Dominique DP

Animation de la téléserie Disney "Lucky Fred"! / Animation for Disney's TV series "Lucky Fred"!

2012-01-25T10:27:00.007-05:00

Je viens tout juste de terminer un contrat pour la nouvelle télésérie de Disney appelée Lucky Fred! Malheureusement, pour des raisons de copyright, je ne suis pas autorisée à publier mon travail en ligne. Toutefois, il m'est permit de le montrer en personne lors d'entrevues professionelles.
La série a été réalisée en utilisant un mélange d'animation cut-out et traditionelle. Elle sera diffusée en février sur les ondes du canal Disney Europe, et plus tard en Amérique du Nord, en Australie et en Corée du Sud.

I have just finished working on the production of Disney's new TV series Lucky Fred! Unfortunatly, for copyright reasons I cannot post my work online . However, I am allowed to show it in person during a professional interview.
This series was made using a blend of cut-out and traditional animation in Montreal, Quebec by Oasis Animation. It should be airing on Europe's Disney Channel in February, and later in North America, Australia and South Korea.

Matte paintings

2011-03-13T12:15:00.001-04:00

PapeRADA

2010-07-06T23:38:00.002-04:00

PapeRADA

Montage Photoshop

Presented at the Forman Gallery, 2010

Log Book

2010-07-06T23:36:00.002-04:00

Log book

8 ½ x 3 ½ x ¾ inches

Used paper, acrylic medium and thread

Presented at the Foreman Gallery, 2010

Hip to Be Square

2010-07-06T23:31:00.003-04:00

Hip to Be Square

17 ½ x 12 inches

Colour pencil on paper
Presented at the Foreman Gallery

Give It Back

2010-07-06T23:19:00.004-04:00

Give It Back

30 x 22 inches

Graphite, watercolor and watercolor pencil on paper
Presented at the Foreman Gallery, 2010

Blogger problem

2010-06-26T11:27:00.003-04:00

It seems Blogger has image uploading problems! Thank you for your patience.
Upcoming posts: works exhibited at the Foreman Gallery, some of my advertisement work for the Centennial Theatre and ink paintings.

Enjoy your visit here!

Illustrations for L'Écrit Primal Magazine

2010-06-24T09:26:00.007-04:00

Series of Illustrations published in L'Écrit Primal, a litterature magazine of Québec city. The issue's theme was the deadly sins. Enjoy!

Greed

Sloth

Envy
Vanity

Speed drawings

2010-06-23T20:33:00.007-04:00

Here are a couple speed drawings made in Photoshop. All drawings ideas were imposed by friends.

"A futuristic city." - 16 minutes

"A burning village." -25 minutes"A Tauren." - 20 minutes

Overnight stay at a zen buddhist temple!

2009-07-04T07:03:00.008-04:00

Omikuji (bad fortune tied to a tree). I thought this was a Shinto tradition, so I don't know why there were some at a buddhist temple...
For an obscure reason, my camera pixelised and pinkyfied most of my pictures! I could save three of them with my friend Photoshop. :P

As many students from China and Korea are coming for a few weeks to YPU, various Japanese culture oriented activities are being organized. Last Friday, YPU's exchange students (the ones staying for a year or half a year) could tag along and go to Hagi, where we could experience life in a Zen Buddhist temple! Although I think most of the Chinese and Korean students found the experience somewhat painful, all four Quebeker folks loved it!
When we arrived to the temple, we had to sit seiza (on our knees) while the priest read sutras (Buddhist preach). It lasted maybe 10 minutes, but it's more then enough when you are not used to sit seiza! Fortunately Marc, Elliott and I had the tea ceremony class last semester and were used to do it.
After being explained various things, we helped with the preparation of diner and ate (in silence!) a vegetarian meal. Technically, you should eat everything. By everything, I mean that when you are done eating, you have to pour some tea in one of your bowls, wash it with a pickle, pour that tea in the next bowl, wash it, ans so on until you washed all 5 little bowls and plates. When you are done, you should drink the tea and eat the pickle! Not eating everything is not respectful to the life that was offered to you.
And although the food was delicious and the portions not so big (just enough, I thought), every single person at my table (we were about 12) except for me and the teacher did not eat everything. O_o

Then, we had a little class about basic principles of Zen Buddhism. It was SO interesting and what was said made a lot of sense to me. But the most interesting thing was to hear the priest talk about respect and principles of non killing, as the girl next to me was lying on the table in evident boredom and incessantly killing mosquitoes!

Buddhist class! I took the picture so I am not in it.

Next was zazen (sited meditation), which I really liked! If you sit correctly, your back naturally becomes straight and it is not tiring. Well, that's what I thought. It lasted at most 15 minutes, and halfway through a girl felt sick and went out of breath! A teacher and a priest took her away and the rest of us kept on going.

