Wow has it been a long time since I posted. But I just created a short animation in Anime Studio to test something stylistically, and I thought I’d share it with you.

Written by Maggie Gallant, co-directed by Erik and Maggie, art and editing by Erik. We had fun making this thing, and now I hope Maggie will work with me on an animation project we’ve been talking about for a while.

We did it in honor of the book launch. Yep, there is a book of the best of Dog a Day, 120 pages of full color images hand-picked by Erik and organized by month. It’s a beautiful book, if I don’t say myself. It will soon be available through CreateSpace and Amazon, and I’ll post details when it is. If you’re interested in a book, they’re $20 plus $3 shipping and handling. I’ll even personalize it and draw a simple little sketch in it. I’ll be selling them through this site, as well, but  if you’re interested just contact me and we’ll work it out.

Another try with the Facebook Graffiti app, which allows you to draw using some very simple tools, and then play back a video of the creation process. I’m not turning out great art (by a long stretch) using this app, but it is fun, and I have fun watching the playback.

I’m teaching Anime Studio to kids right now, and here’s a piece I did in class to show some different techniques. I’ve fully rigged up the dog for animation and created a series of different facial features, then animated it. No story, just showing some of the stuff this bulldog can do.

Not graffiti as in “sprayed on a building,” Graffiti as in the Facebook app. I finally tried Facebook and found this simple drawing program, with which I created this as a quick test. It also creates videos of the creation process, which you can watch below.

I decided to use the Spore Creature Creator to do one of my dogs. You can get your own version (there’s a free demo and a full version, I went free) right here. Above, you’ll see a picture of my “dog”, below, you can see the video of the little fellow showing off.

Thanks to a feature in Corel Painter, I can capture the process of doing a quick cartoon sketch. My process anyway, from large rough shapes in a light color to the final inking and applying just a bit of wash.  This is another quick sketch, but there’s something in this guy’s face that I like.

This is a simple test of a dog rigged for animation using Anime Studio (rigging means putting in a “skeleton” to use in animation, it’s more common in 3D). This helps me spot problems before doing full animations. There are a few problems, but I’m close to ready to use this for running, jumping and other more difficult animation challenges.

This is slightly updated from the one that went up at midnight, as I fixed some problems with the chest not changing volume during the stretch (it was getting way too thin) and the front leg bulging out oddly.