Messa's Blog

2011-08-11T23:39:00.001-07:00

You can find me elsewhere:

artofmelisom.tumblr.com

:) thanks.

New Designs

2010-06-04T10:33:00.000-07:00

Playing with character designs in the Zelda environment.

New Art

2010-06-02T17:16:00.000-07:00

Completed two new pieces. Still knee deep in internship work. :) Happily, anyway.

Hair Cut

2010-05-31T11:08:00.000-07:00

Chronicling my awesome new haircut:

It's so cute. The stylist loves it.

And if I choose to be a butthole, it can totally do this.

Here is the hair this morning, blow-dried upside down. It looks a little funny so I might not try that again. But it's very fluffy. Gonna need to research ways to style it. :)

WIP and Desktop

2010-05-25T16:27:00.000-07:00

Current personal work-in-progress. Going to be a series of music-inspired posters of fan-made musician characters. This guy's name is Jake Rivers and he's based off of Owl City's Adam Young. He daydreams of strawberry avalanches and hot air balloon rides. He missed out on his childhood so he often acts very childish.

My current desktop! I thought it looked cool. I love the hearts at the bottom, too! Perfect for summer. :)

Fanart. Sort of.

2010-05-23T02:12:00.000-07:00

Current selfish work in progress. Yeehaw. Majora's Mask is a great game, and I hope Nintendo revisits similar themes.

Commitment Sucks

2010-05-22T15:23:00.000-07:00

So I went in to revise my profile and found that I couldn't put anything down for favorites because my interests are constantly changing and they're always based on superficial reasoning.

School's Out

2010-05-22T13:45:00.000-07:00

I totally want to make more of these.

Currently wrapping up an internship for Plays for Young Audiences. Really hope it gets approved!

Also working on three book covers for Ryan Hawley. Books are about Christian religious teachings and outlines. It's a different subject matter but so far is a fun learning experience. Using a lot of photo references.

SCHOOL IS OUT! IT'S SUMMER TIME!

Hands

2010-04-13T19:11:00.000-07:00

Inked hands from comic class today. Yay!

2010-02-17T13:00:00.000-08:00

T-shirt final sketch for Product Design class where we research trendy stuff. I am the least trendy person ever, so this class will be beneficial and quite interesting.

2010-02-09T16:25:00.001-08:00

I'm gonna try and update this more. Woop woop. Just got out of comics class - my hand hurts like a mofo. Waiting for Digital Coloring for Comic Books to start up - teacher is Brian Haberlin. Google him. :D

It's also time to make something to eat. I'll scan and upload some stuff later.

Huge Update

2010-02-08T19:06:00.000-08:00

Some inks and stuff.

All stuff for my senior project.

And some random, personal stuff:

More internship sketches:

Been playing Majora's Mask (Zelda) and Drakengard 1 & 2. Awesome stuff.

2010-01-20T05:19:00.000-08:00

Some inking exercises from Comics: Materials & Techniques.

2009-12-04T19:01:00.000-08:00

Ew. I haven't blogged in awhile.

PYA Internship went fantastic. I love Michelle Wright. She's my hero right now.

I don't have too much to show - a lot of it has been school work and personal doodles to keep me sane, but I do have a lot of work that I need to be getting done. Here's a few things I've been working on for the past few weeks:

- Some character designs.

- School work.

- Other personal stuff!

Also played around with Google Sketchup for another class assignment.

Internship Update

2009-10-19T20:42:00.000-07:00

Update on that internship with PYA -

It will only be registered as one credit for now - but it may turn out to be 3 if I do more work beyond the 40-hour limit. Christine Daves (career services director) said I could transfer any more work over to Spring.

That being said. I need to get to work on these sketches. I want to have them in to the client early like I promised.

2009-10-08T14:25:00.001-07:00

Interning with Plays For Young Audiences, who is partnered with the Children's Theatre Company. It will only be a 40-hour internship (which equals 1 credit in MCADian), and I need 120 hours total. I can't take on any more internship this semester because I am already at 17 credits. If I go over 18 credits I need to pay for the extra tuition cost, which is something I... cannot afford!