Bedtime was at 9h15 and wakeup time at 6h00! My grand-ma side was really happy and I slept every single minute allowed. :D Still, I was the last one in the meditation room at 6h30. I don't know how I did that. -.-"

We then helped with breakfast, ate it silently and helped with the dishes. When we were done, a monk took out buckets of water and rags. Oh yeah, we swiped all the floors running with our rags, like in animes!!

In the afternoon we went sightseeing in Hagi, which is a place rich in historical monuments and famous for its potters. In "hagi-yaki pottery", "yaki" is "to bake" so it means the "baked things of Hagi"!

From left to right: Jin, Seha, Evelyne, Tei and me.
OMG c'est le monde de la forêt!!

I really liked the temple experience, I would do it again for a week long! When you meditate, you are facing outside the room. That temple didn't have actual walls but only shouji (slidding paper doors), so at night you could hear the frogs and the rain like you were sitting in the forest, and in the morning the opened doors let in refreshing sun rays and you could see the gardens around the temple. It was so relaxing and peaceful! :)

St-Jean au Japon!

2009-06-27T06:43:00.006-04:00

Spécial francophone pour ce billet sur la St-Jean que j'ai passé au Japon!
(French special for this post on Quebec's National Holiday!)

De gauche à droite: Elliott, Satsu, Evelyne, me, Sayaka, Marc, Kana et Maya.

C'est le 23 au soir que nous avons réalisé que la St-Jean était à nos portes! Super dernière minute, le lendemain nous demandions à l'école la permission d'utiliser l'espace de feu devant la cafétéria pour faire un barbecue. Heureusement, nous sommes copain-copain avec nos deux personnes ressource Nakashima san et Horie san, qui on poussé un brin pour nous faire permettre d'utiliser l'endroit! Nos amies japonaises se sont également joint à nous pour célébrer la fête du Québec!
Au menu: saucisses, pilons de poulet, crevettes, oignons, aubergines, champignons et patates sucrées. Pas tout-à-fait typiquement québécois, mais quand même! Pour compléter l'ambiance nous avons branché la musique québécoise de nos mp3 sur des hauts-parleurs.

Maya et Kana célèbraient la fête du Québec avec nous!

Comme une St-Jean se doit d'être soulignée par des feux d'artifice, nous sommes allés à la librairie (?!) pour en acheter un paquet. Au Japon, les petits feux d'artifices que l'on tient à la main (un peu comme des feux de Bengale) sont très populaires et en été on peut apparemment en acheter presque partout.
Il était évidement défendu de consommer de l'alcool sur le terrain de l'école; nous sommes donc allés nous installer dans un pré sur le haut d'une colline où nous avons bu une symbolique bière tout en brûlant les feux d'artifices. :D

Bonne fête, Québec!

Ikebana: the art of flower arrangement

2009-06-21T08:00:00.005-04:00

Here are the arrangements I made so far in my ikebana class! The flowers are picked on a spicky base in such a way that the flowers are standing by themselves. There are various styles of ikebana, but most commonly the flowers are arranged in a triangle. Every class the teacher picks different flowers to arrange and talks about ikebana styles. There are three main factors to consider when arranging: balance, line and rythm. We get to take the flowers home after the class! :D
Enjoy!

Hotaru matsuri: The fireflies festival!

2009-06-02T22:35:00.011-04:00

Last saturday was the day of Yamaguchi city's fireflies festival. I never thought I would see this many people at the same time alongside that river - especially around the stalls where you could hardly walk!

It was very interesting to me that although it was a fireflies festival, people were much more excitted about getting to weat their yukatas (summer kimono), meet up with friends and eat festival food (I must say I was pretty happy myself getting to eat a taiyaki, a fish shaped cake filled with sweet beans paste :D ).
For exemple, I first got there with a japanese friend, but we couldn't see the fireflies yet because it was too early. So we bought some food, ate it, and my friend said "Well, I don't have much interest for fireflies, so I'll go back home right now. I guess you could come back with the other exchange students when the sun is down." I thought, what's the point of coming to this festival then?! Oh, well.
I did come back afterwards and the fireflies were really pretty! But I'll go back again when there is less lights on.

Oh, and here is a bowl I made in my japanese pottery class! :D (It actually is a chawan, a cup to drink tea from in traditional japanese tea ceremony.) The diameter is about 15 cm.

Suibokuga, or Ink Painting

2009-05-23T06:14:00.010-04:00

As there were no ink painting classes given at the university, I asked a teacher to help me out finding something outside of the school. I wasn't expecting much, but in the end I could take a special once-a-month class given by a well known artist (濱中応彦, Ohgen Hamanaka) that comes all the way from Osaka to Yamaguchi to teach it! I am so glad!

