darrylkee

[darrylkee]

Merry Christmas everyone! I just like to share a christmas card I made for my D&D group

[darrylkee]

Had the chance to animate another idle set, it’s been a while since I did one. I was in love with Garuda’s design and theme, and had a lot of fun animating her. Definitely one of the easiest sets I had to come up with, she practically animated herself!

[darrylkee]

Mood

[darrylkee]

Glad to be drawing again

[darrylkee]

I love warframe and all your work and I agree the maggots are adorable! I’m thoroughly addicted!

Thank you so much! Really happy to know u are enjoying the game!

[darrylkee]

I also did the Operator Idles you can equip based on the schools. I tried to base the characteristics based on the school descriptions and powers. Naramon is probably one of my favourites, it’s unfortunate most players don’t like it very much haha. At first, I wanted it to be based on the old operator concept art pose, (the girl in the black suit) but due to tech reasons, and to be a little more in line with the other idles, I was asked to tweak it. I guess the mish-mash of ideas skewed my intent, but I still like that snarky pose. I hope you like them too.

[darrylkee]

Hey I love a lot of the work you've done for Warframe, I wanted to ask do you have any advice for people just putting their foot in the door/self learning with 3D animation and modeling?

Thank you very much!😊Hmm I dont know what experiences you have so far at animating, but I started animating through reading Richard William’s book ‘Animator’s survival guide’. It gives a good starting point, but there are alot of other great books by Preston Blair, Eric Goldberg, that alot of animators started from. I came from a 2D background and I can say the skills are translatable Animation is alot of practicing, so I would say just keep experimenting and getting feedback are also a great way to improve

Have you tried any of the online animation contests before? Then there’s 11seconds club and LoopDeLoop Animation challenge, which are great sources of online feedback and references. Lastly, I havent found much of an animation community here on tumblr sadly, but i had much better luck on twitter. I had better luck finding gifs, references and discussions from animators there

[darrylkee]

Happy New Year. 2017 had been a busy year at work! I hope to post more stuff I had worked at DE. First up, here’s the big guy on the Eidolon Plains! Had the chance to do most of his animations. Was fun to tackle something so different from the usual normal size enemies, but that came with its own challenges. There was alot of iteration on his size and powers, but the bigger ones ended coming out later as (internally called) the ‘Bigalist’ and ‘Rainalyst’. Not their final names of course =P Here’s just some of the animations of the big guy!

[darrylkee]

The team did an amazing job!

I had the opportunity to cleanup the animation in the entire ending cinematic at 15:47(LINK to the part in the playthrough), with alot of guidance and direction by Geoff Crookes. Most of it was keyframed.

[darrylkee]

If any of my followers are coming to Tennocon tommorrow, I'm manning the art wall! Do come sign your name and say hi 😊

[darrylkee]

Super rough animation, quick and dirty! I’m learning new software, playing around with Krita and TvPaint. I always feel bad that I’m not drawing enough, so might as well draw alot while animating! 

[darrylkee]

A comic started by my friend Kelwin Kwan, go check him out!

[darrylkee]

So for the ivara animation you really added some personality to her, i LIVE the little "shh" thing she does haha

Thank you very much! I’m very glad you like her =D

[darrylkee]

One of the best art advice I've ever heard

How can I get the energy I need to work on my personal projects after a long and exhausting day at work? I mean, I get exhausted both physically and mentally with my current job and it's pretty much when I get home from work that I have the time to paint. What should I do?

Whew. This is a tough question, and a frequent one. The answer is very easy, but the implementation is one of the toughest things you’ll do.

First, let me give you a big hug. No, really, I swear, I’m sending you a hug right now, because I have been there. I fight this battle over and over and over again. And it’s a privileged problem, right? You have a job, where a lot of the people asking questions here are desperate for a job, any job, and if you have an art-related job, that’s even more precious! But those of us who have full time jobs know the burnout they can cause. When you’re working all day, it’s really hard to scrape the bottom of the well again when you get home. This can be draining at a job that isn’t fulfilling you with exactly what you want to do—but let me let you in on a little secret—it’s even MORE draining when you have your dream job, because you’re giving all your creativity to it, scraping the bottom of your barrel every day. And you feel even more guilty about complaining about it because everyone knows you have the coolest job ever and how dare you complain?

So technically the solution is easy. You just fucking make art. Any way you can. If you have to set an alarm every day to get up earlier, if you have to use your lunch break, if you keep a sketchbook in the toilet (I’ve seen this, I swear) you just do it. You give up the dream that you’ll squirrel away 4-5 hours at a time to paint. Instead you steal 30min of whatever kind of art you can whenever you can. You get good at taking sips of art instead of gulps. You force yourself to do it, just like any good habit you’re trying to form. 

But you know this. Your question is how to get over the exhaustion. And in my experience the mental inertia is a lot more difficult than the physical exhaustion in being creative. Ready? 

Stop making your personal art just another job. I know, it’s going to help you switch careers or get ahead in your art career. I know personal projects are more often what gets you noticed for commissions. I know you may have dreams of your side project becoming your main moneymaker one day. HOWEVER if that’s the only reason you’re doing it, then you’ve lost the point. You need to rewind back to the love that made you think of the project or the painting in the first place. The only thing that cuts through exhaustion is joy. The joy of a little kid begging to stay up later so they can keep playing. You need to find that place within you that’s free from pressure, free from expectations, free from future plans. You need to remind yourself that making art is way more fun and rewarding—and makes you feel better—than collapsing on the couch and watching TV. 

You’re not making art because you should, or because you have to to achieve a future goal. You’re making art because you’re a goddamn artist and making art is what makes us feel fucking good. If you can’t find that place, and learn to summon it when you need to, then you need a different side project. Or maybe you need to let go of the dream of being an artist in exactly the way you think you want to be. Go back to that sense of play, and see what comes out of it. Forgive yourself for putting aside the future goals for a little while. A few months maybe. Maybe forever. Don’t worry about that now. Right now, you need to play, and find joy in the process again. 

Staying in the moment, enjoying the process over the product, is the hardest lesson to learn in art, if not in life. 

Good luck.

—Agent KillFee

P.S. You might think I was answering your question, but really I’m putting it here as a reminder to myself. Thank you for asking the question.

[darrylkee]

Some of the Ivara Agile Idles I animated. She originally had an unarmed idle that incorporated her Artemis bow that supposed to be be holstered on her thigh, but I totally forgot that idles can be equipped by other frames if the player chooses, which would look so out of place. Without the bow it just looked like she was checking out her nails  

[darrylkee]

Quick animations for Nezha’s power casts. Had fun keyframing them and following the style Lucy set down for his idle sets =) Also I’ve had suggestions to put these in video, but I was committed to gifs. Although, now that I see the re-sized gifs doing these seizure inducing flashes I guess I will reconsider =/

[darrylkee]

Sentient powers I animated. The new faction of enemies made of up of AI robots. I originally animated them to be ALOT slower and graceful, as they are designed to be nonchalant when taking damage. But it turned out to be a real boring in game just waiting for them to do something. We ended up speeding them up, and tried somewhere between graceful and unnaturally mechanical. If you’ve fought them, you’d probably noticed their limbs can be shot off, and after a while they can re-equip any arm laying on the ground, even arms belonging to another Sentient. The animations were designed to fit any combination of equipped arms as well