That being said, I'm interning with Plays for Young Audiences!

2009-10-02T22:18:00.000-07:00

Playing around with Corel Painter X while my computer is still on a shared license... and Photoshop... and then there are some characterizations of me and two of my friends.

2009-09-30T15:34:00.000-07:00

Possible internship at the Children's Theatre Company here in Minneapolis, in case I haven't mentioned that already. Sounds like the lady really likes my stuff. I'm excited.

Yep. That's all I wanted to update with. Pretty giddy about this. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

AIS Concepts

2009-09-30T03:22:00.000-07:00

Project 3. New concepts. Completely sort of open idea, except it's supposed to be a kind of portrait + environment sort of thing. I chose stereotypes based on characterization. First one, for ideas, is my friend's character Jarrod. He's a douchebag and shops at Hollister, Banana Republic, and Abercrombie & Fitch:

Personally love the third one. Will probably go with that and the colors I selected in the second one.

2009-09-29T16:57:00.000-07:00

Sketch commission for independent client. This one was fun. I used an HB thick lead (2mm?) to sketch out the rough and went back in over it with darker lines from a mechanical 0.7mm pencil.

Another sketch commission. Same process.

Cross your fingers, my babies. I'm hoping to get an internship soon, either with illustrator Becky Dahlquist or with the Children's Theatre Company here in Minneapolis.

Life is good.

2009-09-28T21:51:00.000-07:00

Updated website layout:

New toy:

God cloud above MCAD:

2009-09-27T18:44:00.000-07:00

More sketches. From SGMS weekend and lectures @ MCAD.

And a layout I am working on:

Inspired by redvelvetart.com! Love the hand rendering look.

random sketch dump

2009-09-19T16:49:00.000-07:00

I need to learn how to make rounded corners on these white boxes. Anybody know how to do that? :(

Sketch dump:

School: Sketches

2009-08-27T12:16:00.000-07:00

Preliminary sketch for Illustrated Portrait online, of Lady Fantastic Gaga:

This next one is for Tools of the Trade, to be completed in Pen and Ink. It's based on JAWSSSSSZZZz who will eat your face.

Shark:

Shark again, practicing with tools:

Pokemon Sculpeys

2009-07-31T17:24:00.000-07:00

2009-05-04T10:49:00.001-07:00

2009-05-03T06:35:00.000-07:00

Sketchwork for Illustrated Notebook.

2009-05-03T05:37:00.000-07:00

Emir and Haythen. Emir is 18 like all of the other Japanese girls are 18. Practice with couple poses.

Professional Practice: Website Layout

2009-05-03T02:26:00.000-07:00

Finished a new website layout. It obviously needs some spots. Go me!

http://www.melisom.com

Professional Practice: Spot Illustrations

2009-04-10T09:53:00.000-07:00

Mock spot illustrations for Lifetime Fitness.

Personal: Jean and Angel Designs + Stuff

2009-03-21T00:28:00.000-07:00

I thought the dress and the colors looked really gorgeous!

Mmmm textures. I loves me some textures. Ganked from cgtextures.com.

Angel and devil designs, possibly for stickers or buttons or t-shirts or some sort of merchandise. I don't know. They're cute, though! Left is "Lucifer" and right is "St. Michael".

Inspired by instrumental music... wanted to do something dealing with a composer, or somebody who is very into the music they are creating. Almost like its magic.

Illustration Topics: Concept Sketches

2008-08-26T22:19:00.000-07:00

Concept Sketches for my first project in Illustration Topics:

The two ideas I want to work with are based off of "the art of manipulation", which I took quite literally rather than with someone just being a booger.

So the first idea is a snake in grass, manipulating its body to weave through stuff. But it's a huge snake that is tangled in itself so it's creating this funky pattern thing.

