Kit Run

For my special projects in digital media this term I'm going to make a flash based side scrolling game called Kit-Run. The blog keeping up with its creation is here. I was inspired to make one after many hours spent on this game, here.

ART450 Special Projects in Digital Media

Goals for ART 450:

to learn Corel Painter and incorporate it into my terrible comic, Magus Tales.

to complete at least 10 new pages of Magus Tales, and to work backwards and fix/redraw at least 10 old pages. This process should work to slowly bring color to the whole collection.

to begin construction of a flash based online portfolio for my modeling.

Lea and the Passion Puff

For my Indesign project I'm making a book called "Puffy the Passion Puff". It uses cute and guilt to teach kids about saving the environment.

Lea tries to learn indesign

Lea and a poster

This poster. 

Its a good one.

It inspires me to make good posters. 

..I think its better than all the DMF posters.

all of them.

also, my boyfriend happens to be in this band. 

I guess I should go listen to em'.

Lea on Feminism

I have a serious problem with most feminist art. Someone one day needs to detail in a several page essay why the vagina is a symbol of feminine power as well as an outspoken demand for equality; then, maybe, I'll get it. But when I see a piece like Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party, fully equipped with 39 plates topped with vagina shaped food, I honestly dont see the difference here if a man, trying to assert the power of his gender, decorated a table in penis shaped food.

And as we all know from one of the most common graffiti subjects across the nation, the penis does not make us feel a huge amount of respect for our fellow man. Okay okay okay okay- somethings coming to me. I can see how the vagina is a symbol of our gender- it is after all our most prominent physical difference from men. So i can understand perhaps how it demands a kind of recognition of our sex. But it ends there. To say that the vagina symbolizes our female power and equality seems to me to belittle our good qualities.

Quite the opposite of most feminists I find images of beauty empowering. Not placing demands on me about how I should look, just reminding the world and its viewers that women are beautiful. (and nearly 100% of the time more pleasant to look at than naked than men.) Heck i'm more proud of female beauty than my vagina any day!

(pictured here are two Turkish Bath scenes; the one on the bottom is a traditional image, the top a piece by a feminist artist picturing men.)

So, in my opinion, what would be a better way to fight for women's rights in artwork? Graphically speaking, how about simply picturing women as powerful figures? It worked for Stalin and Bonepart. Instead of "your gaze hits the side of my face", how about, " It was nothin'" as a caption for a poster with a gal in front of, say, a beautiful piece of artwork, a garden she cultivated, or children shes raised! Or, o, heres a good one: a big muscly arm with the saying "your power breeds violence" and then a beautiful reclining naked woman amogst the bazillions of art made of beautiful reclining women with the saying "our power breeds art"

.blah.

Lea the female

I for one enjoy these more than a gal should.  They're two images of five from a collection called "Eye Candy For Strangers" that I found on Deviantart. What they make me think of however is the feminist movement we've been going over in my art history and politics class. Why do women have such a problem with being appreciated as erotic? if you so have the beauty to be so, power to you; enjoy it. 

The female form is beautiful, seriously, there is no getting around it. So when I hear Greer mimiking a feminist whilst looking at some of the Closet Venus paintings, saying with a sneer on his face, "these depict women as an object of erotic fantasy!" etc etc. Well, the object part is no good, granted- so how about "these depict women as people of erotic fantasy"? 

oh, well, thank you young man!

Women are beautiful and I dont think they should get too riled when its depicted sensually for all to enjoy :)

Lea and the old folks home

I was a-diggin for dino-sors when i find a fossil! made this years ago with an old pal. it was coincidence that we were both dressed in black pants and white shirts. very weird. 

Lea and her movie poster assignment

thats right, I'm coming with my wooly friends to a theatre near you. Despite the title, in the movie I dont kill them; I befriend them. It should be called "Lea the Mammoth Friend".

but seriously.

 

for this assignment I used a photo I took up on Table Rock; inserted the mammoths, snowy mountain, and half a picture of myself. Then I painted the rest of me in, and added grass and fancy pants filters.  I wanted the final thing to look more like a painting than a photograph; like those old timey novels. But failed more than succeeded.

above all it is the font that pleases me. Perhas because it is the single element that escaped my disfiguring artists hand

Lea and some bored prostitutes

I came upon this piece on deviantart. You gotta love the color pallet; those liquid earth tones and late night lamps that somehow always remind you of a place in Paris called Montmarte. But honestly, the work is not quite...  THERE. all the way. most of the way, but not all the way.

 The face of the red head on the left isnt quite human enough for me to identify with her (which I desperately want to do because, in a piece like this, half the joy is feeling sorry for the subject matter). It's not that her face isnt realistic enough - no no, many a shapeless abstract from in art history has come across as human. This one just doesnt.  Also the face of the woman on the right is somehow slightly affected by the anime/manga movement thats rampant among artists online. (myself included) This also takes from the work. 

Other than that I'm very happy with it and its digital brushstrokes. Skin pallets are gooey as they should be; the background pleases me- etc etc

oh hey, i need to do something for mothers day

Lea makes a run-on

I am totally terrified that those of us who are gorgeous in youth face the same level of ugly in old age as all humans do. What is beauty anyway!? That shining paragon of dark eyed wonder that gives a person so much power- appreciate! envy! adore! - and then the strange force that comes like a thief in the night and turns audrey and Bea and Meyrl and Julie and countless glimmering dancing girls from the Ziegfield follys into grammas who can can say "i remember" all they want but get no respect from the new generation of young beauties.

i cant take it. I just cant take it!

Lea talks breifly about Napoleon

Behold Napoleon Crossing the Alps. On the left, a not so well known version painted by Paul Delroche. On the right, a momentously well known version by Jacques-Louis David.

