Amber Gail - Animation Artist

Chicken or Beef

2011-12-05T23:24:00.001-05:00

I have not been doing much wedding art but I am using this on the invites. It's a wedding chicken.

Sunset Bachelor

2011-11-07T00:18:00.002-05:00

I developed a generic male character, then felt it would be best to have him look more like an aging mobster who wears suits coloured like sunsets.

Snow Girl

2011-09-19T21:12:00.000-04:00

Skunk

2011-09-19T13:37:00.000-04:00

Cat Designs

2011-09-16T23:43:00.000-04:00

Danny Don't

2011-08-22T22:27:00.002-04:00

I had recently been working on some traditional media illustrations for a baby book for my newborn nephew to discourage him from following in some of my older brother's more unusual footsteps.

Pictured here are - eating nothing but cornflakes, putting french fried on burgers, growing an unemployment beard, and his sleeping to his rooster alarm clock he got as a child from a Kellogg's mail in.

Female figure drawings

2011-08-22T21:59:00.003-04:00

Ink and Colour for Renae de Liz's Wonder Woman Redesign

2011-07-28T14:50:00.005-04:00

Download the full size images for the colour and line art versions.

I inked and coloured Renae De Liz's Wonder Woman redesign. The sketch and original post can be seen here. Renae is the manager of the new Womanthology project.

Amro Suraqan

2011-07-24T22:46:00.004-04:00

I was invited to participate in the 100th exchange round of an invite only group. Amro belongs to Rachel W.

Positive Female Relationships

2011-07-13T00:06:00.005-04:00

"Bromance" gets tossed around so much that I thought it would be nice to do a drawing that celebrates the positive female relationships and role models I've had. I would be nowhere without having had them.

Dr Sketchy's Toronto

2011-07-04T23:21:00.004-04:00

I brought my wacom and macbook with me after work to session 77 of Dr Sketchy's in Toronto. These are 10 minute poses.

Lady Pirate

2011-06-25T12:12:00.004-04:00

Colours are very much toned down in this version. The WIP files have hair which is basically pale green.

Bubble Gum

2011-06-25T11:40:00.001-04:00

I sketched this girl last Thanksgiving weekend and I thought it would be nice to do a simple colour version that was fun and not too busy.

Strawberry Boy

2011-06-14T23:06:00.002-04:00

Saw a pretty boy on the train today with strawberry lips.
All I want to do lately is draw and paint. Better and better and more and more and more.

Male Figures

2011-06-11T10:23:00.001-04:00

Merlin

2011-05-01T23:26:00.002-04:00

Variations on a theme of this previous conceptual image. This is not the format I will be working in for the final product but it's helpful to explore the character in a comfortable way of working before moving on to that next stage.

Love Birds

2011-05-01T21:44:00.004-04:00

I made these images for two very good friends.

Easter Chalk Art

2011-04-27T16:47:00.019-04:00

These are photos of the finished chalk images I did for Jedd's Frozen Custard. The bunnies were for Easter and the flowers are more for spring. Go enjoy them in the space they were designed for and grab some delicious coffee and custard!

Dancing Bunnies

2011-04-19T14:32:00.008-04:00

My student film from 2010

2011-03-09T01:22:00.002-05:00

Kozak Mating Dance from Amber Holowaychuk on Vimeo.

Sheridan College 4th year graduate film.

A Ukrainian cossack and his lover are happy together before he leaves to defend her - then discovers upon his return that she has taken up with another man!
The story is told through Ukrainian folk dance to a Ukrainian folk song Розпрягайте, хлопці, коні (Unhitch the Horses, Boys).
Film by Amber Gail Holowaychuk (www.ambergail.com)

Music by Bohdan Slavutych Jr.

Sung by Nadine Veroba and Bohdan Slavutych Jr.

All animation was done digitally in Digicel Flipbook 6 for Mac. Just my laptop and my tablet and me on a couch for 8 months!

