Thursday, December 17, 2009

Holidays Etc.

During these poor economic times with the holidays upon us I thought I'd dig up some of my cartoons to post.



More to come. ^__^

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Desert Bus for Hope

Really entertaining and exciting things happening! I've been watching Desert Bus for Hope this week. For those not aware already Desert Bus for Hope is a charity gaming marathon put on yearly by Loading Ready Run for the Child's Play charity.

The 3rd annual event started 9pm EST, this past Friday and they've been playing the most boring driving simulator, Desert Bus, from Pen and Teller's Smoke and Mirrors and doing what Loading Ready Run does best as an intenet comedy video group. All this in the name of collecting as much donation funds as they can possibly accomplish so that sick kids will have games to play during hospital stay. This year they are doing phinominally well with donations having more than tripled their first year's totals in less time than the duration of the first year's event!





There are even more exciting things happening this time round! For example, Ken Steacy, well known illustrator for George Lucas publications and on titles such as Astro Boy and The Real Ghostbusters, was in attendance yesterday to auction off some of his illustrations. He is planning to return later today to auction some more items. Ken Steacy's website is at http://www.kenspublishing.com/.

His son, Alex Steacy, a part-time member of Loading Ready Run and friend of mine was in BC this year to help them out with technical operations and camera overlays which has made the facade more graphically involved. Alex has also been involved in part of the comedy performance and donation challenges such as having gone to see the dreaded Twilight dressed as a vampire himself along with other LRR member Jeremy Petter. Matt Wiggins went to the movie but had to make up for not having suited up complete with eyeliner. He succeeded in doing so with Gay Bar performance found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9mF3mISUeo/.

Tune in to Desert Bus for Hope at http://desertbus.org/ to view their drivercam broadcast which is quite hilarious and their bus cam feed to see the game as they are playing it. Loading Ready Run regular videos may be found on YouTube or on their own website at http://loadingreadyrun.com/.

Friday, October 16, 2009

New site very soon to come at digitalseahorse.ca which should include some interesting Flash design.
I just downsized a little demo for web viewing.
http://digitalseahorse.ca/video/smallSCAcity.mov

Friday, September 11, 2009



Here's my latest extensively digital artwork. It was inspired by a few of Alex Steacy's characters from his comic script 'The Tower.'

What I learned from doing this was not to keep too many layers going all at once because it bogs things down way too much. I also learned that while photo reference is ok at times it should be used with caution and knowledge of how it effects perception. Prints available by request at danielle@digitalseahorse.com.

Image is copyright Danielle Pepin and DigitalSeahorse.

Beginning of comic by Alex Steacy may be found here:
http://www.eximworks.org/thetower/phpslideshow.php?directory=.&currentPic=0

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Photoshop Composite Dragons

Here's a composite I did a few years ago and more recently had printed and made into buttons. It's composed of seven images taken on my old Canon Powershot A540. It was fun to make and gives an idea of how creative one can be with photo compositing in Photoshop. Click image to view in full size.

Friday, June 5, 2009

I love doing this stuff as a hobby and even after doing it for a living for a few years it still doesn't get old. My background includes CMYK colour matching and photo manipulation for print. The radio in my previous post is a great example of the level of quality and complexity of projects I have done. The radio project had a deadline of a week's time and this small 8-ball was done in only 15 minutes at the most.


Thursday, June 4, 2009

Digital Radio

A while ago I learned how to create anything photo realistically from scratch in Photoshop. Simple things like gradients and drop shadows on shape selections can prove amazingly similar to the real thing. As you can see from the layers pallet in this radio example I made there are many complex layers, even for each dial and element. The mesh speaker alone is comprised of 8 including adjustment layers.



I no longer have the reference used though it wasn't an exact duplicate and still looks very much like the real thing at a glance nonetheless.


Wednesday, June 3, 2009

SCA Award Show / Digital Media Arts Graduation

I graduated in April from Digital Media Arts program at Seneca College. Now having a bit more time on my hands and need to share my work, I'll be posting some of the things I've worked on that are portfolio worthy and deserve attention.

The last motion graphics piece I produced was for the SCA Media Award Show intro sequence.



I designed the look after being given a general idea of a Roman and Coliseum theme and idea of camera trucking through a Roman city. The archways were drawn fully by me and the surrounding buildings were made to match the style of the drawings. I made textures for the ground and drawn buildings and composed the animation in combustion. Music is a clip from Mozart 7th Symphony. The rest of the animation and stills made for the show other than the logo already produced was matched to the look of my clip as well. I kept thinking while making it, "Rome wasn't built in a day...it was a week!" I managed to meet the tight deadline and was able to assist others in meeting theirs as well after my part was finished.



My segment as you see here was later stitched together with a logo segment before it and a clip after it entering the Coliseum to a main still frame from other animators and presented on a large screen PowerPoint spider system of 2240x768 pixel size.



I was glad to work on and attend the show and all of the people on the team did a great job. Most of them I would gladly work with again.



Full size animation can be viewed here for those patient enough to wait for the QuickTime to load: http://digitalseahorse.ca/video/smallSCAcity.mov

A smaller example of in class work that the intro was based off of may be viewed here:
http://digitalseahorse.com/SCA/Pepin_Danielle_Room3D.mov