I took a bunch of Ryu drawings from the internet for reference.

Here’s the sketch that I came up with!

Here’s a full body shot of how the doll turned out. I’m very happy with it! The headbands, gloves and robe are all removable too.

HADOUKEN!!! Hope you like it! ^_^

Ryu is copyrighted by Capcom.

As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, I have been working on some little crafty projects! I decided to make Christmas presents for a few of my friends this year because I’ve always thought handmade gifts were more thoughtful than buying them. I taught myself how to crochet just to make these gifts. It wasn’t very hard to learn, although it was very time consuming at first. The crafts that I made are called Amigurumi and it’s the Japanese art of crocheting animals out of yarn!

This is the first amigurumi that I made, an adorable baby seal! I gave this one to my lovely friend Arlene.

I made this kitty cat for my friend Claire! I really love the whiskers. This was my second crochet project and it’s when I started to get the hang of things.

Sorry for the horrible quality photo, it was taken on my phone because I didn’t get a chance to take a proper picture of it before giving it to my friend Cass! She’s a fan of zombies and the both of us always hang out and kill zombies together! >:)

If you are interested in making crafts like these, here are the two books that I used to make them. The first is called ‘Kyuuto! Japanese Crafts!: Amigurumi’ and there some very adorable animals in there. The second is ‘Creepy Cute Crochet: Zombies, Ninjas, Robots, and More!’ which I referenced/altered to make the zombie.

Another extremely helpful resource I used is the website ‘Hooks and Needles‘. It was really good in explaining certain crochet methods to a newbie like me! Also, I bought all of my yarn/eyes from Michaels craft store and I found some super cheap crochet needles from a dollar store. Good luck if you plan on trying this!

RIP Geocities! If you have not heard, Geocities closed down today! I built my first website on Geocities more than ten years ago, complete with those infamous tacky animated gifs and tiled backgrounds. It was then that I first started experimenting with html coding and grew a strong interest for web design and multimedia. I don’t want this to turn into some kind of boring biography here, so I’m going to right ahead and skip to the part about me going to college.

I went to college and took a course called New Media and learned all sorts of things having to do with multimedia. Things like web design, interactive presentations, animation, audio/music, video, 3D, you get the idea. One of the many programs we learned about was Adobe After Effects. It is used to create motion graphics, and is used mainly for film post production. It is an amazing program with the ability to create some absolutely stunning animations and effects. You can see all sorts of motion graphics in movies, television, commercials, music videos, etc.

In school, we only touched briefly on Adobe After Effects and didn’t really spend a whole lot of time with it so we just covered the very basics. Below are two videos that I’ve created in After Effects for some projects at school. Please bear in mind that these were my first attempts using the program so they are not that great. :P

I drew everything in Adobe Photoshop and also created the background music for it too! This was my very first After Effects creation ever!

This was a project focusing on animating typography. I chose to base it on the song “Marching Bands of Manhattan” by Death Cab for Cutie (one of my most favourite bands EVER, btw) I really love the lyrics here because they are so descriptive and visual and thought this would be perfect to animate.

Sorrow drips into your heart through a pinhole
just like a faucet that leaks and there is comfort in the sound
but while you debate half empty or half full
it slowly rises your love is gonna drown

As you can see these were pretty basic animations since I wasn’t totally sure of what I was doing. I’d really like to learn more about the program and gain a better understanding of how it works. Which is why I am taking an evening After Effects course that begins this Thursday at my local art college! I’m excited to see what things I will learn. Just because I’m finished school doesn’t mean the learning stops there! I’m always interested to learn new things and hope I can better my knowledge in After Effects so I can make fancier things to show you!

Thanks for reading! Wish me luck in the class! :P
xo, Tiffany

ps. Here are some examples of motion graphics you should check out if you’re interested:

1. James Bond Casino Royale Intro- Awesome!
2. Stardust.tv Demo Reel – Stardust is a company that creates some of the most spectacular motion graphics I’ve ever seen. One day I will create something of this caliber. One day….

These are the two photos that I started with, a nice forest shot and a pretty white horse. I found these stock images on DeviantArt.com. There are lots of quality stock images to choose from, and it’s free!

I was feeling that the photo of the forest was a little flat, so I’ve added the above forest photo to the background to give it a little more depth. Check out the differences below:

Big difference huh?!

After I was happy with the background image, I used the channel mixer to make the colors a bit more dreamy looking. Then I added in the white horsey in and adjusted the levels a little bit.

Here’s a closer view of the horse. Not looking very magical yet..

I added a white glow behind the horse, you can just feel it’s power amplifying. It’s about to go super saiyan on you! AHH!

The Horsey finally leveled up into Unicorn! I added it’s horn just by drawing it inside Photoshop and I’ve also added more white glow. At this point, I am finished with the unicorn and just need to add some finishing touches. I fixed up the colors a bit more by adding a gradient fill on top and then added a clouds layer on top of that to give it that misty look! Take a look at the final image below:

Do you believe in unicorns?