Lyrics translated-

Unhitch the horses, boys
And lay down and relax
As I go into the green orchard
To dig an orchard well

Chorus:
Marusya* - one, two, three - kalyna**
The dark-haired girl who picks orchard berries.<

I know, I know, dear girl
How I have offended you
Because I spent all of last night
Exchanging words with another

Chorus x2

She is not yet a fully grown lady
And is still young in years
Her dark hair, braided, reaches her belt
And the braid contains a darling pale blue ribbon

Chorus

* Marusya is a common girls name.
** Kalyna is the viburnum opulus, a local plant which has cultural symbolic significance. In this song its use makes reference to virginal beauty. Historically, young women promised to plant kalyna on the graves of cossacks who died in battle.

Young lady and cat

2011-02-22T04:59:00.000-05:00

Vector

2011-01-31T01:45:00.006-05:00

I did some freelance work for Social Game Universe toward the end of last year. Here is a small sample of my work on that project.

Girls

2011-01-03T15:53:00.003-05:00

Life Drawings and Portraits

2010-12-23T23:47:00.006-05:00

Christmas Chalk Art

2010-11-26T00:59:00.006-05:00

These are photos of the finished chalk images I did for Jedd's. Traditional media pieces have the best impact in person, so if you have a chance to go down and see them in person I would strongly encourage you to do so!

Chalk Art Sketches

2010-11-23T23:10:00.003-05:00

I was recently contracted by Jedd of Jedd's Frozen Custard to decorate the chalkboards of his cafe with original art for Christmas. These are the mockups I did to work from. Some of the designs look better in pencil! I will post the finished chalk art next time, but you can go check them out in person already if you are in the Toronto area. It was a great experience. Go visit Jedd!

Mad Men

2010-11-16T23:00:00.003-05:00

This is something a bit more fun! I love these characters, they're so deliciously terrible for each other. They're a nice ying/yang sort of pair visually. Joan with her fair skin and orange locks, and Roger with his terrible tan and great big head of white hair. Love em!

Royal Winter Fair '10

2010-11-16T21:50:00.007-05:00

These are a couple loose digital sketches I did on location at the RWF recently. We went every year in college, and although I didn't love doing it then, it somehow just felt right to go again.

Conté Ladies from July

2010-09-25T21:52:00.006-04:00

In the period after I graduated, when I was not working, I enjoyed a healthy amount of life drawing sessions. I am going tomorrow for the first time since my last session and am looking forward to it quite a bit.

First Nations Character Designs

2010-09-22T14:35:00.010-04:00

I was recently hired to do some character designs for a children's video game called The Meeting Place by Bitcasters, a small games company in Toronto. Here are some of the rough works and finished illustrations I was especially happy with! Not all of the designs made it into the game in the state they are here, though most of them were.

I very much enjoyed working on this project! The cultural costumes were especially inspiring. I'd like to try animating some of these designs some day soon.

Using an interactive map quest, The Meeting Place addresses a variety of topics including: bullying, smoking, alcohol, solvents, family violence, suicide drugs, depression and anxiety. The map walks children down paths that they may encounter in their own communities and daily lives, and introduces them to community settings and characters that represent lessons to be learned about making good choices. Content and functionality helps children identify where to go for help in various scenarios. Intended for children aged 10 and older, this program was developed and designed by Bitcasters using CAMH content.

Teaser Concept Image

2010-08-01T19:11:00.002-04:00

I'm not going to say a lot about this. Her name is Merlin. It's a concept I've been moving forward with and developing further. Look forward to more of this in the future!

Café Sketch

2010-07-07T00:21:00.002-04:00

A fancy lady in black with a little bit of Satrapi influence. I read her book Embroideries today.

Two 15 minute figures

2010-06-13T15:34:00.005-04:00

I've been going to life drawing classes outside of the school now that I've graduated. I'm a bit afraid that I would lose my drawing skills if I don't! There wasn't much time at all to go to life drawing sessions while I was animating my 4th year film at Sheridan, and now I can see that my animation drawings are a bit weaker than I feel they could be if I studied figure drawing more diligently. Here's a couple from today!

