A New Creative Endeavor

The image above is my submission for a drawing prompt for the website known as www.sketchaholic.com. If you have not visited this sight, and you love to draw, I highly recommend going there and creating an account. The sight has great artistic resources, and drawing contests that happen fairly often. These contests are hosted by big names in the animation industry but you can even create your own contests if you wish. In addition to the drawing contests, professionals from the industry are interviewed in relation to the contest. Chris Sanders is being interviewed today at 2:00pm CT/ 3:00PM PT by Bobby Chiu, so be sure to check that out if you can. Chris will pick a winner of the contest, and that winner will in turn receive a drawing based on the same prompt from Chris. The prompt for the most recent contest was "Nightmare." My drawing is based off of a childhood nightmare I had involving me being chased around by giant crabs. I hope you all enjoy the drawing but more importantly, I hope you check out the site and keep yourselves creating and self-expressing.

Final for 2-D Character Animation II

2-D Character II Final Dialogue from Grant Harwell on Vimeo.

This animation right here was my final for my 2-D Character Animation II animation class at SCAD. I was proud of my improvement on the piece, and I hope you all enjoy it. Leave critiques or comments if you feel the urge.

Inspired Illustration

This piece is an illustration I did for a blog called Vignette Gazette that I am a contributor to. Vignette Gazette is a collection of students from the Savannah College of Art and Design that inspire each other to stretch our creative muscles by issuing artistic challenges to each other. We each submit topics and create work based around the weeks topic. Anyone who follows my blog who is not already a part of Vignette Gazette, should definitely take the time to check out the blog if you get the chance. There are some really great pieces from some talented artists to check out on the page.

http://vignettegazette.blogspot.com/

The most recent topic was a warrior character design. In order to give you an idea of my idea behind the character, I will quote from the blurb I wrote on Vignette Gazette.

"As I was thinking about my warrior design, I wanted to to something atypical. I wanted to create more than just a cool action hero who was able to slay countless foes, or monsters, or whatever. So I decided to look up the definition of a warrior in the dictionary. One particular part of the definition that I found that stuck out to me was this; "a person engaged in a struggle or conflict." Using this definition and some prior delving into visual reference of African tribal warriors, I decided for my warrior design to be a little African boy. If a warrior can be defined by someone who is engaged in a struggle or conflict, then many people in Africa are warriors everyday. They must fight for their land, food, families, their very survival. I decided that a child would be a good choice for the warrior because all the conflict in Africa affects them the most. They are the future of their nations and what has happened in their life-times will affect them for many years to come. This little boy I have drawn is dressed in a combination of Massai and Zulu tribal attire. Here is a salute to all of the little warriors of Africa who go out to battle everyday. May we come along their side to join in the battle with our own compassion, resources, and prayers."

New Website

So I realize that I haven't posted anything to this blog in an exceedingly large amount of time but better late than never I suppose. After going through Animation Professional Development (or Portfolio in layman's terms), I have a swanky new website among other career materials to show. Feel free to take a look.

www.grantharwell.com

I will try my darndest to regularly post to this blog so keep your eyes peeled over the summer. I plan on working on my senior film over the summer so if you want to track my progress on that, feel free to visit:

www.thesymphonyoflifefilm.blogspot.com

Demo Reel

Demo Reel from Grant Harwell on Vimeo.

Flash Exercise

So now that I have a Wacom tablet, I have been playing around with animating in Flash. This is just simple exercise I thought up in order to get experience working with the program. This is really my first shot working with it. I realize that the arms coming to rest at the end are a bit wonky, but I didn't find that a big deal since it was an exercise. Any further critique would be greatly appreciated.

There Once Was a Boy from Uganda

I hope this post finds all who read it well. This picture below is a little something that I have been working on over the summer. My family sponsors a boy from Uganda via an organization named World Vision. His name is Fred Bwambale. We received a letter from Fred which informed us that he enjoyed drawing (which was one of the only things we could read on the what remainded of the letter when it arrived. It looked like a pack of hyenas had attacked it). Since he enjoys drawing, I figured he might appreciate a drawing as a gift so I decided to draw him a portrait. I hope he enjoys it when it arrives (hopefully in one piece)!