Weekly "sketch" - Frifere, the Hummingbird

This is my second gif to have ever made in Photoshop. Like the fox from before, I used illustrator to draw the bird, being sure to drop the stroke entirely. Then, I put it in Photoshop and started to animate it. All I did was use layers to place wings over the body after editing each, and move the body one to three places up or down. It is a very simple gif, and did not take much work. It was still very fun for me though!!

Winter Wonderland

This is a submission for a contest. I was required to implement "fine art emblems" such as dance, art, theater, choir, and band. I was also required to use an eye-catching, creative font. I tried to implement dance with using the dancing reindeer, art by the painting of a Christmas tree on the wall of the stage, the theater by making the events take place in a theater, choir through the singing mice in the foreground, and band through the angels playing trumpets at the back on the stage. This (minus font) was originally done in pencil, but I edited it in Photoshop, Paint, and Corel Paint. Photoshop was used to trace the stage, characters, and background, and for the font. Paint was used to make more space for the font, and Corel was used to add additional embellishment. All in all, not a great piece, but I tried my hardest.

Weekly "Sketch" - Hoaxes are Easy, so Don't be too Breezy

How To Make a UFO Hoax Using Photoshop This is a link to an article explaining how to make a UFO hoax in Photoshop. It shows how easy it is with a tool like Photoshop to fake something, whether that be UFOs, cryptid creatures, or something as common as dogs and cats. This shows an older version of Photoshop being used than what I have, but there are still easy ways to make hoaxes with the new version. My purposes for posting this link were to show how simple and easy Photoshop is to use for putting images together (kinda glorifying it), and to show that one who might look into Cryptozoology, or one who searches for alien space crafts, needs to be aware that hoaxes are easy to make. This is certainly not to say all the cryptid things claimed to exist do not exist, but is to say that one must be critical when he finds images related to supposed "cryptids", for hoaxes can be extremely easy for someone to make.

The Red Fox Gif

This is the first gif I have ever made in Photoshop. I made the fox in Illustrator, then used Photoshop for the animation, and to make it into a gif file. It was quite fun to animate it, and animating with Photoshop is definitely something I would like to continue doing. The reason the animation in this is not that sloppy (since I am a beginner) is because I have had experience with animations using an application on my DSi from a long time ago called Flipnote Studio. This allowed me to learn how to animate somewhat, and how the fox's head goes down, then back up, can be traced back to the old animating style I learned from watching other people's "flipnotes" on the internet piece of this, called Hatena.
Now, for the complications in creating this piece... Firstly, the stroke of the pen tool in Illustrator is still difficult for me to use, so when I made this fox, I decided to just get rid of it altogether. Secondly, when the fox was being drawn with the pen tool, I did not connect all of the lines together and therefore cresated much empty space in need of orange color. To fix this, I just created one or so orange shapes and hid them over the empty space in the fox. Thirdly, one thing I found frustrating with Photoshop frames is that I could not delete all layers for one frame, yet still have those layers for another. While I could hide layers in one frame and have them show in another, if I deleted a layer, it was gone altogether from all frames. This made it a little more difficult for me to work with the layers and frames. And fourthly, there is one last thing I dislike about using Photoshop's animation feature - there is no "onion skin", allowing you to see on one layer the faded image of the layer before, so you can cause the animation to be smoother without having to cycle between the layers (this was in Flipnote Studio and it was extremely beneficial). Even with these issues, using Photoshop for animation is very fun and easy (though it may take a little bit of time).

Weekly Sketch - Winter Fox

This is a piece inspired by winter. I wanted to make it feel like Christmas is approaching, and used the impressionist brush to give it a scratchy feel (it also helps the trees look more natural). After deciding to make the sky pale, add a pine forest, and make the snow look gloopy (using the "gloop" tool), I felt something was missing. So, I decided to put an animal. I made a red fox. At first, the body seemed to be easy to make fit with the picture (other than the fact that it looks like the layer the fox is on is faded, since the snow seems to show through... I don't think this can be fixed, and I think it is attributed to the "gloop" brush being used underneath, since it seems to have texture). However, after I made the body, the eye seemed harder to make. I ended up reducing the size of the impressionist brush and still using it. The eye stands out nonetheless, but it is more natural than it would have been had I used a simple paint brush.