Harmony Sketches

2010-06-08T19:31:00.005-04:00

You can make some of your own here. It's a free online sketching program called Harmony. Lots of cool effects! I drew a topless sunbather, a Manhattan mother, and a night boating mouse.

Thesis Film Background Painting

2010-05-21T22:44:00.005-04:00

Some of the backgrounds I painted for my thesis film project.

DEMO REEL

2010-04-28T12:18:00.006-04:00

DEMO REEL Amber Gail Holowaychuk from Amber Holowaychuk on Vimeo.

01) Kozak Mating Dance - 0:03, 0:08, 0:12, 0:20, 0:22, 0:24, 0:28, 0:41
• All Character and Environment Design
• Animation (paperless in Digicel Flipbook 6 for Mac)
• Layout and Paint (Photoshop)
• Colour (Digicel Flipbook 6 for PC)
• Compositing (After Effects)
02) Higher Education - 0:05, 0:06, 0:17, 0:19
• Environment Design
• Involved in Character Design
• Animation and Layout on paper
• Background Paint - Photoshop
• Colour - Photoshop
• Compositing - After Effects
03) Higher Education - 0:13
• Environment Design
• Involved in Character Design
• Animation and Layout on paper
• Character Colour in Photoshop
• Beard Interaction in Photoshop
• Compositing in After Effects
04) Exercise Action Analysis - 0:33
• All Character and Environment Design
• Animation and Layout on Paper
• Animation and Colour in Photoshop
• Compositing in After Effects
05) Voice - Patrick Stewart from "Jeffrey" - 0:37
• Animation in Maya
• Vocal Breakdown in Magpie Pro
• Compositing in After Effects
Demo reel assembled in Premiere Pro

The music in the demo reel is Korobushko by Bond, used without permission.

Kozak Mating Dance Poster

2010-04-24T06:24:00.000-04:00

Sheridan Flipbook 2010

2010-04-09T22:07:00.003-04:00

This is the page I put together for the industry book this year. The arrows behind the characters were intended to show the direction of the movement as well as the direction you should "read" the images. Marusya across the top goes from left to right, while Bohdan across the bottom is read from right to left. Dance dance dance! Gogogo!

Production on my film is now essentially complete! Most of what I am choosing to do for it now is all gravy, icing on the cake, window dressing. An exciting time to be me!!... after I get some sleep =_=

Thesis Film Movement Analysis

2010-04-02T00:32:00.004-04:00

These three composite images were put together to go in a display case in the college this week. Overall I'm happy with them. They're a bit interesting because, if you look carefully at them, you can see that I've cheated each of those three movements in different ways.
The top one was a challenge for me because I first approached it as though I was hitting key poses. I looked at many reference videos to discover that although it is a very simple, straight forward dance step I was needing to cover a lot of ground very quickly. The footwork was so fast that I found the best way to tackle that movement was to approximate the foot positions (which is the area that was giving me the most trouble) in the live action video references and to sell the rest of it with the center of balance of the characters in each frame.
The second composite image was a step I don't feel worked too well as an animation, and I can't quite decide what I would have changed to get it to work more efficiently in motion. Rather than using a lot of squash and stretch in my animation for this film I made a conscious decision to hit poses very crisply and to use lots of secondary action on the hair and clothing to follow through along the arcs. Kaj Pindal gave me the advice to hit the poses immediately as he said that "that's what dancers are really trying to do". That's all well and good when it's not a long, continuous movement like this one. The constant changes in the body posing doesn't give the eye much opportunity to rest. I did my best to compensate for that problem here by using the arms to follow the hips just slightly in their rotation.
The third image was the first piece of physical dance animation I had done for my thesis film. There is a huge perspective change for that character in the scene, and the angle he is moving in along the z-axis is a pretty piss poor one for showcasing the center of balance of the character that is allowing him to make such a broad movement in the first place. The character design helps out here. His jacket keeps moving while he himself is not, as always. The sudden whip of his arm does read as being a large transfer of weight and sudden torque in the body. The relative speed with which he takes off is not realistic but, I felt, necessary for such a hefty character to supposedly become airborne. The last pose in that set, where he opens his body, is probably my favourite in the whole film... a silly little aside for anyone who bothered to read this far! Haha. Not as a drawing in itself, but for the way it feels in motion.

