Concept art for the short film Salvaged that I am working on with my friend Ted.
This is about half way done and took me about 45 minutes. Working on this made me want to start drawing some canyons with the stepped rock formations. It was a good exercise and gets me thinking more about concept and about the look and feel of the environment, even when I do things that I consider to be failures it helps me. I always forget you learn more from failure then success. I have already started adding details and it is looking better, though I would share it at a mid point. Expect to see a more polished version some time next week.
Laura is doing an internship for the Lawrence Hall of Science where she is helping with children education programming for their summer fun day program. The activity that she is planning is designed to help children see that the CO2 levels in the ocean are rising and how it is raising the acidity of the sea and effecting the sea creatures that live there from growing their exoskeletons. These were designed to have a social gaming (i.e. facebook and Myspace games) kind of feel. Lobster I had to do a revision on this one because my good friend Chris Vear, a native of Maine informed me I didn't give the lobster enough legs. They have 8. I was really happy with how this one came out. Sea Urchin Brain Coral Chitinous Bivalve or a Clam Sea Star
This was the last week for assignment number 1, this week I turned in my polished version of my animation. It is really smooth and i'm pretty happy with it. I'm sure when a more seasoned eye sees it there will be some errors that I can tweak but for myself I am really happy with how clean it is. Never got it this clean at Ai. I also started assignment number 2. I chose to do a drunken stumble, because i thought researching this part would be alot of fun. I'm always amazed at how difficult it is to get get drunk when your plan is to get drunk but not sick. Needless to say I was unable to get drunk enough to do a proper drunken stumble, but I think my acting skills make up for that. From the reference I created my planning drawings. I only did the main keys, except for the last line they are broken down a little more. But last time I did this I found more inbetweens when I was working on the blocking. So i figured that should all work out well.I wasn't really sure what to do with the second page. I did the same thing that I did last time where I layer all of the poses on top of each other and it turned out looking really clutter and made me feel like it was missing something.
I really dislike doing backgrounds; there are so many rules one needs to follow to make a really nice and dimensional background and they really just don't come easily to me, unlike drawing people who are more fun and intuitive for me. However, this being said, I need to challenge myself more to become a better artist, and I need back grounds if I want to tell rich dynamic stories. So I challenged myself to try and make 2 background drawings a week, and here is the first. This is the home and farm of Paul the Wise. He lives atop the a high hill that is easily defended from intruders, much to Eric's chagrin. Every time he comes to visit he complains about the walk up and Paul always just responds, "One day you will be glad that I found this hill." Eric would indeed be glad years later that Paul had found this hill and even more glad that he had the foresight to build and escape tunnel. Though until that day Eric is always looking for a way to get Paul out of his long house at the top without having to go up himself.
I was looking though one of my many sketch books and found a couple of Viking faces staring back and me. The first one I decided to complete was a profile picture, because I haven't seem to have done too many of these.
This is Ikvar the Black, if I recall viking history correctly men would get the name the Black because of the color of their hair. I imagined that Ikvar would be a hard and quiet man who some didn't trust, but in truth he was the most trust worthy in the party. Sadly, this wasn't realized until it was too late for Ikvar.
Yesterday would have been my grandfather's 81st birthday. This is a portrait to commemorate the day. He was always my favorite to draw when I was a little kid - he was so easy with a big red nose and handle bar mustache, and he loved my cruel little portraits that I drew (not every one else was a fan of the things I picked up on). Every year for his birthday he wanted a birthday card from me. To continue the tradition I've decided to make a portrait of him every July 20th. This is a portrait of him as I remember him best, the only thing missing is his cigarette.
This piece was born out of an argument over how awesome my beard is. Laura and I were at the Bee Show earlier this year, where I exhibited a painting of skull with a bee beard called The Skull and the Bees where I had decided to hang out to discuss my piece. Being shy I instead sat on a stone wall and started sketching, and I soon sketched a self portrait where I was a skull with a beard much like the piece I posted earlier this year. Laura pointed out that the beard I drew was way too long and that my beard wasn't that "Awesome". WHAT!?! So in response I made a doodle of how awesome my beard really is, since you know, it gives birth to stars. Yes, it is that awesome. This was meant to just be another little joke self portrait for fun that I did because I wanted to do another piece in illustrator. But Laura and I have been talking about updating my website so we took this illustration and made my new under construction page as a place holder of sorts until I can get my new website up!
Refining and revising my animation. Big shout out to Ted this week who continued to lend me his eye and give me insights. It still needs to be tweaked and refined, but I feel it is at a good point to turn it in this week - the final animation isn't due until next week.
I watched this video of my dearly departed friend Patrick today and it made me miss him - so I decided do a portrait of him. He has been on my mind a lot as of late and I feel compelled to do some more art about him. It's been a while. Also today I became an Admin on a fan page for Pat Hetic - a page for all of us who miss him to share images, videos, and memories. I may just make this the profile picture. Though now I feel Like doing a second portrait where I turn this one into a zombie... I think that will make a better picture and seem more Pat to me. I will never forget you hetro-life mate.
The lecture this week was done by Dimos Vrysellas, an animator who approaches 3D animation like it was 2D and called all the key poses "drawings." He also didn't time his keys but just did them one after another until he had them all down.This is a good way to do it with pose theory where one pose needs to flow into another. It helped me to simply focus on the poses and not really worry about the timing yet. I found this method worked really well for me and it also helped me to realize where I needed more breakdowns before I started with the timing. It also lead to cleaner poses. I then spaced out all the key frames by 4 and played that. The timing wasn't correct but I just changed some things to be faster and other things to be slower until it felt right. This method worked really well for me and I hope it leads to simpler clean up and better animation as I progress.
Yay for alliteration; I really enjoy this title and I may just do more like this just because the title is fun. I'm also into the idea of doing these drawings where I change the subject matter with the seasons.
Ref Yay quarter 2 has started! I'm in Psychology of Body Mechanics and my mentor is an animator named Chad Seller who works at Disney Animation studios right now. The first assignment for this quarter was to pick an action from a list, there were about 10 of them varying in difficulty. Students were supposed to turn the actions into an animation and work on it progressively for the next 4 weeks. I chose to do jumping over a gap. When I was reading the list the first thing that popped in my head was the scene in "Up" where young Mr.Fredrickson jumps over a small gap in the sidewalk.
The best way to figure out how to do the jump is to do it myself and film it. Reference footage helps for noticing small things that one wouldn't think about as well as provide me with real body mechanics to refer to.
Planning sketch 01 The assignment didn't have any limitations beyond the motion. Though after watching the lecture I decided to give myself the limitation of 120 frames and to try and make the character look proud while he is doing this action. I decided to do this with some cocky hip gestures. Planning sketch 02 This is the break down of the motion, all the key poses with notes going along with it to explain how the motion works. I didn't add any real frame notations on these notes. I feel that that should be a much more organic process and something I have to see and feel right now. One day I hope I can look at an action and just know the timing.
The next step and the next assignment is to block this motion out - so stayed tuned.
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