Ich bin keine Nazi!

For those of you who can't read German, it says up top that "I'm not a Nazi." Just thought it should be said before I continue. :P I do however have an interest of that period, and my abundant viewing of World War II films, many of them lately being about the Third Reich itself, became inspiration for this interior painting.


Not much to say about this one. It's a German World War II bunker, but I bet that's pretty obvious. I'm usually not a fan of interiors because I hate drawing static objects, but I think it turned out fine. I've recently been using a waterproof pen for my gouache paintings, and I think it helps bring out the detail, especially for interiors which are a pain to detail with the paint.

Them characters I drawz.

Reading week was pretty hectic. I spent most of my time working on every porject we had for every calss, which didn't leave much time for some anticipated extra work... damn...

Oh well, here be some contrasting characters for your ammusement. Similar to the last projects, these characters (who are buddy cops) can be seen in action a few weeks down the road. But for now, enjoy their antics in pose form.





Also, here is a beat board story of our own design for a "I am no prepared" conflict. This requires some explaining, unfortunatly. The first three I suspect are pretty self explainitory, but the twist ending is the sheriff is apperently "not prepared" to give away his daughter at her wedding. It'll probably be more clear in the final storyboards.


Character concept

Animation Galore!

A slew of video related projects today! The last of the pre-break semester is completed! I'd be thankful for break if I hadn't so much to do for when we get back.

Oh well, here I've posted my first REAL character animation, a character I'll remind is original and of my own design! (see three posts below) Woohoo! The project is about weight and balance, where the character is to lift a heavy object and toss it. I loved this project, as I am determined to get good at character animation! I've been waiting three years to do this stuff!



Next we have a sound effects animation for sound design. IMPORTANT NOTE: the animation was not created by me (I believe it is called the Bulgarian Cowboy), so I have no credit to the video portion. As well, the sound effects are taken from the Sheridan SFX library. I did however arrange the sounds to correspond with the actions. Not bad, but could be better.



Finally, I have a sound scape from my wave-boat-sack animation. The sounds are credited to the same source as above, but the animation and arrangement are my own doing. It's no without it's flaws. There are some mistakes I noticed after viewing it later, but I was low on time, and it was my first arrangement with an original animation. Overall, it was quite enjoyable.

Caricature-rama!

Lately, in the spirit if learning in character design, I've been workig hard to get better at caricaturing. While I have been doing our assignment to sketch from film or real life, since the best thing to make fun of is yourself, I thought I'd do a few of myself. So today I went ahead and did two using different approches. The first is you basic illustration caricature that exaggurates the features but still looks like a drawing from life. For the second, I used a method and techniques inspired from the great Peter Emslie. That is with a more cartoony approach with almost goofy features, but still shows the essence of the character. (and for those of you who may be busting a nut, so you know I'm not trying to copy Emslie's style, but merely learn from it).



Let me know what ya all think, and if you have any pointers on how I can further push the design, I'd be happy to hear them!

Hope I can turn out better stuff in the future (the first took almost a half hour to do...).

Here's a quickie... of a fishie

Finally, a post that doesn't revolve around my school work. Anyway, here's my first real personal project.


While this was actually a tattoo design I worked on for a friend, this did allow me some experience with photoshop, and the result wasn't poor to say the very least. I can say it helped with photoshop colour theory.

Woohoo! I can do a simple design in photoshop! Next step, FULL RENDERING!

End of Round One!

Here we go, the last of the first bulk of projects. As of now, we have nothing to do as far as assignments go. Other than our next animation project, nothing else has really been assigned, never mind getting finished. Looks like a lazy Thanksgiving weekend.

Here we have the character model and pose sheet for our joint lift & toss animation assignment. Not much to say about it, but stay tuned to see this guy and all his animated glory lift and toss in a few weeks!



Next is the final storyboard for the fidgety Phillip poem. The story beats were posted in my last entry, and this here is the final shot by shot story arc. Hope y'all find it appealing.

My back hurts!

The first batch of projects are just now being finished up. So far, second year is just as busy as everyone says. Not to say it isn't manageable, and actually, it's a lot of fun!

