Qilin Concept Layout n Practice Plus Maple Bacon Animation Film

Still working on coming up with this in a manner I feel satisfactory with.


This is another motion graphics & Animation sort of moving picture. I will animate the hair in layers, and I have already shot my cloud B-Roll all summer, and I have lots of it.

I will be including it into my Qilin film project.

This style is not anything new and I had seen many similar pieces of art (especially anthro foxes and cats usually in a kimono), but STILL compositions. I'd always wanted to do my own unique version with my own characters. It's basically 1 or 2 figures within a Chinese mountain side garden. I'd seen a lot of these kinds of things in China.

Back in 2002 I was at Antrho Con in Philadelphia and I bought a Portfolio and a few other prints by Dark Natasha including THIS one which I want to credit as my favorite in this style, which also somewhat reminds me of Gongbi paintings.

As much as I like her work, I don't want to do it exactly like hers, but my own version that is more me. I also cannot decide if I want to do spring or autumn, or even red maples.

To give you an example of my own styles of Qilin as Anthro I have THESE:

Obviously, I wouldn't be doing an animated cartoon piece anywhere near this detailed, but more simplified for animation. 

More like THIS:

Or similar to these:

I'm STILL working on figuring that out, including the composition layout and framing. I can;t decide how it will be yet. I'm getting closer, but I'm still not there yet. I will eventually get it, but I need to work at it.

The major frustration is due to not being easily able to access life drawing classes. I want a more formal and disciplined study for that.

As you can see in Dark Natasha's piece there's falling flower petals & leaves. SO, i'bve spent quite a lot of time learning & practicing custom making particles in Adobe After Effects CC. I did NOT know how to get that to work for a few years, and was very frustrated.

The Making of: Whimsical Jackalope In Spring: Art On The Marquee Full 001 from Kandice Zimbleman on Vimeo.

As you can see, the falling petals in this work is just pink triangles. Literally NO ONE I'd asked knew how to make a custom particle and all the tutorials were outdated and didn't work. NO one at UMASS knew how, and the curator, Jeff, also didn't know how. I must've asked easily 3 dozen individuals, and they also didn't know, including those whom taught After Effects in classrooms, or worked at gaming studios, and NONE of the people whom made tutorials would answer me on: YouTube, Twitter, and Email.

It was my daughter whom helped me to come up with the triangles as a compromise, and even programmed them. Then the curator, Jeff, helped me fix the programming.

Obviously, I've learned a lot more about particles since then, but I still couldn't get a custom particle to work. So, I had to reach out to Adobe and their people in the forum helped me.

So, these are the custom particles I came up with, plus using trackmats:

Watch BlackUniGryphon Logo Custom Particles Falling Leaves from blackunigryphon on www.twitch.tv

That was A LOT of WORK! 

Some of the particles are leaves. The leaf was an open source bit I borrowed online. But I want to actually custom make my own soon. I finally got a new scanner.

Other particles are my Black UniGryphon Logo. Some are like falling leaves, and other are like snow fall, or confetti.

So, you can see how a lot of these things are related. I'm often still perplexed about pre-compositions in After Effects, but I'm getting better at it.

Leaves, and Maple Leaves are gonna be a HUGE focus lately, especially since the film I'm a DP 7 Chief Editor & Graphics on is called "The Holy Maple Tree" and we finally did some filming for that. I'm NOT filming today tho'.

I've also been Live Streaming my work on Twitch:

Watch Sketching Anthro Qilin Unicorns in my Sketchbook n hanging out on my balcony from blackunigryphon on www.twitch.tv

Maple Bacon Film is Almost Done:

But also the Animated Film I'm doing with my daughter is almost finished. It would've been done in July if not for the heat waves.

Watch Animating in Toon Boom Harmony from blackunigryphon on www.twitch.tv

Unicorns, Rainbows, And Stars!

I've been redoing my graphics for Tumblr, Facebook, and elsewhere.

It struck me to do RAINBOWS after I was reviewing a number of the sources I'd mentioned in my previous blogposts.

I I have almost NO RAINBOWS in my work. The only 1 I can think of was the Sekhmet one I did for a stupid rigged Furries/Anthro' contest, that I never won both times, and the winners were just the buddies of the person having the contest.

Anyways, these are VERY Care Bears & Die Lezten Einhorn (The Last Unicorn) inspired in the coloring styles. Anyways, it turns out the people LOVE RAINBOWS!

Here's actually BOTH of the Sekhmet Goddess Pieces:

Sekhmet Mystic by BlackUniGryphon on DeviantArt

Sekhmet Star by BlackUniGryphon on DeviantArt

Here's This Dujiao Qilin Piece Reworked

Dujiao Qilin Rainbow Cool Colors BG by BlackUniGryphon on DeviantArt

I also did a PURPLE version for DeviantART's PrideMonth thingy.

