Christmas!

For Christmas I got a new tablet. I know most people just straight up do a painting to post, but I'm actually kinda ill, so I'm just watching star wars in bed. Instead, I wanted to practice animating, so I did a walk-cycle for Kuja. I found a free animation program called "Pencil". It's kinda tedious to use, especially moving around frames, so I'll never try and do a finished piece on it, but in half an hour I did this walk cycle, so it can't be that terrible of a program.

As i do more randoms during the day, I might just fill up this post with nice video goodies.

Another Quickie :D. Poodle fighting on leash.

Holidays!

Winter break! Which means I have TV again! I also have the worst sleep schedule ever atm. I'm stuck on the 2-3 hours a day regiment. So I've been filling up pages of 8.5 by 11s with comedians heads, and late night talk show hosts. I'm trying to capture likenesses off one expression. So I look at them, they do something, I look away, draw that, and hope it turns out good. I think I hit these 2 pretty on, and double bonus, I was watching the Price is Right, Win Win.

By the end of the holiday I'll make a compilation page, once I get my hands on a scanner.

End of a Semester

The school semester has ended. Hurray!

With that comes a reflection on accomplishments. The easiest way to represent those thoughts is with the story reel that has been in progress this whole time.

I still like the story; it's clear and short, and clearly represents a character (Something I've been struggling with in other projects). The boards are terrible and I always meant to fix them, but never had time (How I allocate my workload). I think I spent the right amount of time doing the rough passes of animation, but I am no clean-up artist (Knowing my strengths). I now know how long it should take me to do a scene right, and what the benefits of that is (Addressing my weaknesses). This piece was not cleaned well, but I spent that time doing all the colouring and retouching to compensate for it (Work ethic). As stressful as finishing it was, it is finished, and that's something to be proud of (Love what you do). I hope you all enjoy (Know why you do it).

Here is a scribble from 7 weeks ago. I still really like spotted, and want to continue to develop it. I will be doing model sheets for the characters over the break. This sleepy Kuja represents my feelings at this second now more than ever.

Having fun with the characters.

Here's to another project finished, leading to more possibilities to come. Next semester!

Progress Blogging

Here are some things in progress/finished within themselves that I did this week :D

First, I drew a new character line-up for group film. The story has changed, and thus there was a lot of costuming that got tossed out. So now Boss is a manager style boss, and Blink is a villain with a droid he pilots to do his dirty work. It's gonna be good. Promise!

My Pan background for layout, with the two extremes of the shot for your reference.

And that same old story reel your tired of watching, but with updated animation roughs, and the coloured pan-background inserted

I'm not entirely happy with the pan in that, cause I used premier to cut the reel, and I needed After Effects to composite the pan properly... :(

Edit: Looking at the pan composited. I think I'll just go back and adjust the target dummy to the position I had before. Ignoring the changing perspective.

Anyways, 2 weeks left, and a decades worth of assignments to go. Fun!

P.S. The comments box is below. I'm looking at your Noris ;) (Takes some to get some, lol)

Guilt Post

Having a blog means I feel guilty when I have nothing I want to post. I spent all weekend writing an in depth essay, so my art generation was at a minimum. My ability to procrastinate was still very high though. Let's just say my room is spotless, and a lot of other chores have been taken care of.

I don't think anyone particularly cares about me posting group films designs. Especially cause I only put up the ones that have been thrown away. I figure this can be some nice art fodder for all my viewers.

Firstly, my personal favorite interpretations of Boss and Bori. Organic, wonky, and troll/goblin like. Coloured to feel that way too.

We had to put together an art direction pack, showing what we have contributed to the film. Here is the old design for boss, the still current design of blink, and some experiments for Bori (which I already posted)
Colour and style tests. I was looking really closely at the Marvel interpretation of the Wizard of Oz saga. Love the texture style painting, and wonky character design.

