AM Q3 ASN2 Video Reference, planning and Blocking

After my e-critique from Jalil, I decided to start over and redo my reference and my planning for this scene. He suggested that I use something that I can actually hit with all my might so that I can get better arcs in my body and more honest acting and poses. He said to make it simpler and to take out any walks that I had going on it it. So I spent a couple of hours shooting reference, it took me a while because there was a guy across the way working on some ones roof and I felt really self conscious. Though I shot it twice after the first time I found out what I really liked about the scene and I was trying to capture different subtle ways of doing it.

After shooting the reference I did my planning drawings. I found a lot more interesting actions to do this time including the sword rolling off the shoulder and moving into an attack stance. I feel that could look really slick.



I e-mailed my new reference and drawings to Jalil and he said that I need to hit the "tree" harder, I'm still holding back. But he said that some other guy from Weta saw my drawings and said they were really nice, so I got that going for me.

Though I didn't get that e-mail until after I had already finished my blocking because Weta is in New Zealand and is a day in the future and He doesn't answer our e-mails on weekends and I sent the e-mail on Friday.

I feel pretty good about my blocking. I think I need to do some more reference with the sword hits and to vary those two hits a little more. But this is a great start.

Sailor Comes Home to Skull House on the Prairie

Sailor Comes Home to Skull House on the Prairie

Cup Cake Skulls: Sprinkles of the Dead

Sprinkles of the Dead

Cup Cake Skulls: Deadly Frosting

Deadly Frosting

One of Laura's co-workers, Martha, gave me a great idea to turn these into birthday cards. Happy birthday you are one year closer to death!

AM Q3 ASN1 Final and ASN2 Reference and Planning

The final animation was due this week and I didn't quite make it. This week felt like two steps forward and one step back the whole time. I actually made a lot of changes to my animation, however, after I got pass the brick wall I had when working on re-blocking most of the scene I was pretty much out of time. This week I am starting on Monday and going to get as much done as possible. Not going to let this happen again! I am also going to continue to work on this shot and take it as far as I can. I hope that my mentor Jalil will continue to give me critiques, if not I will have to start bugging my friends.

This is also the start of Assignment number 2, I wanted this one to be the counter point to the first one where the first one was chaotic and haphazard, I wanted this one to be more subdued and controlled. I don't know if it is reading the way I want or I am just tired and hate everything. I think most of it will be in the timing.

Note to self week 8 go out and film reference with a friend, last time it went so much better when I had the help of Rick to act it out and just do some different things and give me ideas. I feel like a lot of my reference is all the same. Maybe I will try and hang out with a friend this week and shoot some better reference, damn why does it have to be raining this week.
Yes I know this looks like a jumble, in all my other addignments this worked really well, I guess it is all too close to one another to work well visually. I was also surprised when I brought in a render from my scene from last week and that the spacing was really close to how I drew the planning for the last assignment. I didn't even know, it was kinda cool.
Here is the break down where it should make some more sense. The shot has pretty much 3 steps, he picks up the sword, he hacks at the tree and then he kicks the tree down. I'm hoping that I can get some subtle animation going on, where he is breathing heavy.
I am hoping that due to the fact that there are less keys that I should be able to add a lot more interesting texture in my timing and get more a sense of thought from the character.
On a side not I plan to give the viking character a beard, mustache and an eye patch, so no matter what it will be more epic

Cup Cake Skulls: Hostess of Death and Inks

I wanted to participate in Arts Benicia's Small Works art show this year and I had planned to submit 4 pieces though do to my own poor time management (and usually putting too much on my plate) I was only able to get one done on time.

Hostess of Death.

When I started working on this project I knew I wanted to do something with skulls. I started doing some Dia De Los Muertos kind of sketches, but I couldn't get them to look the way I wanted and I asked Laura what I should do. She said I should so something like the Gloom Cupcake painting that I did for her last year. I thought that was a good idea, but I wanted to incorporated a better skull into the piece. So I drew a cupcake with a skull on it. It kinda looked like a Jeremy Fish, piece who has an awesome graphic style, so I went ahead and designed 4 different Cup Cake Skulls.

Now I just have to wait to see if my piece is excepted. Though I have an in with one of the judges, so I am optimistic.

I have the other 3 started, they are already inked I just need to paint them. I plan on painting them this Sunday, After I get my homework done and get ahead on CT

Deadly Frosting

This was the first one that I drew that made me want to create the other ones.

The Gourmet in the End

I guess this is my gourmet one seeing as it has the cinnamon stick in them.

Sprinkles of the Dead

SPRINKLES! That is the only thing that this one is missing, when I did the original sketch for this one I did a little burst with the word SPRINKLES which was one of my favorite parts though I feel like it would break from the style of all the other ones.

Now I just need to find some frames that these pieces will fit into.

CT Costume Design 2010

A Consensual Tentacle Halloween! What should August and Gilda be for Halloween?

Or should they be?
You can vote on the Face Book Page

AM Q3 ASN1 Blocking Plus and Beyond!

This week I have been in an animation funk and had trouble getting started in the beginning of the week. Perhaps my inner procrastinator was rearing it's ugly head. But what my goal was, was to get get my animation as far as possible at the very least I wanted final timing and start doing the splining. Which is exactly what I accomplished.