The second idea, which I think is very.. simple, is basically doing a piece on body contortion, which is where the user is manipulating their own body, right? So yeah. Carrie (my instructor) said both would create really interesting imagery so I'm probably going to go back and forth with those two.

General: New School Year

2008-08-26T22:17:00.000-07:00

Starting the fall with my second semester as a sophomore at MCAD. More posts after this!

Illustration 2: Final, Image One

2008-04-30T17:54:00.000-07:00

Below: Sebastian, in all his techno musical glory.

Below: First image for my Illustration 2 final.

General: Sketchbook Scans 2

2008-04-11T12:41:00.000-07:00

This is fresh from this morning! Just some notes on an MCAD Alumni speaker, Matthew Rezac. He's a Graphic Design/Photography kind of guy who's got some pretty neat designs. He's done a lot of designing work for MCAD and the Walker Art Center, so I think that's pretty cool. Good for him. The other doodles on the page are just.. some.. random character doodles. Yay for foxes with incredibly irregular skinny legs!

More foxes. I don't know what's up with me and foxes lately. This was inspired by the art from the PS2 game Okami. Drawn with a silver sharpie marker on the front of my moleskin sketchbook.

This is the back of the sketchbook. I got bored in class.

General: Sketchbook Scans

2008-04-11T12:30:00.001-07:00

Wow! I haven't updated this thing in awhile. I got some of those moleskin sketchbooks, $15 for 3 of them, so here's some scans from the one I'm using right now. I like these, mainly for the tinted paper and how I just discovered how cool white-out looks on it. Oh, you'll seeeeee.

Here's some ideas for my "Family" assignment from Illustration 2. They are colonial cat brothers, but I may switch it up and do three separate families of cats. I really wanted to step away from doing your typical human and just see what I could come up with as far as animals. I guess it's kind of inspired by the woman who illustrates and writes the Skippyjon Jones books where the main character is part of a Siamese cat family.

These are just some bad crappy thumbnails for Digital Illustration's assignment to illustrate one line of lyrics from a song. The line was from Metallica's No Leaf Clover: "Then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train heading your way."

This lovely thing is for my individual project in Ideation and Process. I want to create creepy looking horror/macabre children depicted in a light-colored environment, so it's like taking the happy atmosphere of children and mixing it with the unsettling, dark atmosphere of horror. I promise I'm not a sociopath. I don't know why but I just like this kind of stuff.

More for the individual project. I don't like this last one as much now that I added black lines. I like using just the pencil and the white out.

General: Sketches and Pit!

2008-03-20T23:01:00.001-07:00

SHISHI DOG!

Fanart of Pit from Kid Icarus.

General: Highlighter Doodles

2008-03-13T18:58:00.000-07:00

General: Sketchwork

2008-03-10T23:59:00.001-07:00

These are some caricatures I did during Illustration II on Monday. I want to say I got bored (well, technically I did), but these are also studies for styles or just something fun for our next assignment, which is going to be for the self portrait contest.

And this guy is just a wonky rough character (I say rough because it was quite a random doodle that I decided to ink). His head's way too big.

General: More Sketches

2008-03-06T18:55:00.001-08:00

General: Doodles, WIP

2008-03-03T23:53:00.001-08:00

Here's some art that, uh, I've been working on, I guess? The first image is just some doodles. And then the second is my WIP (work in progress) for Digital Illustration's assignment. Woohoo!

Ideation & Process: Group Project - Brainstorming

2008-02-26T14:00:00.001-08:00

Here's some notes/brainstorming on the group project we're starting in Ideation & Process.

Ideation & Process: MIA Exhibition 2

2008-02-19T12:41:00.001-08:00

River to Infinity - The Vanishing Points
Mixed media, installation view

This entire installation (which includes a stone path that viewers can walk across, two rotating headless horses, and others) calls for attention to detail through the material used to present the idea and concept of River to Infinity. The horses especially are covered entirely in a jewel-like material.

Unknown Work Information -Coming Soon-

We chose this textile piece because of the amount of detail within the texture pattern on the fabric. All of these little dots and splotches create an interesting effect.