The progression of Bori, up until this design got thrown out. This only includes my part, and not Shen the other designer working on this character. We wanted simple, teenager, full of ambition, and some kind of creature. Those were the ground rules. You can see me playing with shape proportions in silhouette before designing. The top drawings were storyboards i liked the feeling of Bori I was achieving.

And more Stop-motion...

I really enjoy that class, it immediately reveals problems in animation. Right now I think I self-reference animation to much. Even though I never record myself doing an action, I act through it, and try to realize what I am doing physically.

This is a weird complaint, but it always feels to natural and evenly paced. I want more abstract, expressive timing in my work, and that's what I'm working towards now.

A walk.

My smash assignment.

More in the future... Hang tight ya'll :D

3D First pass

I've been trying to get ahead of the game, cause I see the looming deadlines coming up in my future. I tried to bang out all of my thinking character animation today in one sitting. Some tweaks to fix, but it was a blog-worthy pass.

The dialogue is from Antoine Dobson (Bed intruder video). Enjoy :D

Story reel 3

I hope people don't get tired of seeing this. It's the story reel again. This time, the pan has been changed so the overlay no longer moves, and makes things weird.

Also the animation is now in rough form. No longer story poses, but actual timed out keys and breakdowns. :D

Group Film

I've felt bad, cause I've been posting on my group's blog almost every other day, and I put nothing on here. I think we're supposed to keep stuff secret, but no one else does, and these designs won't give away the story. Plus all but one of these is getting tossed regardless.

colour studies/designs. These are close to what we have going now, but that all can still change.

Lots of other possible design styles for the characters, yet to be discussed.

One more, I forgot to include in that compilation.

Revised Story Reel

Lack of postage, cause most things I've been working on are for group film. I'm waiting for my designs to get thrown out before I post them somewhere else.

So here is my in progress story reel, with a pose test, and the layout pan inserted.

Infamous present-tation

For that awesome cool wedding we went to yesterday, me and my brothers got our friends a nice gift. But it's in our nature to make people work for their rewards. When they get through our elaborate pranckaging, it'll all be worth it. For the card, we decided to not even bother signing it. Instead I drew a quick doodle of my brothers and I. I think they'll recognize who's responsible. lol

I'll probably colour this up and make it a staple from now on.

Castle reference

For my Action Analysis I have my character in a medieval training ground. Finding pictures that detail castle brick work had been almost impossible. The best sources I found were model reconstructions, made for table top games. I was fortunate enough to visit Casa Loma today, for a dear friend's wedding. His wedding was fabulous, I wish I was cool and handsome enough to be married in a castle like him. :D

Now that I finally found some good reference, I'll be able to redo that layout below, with more fancy designs. Yeah! But I figured for anyone else that has come into my situation, it'd be best to share around the reference.

Epic upshots are the best way to show castles.

I was looking for that design that edges the tops. Being the most recognizable feature of castles.

Archways and brickwork.

A stone wall was nothing like I expected. Sure there's rocks, but then they line it with concrete in between, and make a design out of that.

To show you what I mean. notice the gaps between the concrete and the rocks. It's forming it's own design.

This light looks likes an armored breastplate that's been modified.

Trophy mantle. lol

Door knockers. I touched them :)

More cool light fixtures. I like the cast iron swirly motifs.

I finally understand curtains, and how to make them look cool.

They have a cool fountain in their courtyard. I should of went down to take a better picture.

For all of you that made it to the bottom of this. Mini cannon. SO COOL. It was sitting at the foot of a bed. The best way to ward off bed intruders. lol

Layout and Stop mo 3

Rough Layout for Action analysis. Put in both parts of the pan as separate composites, because the composition for the final shot changes with the overlay.

More stop mo. Maybe I have Hoop Dreams:

Stop mo 2

Another stop motion test. Still not allowed to involve the characters legs, so I did a baseball toss from the hips up.

Design development 3

The gang is finally all here.

