I’m on team FC = OC, so here are some lovely FCs kissing for OC Kiss Week!
First, we have Tal’kaela and Nereth hand-kissing. Next is the Steven Universe AU versions of them, Peridot and Moonstone. THEN we have Tal’kaela’s tol and strong girlfriend, Verelan, lifting Tal’kaela up by her perfect ass for a smooch.
I wish I had time to draw Tal’kaela x Saren, but I ran out of tiiiime! Maybe later tho.
Here’s another sequence I did for the Steven Universe episode “Keep Beach City Weird”. This follows the Previous Section I posted a while back. Since we’re in the midst of another hiatus, I figured I’d go through, post some old stuff I never got around to posting.
*Potato and Breastplate drawings by Ian Jones-Quartey
We were sitting in the writers room breaking the story for The Answer. The story became more and more fairytale like, and I recall Rebecca coming up with the idea that the episode could look like a story book. I did these quick roughs in marker which eventually became the foundation for the look of “The Answer”. I did these on the spot while we were still figuring out the story, so the events in these drawings don’t specifically line up to anything in the final… but I guess some of the concepts ended up getting used.
After seeing them, Rebecca brought up the works of Lotte Reineger, the german animator. This fit perfectly, we had both studied The Adventures of Prince Achmed and her other films in college and Lotte Reineger is a huge inspiration. Not only are her films hauntingly beautiful, she created the first ever animated feature film and the first multi-plane camera way before Walt Disney did. She’s an unsung animation pioneer.
I originally thought the whole thing would be in silhouette but we allowed the main characters to have interior detail with limited palettes. I love limited palettes!!! Rebecca oversaw the resulting design process with our art director Jasmin Lai and I really think it came together great. In the final episode, the Shadow Puppet section is boarded by Lamar Abrams and he completely made the whole thing work which was not an easy feat. There’s some really inventive stuff in there.
On Monday January 4 new episodes of Steven Universe start airing! It’s the continuation of what we informally called “The Barn Arc”!
We hadn’t used the barn as a location since Space Race! The Barn is a super fun location because it’s full of old junk. You can believe that there’s old cars, old planes, all kinds of building materials inside.
Since they would be living there we realized that we needed to flesh out the area a little more. Here’s my original sketch of what it could look like. I especially wanted to add a silo. We didn’t use all of these ideas but a couple of them will show up in next week’s episodes. Please watch them!!!
Also I drew a tiny Peridot in this image can you find her??????!
Was looking thru old files for another project and I found this unused animation I did for Steven Universe: AttackTheLight! Unfortunately I think I finished this too late for it to be included. Oh well! The game, by the way, seems to be making its way onto a couple end-of-year game lists, which is… giving me goosebumps. I can’t believe it got so much love. Thanks everyone for your support!
Steven was animated by our friends at Grumpyface, and Chibi Alexandrite was drawn by Rebecca Sugar
The Annies nominated my work on The Test for “Outstanding Achievement, Directing”!
Here’s the animatic clip for a sequence that I’m really proud of from the episode. It was a big collaborative effort by Katie Mitroff,Hilary Florido,Rebecca Sugar and myself! The animatic was put together by our editor Lauren Hecht!
In the episode, the gems put together a hastily made dungeon for Steven to walk though- we imagined that it would function like a buggy video game. To top it all off, the gems didn’t even have time to build an outer skybox. SU is a very design intensive show, with tons of unique props and backgrounds in every episode. The Test on the other hand was deliberately limited in scope- it was very important to us that he’s traversing the same location with the same props and effects. To do more with less.
When putting together Steven’s out-of-bounds moment, I really wanted to make sure that the experience felt disorienting and haunting… In the above animatic, the soundtrack is ripped from Arcane Kids’ Bubsy 3D, which was a crew favorite at the time. In the final episode, our composers Aivi and Surrashu made the moment even better(and there’s a subtle secret hidden inside as well.)
At the end of the clip, Steven overhears a conversation that the gems are having. This is a very rare occurrence in the show and I had a blast writing & boarding it with Rebecca! We thought that Amethyst would be the only one honest enough to say “We’re bad at this” and tried to make it feel like an excruciating truth that nobody else could say- they linger in silence for so long before.
This is hands down one of my favorite episodes. The ending, boarded by Katie, is absolutely heartwarming or devastating depending on how you look at it. I feel really lucky that I got to work with such a talented crew to make it a reality.
I just finished Steven Universe Future and I absolutely A D O R E older!Steven soo much
Steven has always been my favourite gem and I don’t wanna say goodbye…..at least I can sit here and design outfits for him. That pink bomber jacket still gives me life every single time I see it
