Cyndil's Portfolio

Grandma's 80th Birthday

2012-01-17T22:37:00.000-08:00

shh...it is a surprise

Crafting Robin Hood

2012-01-14T16:42:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time about three years ago, I was in a class where our focus was to illustrate the story of Robin Hood. Recently one of my fellow illustrators who was in that class asked if we were interested in revisiting that enjoyable time so he started a blog for us to post some more Robin Hood illustrations. Here is my first post for it. I wanted to do a young Robin Hood illustration, so I did :)
It was for fun and quick, but turned out great.

LC Career Paths for Highschoolers

2012-01-03T21:15:00.000-08:00

So while I was volunteering at LC Highschool for my online TEFL class, the teacher I was volunteering for discovered that I was an artist. So he asked me to do an illustration for one of his presentations. They were helping me with my class so I thought I would go ahead and help them out as well. I thought it turned out well enough, it isn't what I normally do or at the level of a portfolio but I was happy to help out the teacher and the students.

IF: Round

2011-12-01T20:22:00.001-08:00

This is a rough, experiment but I thought it went well for this weeks topic, for Illustration Friday. I think I am going to play around more with this style and hopefully tighten it up to produce more professional illustrations.

IF: Vanity

2011-11-21T17:42:00.001-08:00

A fun quick illustration, when I thought of vanity: I thought of someone spoiled who believes themselves beautiful but in actuality they look ridiculous.

IF: Fuel

2011-10-26T14:42:00.000-07:00

So I was going more conceptual rather than narrative this week. Mainly because I don't have time for thinking up a character at the moment. I wanted to think of fuel as the main theme but it only being an underlying theme as well. I am not that great on the conceptual art but I thought I would give it a try.

IF: Hibernate

2011-10-05T20:03:00.000-07:00

I am back, and I had my own 'hibernate' time I guess. I loved the idea of a bear curling up for a long hibernation then having something interrupt that. I loved drawing it out but I am still developing that love for painting. I thought overall it turned out okay, if you have any criticisms please feel free.

Volunteering and Stuff

2011-09-21T19:43:00.001-07:00

So, just so that you all don't think I'm slacking, I have actually been volunteering and also working for a foot doctor's business. I volunteered to do some graphic art for the local Guild School, mainly their adds for the Penny drive and their 'Smiles' Campaign. Here is the logo I worked on:

It is supposed to be like a penny for the penny drive. My friend who works at the guild school really liked it and I am glad it was what they were looking for.

I also redesigned a website for the Family Foot Center, a local Foot Doctor's Office. There is still some tweaking to do on it but I like it a whole lot better then how it was before.
You can check it out at www.familyfootctr.com

So that is up to date for me I need to finish this weeks illustration and I will post that here soon.

IF: Mysterious

2011-09-07T15:45:00.001-07:00

This Topic for Illustration Friday was Great. It allowed me to be creative in designing a great introduction illustration for my up and coming graphic novel. Featuring two characters that are fun and Traditional. I also had some fun with light and darkness, experimenting with a new brush feature. Hope everyone enjoys :)

IF: Disguise

2011-08-31T15:19:00.001-07:00

Back from Vacation and since I spent a little more then a week in Idaho... guess what was on my mind. I love cows despite their smell, so I wanted to do something that was like a wolf in sheep's clothing but with cows. I thought it turned out pretty well, it took me a while to get a good composition and I had to play with how I would disguise the bear. This was quick but fun, until next week and a new story.

IF: Imperfect

2011-08-09T19:51:00.000-07:00

This is the only illustration I am going to do this month only because I will be traveling the rest of the month. This illustration came to me while sitting outside and listening to the birds. I thought what would happen if a bird hit the wrong note.
Sorry not as epic as my other illustrations but it made me laugh.

But be excited come this September I will be back doing sequential illustrations and I am also planning on starting a new comic and so I will be posting the character designs for it coming soon.

Magic Bound

2011-07-22T06:35:00.000-07:00

Hey all,
So it has been a couple of months but today I am going to give my roommates the completed short comic about our adventures in 'the place where dreams come true.' So I am going to post one page of the comic here. It will be without type, sorry. I combined all the pages on indesign, which worked out great for me when printing but uploading here will be kinda a pain so here is the first page and if you want the full version... contact me and we'll figure something out.

and hey why not add one of the other funny ones, even without the text it is amusing. :)

Break

2011-05-25T14:13:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone who has been following my blog, you probably realized that I haven't been updating it weekly like I normally do. That is because I have started a new project. I decided to write a comic based off what I have been experiencing here at Disney world. This comic will be about 48 pages long and I am proud to present the character designs of the protagonists. So I will do updates on where I am at with the comic ever so often but it wont be as often as before. Wish me luck, I have till the end of July to finish it.