Purple Spirit Pride Rainbow Qilin by BlackUniGryphon on DeviantArt

Here's the progression of a number of changes I made to this graphic. I wanted to stay more minimalistic, but I felt it needed a but of SOMETHING. I went with a cool colors vibe, and started adding a stars. Eventually, it became a rainbow.

Ying Qilin Dujiao Qilin Graphic 01 by BlackUniGryphon on DeviantArt

Ying Qilin Project Banner Dujaio QIlin w Rainbow 1 by BlackUniGryphon on DeviantArt

Ying Qilin Project Banner Dujaio QIlin w Rainbow 2 by BlackUniGryphon on DeviantArt

Examples of Older Qilin Character Design Artwork 001

I would like to run through my older Qilin character designs I came up with back in the GWB era. I also lived in China several times back then for long periods, spending a lot of time there and then coming back here to run seasonal art businesses in malls in which we sold custom made commissioned charcoal & pastel portraits and pop art, when there still was a Middle Class but on the decline.

I had to stop multiple times because of getting pregnant, living in China, the economic crisis, and lots of other things.

Basically,  in traditional cinematic or television character animation, the characters need to at least be somewhat simplified, because it's easier to draw, and focus on the motion, movement, emotion, and too many details slow it down. The more detailed your character design is the less likely it makes sense to really animate it, which doesn't look as good, because it's stiff. I honestly hated learning to animate using a "held cell" at AIPH because my original animation teacher at the Philadelphia UARTS was a graduate of CALARTS and taught the Disney standard style, even tho' Disney does actually use "held cells" in their feature animations they generally didn't. If you watch Japanese animation, AKA anime, their characters often have more details, but they are very choppy, stiff, and don't move very much. They tend to be more like a manga (comic book) that slightly moves and had audio. This is fine if you are producing more quantity over quality.

For my purposes, I need to have the Qilin still look like it has dragon scales, so I need to use simple old fashioned cartooning tricks to infer that it's covering in scales in whole sections of it's body. Some will be in the line art, and the rest will be in the clean-up work, especially the coloring.

As you can see, this Qilin has many many scales, lots of details. This is a NIGHTMARE to animate. It looks great as a still image, or for comics.

So, character designs need to be simplified, and stylized.

Here's a simple technique that tricks the human brain into thinking they are seeing a lot of details, when in fact, those details are merely inferred:

Close-up of my character "Lively" with a spirit dragon. See the textures that are inferred using simple colors and cots, highlights, and shading.

 With just a few lines, blots, or coloring the brain is told to see details that aren't actually even there. Also, keep in mind that THIS DRAGON is a WHITE DRAGON (with gold & silver inferred tones), and yet I have NOT USED ANY TRUE WHITE on it except it's teeth, and slightly on the highlight/reflection on the eye. I used almost NO TRUE RGB YELLOWS either.

Much of this technique is based on COLOR THEORY, but color theory in RGB (digital pixels) is different than working with inks (CMYK), or pigments in paints or pastels.

So, here's a number of my older rough designs for my original story:

Mighty Qilin by BlackUniGryphon on DeviantArt

Dujiao Qilin Spunky by BlackUniGryphon on DeviantArt

Simplified Qilin Front by BlackUniGryphon on DeviantArt

10 03 2007 _002 by BlackUniGryphon on DeviantArt

Eyewitness Qilin by BlackUniGryphon on DeviantArt

10 03 2007 _0013 by BlackUniGryphon on DeviantArt

Ruf Doodles 10 16 2007 001 by BlackUniGryphon on DeviantArt

I actually drew a lot of inspiration form the film "The Last Unicorn" and referenced it a number of times because I kept finding my detail-minded psyche constantly wanting to put in the details, and it was often tripping me up.

There are so many parts to the film that are stunningly gorgeous! Yet, they also use a number of tricks and techniques that infer details using color, shape, form, and color theory. In melds Western Art & Far Eastern Art. The background artwork is stunningly painted, but also this effect is achieved by the flow of the film moving from beautiful themes to dark and scary ones which heightens the contrasting vibe to each part to the viewer.

Another classic animated film that also blended Eastern & Western Art was Disney's Bambi which was the first animated film ever produced in America that employed a special Chinese artist, Tyrus Wong, to do the background artwork, and to influence the entire look and feel on the production.

I have more to write about on this topic, but I will end this entry here.

New Qilin Art Coming Up Soon

I still need to scan the recent work I did. 

I have a lot of things to do this week, every day so far. 


The Qilin GIFs I have here are based on my older original character designs I made back in the GW Bush Era.

The Tumblr for this project is HERE.












I've been discussing some ideas with my friend Drakenhart this week, also.

The Faceboook page for this project is HERE. You're welcome to come join and participate in the process.

I will probably be creating a Folder for this in My DeviantART Gallery soon also.

I was redoing & revamping my Etsy Profile, and My Shop over there, last weekend. 

I will probably be putting REAL HAND MADE "Adoptables" sketches on it this summer.


Here's a recent rough horse animation walk cycle. Not the greatest. But, nobody's perfect the first time, right?
Still figuring out OpenToonz