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?!

well, I'll tell you. It is my understanding that Napoleon, whilst crossing the Alps in 1800 (with the intent to invade Genoa Italy and reclaim the territory for France), rode on a mule, in nice weather, wrapped in some raggy blankets. The point of all this, of course, is that the painting itsself is a powerful and effective piece of propaganda. Napoleon didnt even sit for the portrait. He said something like "pish posh! Mars, the god of war, never sat for a portrait! And yet artists do not hesitate to paint his great image! It is the character that counts! Not the likenss!" So, David had his handsome 14 year old son pose for the painting, and Napoleon appears a youthful, spry, impassioned young male.

Artists are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, you know.

Lea does Photomontage

mai montage. its called lea. model lea on the right, normal lea on the left. Featured in the middle in no specific order is Zorba the Greek, Audrey Hepburn, Marial Hemmingway, a lion, Sonic the Hedgehog, Arc from Terranigma, Ranma, Bubble and Bobble, Heather, my ex-husband, dressed as Link, my kitten Wiki Wiki, an arctic fox, my parents, the tour d'Eiffel, a bowl of veggies, some bushmen, a t-rex, a flag on top of Buster Brown in Waimea made up of bras, my anarchist high school teachers, and my childhood pals.

Lea finally does "Alphabet Soup", "S" being the lamest one

Lea is in a photo montage

 no, i didnt make it, but i am in it. It's-a-mai birthday party! as depicted by a far away friend. it makes me happy so I figured I'd post it as a prelude to the montage i myself shall soon make.

Lea makes flash fox

Click the fox

lea tries to photograph the other again

..but this time, they are couples - featuring a secret sentence from the female in each pair. It looks like I dont have pants on but this is an illusion of the hopeful eye and nothing more.

lea pictures the other - and cheats a bit

  

This is a photograph I took of my significant other, Kabir. I know the fellow a bit, admittedly, but as I have yet to venture into the world and photograph an unknown, Id figure I'd work with whats all ready wandering around my house. 

Photoshop was not used extensively, just to gray out the background and stick some clouds on what was a photo of me. 

...I dont really like it. It is supposed to be "a man with no natural habitat", stuck in a white box  holding a picture of something natural but tied down to unnatural stuff. -But even interpreting it is giving it too much credit, so lets not.

lea consumes video games

Terranigma is the best video game of all time. To this day, when I am old and weathered  and mine taste has stood the test of time, the game still draws  tears to my eyes. You get to play the little hero Arc, and go about the earth resurrecting the world. First you bring forth the grass and trees, then the birds, then the  animals, and eventually humans- and then you help them build towns, invent airplanes, hamburgers, and telephones and then you die. wonderous. 

I prefer these old adventure games to most of the new fancy pants ones for similar reasons why I think Aristocats is so fab. The error makes the art human- and apparent! I like seeing the trace of the artists- and letting my imagination - (eeeeeee maaaaaajjjj in ay shon) actually do something! 

lea consumes beuny / emits poem

beuny.

its a beuny beuny.

it is soft

its is gray

it wants you to touch the soft poof between its ears

it is a curious beuny!

lea illustrates by digital means

  the completed new title image for meh webcomic.

lea makes pictures with letters

so the sad and very ugly truth comes out. Lea. is not. a letter artist. In fact I've decided i have virtually no grasp of abstract design what so ever. and ye know what?! I'm a perfectly happy peach with that idea. However I am so disgusted with my creations for this assignment that I am going to go to the gym. something ive done maybe once in my life.

lea comments on good animation

The Aristocats is one of my favorite animated films. It gets me excited when a character turns their head and  all the ink and pencil guide lines show through the color.  The fluid and kind of messy images make the art seem real- human, not without flaws; and thus, a little more alive. I think my affection for this style is what encourages my art to be as messy as it is. I like to leave the guide lines in- all the extra lines make it feel so much more..approachable than something so perfect that it's mechanic. I've been told "you should clean up the line art" and so, from time to time, on a new layer in photoshop I trace over the original image excluding all the progress lines... and almost always end up deleting it, find it lacking somehow. 

Aristocats demonstrates this throughout the whole movie. I should be aware that the animation is a million little drawings! Art shouldnt pretend not to be art. especially, ESPECIALLY cartoons.

lea scratch 4

Heather after her accidental hair cut.

lea scratch 3

I'm working on a new title image for Magus Tales! But so far all ive got is an ugly Ratihas wearing jellyfish on his hands

lea on animals and animal photography

These photographs are from an online exhibit called Ashes and Snow. I discovered them several years ago and strongly believe that, of all photographs I've ever seen, these affect me the most profoundly. The series claims to be entirely unaltered film images, but I havent decided if I believe it or not. So! Why am I affected so deeply? Everyone is passionate about some kind of belief or way of life. For example, the idiot who lives below me believes in a way of life in which the brain is rendered numb due to constant, repetitive, bass beats.

I however, believe very strongly in a way of life that is deeply interconnected with, and respectful of, nature and specifically animals. (This belief has lead me into vegetarianism!) These images move me very deeply in that the human figures are often represented as small, submissive, and peaceful- while the animals are empowered. Humans, just like wild cats, elephants, mice, birds, apples and grape fruits grow out of the earth; in exactly the same way that pears grow on a pear tree. We do not own one another, and "animals" were not placed on the earth for humans "to eat" as some horrendous religious types think.

It is my wish that some day soon humans learn that we are animals- and that we assume our place as equals amongst them and amongst the earth that produced us.

lea scratch 2

lea scratch 1

 I admit I dont know what im doing for this first assignment. Youll notice on the left here a man with  head that is distinctly a rectangle.