Heather Dixon Wallwork's Blog, page 12

Illusionarium Book Trailer

A book I wrote, "Illusionarium", will be coming out soon.  {May 19th!}  My favorite part about this is that I got to make the book trailer!

{A book trailer is, like, a teaser to get people excited about the book.  I made the trailer for Entwined, so it was a lot of fun to do it for Illusionarium too.}  And, like the trailer for Entwined, the first version was totally the wrong direction.




I wasn't real happy with it.  The silhouettes I made felt too cartoony, the gears too heavy, etc.  And I felt like the there wasn't a unifying element in the style.

So, I scrapped it and went forward with a different look.  I made the vignette a lot more delicate, simplified the color scheme, and used images that were from the time period of the book.




I liked this much better!

It was a blast to make.  This is totally  my dream--to have a small-productions animation studio where I get to make, like, commercials and music videos and a bunch of different styles and I can get all artsy and stuff and there are dancing ballerinas everywhere

My other dream is to secretly live in Disneyland for the rest of my life.










A girl's gotta dream.


Anyway, here's the trailer.


A great big thank-you to Matt Gates {who did the music}, Jeff Meacham {sound mixing}, Joe Fowler {producer}, and After Effects, which is my favorite animating program EVAH!  Thanks, guys!

Mary Pretty Profile

Another Mary Poppins picture <3

Some people might say this blog has too much Mary Poppins.

IF THERE WAS SUCH A THING!!!  HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA

I can't waaaaaaaaait!!!!! {Cinderella fangirling}

So Cinderella comes out this weekend, and I can't even say how excited I am to see it oiulwengh;aoewgjkn/.lk'adsboihfdba;io

Everyone in this movie is absolutely beautiful.

Cinderella is beautiful.


She's even gorgeous in her rags.

Her fairy godmother is absolutely stunning.

Her stepmother is drop-dead gorgeous.



Even her stepsisters are beautiful.

I want their dresses*

*And I'm totally not just saying that, I think those dresses are adorable and I'd wear them in a shot.  A shot, I say!

The prince is so beautiful I think he's a girl



And don't even get me started on the mice!


I am soooooo excited.
But I'm also nervous.  Because I bawl every time I watch the trailer.

I'm kinda a cryer.  I cry through a lot of movies.












SARAAAAAAAAH!




So with a track record like that, I know when I watch Cinderella, it's going to be reaaaally bad for the other people in the theater.




I've figured out a solution, though:

I'm totally filling the theater with every girl in my whole family.



{We're totally a family of cryers.}

AAAH I CAN'T WAIT

My Epic Mom

 This is my mom.  {You've met her before.}  She's pretty epic.


She doesn't like being called epic, though.


One time we went river rafting.  The raft guide was like:

And mom was like:

And he was like:






And what do you know.




How does she do that??

When my fiance broke off the wedding, my mom felt really bad for me.


So we went to Disneyland!

This is a picture of me in front of the Jolly Holiday Bakery.  This is my favorite place in the park, because it's themed Mary Poppins.  <3 <3 <3 <3



Let's zoom in and take a look at that gorgeous stained glass penguin.

 I'm watching you.
Adorable, right?  
But wait...zoom in even closer--

...And you can see my friend Renee, taking the picture!

And if you zoom in even closer--


Can you see it?  No?

Okay, let's zoom in a little more.

THERE it is!


It's Mickey Mouse, beating a kid with a baseball bat.  And who says Disneyland isn't the happiest place on Earth??

Anyway, back to the stained glass penguin.


My mom couldn't help notice how much I loved that stained glass penguin {I might've been licking the glass} and she decided to make it for me.  My mom is pretty marvelous with stained glass.



She started by having me make a pattern of it.


I changed it a little from the original window to make it a little closer to the cartoon penguins in the movie.

Mom took the pattern and did her magic.


It turned out beautiful.



Thanks, mom :) :)

As Seen at my Aunt's House

David loves dem roll up pancakes.

My Totally I̶r̶r̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶a̶l̶ Rational Fears

Is it weird that I want bus drivers to like me?


I was thinking about this the other day.  Like, why does it matter if I'm on their good side or not?


I've never seen the same driver twice.  It's kind of an irrational fear.


But then I thought


Is it really that irrational?


I mean, nothing's really stopping THIS


from happening.



















Later...



*******




Another Totally Rational Fear I have:

Why waiters scare the tar outta me.

Speedpaints, Speedpaints, Speedpaints!

I haven't kept on speedpainting like I should, but that's one of the joys of setting New Years goals.  You get another chance to flub it up!  Hahaha.