During the first class, all I did was painting vegetables. First year students usually stick to doing such exercises but as I am going to be there only a few months, they said I could skip a step or two! Yay!

People taking the class with me are all so very nice. Mostly all retired people, they are asking me where I come from and they always have a sister of their granddaughter's husband who's been to Vancouver once. It makes me very happy that my japanese level reached a point where I can have a decent conversation with an adult, because being polite in japanese is not only about manners and appropriate vocabulary! But let's put that aside for now.

A week after my first class they had a group exhibition and they insisted on me participating! They took the eggplant you see there, but I had to sign it properly, say with an "incan" (the red seal). There was no way I could exhibit the work without it, so someone called his friend who makes them incan and asked him to make one by then... for free! O_o

One day trip to Osaka!

2009-05-15T21:59:00.009-04:00

Marc, me, Evelyne and Elliott in front of Osaka-jou, one of the most famous castles of Japan!

We thought we had to go to an Air Canada desk to decide on the date of our flight back to Canada before realising we could do it by phone. But then we were already into the mood for going to Osaka, so we went anyways! We rode night buses so we wouldn't have to sleep anywhere, and from 7am to 10pm it was intense Osaka visiting!! Lots of fun, we first visited the famous Osaka Castle and then walked down the streets for window shopping. We meet up with Marc's twin brother and former room-mate who came to visit Japan for three weeks, ate Osaka's trad food (okonomiyaki) and took pictures in a purikura booth!

View from the top of the Castle, one of the two fishes traditionally found on japanese rooftops. They are supposed to protect the building from unlucky events due to bad weather.

Super intense flashly street of Osaka!

Typical purikura booth!
Its particularity is that before it prints the pictures, you can draw, write, add glitters and other super duper cute stuff on it! The printed sheet has only one size, but you can choose how many pictures you want on it so that you can share with many friends.

Osaka style okonomiyaki!
Cabbage and a meat or fish of you choice are mixed to a special doe and cooked like a pancake. It is topped by okonomayi sauce (indispensable ingredient), mayonaise and dried fish flakes. It's really, really good!!

*those two pictures come from Wiki!

Festival in Shimonoseki!

2009-05-09T22:22:00.015-04:00

Last week-end we went to see a festival (which name I forget, haha) in Shimonoseki, one one the biggest cities of Yamaguchi prefecture.
You probably already know about geishas, those ladies whose life revolved on practicing and performing feminine arts for the pleasure of nobles and other high-class people.
Orians, on the other hand, were courtisans. Because they were just as beautiful as geishas, they had to wear their obi (kimono's belt) the other way around so that you could clearly recognize an orian from a geisha. The pleasure house they belonged to would once in a while have their most beautiful orian walk down the streets in a very special way, in order to attract customers. This walk, considered an art in itself, is the major attraction of the festival we went to. Although pleasure houses are no more, the beautiful aesthetics and traditions related to orians are still passed down, and performers are practicing the year long for the day of the festival. I really was beautiful!

Orian, walking.

I recommend you watching Sakuran, a simple but very beautiful movie about the life of an Orian. The kimonos are really amazing! Here is the trailer, with english subtitles. You can see a bit of the special walk in it!

Shimonoseki being close to the sea, there were various other events in relation with fishing or naval war. It also has a enormous fish market where you can buy freshly made sushi. DE-LI-CIOUSSS!!

Children performing taiko by the sea.

Samurais walking down the streets of Japan?!!

They turned out to be actors in a play performed for the festival.

Hanami: flower viewing!

2009-04-13T05:11:00.010-04:00

Here are pictures of flower viewing with friends in Yamaguchi!
Truly amazing.

Great picnic!! XDFrom left to right: Sayaka, Noriko, Marc, Evelyne, Seha, me and Elliott.Marc, Evelyne and Seha.Elliott played soccer with some japanese boys! Photo grand angle prise par Elliott! ^^

Sotsugyoshiki : the graduation ceremony

2009-03-19T00:15:00.004-04:00

In the back, from the left: me, Tania, Bridget and Marc. In the front: Miwa, Small Aya and Big Aya.

Nothing to do with the Canadian or American’s! First of all, there is no prom like party, only the graduation ceremony. For the occasion, the girls are wearing the hakama (a kimono over which a skirt like piece of clothing is added- a traditional dress from edo) and the guys suits (how boring!! The poor guys…). But anyways, since YPU originally was an all girls school, today the girls still greatly outnumber the boys (1:8 ratio!) and we got to see so many beautiful hakamas!!