Red-figure Hydria
Earthenware, colored slips

This Grecian vase depicts finely detailed ornamental designs--from the figures to the repetitious patterns circling around the vase.

Collage IX: Landscape, 1974
Wood

This piece was pretty obvious. The collage covers an entire wall and is composed of many small detailed pieces of wood, all of different variations of browns and grays.

Transformation Mask, 1993
Cedar, pigment, cloth, string, wood

We chose this piece because of the intricate designs placed all over the mask. It isn't fine, small detail, but the intricate work provides us with a different kind of detail--a kind that we can still appreciate.

Ideation & Process: MIA Exhibition

2008-02-19T12:20:00.001-08:00

MIA Exhibition: Detail through the Ages

This is still a big fat work in progress. Nothing's in order, but we do have our working pieces for right now. We may switch them with something else, and I need to run back to the MIA to grab some more information, but other then that, this is what we have to work with:

Mummy of Lady Teshat in Cartonnage, 1085-710 B.C.
Cartonnage of painted linen; polychromed pine coffin

We decided to feature the Mummy of Lady Teshat because of the coffin's immense amount of detail in the panels of the case.

Jade Mountain Illustrating the Gathering of Poets at the Lan T'ing Pavilion, 1784
Light green jade

This chunk of jade has a deeply detailed scenery illustrated from one side of the art piece to the other. When looked upon closer, the viewer can see even more wonderful details.

Kapkap, 20th Century
Clam shell, tortoise shell, cord, shell beads

This small disk is also a fine example of small detail that can be appreciated when looked upon. The repetition of the small designs creates a stunning image upon the small sculpture.

Storage Chest, 17th Century
Wood with mother-of-pearl, tortoiseshell and ivory veneer with silver inlay.

This storage chest from the Turkey Ottoman Dynasty is a wonderful display of attention to detail through it's elaborate patterns and design.

Kananginak Pootoogook, b. 1935
Inuit
Cape Dorset, Arctic Region

We chose this piece because of the fine details featured in the bird's feathers and body texture.

- - -

We're going with a "detail" theme. We've also seemed to cover a lot of history through these, so we may go back and enhance that some more. Many cultures through many times have shown great skill and handiwork through the detail they use in their art. It's amazing to be able to look at these wonderful pieces up close and experience the little things that make it what it is.

Group Members: Melissa Somerville, Elizabeth Rossetter, and Elizabeth Boeckman

PS - 2nd Post will include more images for the exhibition.

Ideation & Process: House Icons

2008-02-16T11:31:00.001-08:00

We had to take a house icon and alter it 15 different ways and then come up with captions, or something like that. So this is what I had come up with:

Ideation & Process: Compelling Image

2008-02-12T14:57:00.000-08:00

Assignment: Create a compelling visual based off of one of your sketches (of the frog or music alien) or the item you created (featured in the IDK post).

Ideation & Process: IDK

2008-02-12T14:54:00.000-08:00

IDK = I have no idea what this is supposed to be.

But here's a picture of what used to be a toy frog.

Illustration 2: Process Work

2008-02-04T16:36:00.000-08:00

Some more scans from my Illustration process sketch book. The image below is the divider since I have both Illustration 1 and Illustration 2 process work in the sketchbook.

The above image is more process work dealing with "secret" and "child".

Ideation & Process: Sketch Exercises

2008-02-04T16:33:00.001-08:00

Scans of some sketch exercises done in Ideation & Process.

Illustration 2: Metaphor Illustration

2008-01-31T22:44:00.000-08:00

Here is the final illustration for the metaphor "Recipe for Disaster." Size 12"x12".

Illustration 2: Sketch for Metaphor Illustration

2008-01-30T19:45:00.000-08:00

Metaphor: "Recipe for Disaster"

I wanted to play off of the idea for "recipe for disaster," so I came up with this zombie chef who is cooking, or was cooking, some monster soup and an accident happened (not sure what) and the table broke, the soup pan went flying, and so did the zombie chef's eye!