Anyway, here are some 30-minute speedpaints from last year ^_^

Haunted Mansion Mary

"Is this haunted room actually...stretching?  Or is it your imagination, hmm?"  Actually, I think this room is getting cuter, it makes me kinda wish the Haunted Mansion was themed Mary Poppins.  They could call it "Mary's Mansion" and they could turn on all the lights and there would be flowers everywhere and people would ride umbrellas over rooftops.  Why is this not a thing?  Someone make this happen.
I spent my Christmas vacation drawing this, which means it was the best vacation ever :) :)  Hope you all had a jolly holiday!



{Smaller version below}  {Added because having a longer blog post makes me feel like I've accomplished more.  Heh heh.}

Yes to the Dress {Again}

Hi.  My name is Heather Dixon, and I'm an addict.

I like to watch "Say Yes to the Dress."

It's a terrible addiction.  There are so many other good, wonderful things I could be addicted to.

Like mathematics.  Or oatmeal.  Or cocaine.


I don't know why I keep watching it.  It's a terrible show.

All the dresses look the same.


A lot of the brides are absolute monsters.




So why do I keep watching it?  Why???*

*probably because it's free on Youtube.


Here's what's really dumb about the whole thing:  I already have a wedding dress.


No, I really do.

I was going to be married earlier this year.

I'd wanted a wedding dress like Grace Kelly's:


Isn't she so pretty??

Unfortunately, wedding dresses that looked like they stepped out of a 50's musical haven't been in style since...well...the 50's.


So when I went shopping, there were a whoooole lot of sleeveless dresses....

But not a lot of Grace Kelly dresses :(

I found one that almost came close.

It cost $5500.



{I didn't buy it.}

I'd pretty much given up on my 50's wedding dress fantasies, when on the fly I decided to visit a tiny little dress shop tucked away behind a storage facility.

It was so tiny they didn't have enough dressing rooms {and to be fair...I did show up without an appointment.}  But they fit me in anyway...and they fit me in a broom closet!

That's where I found It.


Not the mop bucket...The Grace Kelly dress!  
It was sooooooooo pretty.  
{And way cheaper than $5500.  Which made it even prettier!}
 The lady who runs the shop told me her secret--she orders plus-size dresses in smaller sizes {she says a lot of dress shops don't know you can do that} and so that's how she finds dresses with sleeves.

Here's a picture of It:


I know right!  It's even prettier when it's not a badly-drawn grayscale cartoon!

That was then.

This is now.

A month before the wedding, my fiance broke up with me.



But enough about him.  {Though I really enjoyed drawing that last frame.}

All this to say, I still have a wedding dress.  And even worse, it still had to finish being altered.  Which meant I had to re-live everything every time I put it back on...

Thankfully, the lady who fitted me gave me the best advice I'd ever gotten:


And so, with the money I'd saved from returning his wedding band and other wedding expenses, I bought a 22" inch cintiq...which I am using right now.


Some people would say that's definitely a trade up.  {Oh, but not me!}

The dress currently hangs in my closet.  It's too perty to sell :)


I bring this all up because the other day, I was {yet again} watching the show.


A bride came in with her grandma and her entourage.


The grandma had very definite ideas of what she wanted.


The bride had very definite ideas of what she didn't want.


To make her grandma happy though, {because grandma was paying for the dress}, she decided to try on a dress with sleeves.

She hated it.


I had to stop drawing at this point, because I was like:


And it did.  It was absolutely gorgeous.

But the bride didn't just hate it.  She really hated it.




What made this all totally worse is that this was "Yes to the Dress: Atlanta", which meant that all these terrible things were spoken in a Southern accent!  Something as adorable as a Southern accent should never be used to say such horrible things.  There oughtta be a law!*

*I really mean that, too.  My plans for Can-merica are moving along and when I'm dictator, the second law* I'll put into motion is that people with Southern accents can only say food-y things.  Like, "Honey," "Sweetie-Pie," "Possum with a sweet potatah," etc.  I have Plans.

**The first law is that every Mountie has to learn how to tango.

The bride comes out to the dressing room floor...


And her entourage is like:

Oh yes, that dress with sleeves surrrre is funny.

Grandma just sits there.



It IS pretty!!




It was. :(
The bride goes back to the dressing room and tries on a dress that looks like every other dress in the store. :( :(


They love it.



Long pause.





NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!





I haven't stopped drawing since the episode ended.


This blog isn't very famous.

There are about 4 people who visit it a day.

One is my mom.  {Thanks, mom!}

But there are 3 others.  One of them could be that Southern grandma.

This blog post is for her.

Southern Grandma, you were RIGHT.  That dress with sleeves was beautiful.  Don't you listen to them.  You gotta go with your GUT and your gut was RIGHT.




The End.

Thanksgiving Movie

I'm a really fun person to watch movies with.


Addendum:  Thank you so much for the kind words on the new blog design!  It was a long time coming.  We should do something to celebrate...like maybe seeing a movie or something...?*

*But only if you've read the book