Wearing the hakama is even less common then wearing the kimono. Most people do not have one and in October, a rental agency comes on campus for several days and girls will go try out hakamas over their kimono to find a matching one. Then a week before the ceremony you have to give all of your attire to a company that dresses people in traditional Japanese clothing (!) and around 8 in the morning on the ceremony day, you go there, they dress you up and about an hour or so later you are ready to go to the ceremony, which started at 9h40.

The graduating students went in the hall with their families, and we needed to wait outside. Surprise: almost all of the rest of the school came to congratulate their senpais!! It’s not a bad thing in this case, but Japan’s older/younger hierarchy always stuns me.

Inside the students are being talked to. Sometimes they stand up because some official person speaks, sometimes they’re sitting. From what my friends (and teachers!!) told us, it’s intense boringness.

Then they came out (at 11h30 !) and everybody rushed to see their friends (senpais) and take pictures of/with them. Later they could get their diplomas (in a surprisingly non ceremonial way) and take group pictures.

Around 2 it was over! Most of my friends went to take their hakamas off and then have a meal with their seminar friends and teacher.

Very interesting as a whole: no food, no drink, no party; everything is done in the morning and beginning of the afternoon. No prom-like event.

Still, the dresses were wonderful. *___*

In the middle is Haruka, my tutor for the first semester. <3>

The sakura started to bloom!! :D

2009-03-13T04:08:00.004-04:00

Need to buy my own camera..!

Well, this is so that you can have an idea of what I am drawing lately. This picture was drawn some months ago, and I left it as it was. Later I decided to use that style when drawing the japanese notebook's illustrations (which scans I should have in April).

Then I really got into it and I am working on a series of paintings and colored drawings.

They say that when you stop looking for something you find it- well as I decided I shouldn't wait to have found the ultimate style to start creating something constant, right now I am happy to explore this one. I don't think it's defenitive or anything, but it's good for now. :)

Strawberry picking & scanvenger hunt!

2009-03-11T00:47:00.005-04:00

Little news of past activities around the Gooch! I'll upload stolen pictures soon hehe...

Last week Rie, Sayaka, Marc, Bridget and I went strawberry picking! You pay about 9$, and you can stay (almost) as long as you want in a huge greenhouse filled with delicious strawberries. Oh my god was it great. We were so full we slept in the car on the way back. Sorry Sayaka! " "

Then a few days ago, the people from JET (Japan Exchange and Teaching programme) organized a scavenger hunt in Yamaguchi, and that was lots of fun! We were divided in 4 teams with cars, and we had 3 hours to find the most items we could. Here's some examples of what we had to find:
- Boxing gloves (1 pt)
- Living duck (1 pt)
- Cleaning product with only english on it (2 pts)
- School children in order of descending height (2 pts)
- A fruit or vegetable bigger than a person's head (2 pts)
- Dead duck (no one found that one I must say!) (3 pts)
- High school boy wearing a girly hair pin (3 pts)
- A pyramid of cup noodles of at least 10 stories high (3 pts)

Great times. :)

Umemi, or plum blossoms viewing

2009-03-05T02:54:00.008-05:00

This week Sayaka, Marc, Bridget and I went to a park in Hikari (a little far from Yamaguchi city) to see the plum trees blooming! Although it was a bit late and most of the flowers were already gone, it sure was a very nice place and we had a good time !
Then as we were close to the sea we decided to go for a walk, and we scared away a poor couple with our big gaijin voices. But anyway, the beach felt great!
The pictures were taken by Buri. ありがとう！

Japatech: the cell phones

2009-02-27T00:57:00.010-05:00

In Yamaguchi there is a long arcade mall with plenty of interesting shops. In that mall, hiding over a drugstore is one of the nicest café I’ve been to (even in Québec)!
You’d miss the entrance – and its part of what I like about it: You have to know it exists to go there. The narrow staircase leads to a western wooden door; the ones that open to outside, except we're already inside! The café itself is a mix of western styles; the walls and tables have a cool Scandinavian feel to them, while you can sit on French and English style couches/sofas. There is this feeling I get when entering a place that wants to look western in Japan, but the many design, art and decoration magazines available to read there tell me that the owners actually wanted to mix the styles. I love it! The menu includes Japanese and western foods as well as a varierity of drinks. And they play jazz music! And the coffee is actually good (I must tell you my friends, good coffee is no common thing in Japan)! But most of all, they have wireless internet!!!

Did you think that Japan was the land of technology? That every regular Japanese person had a computer? That you might get the internet even in the middle of the forest??
NO! Wireless internet is not in any restaurant or café and most families have a single computer for the whole household, if not at all. How come?!
The answer is: cell phones.
The Japanese cell phones are monsters / wonders of miniaturisation. With a Japanese cell phone you can:

- Text, and include smilies (from a selection of about 2000), animated backgrounds of hearts twirling around and happy suns and other really really cute stuff;
-Have your whole agenda on it; with alarms for important events, birthdays and so on;
- Access Internet and you regular email account, watch videos online, upload and download files;
- Take high resolution pictures;
- Listen to your music like it was an MP3 player;
- Watch your videos and clips like it was a MP4 player;
- Watch TV;
- Call I guess, although I don’t recall seeing a Japanese person actually calling: it’s impolite in public anyways.

