When in Rome...

More than a week without posts, I better have a good reason! Well I do, or at least I like to think so: I was in Rome for a week for my honeymoon. Me and Daphne got married back in May, but because I was so busy with graduating we planned our honeymoon in October. We had a great time in Rome. It is a beautiful city with great people and the best food!

I also brought my sketchbook and I did a few sketches, I focussed mostly on the surroundings; buidlings, statues, trees etc. Here are some of my sketches, I'll post some more later this week.  

Storyboard Workshop

Have I got something for all you people out there interested in the simple art of storyboarding: During the special edition of the fantastic Klik Animation Festival there will be a workshop on storyboarding, presented by Mister Daan Jippes and myself!

The Klik special edition (special in that it is only lasting one day this year, so I guess it's a limited edition as well) is on Saturday November 5th at Kriterion in Amsterdam. We will give a short presentation on the role of storyboarding over at the American studios, after which I will pitch a short storyboard. After my presentation Daan will review my work, live on stage. He will do this as he draws over my panels, to show how they could have been improved. This will be a confronting but (hopefully) fun experience. 

We hope this workshop will give you valuable insight in the story process, and the diferences between the American and the Dutch approach. Daan's juicy stories about the different studios he worked at are, of course, always a blast!

Ticets are €8,50 (or €30,00 for a daypass), the workshop starts at 11am and will last 90 minutes. I hope to see you all there!

This picture should give you some idea of what the workshop will feel like, it was taken during my intenrship with Daan and shows me pitching a board, as Daan offer suggestions on how to improve it. (Of course the actual workshop will be at least five times more glamorous than this picture!)

Looking Solid

A rather quick sketch of Old Snake; the Metal Gear hero as he appears in Metal Gear Solid 4. I want to do a more dynamic drawing of him, this was mainly a study to get the likeness and to try some more sketchy techniques. When I get the time I want to use this sketch to do a cooler, more action packed Snake. 

I love the original designs by Yoji Shinkawa, Ashley Wood's versions are also fantastic. To be honest I have never played MGS4. I am an X-Box owner, so I just never had the chance. I am looking foward to that HD package that is coming to 360 and PS3 next month!

Ink and marker on paper. 

Skater Boy

Character sketches from school project from last year. This was part of the original approach of my graduation project; a story of a young hipster girl who falls in love with the non-hip, fat skater pictured above. Although that story didn't work out at the time I might revisit it some other time. I've got the feeling that there might be more there, than I originally thought.

My Digital Scrapbook

During my graduation project I was asked to create a Tumblr blog to document my research. Now I'm not a big fan of Tumbr; I sincerely hate the way their interface works. (Good luck to you, if you wish to customize the appearence of your Tumblr blog.)

But at the same time I quite like Tumblr as a way to share stuff. I've always liked to keep scrapbooks with all kind of influences, and Tumblr is a real easy way to share somthing similar with the world.

So I started a second aapstra blog, it will in no way replace this existing blog. Instead it will be the place where I will post the stuff that inspires me. As you might have seen I have added a permanent link to my Tumblr on the right. Please check it out, if you've got the time: aapstra.tumblr.com

Faun

These are some studies of fauns for this small side project I'm working on. There is not much more that I can say about it right now, but there will be more on this soon.

I'm still working on my blog, as you might have seen. There have been a few changes, and there will be some more. I hope that it won't cause too much inconvenience.

Dr. Sketchy's

After seeing awesome Dr. Sketchy drawings pop up on blogs from all over the world I finally had the chance to experience this fantastic drawing event first handed. Because there is now

an Amsterdam branch of Dr. Sketchy's!

I had a great night drawing beautful girls, listening to the amazing singing MC: Shai Sahar, and drinking beer together with my friend, and super artist, Mensah.

My favourite moment of the evening was a small contest: we were challenged to draw a pose using our 'wrong' hand. I'm a rigthy myself, so I had to do it left handed. In the end everybody handed in his or her drawing and a winner was picked by the Dr. Sketchy jury. There were some extremely talented people there so I wasn't expecting to win at all, but I did!

The winning drawing can be found beneath, the model was the lovely Spaanse Ans (Spanish Ans) with 74 years, the oldest burlesque model in Holland.