It may be worth throwing in a mention here that the bottom row on each image was the rough animation for the sequence shown above. I've been working entirely digitally, in Digicel Flipbook, if anyone was curious about that.

Thesis Film Coloured Animation

2010-03-26T17:51:00.004-04:00

Click here to view the clip if the embedded video will not play for you. This is the scene I have been showing work from on this blog. That's all on this front for now! The film will be done in another couple of weeks. For now, try to imagine it with music and a background and... you know... the rest of a film surrounding it!

De Colores

2010-03-21T13:25:00.005-04:00

There are many characters in my thesis film, and even though I'm shamelessly rocking a liberal amount of animation reuse, they all need to be coloured. A little bit of planning goes a long way here.

It's all very Beauty and the Beast! Green, red and yellow like the Bimbettes. That was not my inspiration for the colour choices, guys really do wear pants in those different colours with their folk costumes. I like that it has that similarity though.

Whenever I work on colour design I always want to sing De Colores.

Animation Equivalent of the Cutting Room Floor

2010-03-12T12:53:00.003-05:00

I had been developing some scenes which got the axe fairly recently. Here's a comp of some rough work from one of those.

Thesis Film Clean Up Frame

2010-03-06T16:47:00.001-05:00

Not doing much these days other than working on my film! So you get some more of that.

Looser Life Drawings

2010-02-27T13:13:00.005-05:00

The comment I most regularly get on my life drawings is that I am fearless, and I'm not really sure that's reflected in the body of works I consciously show to others after the fact. I'm not afraid of making a big mess on the page, or just doing something because it feels right. My reasoning for that is that, if you are only as good as the weakest piece in your portfolio or demo reel, the worst drawings you make are really the ones you should be working on the most.

I don't think I'm unique in the unfortunate reality that I sometimes get too caught up drawing tiny, detailed sections that really don't contribute to the overall strength of a piece of artwork. I did feel that, maybe only for today, it might be nice to put up a more accurate reflection of what my "visual handwriting" is. Balls-to-the-walls fearlessness and defining the figure with tone and shape rather than a refined line drawing.

Thesis Film Inbetween

2010-02-19T03:30:00.002-05:00

Hard at work on my film! I'm busy making this kind of "unimpressed" face at drawings on my laptop screen.

Old Working Boards

2010-02-13T10:06:00.004-05:00

These were the working rough boards for my thesis film from the middle of September of last year. It's bittersweet to look at for me now - the huge chunks I've reworked, the original intent of what I was trying to do, the large amount of horses I was able to remove entirely. As a matter of personal preference I feel compelled to say that boarding this particular short film was a very frustrating thing for me. I was beating myself in the face with culture shock, getting lots of feedback from people without any previous experience with Ukrainian culture. Some of the comments I got you would not believe! It wasn't making it easier to get at what the issues with the boards really were.

Colour Studies and Exploration

2010-02-05T23:48:00.005-05:00

I went through a whole lot of exploration of colour before I deciding on the colour styling for my film. Ultimately, I thought it would be best to stick to jewel tones and warmer shades, without straying too far towards a "cartoony" colour palette.

I started with the colour bars, making sure to cover the few variations I thought might be appropriate for this film at each approximate time of day. After building up the colour studies I weighed in on what I thought would be most effective for the content of each individual scene. Most of my opinions on those little decisions changed when I put my choices together, side by side.