Illustration 2: 5-hour Illustration

2008-01-30T11:06:00.000-08:00

During Illustration 2, the class had to create an illustration from 1:00pm-4:45pm.

The prompt: "Plenty of Fish in the Sea"

The idea was to create a "C" shape and put fish in it. The original is close to 14"x14", and will be printed at 12"x12" for next week.

General: Sketch Book Process Scans

2008-01-29T20:23:00.001-08:00

Here are some scans from my small process sketch book. It is roughly 5"x8". It's sort of my "this is when I'm bored" or "have nothing to write on" sketch book. I have some notes in it, some reminders, and lots of doodles.

This next one is from my illustration process book. The sketches are from my first Illustration 2 assignment.

Ideation & Process: Childhood Map - More Images

2008-01-23T18:26:00.001-08:00

Ideation & Process: Childhood Map

2008-01-23T18:19:00.001-08:00

Assignment: Create a map from your childhood home to MCAD/the classroom.

Process: I cut up a big piece of bristol paper and used paint markers, colored pencils, and sharpie to create the images on the bristol. I then stitched the "path" with my roommate's gold string. Thank you, Storm. Once it was done I took pieces of tape to reinforce the papers together so that they would fold up.

Approach: I wanted to depict some sort of child-like project, so I kept with a really sloppy child-like style and gradually refined it (or tried to) as I went further along to the paper panels representing parts of my life like middle school and high school. It basically maps my life chronologically.

More pictures will be posted in the next post. :)

Ideation & Process: Other Maps

2008-01-19T11:29:00.000-08:00

During our first Ideation & Process class, we were also given two other "map" exercises. The first exercise had us draw three different maps showing how to get from our dorm room to our classroom.

My three maps were very simple. I guess when I heard the assignment I took it quite literally; I'm not very creative sometimes.

Our second exercise had us create a map showing how to get from the classroom to the main auditorium on the first floor... on a couple of conditions: 1) we were not allowed to draw anything, and 2) we were only allowed to use words, but not any proper nouns.

I do believe my version of this exercise shows a little bit more creativity (though not much) than the other 3 maps, simply because I thought it would be cool to form the words into a map themselves, so if you had no idea what I was talking about, you at least had some kind of direction to guide you.

And that's pretty much it.

Side Note: Link is © to The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass; Nintendo

Ideation & Process - 3D Map

2008-01-17T15:42:00.000-08:00

Assignment: Create a 3D Map that directs from room 432 to the coldest place on the first floor of the main MCAD building.

Extra: The class was allowed 13 minutes to retrieve any materials they could get their hands on. However, if anyone returned late, they were not allowed to use any of the materials they found and could only use the materials that they had with them in class.

The materials I used included notebook paper, cardboard, and tape grabbed from the service bureau.

Process: I basically used the same process that Kinji Akagawa preached about in Foundation: 3D. "Just do, Daniel-san." So I just did, and I formed the main MCAD building using a small piece of rectangular-shaped cardboard. I then took strips of notebook paper that form the "floors" or "levels" of the building: 1st floor, 2nd floor, 3rd floor, and 4th floor. They are labeled (backwards, so that when you look into the box, you read them correctly).

The south stairs were then made using two more strips of notebook paper that were then folded back and forth to create a, sort of, "paper accordion". I then took the fringed edges of the notebook paper and used strips of that as a "path" to show the user where to go.

The end destination is marked by a shape that resembles a star (I would say it was a star, but as we all now know I cannot hand-rip recognizable stars). I also used some paper to mention another set of stairs located on the first floor. This serves as a landmark to help the user locate the "star", or destination.

Introduction

2008-01-17T01:13:00.000-08:00

Hello! My name is Melissa, and this blog is serving as an online record of class assignments and exercises. It will only be used for my school work at this time. If you are curious about other work that I do, I suggest you mosey on over to my deviantART.

If you have any questions, feel free to drop me a line at melissa_somerville@mcad.edu.