IF: Lesson

2011-05-05T17:08:00.000-07:00

Here is a teaser for the animatic that I am dreaming about. Here is our small but persistent penguin bent on being different. My focus this month is a few illustrations about him. This style was another experiment and so the other illustrations wont be like this one but they will be hopefully get up to portfolio level.

IF: Bicycle

2011-04-27T10:46:00.000-07:00

Well after listening to Queen's Bicycle song over and over again, I was inspired to illustrate the last of April's story. The girl discovered that despite changing her surroundings she could not be happy because the problem was within.

This was a fun story to illustrate, but I don't feel as though I really got into the characters but we shall see this next month how far it will go.

IF: Journey

2011-04-20T19:22:00.001-07:00

It seems as though our clowns have escaped the clutches of our villian. Hopefully they are headed to a brighter future. Next week will be the finale of this tale so we shall find out.

This one frankly made me want to throw my computer across the room, the colors were not turning out like I wanted them to, so I just left it a bit gray and depressing, here is my bright hope that next month will be a more brilliant story.

IF: Bottled

2011-04-14T12:50:00.000-07:00

So the plot thickens, what will happen to our poor trapped performers? We will have to see next week.

I liked how this one turned out, I am trying a new color palette and it is really fun to experiment with it. I am not sure this one is quite done with, I plan on going back and fixing a few things and spending a little more time with this one.

IF: Duet

2011-04-07T10:46:00.000-07:00

New Month = new story, sorry I got up with family vacations and work the last two weeks of last month so I was only able to create two illustrations for that story but this one aught to be good. Here are two clowns one quite enamored with one the other depressed about where her life is leading her. Depending on what the subject of next week is, we shall see how this duet will progress.

IF: Stir

2011-03-17T11:05:00.001-07:00

So here is the next illustration in the Peacekeeper's Story. You make up what she is doing other then stirring. Why is she stirring? not sure but it follows the topic. It was fun though because I experimented with just a simple ballpoint pen. I need to tweek a few things but here it is to your enjoyment.

IF: Warning

2011-03-10T09:45:00.000-08:00

I've decided that I am trying something new with the Illustration Friday theme, instead of strictly following the theme I am going to try to change things around. I will still use the theme but apply it to a story that I am working on each month. This way I am full filling my desire to do sequential art and still producing an illustration each week for illustration Friday. This month is the 'Peace Keepers' series. I will see if I can produce the comic along with the illustrations, I don't know we shall see.

IF: Swarm

2011-03-03T17:16:00.001-08:00

This one made my roommate laugh her gutes out. When I saw the topic was swarm I for some strange reason thought of lemmings. My mind confuses me sometimes. But the thought of these little rodent mindlessly leaping off cliffs to their doom was my response to the topic. Enjoy, hopefully it made you laugh.

Surrender, Illustration Friday

2011-02-03T09:59:00.001-08:00

Well, I finally figured out how to get the images on the internet here is Florida. So as for the subject of Illustration Friday: Surrender. This took me a while to decided what I should draw. I finally chose to go with something I thought up while I was riding the bus (takes a long time to get where I am going). I thought about when I was in my horseback riding class and how the horses being ten times our weight were willing to submit to our demands. I took that thought and so decided on a cowboy horse training his horse. Him being very pompous about it and the horse submitting or surrendering slightly unwillingly. It was a fun subject to create and can't wait till next week.

Illustration Friday: Chicken

2011-01-16T16:17:00.001-08:00

So since I am going to work at Disney World and am not sure when I will get a job illustrating. I am going to start participating in Illustration Friday. Every week will be a new illustration.
This will be my first entry. It was something quick that I thought to do. It was great to explore my option here as well.

My Brother the Lizard

2011-01-11T17:47:00.000-08:00

This was a Christmas gift for my brother, he asked for an animal that represented his personality. I then tried to think of the different attributes that he had in common with the creatures that I knew. I finally settled on an iguana. Mainly because of his laid back personality and his love of the sun and the beach. I am happy to say he loved it and I enjoyed making it for him.

Toadz, Storyboard

2011-01-11T17:08:00.000-08:00

So this is the Storyboard I created for Toadz, this project was for my Narrative Illustration class. I had a fun time creating it, we had to use index cards and create 50 key frames for the story we chose. I used the portion of Toadz, where Armide goes to seek Apprenticeship from the witch of Hansel and Gretel, Granny Ginger.
This was also the first time I ever used prisma color markers to this extent and I thought it turned out quite well.