From Docomo, Japan's biggest cell phone company.

Most of my friends at the university started to use a cell phone around 14 – and nowadays kids are given cell phones around 10!
There are many Japanese websites expressively made for people using cell phones. For exemple, a trendy thing to do is writing stories from your phone directly to a specialised website. Some popular stories even get published / become a movie, a manga or an anime!
Crazy.
In the meantime, I am sad not having internet at the residences, and my cell phone not having an internet contract. ｡+ (ノД`)・゜・。

By the way, have some finish music and click "Husky Rescue" in the Sweet Playlists category ! You can also find them on Myspace. Love it love it love it. Wanna go to Finland now. It's my fisnish roommate Tanya's fault. She's the devil.

2009-02-23T02:37:00.010-05:00

À saveur de fraise. <3

2009-02-19T22:12:00.004-05:00

Hello guys!

I refrained from putting only text up on the blog because I didn’t have any pictures to add with it… I sent news letters to some of you with photographs in it, but I there were all my friends’ and I can’t just take them and stick them here, hehe. My small problem is that both of my cameras broke: my digital right before I left and my manual right after I got here. ( ; ￣▽￣)

The other thing is that I found myself not doing much art, if not at all since got here!! Well, now the semester is over and for the spring holiday I am not going to do anything but art. JE SUIS EN MAAAANQUE!!!
Japan is filled with beautiful landscapes and great art. I fortunately could pick the subjects of my papers and got to do comparative studies of Japanese and western art, and it’s the most interesting thing!!
Can’t take it. I have to do something. OMG!!!

I am lying; I got to do some art, as I could get into that fashion design class! Yet the teacher still has all of my works. (。-∀-) Also, for one of them classes I had to write a diary entry for each lecture or activity. I imposed myself to draw a picture for each instead. The teacher still has that, too.
A-ah… yeah why didn’t I put them up before? Well you guys know me; I drew all 12 pictures in 2 weeks before I had to hand it over. （。´∀`）b　Success!! I didn’t lose my speed!!

So I decided to stop being stupid and wanting to put only art on the blog. I am too perfectionist for that; in fact I should stop being perfectionist at all. So I am just going to loosen up for now and go for the writing! (。-`ω´-)

See you guys very soon!!

Here’s a picture from the fashion show I took part in! Me and Marc (on the left) worked as a team on both the design and fabrication of our clothing. The only things we did not make were the shoes and Marc’s belts! That was a heck of a lot of work!! But we won the second price, yay! (｡￫∀￩｡) Unjin (next to me) modeled for Petri (on the right side). I know one of my friends took other pictures; I’ll try to look into that. ;)

A bunch of paintings!

2008-09-19T11:29:00.014-04:00

Hey guys!
Sorry for the long no-update period. I've been away for a week and a half or so and have been quite busy with the preparation for Japan!
Well, some of you requested that I put past art projects on the blog. I'll do it in four times: paintings, drawings, 3D and ads. This way they will be easy to spot with the labels (plus I need a bit of time to shoot the works :P).
So here it goes! :D

Reproduction of Carravagio's The Calling Of St-Matthew (detail), 2006
Acrylic on wooden round panel, 60 cm.
Link to the original.Reproduction of Cézanne's The Card Players (2006)
Acrylic on wooden round panel, 60 cm.
Here's the original
(there are 5 versions of it and I couldn't find my book's on the net):

There is a special story about these two paintings!

This was a color reproduction exercise, based on a well known artist's work. I ambitiously choose a Carravagio painting, but not until the day before it was due I realised I wouldn't finish it in time. So in one night I reproduced something much easier on the other side of the panel! Yeah!

Apple (2007)
Oil on canvas, about 100 cm X 40 cm.

This is a school work, but I don't remember the purpose of the excercise lol. I leave the interpretation to you... ;)

Untittled (2008)

Acrylic on Bristol 45 cm X 36 cm.

Still plan on adding things to this, but so far I like it! :) Again, interpretation is all yours. I think I'll name it " Magnetic Field", but I'm not sure yet.

Jedidiah! : an humanitarian activism throught art

2008-08-26T13:00:00.008-04:00

Pierre-Hugues and I had this ambition: creating an association of artists who'd give away a percentage of the sale of their works to charity and environmental causes.