Below you can see my working colour palette for the film. Kozak Mating Dance is ending up with much more red in it that I had set out thinking it would. I'm very glad I did this work, if only to have had the good sense to remove the whole "evening" palette from consideration. I think I've hit on something that works! As you can see, the workflow test scene a couple posts down is from the first colour section, in the top left corner.

Animating Dance

2010-01-29T21:20:00.002-05:00

Animating dance has been a truly challenging, engaging, and rewarding experience for me. Never before have I felt this level of appreciation, consideration of, and care for what I am animating. I wish I had better words for communicating what this is like. Now, if only I wasn't on the 200 drawing a day diet (which is meatier than it sounds) I could really get in to breaking down the movement and caricaturing it for animation!

Thesis Film Test Scene

2010-01-22T15:32:00.006-05:00

Click here to watch this clip if the embedded video does not work for you. Our most recent milestone deadline asked for by the school was to work an entire scene through our pipeline. I definitely have some opinions about what I still would like to change in this scene! Still, I do feel it was important to see what sort of quality I can churn out under the time restrictions I've set for myself for this project.

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-25T12:55:00.009-05:00

My Christmas card from this year - happy holidays, everybody!

CHRISTMAS BREAKFAST SPECIAL!
Why yes, those ARE scrambled eggs with food colouring! The drinks are eggnog lattes, made with an ethiopian ground and sprinkled with cocoa. My favourite part of breakfast - Ms. Ecks gingerbread men! Faces and boots drawn on with my precious Wilton Foodwriter. Nothing fancy about the toast but a spread of raspberry jam and cream cheese with a side of apples at least keeps the colour scheme!

BG test

2009-11-21T00:13:00.002-05:00

Not sure where I'm going with this whole "art direction" thing, but I'm steadily chipping away at it.

Royal Winter Fair '09 Horses

2009-11-13T16:34:00.001-05:00

My best pieces from the fair today. There are horses in my thesis film so I really did my best to learn to like drawing them.

Pivoting Stencil

2009-11-07T22:45:00.000-05:00

"Stars whose explosive deaths spread complex atoms..."

Heavily inspired by complex binary networks.

Frankenstein Hallowe'en Bartender

2009-10-26T16:23:00.000-04:00

$2.50 for an eyeball, $1.50 for an ear

Recent costumed figures

2009-10-18T23:59:00.000-04:00

A 1 minute, followed by two 3 minutes, then a 15 minute, a 5 minute and finally two 10 minutes.
My instructor gave me some helpful feedback in the bottom corner of the 15 minute portraiture piece, but nobody needs to see that so I've blanked out the negative space.

Luma Cakes

2009-09-03T09:24:00.001-04:00

LUMA CAKES!
Nothing too fancy here, your basic yellow cake made in star-shaped silicone bakeware. I coated with royal icing and drew the eyes in with a Wilton Foodwriter. The Lumas are a bit lumpy looking because I added shredded coconut to the icing. You could skip the icing and dye the cake batter directly, but I doubt it would look as pretty.

Some very Ukrainian poses

2009-07-23T20:25:00.000-04:00

Getting my nerd on! If there's anything I love as much as art and animation, it's folk dance.

All the work I've been doing lately is not work I am able to put online ): I will just have to work harder!

Pen doodle

2009-05-05T22:36:00.001-04:00

It's hard to keep in mind some days that what I'm really doing here is "living the dream".

Film Frames

2009-04-10T15:36:00.000-04:00

Last weekend I'm working on the group film for school! It's very exciting stuff.

Storytelling, supposedly

2009-03-18T21:56:00.000-04:00

I know there is something distinctly uninteresting in posting more life drawings - truthfully, the nice thing about doing this is that it forces me to look at them and learn from them just one more time. You know, rather than hiding them in a corner of my apartment before moving them to the recycling bins outside.

Also, a photo of me in NYC, as visual proof that I really am drawing other things outside of school.

