The Force Awakens

Unbelievably excited.

-Anna

Molly Rocket Development Blog

Just a quick post to announce that the Molly Rocket website is now live and posting weekly blog updates! I've been doing some seriously ridiculous drawings for it, and Casey has been writing some equally ridiculous blog posts. Stay tuned for news about our interactive fiction project, among other things. There's a mailing list that you can subscribe to if you want updates delivered to your inbox.

mollyrocket.com

Below are a handful of the illustrations from the site - and there are plenty more coming!

-Anna

Phoneme Phun

Just an average day of game development at Molly Rocket. Casey (programmer) and I (illustrator) had some deliberations over which mouth shapes (phonemes) we should use for certain words/sounds. It involved making lots of stupid faces and strange noises, and was all rather amusing.

GUUUUUH THHEEEEE MUUHHHH ESSSSSS VUHHHH LEEEHHH

(If it's not apparent, work is a lot of fun.)

-Anna

Valve Visit

I'm now officially living in Seattle, and between moving and working I haven't had any time to draw for the blog! Hopefully once life calms down a little, my posts will start up again. But things have been exciting...

Today I got to visit Valve, the developer behind the Half-Life series and the Portal games, among other things (Steam, for example). I've been a huge fan of their games since playing Half-Life 2 back in high school, and I never imagined I'd get to visit the company - and not just as a fan, but as someone in the industry (which is still pretty surreal). The main reason for our visit was to test out the HTC Vive, a virtual reality headset. It was my first VR experience and it completely blew me away. This video does give you a basic idea of the tech, but VR is really something that needs to be experienced to be appreciated...

At one point in the demo, you try to repair a robot at Aperture Laboratories from the Portal games, and when you inevitably fail (as you're designed to) GLaDOS descends, looks you square in the eyes, and destroys the lab around you... pretty immersive, amazing stuff. So, to conclude, here's a drawing I did a few years back of Chell and Wheatley... because the me who drew that would have a hard time believing that today happened.

-Anna

Self

A drawing I did for Sketch Dailies "Meet the Artist".

-Anna

Seattle bound!

I have been seriously neglecting this blog! Life has been crazy. I'm moving to Seattle (from NY) to work for game developer Molly Rocket. I've been freelancing full-time for Molly since September and it's been so much fun. I love collaborating, and it's something I've been sorely missing over the past few years as a freelance illustrator. I think we're making something really cool and I'm super excited to see where it all goes :) The project I've been working on should be announced at some point in the next few months, and I'll make sure to post an update when it does.

In the meantime, here's a quick sketch of Furiosa from Mad Max Fury Road. Good news! Film is not dead!

-Anna

Supergirl

The new Supergirl show looks super fun!

-Anna

Wyrm

Had a little free time today and wanted to draw something fun, so I decided to try today's Sketch Dailies topic, wyrm (which is the name for dragon in European mythology, apparently).

 

-Anna

May the 4th be with you!

Happy Star Wars Day! Star Wars was a huge part of my childhood and I have no doubt it's part of the reason I love drawing, sci fi, storytelling, and classical music so much today. So thanks, Star Wars!

My brother and I had (and I'm sure it's still somewhere) a huge bin full of Star Wars toys and action figures. My personal favorite was this huge AT-AT. My brother has always been partial to X-Wings :)

MoCCA!

This past weekend was MoCCA Fest! It was my first time exhibiting and it was really fun (and super exhausting). To everyone who bought a print or a sketch, thank you! I sold out of my Kavalier & Clay prints, which I totally wasn't expecting. I wasn't quite sure what to bring and now I've got a much better sense of what people are looking for... next time :)

The highlight of the fest for me was getting an amazing Song of the Sea watercolor painting from Irish illustrator/director Tomm Moore. He was super sweet and it was wonderful to meet him!

 

Now back to the real world...

-Anna

MoCCA Fest 2015

I’ll be at Table 435 at MoCCA Fest with my friend Morgan! This Saturday and Sunday, 11am-6pm at Center 548 in NYC. Come say hi!

 

-Anna

Don Draper

The final episodes of Mad Men start tonight! I don't want the show to end :(

-Anna

Queen of Hearts

First sketch dailies in a while!

-Anna

David Lean Studies

Had a free minute today, so I painted some frames from David Lean movies. I did a similar thing with 2001: A Space Odyssey a while ago, and I found it was a good way to learn about color and composition.

-Anna

Farewell Leonard Nimoy

"Of all the souls I have encountered in my travels, his was the most... human."

-Anna

Parks and Rec

Final episode tonight. I'm gonna miss these guys!

-Anna

Oscar Party

Well this is the most ambitious thing I've done in a while! There are a few movies in there that didn't actually fare so well at the Oscars (most notably Citizen Kane and 2001), but I couldn't do a classic movie drawing without including them.

Left to Right: 

Eliza Doolittle (My Fair Lady), Charles Foster Kane (Citizen Kane), HAL (2001: A Space Odyssey), Gollum (Lord of the Rings), Judah Ben Hur (Ben Hur), T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), Jack Dawson (Titanic), Scarlett O'Hara (Gone With the Wind), Rick Blaine (Casablanca), Vito Corleone (The Godfather), Hannibal Lecter (Silence of the Lambs), Maria Rainer (The Sound of Music), Forrest Gump (Forrest Gump), Salieri (Amadeus)  

-Anna

Duet

Last week I got to see a presentation at the Museum of the Moving Image by one of my idols, legendary Disney animator Glen Keane. He gave a talk about his career and his new short film Duet. It was an amazing experience. He's been one of my heroes since I was a kid, and he's certainly one of the biggest influences on my drawing. I left feeling so inspired!

-Anna

Mahler

Quick little warm-down doodle. Over the past few weeks I've been going through all of Mahler's symphonies while working and it's been wonderful. They're super long, so it's taking me a while to digest them all.

-Anna

Pixie

Quick sketch dailies!

-Anna