We were quite happy (and surprised!) to discover that a similar project was developped in the US, and that's Jedidiah!, a group of young artists, musicians and athletes. They produce and sell clothing to "create a consistent revenue stream to asist and empower victims of poverty and injustice".

Maybe you already earn a piece of clothing of their's, as their products are retailed at Sears!

Take a look.

Jedidiah Clothing: Who We Are from Jedidiah Clothing on Vimeo.

http://www.jedidiahusa.com/home

2008-08-26T09:51:00.003-04:00

2008-08-22T16:03:00.003-04:00

I did my best to fit this cartoon into the post... Had to cut it in pieces because Blogger would crop it and there was no way you could have zoomed onto it!

2008-08-14T11:39:00.001-04:00

2008-08-13T14:55:00.003-04:00

HELL YEAH!
Tickets are reserved and departure is September 25!! Sushis, sakura trees and Tokyo Tower, here I come!!
Ah... I know these are NOT the only things in Japan... I know there also are Mt. Fuji, rice balls and geishas. Dah.

2008-08-09T13:30:00.000-04:00

Roadsworth

2008-07-22T10:01:00.006-04:00

Or integrating artistic beauty to dull city grounds.

If you live or went to Montreal you might have once seen this enormous white and blue lego painting on the floor in front of the Palais des Congrès.

I always thought that was a pretty cool and clever artwork. Now as someone sent me the following video I made the link between the lego artwork and this street artist who was on the news some 4 or 5 years ago.

Discover this incredible artist which I now admire so much for his foolish courage and pure ambition of making this piece of world a little prettier!

The pictures come from Roadsworth's website.

The movie trailer is the property of the National Film Board of Canada.

This machine's a jerk.

2008-07-21T12:47:00.002-04:00

The Mighty Recording Machine

2008-07-18T11:41:00.000-04:00

Computer Arts tools

2008-07-17T11:11:00.008-04:00

Trying on speedpainting with the help of (copyright free!) Computer Arts magazine's high resolution photoshop paintbrushes. I also used some of my own paintbrushes, and I painted out the figure at the end.
The magazine's a very useful one for graphic artists: it contains graphic software tutorials, tips and other articles on graphic art, and it comes with a cd with free material to work with, as well as works from artists at the cutting edge of modern graphic art - I highly recommend it!!

*** Lil' mistake: for those of you who read "Idn" yesterday, that was a mistake. Although Idn is also a great magazine, I really was talking about "Computer Arts". My bad! ^^;

Siiight.

2008-07-15T10:54:00.001-04:00

Schmu.

2008-07-14T09:50:00.004-04:00

New layout!

2008-06-27T12:51:00.003-04:00

I just chaged the whole layout of the blog, so I post the old banner here, in order to keep it archived! Hope you like the new one.

Iroquois folktale and... a switch to english!

2008-05-22T20:39:00.009-04:00

« J’ai faim... j’ai faim...!! »
« J'ai fsee... Genesee... »
« Genesee! »
« Vite, il faut partir! Il arrive! »
7 ans plus tôt
***
"I'm hungry... I'm hungry...!!"
"I'm husee... Genesee..."
"Genesee!"
"Hurry, we have to go! It's coming!"
7 years earlier

« Mes enfants, je vous ai déjà expliqué ce que c’est que la mort, de même que la maladie et l’infortune. Sachez que tous ces fléaux ont une cause. »
« Écoutez attentivement car ce que je vais vous dire n’est pas à prendre à la légère. »
« Ko nea rau neh neh. »
« C’est un être monstrueux : grand comme cinq hommes, il a pour tout corps une tête à la tignasse épaisse, flanquée d’une grande paire d’ailes noires. »
« Il se terre dans les bois, les champs et les rivières depuis des temps immémoriaux. Il sème la terreur et le fléau, qu’il soit en colère ou qu’il s’ennuie. Et lorsqu’il a faim... »
« Il n’hésite pas à se nourrir d’hommes. »
***
"My children, I already explained to you what are such things as death, illness and infortune. Now, you have to know that they all are caused by something. "
"Listen carefully, this is very serious matter."
"Ko nea rau neh neh."
"It is a moustruous being: tall as five men, its body is only a head with thick hair, and it has a pair of large, dark wings."
"It's been hiding in the woods, the fields and the rivers forever, awaiting. Weither it is angry or bored, it causes terror and misfortune to makind. And when it is hungry..."
"It eats humans without hesitation."

