December 13, 2012
lonely loner
Posted by Kaylie at 12:21 AM 0 comments | Permalink
Labels: comic, Dinogeddon, music videos
December 3, 2012
warrior vs. mage
Posted by Kaylie at 4:33 AM 1 comments | Permalink
Labels: commissions, fantasy, magic, mystic
November 27, 2012
too real
the best advice i can give anyone is just do it. one of my biggest pet peeves is when people see other people doing something cool, like knitting, drawing, making music, whatever, and say “that’s so cool! i wish i could do that.” i’m guilty of this myself, but it makes me want to say “then just do it.” because i realized that the only thing we’re born knowing how to do is eat and poop…you gotta learn everything else. maybe someone is more predisposed to being good at something, or making it look easy, but they had to learn too, the same as you do. i realized i can get rid of the majority of my bad feelings about not being productive enough if i just be productive. my productivity still isn’t as good as others’; i’m probably quite slow by comic artist standards, and i still kick myself a bit for it, but i’m still creating. because i remember how bad and dark being at a complete stop felt. i might slow down, but i never want to let myself stop, ever again.
but i also know there are plenty of artists who are working a day job to survive like i was (and most likely will again), who have mental health problems like i do, who get worn down by the daily grind and feel less than human, like they can’t think, much less work on the things that are beneficial for their mental health and well-being anymore. i know because i was there. and they ask me what they can do, and i want to tell them “just do it,” but i know that doesn’t work when you’re in that state of mind. so i don’t know what to tell them. i wish i did.
Posted by Kaylie at 4:36 PM 0 comments | Permalink
Labels: advice, art, artists, depression, help, life, mental illness, work
November 26, 2012
after all
i'm working on many things, actually, contrary to what my inactivity on this blog would suggest...for now, sketches of Fenris from Dragon Age 2.
Posted by Kaylie at 12:53 AM 0 comments | Permalink
Labels: Dragon Age, fan art, Fenris, music videos, sketches
October 19, 2012
tell me if you like it
Posted by Kaylie at 3:09 AM 4 comments | Permalink
Labels: comic, Dinogeddon, dinosaurs, web
September 27, 2012
none
thinking about deleting this blog. i dunno.
Posted by Kaylie at 12:01 AM 3 comments | Permalink
Labels: Dinogeddon, dinosaur, Ronnie, sketches, t-rex
September 12, 2012
date with the night
Posted by Kaylie at 4:51 PM 0 comments | Permalink
Labels: comics, Dinogeddon
September 7, 2012
you party?
this is one of my favorite pages so far.
i think i'm going to challenge myself by trying to stick to a weekly update schedule. i'm thinking wednesdays. we'll see how that goes; if i can easily do it, maybe i'll work my way up to two pages a week, and so on. still working on side projects and commission stuff. we'll see!
since i live at my desk now, i've spilled honey all over my workspace, and yesterday it was silver nail polish. maybe i really am as messy as everyone says.
Posted by Kaylie at 12:55 PM 0 comments | Permalink
Labels: comics, Dinogeddon, pages, update, web
August 29, 2012
commissions
i'm currently open for commissions (you can e-mail me at tigermassacre@gmail.com if interested!). here's a few i've done recently.
this was a commission for Kelly Thompson, who is a fellow sometimes-guest on the Audioshocker's A Podcast With Ross and Nick. it's the two main characters Bonnie and Lola from her amazing upcoming YA novel The Girl Who Would Be King, which just enjoyed a very successful Kickstarter campaign.
and finally, this was for a client who wanted to incorporate some elements from my comic Dinogeddon, but with more of a Frazetta type of feeling. i got the feeling he wanted something more realistic than my style, but i think it still turned out pretty well. i really liked his idea of the gender role reversal for the fantasy trope.
Posted by Kaylie at 1:55 AM 0 comments | Permalink
Labels: art, commissions, dinosaurs
August 28, 2012
i'm gonna do the best i can
more old cartoon stuff. i really love the Cab Calloway Bettie Boop cartoons.
i find the world of 20's-40's cartoons so fascinating. it's given me an idea about doing a comic in the style, set in the 20's or 30's, and has all the dark shit and vice that is represented in cartoons of the era, like these. maybe even seriously deal with issues like racism, sexism, homophobia and stuff that was rampant in cartoons and in the attitudes of the day. i need to ferment it some more.
Posted by Kaylie at 12:20 AM 0 comments | Permalink
Labels: Bettie Boop, cartoons
August 14, 2012
story of my life.
Posted by Kaylie at 1:47 AM 0 comments | Permalink
Labels: autobiographical, hair, sketches
August 13, 2012
techno-cracked
i've been watching a lot of Flip the Frog cartoons lately, as they happen to be in a volume on netflix streaming called "forgotten cartoons," or something like that. the title is, sadly, appropriate. the volume i've been watching is all Ub Iwerks cartoons, mostly Flip the Frog and Willy Whopper. if you're like me, you probably never heard of Ub Iwerks or these characters, so i ended up looking him up, and i'm so glad i did.
Ub was a very talented artist, and was one of Walt Disney's oldest friends and collaborators. Iwerks came up with and animated the character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, which Disney eventually lost to Universal and has been in news recently for being traded back to Disney. he also created lots of early Disney characters like Clairabelle Cow, and co-created Micky Mouse, as well as animating most early Disney cartoons himself.
eventually he and Disney had a falling out, mostly over his feeling overworked and receiving little credit, and he went on to start his own studio, and employed fresh young animators such as Chuck Jones. after his own studio folded, Iwerks went back to working for Disney where he animated, pioneered special effects such as the combination of live-action and animation in Song of the South, and even designed theme park attractions for Disney theme parks. he was also the animator behind one of my favorite cartoons of all time, The Skeleton Dance. i was amazed i had never known about this guy, or Flip the Frog.
Flip cartoons have a certain charm and punkish nature i find endearing, especially compared to Disney cartoons, or even Looney Tunes at the time. for example, in the cartoon pictured above, Flip takes refuge in a spooky old house in a storm, only to find it inhabited by a scary animate skeleton, who tries to force feed him chicken bones, watches him dance with a skeletal lady, then decides Flip's skeleton would be the perfect size to add to his collection of assorted sized skeletons, and goes about trying to extract it with a large knife. in another, Flip tries to sneak out on his hotel bill in the middle of night, and in the ensuing chase with the hotel owner and a policeman, he keeps catching peeps at a shapely lady getting out of the shower (awesomely, when she catches the policeman peeping in her keyhole, she stabs him in the eye with a hat pin!). i'm a little sad that Flip was slid under the rug for so long, but glad that collections like this are bringing him back to a wide audience (including me!).
as i started watching these classic cartoons, i began to wonder what shaped them; as animation is an almost limitless medium, and these people were pioneering new frontier here, why were they so similar and formulaic? i understand that there was probably some meddling going on here from the top, like this is what sold and what people wanted to see, so make more of this, type of thing. but who started it all? why do inanimate objects suddenly spring to life? why is everything so round, jolly, bug-eyed and prone to whistling? why does everyone have noodly appendages and a penchant for sight gags? i was surprised to learn that it was all almost completely because of Iwerks. his style was what pretty much all animation aspired to be afterward.
i also find it interesting that Iwerks' cartoons were an influence for Osamu Tezuka, who saw them soon after World War II. so, in a way, Iwerks also had a hand in shaping the style of anime!
i know Iwerks is well known in many circles, but he and his work were new to me as an amateur animation enthusiast, so i thought i'd share how this little discovery has blown my mind.