-saturated colors, in my opinion. Unlike digital painting, you can only go down in saturation.

I got about fifteen hours of sleep pulling this together (among other things) the week before the Class Films premiered. Just, no sleep that week. At times there were eight of us pulling all-nighters in the basement of the BGC, working on editing, special effects, sound, score, and so on. Ten, our director, got even less sleep than I did (ten hours, I think?). Many spent more hours on the film—I ended up topping the sleepless leaderboard simply because I did not skip a single class. What now. Perhaps I have too much pride as a student.

Speaking of which, I’m trying to figure out ways to continue education post-college. But more on that later.