So we were supposed to do beat boards to describe our film for presentation. I figured I've been doing everything digitally now a days, I wanted to make sure I could still draw, lol. So I boarded out as many panels as I felt would get the attitudes of the story across. What I have are not quite beats, not quite storyboards, but all good fun.

The pages are formatted into acts, cause iunno...

Act 1: Pride comes before the fall.

Act 2: Learning to accept others guidance.
Act 3: You're more awesome than you know.
Why did a I put little blurbs beside the acts? Well, why are you reading them... look at the pictures.

2 other new posts below, Enjoy!

Design development 3 continued...

Another layout concept for the film. I wanted the Ibex to be in a very bright, rundown piece of the jungle. I put a rockface behind him, cause he feel's kinda goaty to me.

The initial design sketch for the Ibex. I'm a little irked by how many people like this guy over the others.

Fun fact: Design time for each character. Cub: 2 days, Chameleon: 2 weeks, Mother/Orora: 3 days, Ibex : 2 minutes. lol

A face chart for Orora. I have to do one for all the characters, but these sketches looked nice. Both leopards, and the chameleon deliver dialogue, as of right now, so their designs had to be capable, and believable of that.

This is a triple post day, btw. The one below is just as new as these first 2. I just formatted them for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy!

Cafe sketches and more

I want to start adding my cafe sketches into this blog again, so here are some drawings from as of school starting. I want to have a page like this every other week or so.

This blog also needs one of those cool banners. I was trying to think of something that represented me as gentle. So while on the subway, I drew myself as a plushie. Then decided young me would love said plushie, for it is cool. I will fix up, and digi paint this sketch soon enough.

We also broke out some figures for stop mo class. I like animating to dialogue, so just imagine her saying "Talk to the hand, cause the face ain't listening". lol

Design developement 2

I've been designing for group film pitch.

Added the little cub's mom today into the lineup.

The Ibex below is just a rough concept. I like the idea of him being really old, and a bunch of young doe's around to laugh when the cub fails.

I thought I should put out there that designs don't just come from 1 drawing. This is an actual sheet I made myself after scribbling for a couple hours. I took all the drawings that had an element or 2 that I liked, and put them on one page to self-reference more easily.
An old design for the chameleon. I had an extra slot for this post, so why not toss it in.
The only other project this year is the Action Analysis Animation!!!

I actually designed like 5 or 6 concepts, with their own little story, maybe I'll scan em in, and post em later. What I settled on was just designing myself into a squire, and swinging a big sword. So there's me, and my medieval made-up father.

And here's the story reel. Hope it works. Caused me so much grief to put up, lol. Lost it's widescreeniness.

Design developement

I haven't really had any formal assignments yet. Just a lot of developing ideas at my own pace. Which is worrying, cause I get too much time to mull things over in my brain. I decided to push ahead and start doing the designs for everything I knew would be coming up in the near future.

So here is some work my short story pitch.

Lesson number 1 is how to catch a moth.

He's just so cute.
The chameleon has been some work, don't really think he's ready yet.
Some more exploration of his dimensionality. Wanted to clear up all his forms.
This is just a toss in. Was going to start designing the other characters for the idea.
The post below is new stuff too. A little bit of an apology for how rough and unclear my posts have been as of late.

Extra goodies

On top of designing for group film, I've been trying to figure out what I want to do for my action analysis. I've been boarding out a lot of ideas, but nothing is really singing to me yet.

I wanted to do a little piece about an eager scout at first. I didn't want the design of the kid to be generic, so I thought about how people I knew would look as kids. Then I just decided to design me and some of the guys as cub scouts for the lol.

This one's a troll, I wanted to be a frog farmer.

Another design for the troll. Basically the premise was he finds a turtle snapping at his frogs, and hits it all the way to Timbuktu with a log/club.

And I did spend the time to think about how I want to resculpt my orangutan. I haven't started it yet, but the schematics exist.