One of my class mates Erik Lee pointed out that I had my viking stepping with the wrong leg when he took his sword swings. he was right and it was the perfect thing to help me fix some issues I was having with the shot. It opened the sword for all these really great big arcs and for more variety in the two swings. Thanks Erik.

After my blocking was done I took it into splines and for the first time it went really smoothly. there are some messy tangents and I need to clean the splines more but for the most part they looked just fine. I focused most of my attention to getting the throw transitions working and to getting the times where he swings the sword across his body to have a nice clean arc. I'm really happy that I was able to get it splined even if it isn't refined more.

I have also proven to myself that I am still capable of pulling an all nighter something my 23 year old self thought I was incapable of anymore.

Tattooed Sailor Girl

Originally this was going to be part of a post I was going to do on 10.10.10. where it was a series of 3 pinups all 10s (get it?) however, my homework ended up taking longer and I had some problems making art during the week so I have decided to simply post them all separately as I make them.
I have have a series of Sailor Girl pinup sketches sitting around for a long time and I have been meaning to finish one. This surprisingly was not one of them, after having so much fun illustrating the Tattoo Style Gilda Head I felt like drawing another portrait like that. I gave her that expression channeling Popeye the Sailor Man. I tried to giver her all traditional sailor tattoos. I had added the 10s for the 10 theme I was going for, though with what I have planned for my next pinup it ended up becoming more of a playing card theme.

AM Q3 ASN1 Blocking

I was very excited to get started on this project this week. What could be better then animating a character with a sword and shield. I also liked that for the first time I feel like my character has a real personality and not just doing an activity.
Though I had all kinds of problems with this project. First I updated to Maya 2010, which was free for students, thanks Autodesk! Though it appears to be a memory hog and at times runs really slow on my machine, there was no hope of playing with any good timing, Which lead to lots of playblasts.
I ended up animating this scene twice. The first time I animated it I had set up how the sword and shield leaves his hand in a weird way. The way that the extra items get attached to Stewie is simply by parenting the object group to the hands, this would not do me any good for what I want them to do. I will make sure in my survey this quarter to mention adding better option when it comes to parenting. I ended up parenting the object group to the hands, which made keying the sword and shield weird and hard to mess with in the time. After I did the first bit of blocking I didn't like what I had so I decided to start over and set up the items in a much better way.
After setting up the sword and shield with splines for controls and to hold the parent constraints I had a much more efficient and keyable and adjustable set up. I reanimated the scene and I changed some of the actions and it didn't turn out as nice. I ended up liking my first pass better. So I had to figure out how to copy and paste animation into my new set up. It took me a while to figure out, it turned out to be really simple, it was more about importing the animation the copy and pasting it. After that I cleaned up as much as I could of the old blocking and for some reason some of the controls didn't transfer, I reblocked those and got as far as I could. I just ran out of time jthere is still more that I want to do.

I think this week I might try and do a couple of run cycles from the Richard William's The Animator's Survival Kit, because I feel like there is something off with my run and I can't figure it out and the best way to learn something is by doing it.

The Best Wing Man

Today is the 3rd anniversary of my Best friend Pat "Hetic" death. If you remember him share some feelings on his Face Book fan page.
Before Pat died, he would sit around joking about him becoming a ghost and helping me out after he died. He said he would haunt Stan Lee and all the comic executives to get me a job. When he was alive he was my wing man, I would like to think he tries to continue that role from beyond the grave.

I miss you so much and wish you were still here to be my wing man, there is no better then you my dear dear friend.

AM Q3 ASN1 VIKING reference and planning

A new quarter, a new mentor and new exciting assignments. This quarter I got Jalil Sadool an animator at Weta, he has a reputation as a tuff love kind of kind of mentor, I'm looking forward to it (and dreading it) becuase I know it will be tough but it should help me to be a better animator which is the whole idea. This quarter I am doing the animation Jam, where we pick a theme and animate a series of exercised in the theme, when the week started I was overwhelmed with the possibilities and had no idea what to do. Then I looked at all the props that they gave us and found I could make him look like this!
It was now clear what I was going to do. VIKING WARRIOR! So seeing as I wanted to the animation jam the idea is to make 3 different excersizes that embody this theme and relate to one another with out be necessarily seamless. So my idea is that in the first assignment that he is a viking in training and he isn't very good. Then assignment number two he is still in training but he is awesome! Then in assignment number three he goes out to fight the mythic beast, played by our old friend Ballie.

So this week I was hanging out with my good friend Rick-O and I asked him to help me film my reference video. I didn't have a real specific plan, just to have the viking use his shield and sword and attacking a tree (pillar) with mixed success and then reacting by running away. Here is the best of what we came up with, we shot 36 shots and I picked the best ones that had similar things going on in them that I really like.

We filmed a couple of other ideas too but I liked this idea that he screamed and ran looking all crazy and bad ass and then when he hits the sword flies out of his hands and he freaks out throws his shield and runs away.
Page one
I drew out the whole scene with the staging on top of each other like a 2d animation along with arcs and general notes about how I plan to break up the scene.
Page two
Break down sketches of all the keys with notes on how to change between them. I needed more break downs for the run, but it would all just be a repeating cycle of the run and I felt it would be redundant. I feel the hardest part is going to be this swing over the head.
Page 3
Fleeing away very timidly breakdown sketches and notes, again here I didn't full draw out the keys because it is a simple bent knee run.

After shooting the reference I am really excited to start animating this! I can't wait to hear back from my mentor and get a feeling for his critique style.