-------------------

I wanted to enter a quebeker cartoon contest, but didn't managed to finish in time (1st of may) because I was busy with the past semester and job hunting for the summer. Yet I decided to have it done and here it is for you to see! ^^

To enter the contest one had to submit the first two pages of a 6 pages work on a quebeker folktale of their choice. I choose an Iroquois folktale: The Flying Head. (For those of you who would like to know more about the Iroquois nation, follow this link!) The Iroquois long believed that the Flying Head ( Ko nea rau neh neh ) was a monster who caused infortune and death to mankind. It is said that one day, as the tribe left the camp because the monster was coming to eat humans, a women stayed behind. She fooled the monster by pretending to prepare a delicious meal in her pot who was filled, in fact, with hot stones. The monster rushed into the longhouse, grab the pot and ate it all; it then flee in pain, never to be seen again.

This project took a lot more time to realise than expected. Conclusion: gouache is really pretty but takes too long for perfectionnists working 40 hours a week. -_-;
Oh, well. Need to find a faster medium.

Wondering why I switched to english? Well as you know, I am going on an exchange to Japan in september. So I had three languages possibilities: French, english or japanese. I picked english since its the language most likely to be known by both my fellows quebekers and japanese friends-to-be. But fear not! I still am a proud francophone quebeker. :D

A Perception Matter

2008-03-27T17:29:00.005-04:00

Voici l'oeuvre que j'ai présentée au Art Show for Diversity de Bishop's.

A Perception Matter (une question de perception) illustre comme même lorsque nous faisons partie d'un groupe opprimé pour une raison ou une autre, nous avons tout de même des préjugés ou des comportements préjudiciaires envers d'autres groupes. L'exemple le plus flagrant qui me vient à l'esprit est celui de Faith Ringgold, une artiste qui lutta activement durant les années 60-70 pour les droits des noirs aux États-Unis, mais qui ne put s'asseoir à aucune table de négociation parce qu'elle était une femme.

Pour en savoir plus sur cette artiste, rendez-vous à cette adresse: http://www.faithringgold.com/ .

Cake Trauma

2008-02-21T22:50:00.006-05:00

Essayer de faire un gâteau au chocolat chez quelqu'un qui cuisine pas, c'est du sport.

Concours BD

2008-02-17T19:04:00.007-05:00

Désolée pour le délai!!
En gros, j'ai rattrapé le retard que j'ai pris dans mes travaux et... c'est pas mal ça... hahaha!

Voici les planches que ma sœur et moi avons soumises au concours BD de la librairie Monet!
Nous n'avons pas gagné malheureusement, mais ce n'est que partie remise! Nous reconnaissons ne pas avoir eu beaucoup de temps à mettre sur ce projet, et comptons bien le retravailler pour soumettre une version améliorée à un éditeur. Sinon, ben on trouvera autre chose!

Case 1
Bulle 1 : Bonjour, Julien.
Bulle 2 : On va procéder à ton entrevue.
En bas de la case : À 18 ans, j’ai tout essayé.
Case2
Dans le dos du 1er homme : Pot, LSD, coke, héro… et leurs dérivés.
Dans le dos du 2e homme : J’ai aussi fini par passer en désintox.
Case 3
À gauche : Et m’en voilà sorti…
À droite : en train de passer une entrevue pour travailler dans une pharmacie.
Case 4
À gauche : Pourtant,
À droite : je n’ai pas envie de travailler pour eux.
Case 1
Pagé!
Case 2
Bulle 1 : Ah, Alex!
Bulle 2 : Pis, le travail à la pharmacie?
Case 3
Bulle 1 : Ben, je viens juste de commencer…
Bulle 2 : Ah, ouais, ouais…
Case 4
Bulle 1 :Alors ils t’ont engagé même si tu… si t’étais un deal…
Bulle 2 :C’est toi qui es louche!
Case 5
Bulle : Julien, je vais te parler dans mon bureau.
Case 6
Bulle 1 : Tu vas me faire renvoyer!
Bulle 2 : Bye!

Case 1 :
Sur la porte : G. Blanchard, Pharmacien.
Bulle : Tu peux t’asseoir.

Case 2 :
Bulle : Tu dois te douter qu’on t’a pas engagé ici pour rien?
Case 3 :
Bulle : On a enquêté sur toi avant l’entrevue.
Case 4 :
Bulle 1 : Évidement, on sait que tu sors de désintox parce que tu étais accro aux drogues dures.
Bulle 2 : Mais c’est pas le plus important.
Bulle 3 : On a aussi découvert que tu as été dealer de drogue... et que tu ne t’étais jamais fait prendre.
Bulle 4 : Qu’est-ce que vous voulez, au juste?

Case 1
Bulle : Quelque chose de tout-à-fait dans tes cordes.
Case 2
Bulle 1 : Je veux que tu reconstruises ton réseau de contacts pour vendre ceci : la RED.
Bulle 2 : C’est une nouvelle drogue que nous avons mit au point ici même.
Bulle 3 : Il s’agit d’un stimulant dont nous voulons connaître les effets en profondeur.
Bulle 4 : Je ne suis pas radin; si tu acceptes docilement, tu seras payé pour ton travail. Case 3
Vide.