BFA Final

2011-01-03T17:34:00.000-08:00

Here is my BFA project, at least the storyboard of my project. It took me at least 8 months to create and a lot of patience not to give up. The story is based off the Brother Grimm's tale. In the project I mixed two cultures together, of Asian and European. This project is directed at promoting myself as a story artist and an illustrator, therefore I am targeting the two fields of publishers and film. This project took forever to create and was a lot of work, my teacher even said that I had the most finished illustrations that has ever been seen in the BFA program. I think it was worth it and I really enjoyed myself.

Narrative Illustration Anamatic

2010-12-29T17:17:00.000-08:00

Toadz from Cyndil Tanner on Vimeo.

This video was a lot of fun to create but it took longer then I thought it would but I learned a ton. The music was done by Voicemale, Bolero. I am planning on continuing to create videos like this one. It definitely is a trial run, but it is a start. For this project we had to create a minimum of one minute animatic. I have never done this before and I also have never used any film editing software, thankfully a couple months prior to this assignment I bought Avid, an editing software. I still needed to learn how to use it though, but with no sleep: amazing things can be accomplished. I did get a little carried away and sadly because of limited time I had to draw in photoshop; which I hate.
The good news is I finished the project and am now on my way to finishing more.
The video picks up after my storyboard, where Armide goes to see a master witch, whom Armide hopes will help her become the witch she wants to be. My favorite part is at the end where Repunsel gets her hair stuck, it is hard to tell because the timing is a bit off but I love it. In my later videos it will be better.
Enjoy and expect more great things!

Maquette: Armide

2010-11-22T11:42:00.001-08:00

So this project turned out great but it took loner then I thought it would, it was a learning process though. I did a maquette, this is like a small sculpture of your character, they do maquetes for movies when they need to draw a character over and over again, it is also a great reference for lighting. It was fun but extremely frustrating. Note to all who attempt this, cut your nails!

Armide: Revised

2010-11-22T11:37:00.000-08:00

So after looking at all my other characters I had to change Armide, she was too tame compared to the others and I need her to stand out. I got the inspiration for her from one of my roommates who had the most awesomest hair in the world. Overall I thought it was fun to design her, that and now she has a unique character.

Toadz

2010-10-21T12:06:00.000-07:00

So the next project, we had to create a minimum of three characters that either support or hinder the main protagonist. I had a lot of fun creating these different characters, I ended up loving it so much that I created four. Armide's frog, Maeve (Armide's Mother), Madame Gothel (the witch from Rapunzel), and Granny Ginger (the witch from Hansel and Grettle) were the four I chose to do. I wanted to take different views on them other then your disney average evil witch. I really pushed the characters and what they look like, in so doing that though I now need to go back and again redesign my main character. When will I find time for that? Oh well, here are the character's personal illustrations and following are the line-up, how well they look together is the most important when creating groups.

Toadz

2010-10-21T08:23:00.000-07:00

So our teacher wanted us to go more in-depth of what our character is like so her assigned us about 200 questions that we had to answer about our character's personality, physical traits, quirks, interest, religion, etc. Don't worry I won't bore you with the details. Just the images :). We had to then do action studies for our character, I did my best trying to break my character to see how far is too far. Some of the work some of them don't have that great of silhouettes.

I thought the exercise was a ton of fun though, that and there are a ton of hilarious picture of people falling on the internet. The next part of the project is an emotion studies, comprising of 12 emotions: Joy, Surprise, disgust, regret, fear, anger,love, sadness, pride, nervousness, relief, and confusion. See if you can figure out which is which.

And lastly we had to create a five point turn around. It was daunting but I did it, though I think I could have put a more s-curve into her.

Toadz

2010-10-21T08:14:00.000-07:00

It is time to create the main protagonist. Her name is Armide and she is a quirky odd type of witch. I've had multiple reviews and revisions done to her and I am still not satisfied. So expect changes but for the most part this is her general idea.

I began out with just trying to see what her outfit would look like:

After I finally decided on what she would wear I then went ahead and illustrated what I thought she would look like and also a little of her personality should come out.

That is all for now

Toadz

2010-10-21T08:06:00.001-07:00

So I started this new class called Narrative Illustration. This class focuses on character design and story. Which is great cause that is what I am looking into right now. We have to create an id and logo and a story to go along with it. My story is Toadz. I will give a synopsis below. I am super excited for this class. So lets get started.

