Finally starting to work through a book of Corel Painter 12 lessons that I bought shortly after Christmas, and I’m beginning to realize the power and cool potential of this program. Here is a painting of a bowl of apples I did from an image using clone brushes:
Finally, another Threadless submission! 
I had the idea for this while I was working on my animation project, and didn’t get a chance to actually work on it until just recently. I’m really proud of the idea for this one, so please take a moment to click either the image above or the link to the right and score this design on Threadless! 5′s are preferable 
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Here’s my first update of what I hope will be many over the next month. Some of you may be familiar with the “Lighthouse Keeper” fictional blog I kept on this site a couple years back (though still searchable if you’d like to read it). Well, in honor of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), I will be spending November writing my long-gestating novel, “Return of the Lighthouse Keeper.” I started it today, and manage to blurt out 1499 words. I hope to keep up this pace for the entire month, hopefully getting most of the way through the novel by the end of the thirty days. As a special addition to this inaugural post, please enjoy the first paragraph of the novel (done in my best John Le Carre imitation style):
It was a full month before he was able to speak again; and a month doesn’t pass easily in silence. Crippled, in his way, by the lack of speech, he passed through the month unable to make phone calls, turn on his television, or even open the door of his room at the Examination Facility. But then, he had come from the Push-Button Age, when people were forced to the edge of manual labor to do something as simple as turn on their phone. He would have preferred the independence of buttons to the slavery of silence. Though after ten years of not only silence but solitude, he delighted in a transitional month of watching the teams of experts come in day after day, announcing their excitement and skepticism to each other between the “Yes or No” questions they would put to him. Many of the questions he answered with a shrug – he wasn’t a scientist, after all. He had a few questions of his own, meanwhile, but those would have to wait.
Well, I finished my animation project today. As you can see from the following poster, it’s called “Grow Till Tall,” and is set to the song of the same name by Jonsi.
While it is finished (and actually online…), I’ve decided not to let it out of the bag quite yet. There are a couple of reasons for this. The first of which is that I spent a year on this and I want to just let the feeling of accomplishment soak in for a while before dumping it on YouTube for the world to see and then move on. Second, I went through a lot of waiting for Photoshop and Flash to struggle with the high file sizes necessary for an HD finished product, and I don’t like the thought of people just watching it in a 5″ square on their computer monitors at low res, so I’m going to see about getting it shown locally at El Cid’s short film night on a large screen. After that, I’ll try and get the best resolution version I can to people.
Of course, I want a whole ton of people to see this, and I know a lot of you have been waiting (which, I should point out, is a whole lot easier than animating…), but this is a big deal and I just want to take my time and handle it right. That said, there is a whole ton of art and animation on this site and on my facebook page to tide you over for the time being. I’ll also be updating this site more often now that I’m free to do more one-shot pieces of artwork that I’ve been putting off! Which I’m excited about.
Finally started playing around with a Photoshop brush pack I downloaded from someone on deviantArt. SOOOO MANY BRUSHES! Mainly for speed-painting, which is the next thing I need to teach myself. Did this in a little under an hour.
Been working on the scene that involves this background for this past week. It’s just about done, now, and I thought I’d show you what it looks like with the subway train actually in it. Subway took me a little over an hour to draw. Looks cool in motion, too .
P.S. – It’s only a 1 Train because that was what the reference photo I used showed, and I couldn’t remember the other colors/letters at the time for some reason. I NEED TO GET BACK TO NEW YORK.
A little bit of rough animation from my current project. This is the best timing I’ve gotten yet! (Nearly fell out of my chair when I first saw how well it turned out
Scene 8 Ruffs from C.E. Downes on Vimeo.
Just did a little drawing exercise, trying to make my poses a little more dynamic. I thought it was funny enough to share . Enjoy!
(p.s. it’s scanned straight from my sketchbook, so please excuse the weird gray gradient on the left)
Hey all! Just submitted a design to the “Threadless Loves Characters” contest, called “Mr. Ampertini,” which is a re-worked version of an old design. It also depends on getting a good vote score, so please click on the link to the right, or on the image below, to go vote for it at Threadless. Thanks!