Case 1
T’AS ACCEPTÉ?!
Case 2
Bulle 1 : Tu sortais pas de désintox, toi-là?
Bulle 2 : Ça veut pas dire que je vais en prendre.
Case 3

Bulle 1 : Et puis…
Bulle 2 : …ça ne me déplait pas en fait. J’ai bien envie d’aller mettre mon nez dans leurs affaires...
Bulle 3 : …on dirait qu’ils jouent à quelque chose de plus gros qu’ils ne me le font paraître.
Bulle 4 : Et en plus, ça paye.

Case 4
Vide.
Case 5
Bulle 1 : Bah! Quand tu prends cet air-là, ça donne rien de s’opposer.
Bulle 2 : Encore heureux que tes parents t’aient pas abandonné.

Case 6
Bulle 1 : Pas le choix! J’étais pas majeur quand j’ai commencé la désintox.
Bulle 2 : …

Voici les commentaires que nous avons reçus :

Votre dessin révèle une belle personnalité graphique en devenir. Continuez à le travailler, et pensez à ne pas laisser de pages complètes sans décors et soignez les détails : ils donnent de la crédibilité au récit. Votre idée est intéressante, mais il faut la travailler davantage : comme elle a souvent été utilisée, de quelle manière peut-elle se démarquer de ce qui a déjà été fait?

Ce que je trouve à dire là-dessus:

- Hein? Ça a déjà été utilisé souvent? Mais bon, l'histoire aurait effectivement être plus travaillée.

- J'ai dessiné mes planches grandeur nature, c'est-à-dire petites (15 x 20 pouces) ! En pensant m'économiser du temps sur le calculage de proportion du texte, j'ai perdu au niveau du détail et il m'était difficile de travailler rapidement, et d'autant plus avec précision. Résultat: il y a plein de bulles croches et les décors sont pour la plupart douteux... :S Ouais, ouais, ouais... bel estimé!

- Les dialogues sont foireux! J'ai dû les composer à la va-vite parce qu'on manquait de temps et que faute de scanner, je ne pouvais envoyer les crayonnés à ma soeur. T_T
- Je suis tout de même satisfaite de mon utilisation des contrastes de gris pour créer les ambiances requises! <3

- Je suis aussi contente des expression des personnages!

- J'aime bien ma mise en page, mais elle aurait pu être plus recherchée.

Qu'en pensez-vous?

Étude de style # 3

2008-01-17T09:29:00.001-05:00

L'une de mes études pour le personnage principal: Julien.
Concept génial de ma soeur au sujet de son nom: pour mettre de l'emphase sur sa personnalité rusée et ses aptitutes sociales, son prénom sonnera doux et franc, et seuls ses employeurs et ses collègues de travail l'appellent par son prénom. Son nom de famille par contre (à déterminer) aura du caractère et du punch, et les personnes qui le connaissent bien l'appellent par ce nom.

Ouais! ma soeur a fini le prédécoupage des 5 premières pages, soit le 10% du travail entier, qui doit être remis comme participation au concours. GO, GO, GO!!

Merci pour vos encouragements, les gens! C'est super apprécié! :D

2008-01-12T16:17:00.001-05:00

Premier test d'encrage.

Moi 'ssi, moi 'ssi!

2008-01-12T00:38:00.002-05:00

Étude de style #1

2008-01-10T20:15:00.001-05:00

Christine travaille encore sur le scénario de la BD dont nous voulons soumettre le projet au concours de la librairie Monet (http://www.librairiemonet.com/monet-editeur.php). En attendant, je fais des esquisses pour bien cerner le style et l'ambiance de la BD.

Pour cette histoire, je veux créer une ambiance à la Edgar Allan Poe, où on tente d'expliquer le surnaturel et le mystérieux, sans réussir tout-à-fait. Alors donc:
-Un jeu d'ombres et de lumières assez contrasté, à l'aide d'hachures fines.
-des angles de vue dramatiques et distortionnés et une mise en page plutôt asymetrique pour créer de l'instabilité.

D'autres idées?

Blog Mania

2008-01-10T13:23:00.002-05:00

Wouaaaaahouuuuu!

Enfin, j'ai réussi à faire un blog! Après maintes aventures avec mon scanneur et mon appareil photo, voici ce qui me servira à mettre sur internet mes projets et illustrations, garder contact avec les gens que je laisserai au Québec l'an prochain et par dessus tout, connaître votre avis sur ce que je posterai ici!

Ce strip est le premier d'une série sur la naissance de mon blog... Mon objectif est de poster au moins une chose par jour, alors revenez souvent!

Do :D