Toadz
Be Your Own Witch

Amongst the sunny branches of the tallest tree of the dread forest sits Armide staring up at the clouds, she lazily picks out shapes of frogs and toads in the sky delaying her return to home. Back at home her mother, Maeva, kept putting on the pressure of choosing her alignment, or witch type, so that Armide would be an acceptable witch. Which, she was not. That is acceptable; she was actually described as an awkward witch. Her potions were potent but pink and her outfit was horrid but classy. She wasn’t your typical warty witch but neither a seductress type witch either. She was different. Each day her mother would try to entice her with entrails or potions to see what would peek her interest. Armide in turn shows her mother her own trick of transforming people to frogs, (which her mother just laughs at). Finally, Maeva gives up and sends Armide on an errand to go see her aunt, the fortune teller, to find out what Armide should be.
With her pet star toad, Renjii, in hand; Armide starts down the crooked road, which leads out of the dread forest to the local town where her aunt has a firm grip over the gullible peasants. She says hello to the werewolf as he tries to entice a young girl wearing a red coat with some flowers and continues on her way. At the run down village, in a hut lives the fortune teller witch, a perfect example of a true witch: crusty as her shack (nothing like Armide). The seer gives a crooked smile and gives a great act and show before she commands her glass ball to tell her the future. Armide doesn’t show much interest and the old witch disappointedly tells her that she must travel the four corners of the land Fée, meet with the great witches of the past and gain the advice from them. What type of answer is that ‘ask someone else’, annoyances? Armide decides instead of just asking for advice she will attempt to become each of their apprentices and learn to be a witch like them.
Finding these great witches of the past isn’t that hard, you just go to the most unpleasant location you can locate and at the heart is the witch. The problem is the peasants in between. One scenario she was confronted by a malicious group of peasants that were really after a man-made monster named franksten or something, but they were perfectly willing to change goals and go after Armide. This didn’t help Armide’s mood, they burned her broom and she was forced to curse the land with flies. Bwahaha, more food for the frogs!
She finally arrives at a candy cottage in the center of a confusingly twisted forest. The old witch was willing to listen to her plight and showed her the simplest ways to create glorious candies and goodies that Armide burns quite gracefully. Disgusted by Armide’s hopelessness and angered by the waste of good treats,(that and the smoke scared off some passing children) the old witch attempts to throw Armide into a pot of water to boil and eat her. But Renjii leaps into the face of the old witch and in the confusion and thrashing about the old witch tripes into the pot and gets boiled herself.
Armide leaves in a hurry and scoots past another passing fly infested group of peasants armed to the teeth with stakes and mumbling about vampires. She turns them into a bunch of toads for good measure. She soon arrives at a giant garden, with every plant one can dream of and a giant wall that surrounded everything, at the center was a sun tanned witch, Dame Gothel, gardening amongst some cabbage. The witch listens for a moment and says she can stay because the best witch is one that can garden. Armide lasts about a day when everything she touches starts to die or something goes wrong. With half her garden destroyed Gothel drags Armide to a tower and attempts to lock her in. But Renjii climbs on the nearest and only broom in the tower and Armide gets the hint and steals it in and flies to safety leaving Gothel alone and trapped in her own tower forced to watch as her garden is stripped bare by an expecting father.
This pattern continues with every witch Armide encounters. She accidentally breaks all the mirrors in a kingdom and trying to say sorry she makes an apple pie for the witch, I guess she was allergic. The snow queen’s palace is not flame resistant apparently and melts; that witch is lost in the river made from that large chunk of ice. (Note to self: do not make bon fires to call forth evil spirits in a palace of Ice.) Armide even tried to ask the Sea Witch but a passing fisherman snags her and she is put out on market before she can do anything to help.
“Well, that didn’t work very well,” Armide heads home trying to figure out her next move, but as she is on her way she is followed by angry peasants, literally hundreds of them are hunting after her. She loses most of them in the forest but she meets more problems as she gets home. Maeva is there waiting, she screams at Armide, and proceeds to curse her when other witches arrive. More witches don’t mean anything good, Armide is to be destroyed for the fact that she has defeated their great witch leaders. ‘Not only did you defame our great Witches but you continue to use that bizarre frog-curse on people.’ Screeched her mother. To make matters worse the lost peasants start showing up yelling for respite and vengeance.
In the calamity of shouts and cursing, Armide hears a soft croak coming from her toad. At least Renjii still loves me. Truly, Armide has always loved frogs too, they have always accepted her. That is probably the reason she created the spell of turning people into frogs. Her Spell! She looks around at the angry peasants and infuriated witches, and with a smile she waves her hand and in a flash and a thousand pops; she is surrounded by thousands of frogs. Her smile turns to laughter as she realizes she is the most powerful witch in the land. She is her own type of witch.