4th Year Story Concept

2009-03-12T22:41:00.000-04:00

Without getting into explaining the concept itself, two little pieces of artwork which maybe-kinda-sorta communicate something. The story is about being awkward and how hilarious children are.

Birth of a Puppet

2009-02-22T22:17:00.000-05:00

An exoskeleton, heads baking in the oven, and the always popular under-the-skirt shot.
I've been considering doing my personal film next year in stop motion, so no time like the present to start messing around with building puppets! I figure getting started with that now will give me a rough idea of how improbable an idea this is for me. So, I'm giving birth! It's almost like I'm a woman or something.

Four Doors

2009-02-06T19:21:00.000-05:00

I made this painting in Florence, Italy - sitting on the floor, opening all the doors in the house, ignoring strange looks from people going up the stairs. Fixed it up a little tonight digitally to make it look the way I wanted.

2 min Costumed Life Drawing

2009-01-31T20:06:00.000-05:00

There's some weird stuff going on around the skirt/sleeve tangent, but there's still something about this drawing I like. It's a bit cutsie-poo.

Action Analysis

2009-01-03T23:36:00.000-05:00

A few detail images of the texture and shading I did for the layout of my animation assignment this semester.

The animation was an action analysis, a side step. Some of the earlier conceptual development, along with the original story reel the animation belongs to, can be seen here. The animation was done as lineless pixel art, and so most of the detail has been lost from the high res file.
The completed animation, yay!

Make the people laugh

2008-12-04T23:24:00.000-05:00

Yet another one of these walk things.
Just think! Next week I'll have honest to goodness real 2D animation to show off.

A ridiculous amount of back views

2008-12-04T23:16:00.000-05:00

Two 5 minutes poses, followed by two 10s... why was it all the back views which worked out best today? Boo.

Baby Steps

2008-11-22T00:01:00.000-05:00

I'm a touch embarrassed to say it's my first ever puppet walk. I did play around with a bit of a step last week and also a bit of a clay... thing. It can only get better from here?

Inaccurate colour

2008-11-20T07:45:00.000-05:00

A more stylized approach to life drawing! A 2 min, a 5 min, and two 10s.

Made on a Mac

2008-11-16T21:02:00.000-05:00

A design I did for the animation T-shirt submission. I wanted it to look a bit like the little man that they have on the Wii which tells you not to smack in to random objects around your house with the controller.

Royal Winter Fair '08

2008-11-12T21:51:00.001-05:00

A little bit of colour, a little bit of tone.

More Puppet Work

2008-11-07T19:07:00.000-05:00

Another timed test, following general parameters for action and movement.

We were instructed to do a simple MS arm wave to study successive breaking of joints in detail. This was my second attempt at the exercise. I followed it up with a more complex variation of the blahblah more stuffy language. If you watch it you will see!

Figure in colour

2008-11-03T10:45:00.000-05:00

A 20 minute pose, done in nupastel. I didn't have any nice subdued neutrals in my pile of colours so I had to get creative with the hair and chair.

Studies of Character and Culture

2008-11-02T01:00:00.000-04:00

Engaged Scrooge from Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Acrylic on illustration board.

Stop Motion Exercises

2008-10-19T21:23:00.000-04:00

A timing test, following a specific path and other restrictions set by the instructor.

Learning how include bent legs in puppet animation and all that that implies.

Gestures from the first few weeks back

2008-10-09T22:55:00.000-04:00

30 seconds, 1 and 2 minute poses, in that order.

Action Analysis WIP

2008-10-09T21:01:00.000-04:00

Starting off on a new blog! First upload is the rough design pack (as you can tell by all the labelling) for the major personal animation project we're working on this semester. The turn around looks a bit haggard, I was frustrated with all the traditional redrawing and decided just to take it in to digital. Hopefully the redesign after animating will save me there.

Below is my 30 second story reel for the same project. The section the rough design pack pertains to is a 5 second scene towards the end.