The Last Summer Project

2010-09-09T21:43:00.001-07:00

So my boss got so excited about all the projects I was working on and see how well I was able to execute all of them, she brought me over to one area of the library where there were three pillars and she told me I was completely free to do whatever I wanted to these pillars. So I thought of using quotes on reading and adding to scenes from childhood tales or stories. I also have always admired the style of the vintage silhouettes, so I tried that style. It turned out great, took a bit longer and more experimenting then I thought I was getting into but I am happy how they turned out and also I heard that many of the librarians were fighting over who would get them when they are taken down at the end of the semester.

I love the story of Cinderella, that and it was fun designing out her dress.

I had to have an image for the guys, so here it is, taken straight from the story of sleeping beauty, at least the Disney version.

This last image I just loved because it was just fun to do and the story of Alice is so readily recognizable. Later one librarian told me that I should illustrate a whole children's book in this style and she already promised she would buy it. I really do love this style but I am trying to perfect another, you never know where life will take you.

The next summer project

2010-09-09T21:27:00.001-07:00

So with the success of the first project, my boss and a couple of other librarians decided that they wanted to use me for a couple of other projects around the library and there was one area of the library that had windows lining the wall but the problem was the students when sitting at the desk stared right through the windows at the other students sitting across from them. We didn't want the poor students to feel as if they were in a fish tank (don't tap the glass :)). So the library director approved for contact paper to be put up and it was my job to make it pretty. So I cut out stencils and created the effect of etched glass. Turned out pretty impressive and the students wont feel as if someone were staring at them.

Summer Job

2010-09-09T21:11:00.000-07:00

So during the summer, I worked for the university library. Starting out doing the dregs work of any college student working for the college, but then one day my boss discovered that I was an artist when I drew a couple of my colleagues for the fun of it. Well this discovery allowed me to be in charge of the bulletin board next to one of the exits of the library. My boss said I was free to do what I liked so I tried the ripped paper style and after showing her a couple of my quick sketches I was able to produce the image below, which will be shown all semester. I had a ton of fun with this project and it allowed me to experiment with a new style.

Regretful Demon

2010-07-22T08:01:00.000-07:00

The Curious Angel

2010-07-22T07:57:00.001-07:00

Sorrow

2010-06-24T17:58:00.001-07:00

Vita

2010-06-23T10:17:00.002-07:00

Vache

2010-06-23T10:17:00.001-07:00

Mouton & Singe, the twins

2010-06-23T10:16:00.000-07:00

Souris

2010-06-23T10:15:00.002-07:00

Serpa

2010-06-23T10:15:00.001-07:00

Poulet

2010-06-23T10:14:00.000-07:00

Lapin

2010-06-23T10:13:00.002-07:00

Cochon

2010-06-23T10:13:00.001-07:00

Chienne

2010-06-23T10:12:00.000-07:00

Chevalle

2010-06-23T10:11:00.001-07:00

Tigre

2010-06-16T22:18:00.000-07:00

The Old Lady

2010-06-16T22:17:00.000-07:00

The Story Board for Robin Hood, Peril at the stream

2010-06-16T22:10:00.001-07:00

Fall Adv Illustration 2009

2010-06-16T22:06:00.001-07:00

My Mom's Bathroom

2010-06-16T21:09:00.000-07:00

What Makes you happy?

2010-06-05T09:06:00.000-07:00

Fear

2010-05-25T22:50:00.000-07:00

Business Video

2009-12-09T10:51:00.000-08:00

The Bugs

2009-05-14T21:28:00.000-07:00

IF ~ Intricate

2009-03-11T21:50:00.001-07:00

IF ~ Instinct

2009-03-05T13:23:00.001-08:00

Illustration Friday~ Celebrate

2009-02-18T20:21:00.000-08:00

Illustration Friday ~ Time

2009-02-11T19:04:00.000-08:00

IF~ Flawed

2009-02-04T19:38:00.001-08:00

Illustration Friday~ Climbing

2009-01-29T13:01:00.000-08:00

Pale

2009-01-21T18:18:00.000-08:00

IF- Pale

Test Post

2009-01-09T13:35:00.001-08:00

Yeah never done this before, hope it works.