This year, a lot more is being applied. We're no longer beginners, we've entered the professional world! As as such, I've been trying harder to put out better work, and i see some aspects of my skill improving... while others *cough* life drawing *cough* still remain less that grand. But this year we have a lot of capable teachers, so all should be well in the world soon enough.

So here I have the first animation of the year: the Wave, Boat, and Sack. I think the premise is pretty self-explanatory, but the project was mainly about water effects, and weight.



I think this turned out pretty well, tho' I believe it could have been better. There were various struggles at first, but most managed to be worked out in time for the due date. Personal opinion: not a bad start.

Here is our first painting assignment. Just a random layout. The rough portion dealt with black and white tonal rendering to lay out the mood of the piece (they're not posted here). Following this, we did a minimum of three colour studies followed by the final.





My painting skills seem to be the only thing that has improved over the summer, thanks to a single painting projects done in May (see previous post). So I can safely say do enjoy this, and I like the result!

Finally, here we have beat boards and a related character design done for storyboard class. We were given a poem and asked to tell a short story through narrative beats (ie. through as few panels as possible). This will function as a stepping stone for the following process of creating a full storyboard, which is in the process as we speak.




So far, so good. More projects are due in the near future. Expect more work in the near future.

Year 2

Thank God summer is finally over! It was a really sucky 4 months...

It feels good to get back into the swing of things and to be focused again!

But my skills have become rusty since I've done so little over the last few months, so hopefully I'll be back and awesome again very soon! Stay tuned for more stuff in the future.

Last Post of the Year!

Well this is it, the last of my work from my 1st year in animation. It was a good run! I most definately learned a lot about the work that I am getting myself into, and about the years ahead... and it is most definately something I want to be a part of. Over the next few years, I hope to improve just as much as I have over this year, and hopefully dish out a great 4th year film that really wows the audience... but I'm getting ahead of myself...

The last projects were standard fare. My final animation for the year, and my final painting project, which I did digitally in photoshop.


I got a lot of laughs out of this one, as you could probably tell. as good as it turned out, I couldn't really get into this project like I did the others, dispite that this one offered more freedom than the rest... end of the year lazyness, I guess.


Now honestly, I'm not happy with this turn out, but that was pretty much expected. I recently got a tablet, and since we were allowed to render the last painting digitally, I saw it as an invitation to experement a little. So seeing as this was my first photoshop project with a tablet, it was pretty much what anyone could expect. But I was given some helpful advice on how to use the tablet and photoshop. This is important since the industry pretty much uses digital background over traditional ones. I need to find tutorials, because this summer is going to be used to learn photoshop inside out!

Well that's all for this year... of school. Hope you enjoyed the work from my 1st year! :D

Stay tuned tho', summer's here and my goal is to practice techniques in art that I need improvement in. First and foremost: Photoshop, but I'm also planning to do some paintings and painting studies, caricatures (perhaps of you!), extra animations, and of course numerous sketches and colour renderings of some sketches! Also I'll post some of my life drawings up later too!

It' gonna be a busy summer! Hope to see ya here again soon!

A bundle of goodies for all y'all today! With the coming of the end of the year, everything is done in bulk, which is good! More art with fewer updates!

To start, our final character project is basically a rehash of previous projects, namely character posing and expression. This time however, we designed one character and then created a character package, a single sheet reference for the animator to use.

I like how this one turned out, besides being a better anthropomorphic than the last project, I think my clean up and posing were better this time around... not perfect of course, but adequate.

Our final painting projects are also due, and this time we had TWO paintings! O_O... It was more enjoyable than I'm letting on. :P

The first was a copy of a master's work. We could chose anything to use, so because backgrounds are his specially, I chose a Miyazaki background from Spirited Away! (also an AWESOME FILM!!!)

I REALLY like how this turned out. Probably because it was a complete copy, it left little room open for mistakes. Although some of the colours are off, and the shades really diluted, it's still one really kick-ass painting! Thank you Mr. Miyazaki!


This is the original from Miyazaki's Spirited Away. Behold it's pure AWESOMENESS!

Following this, we had to paint another background using the same painting style from the first, but this time it was your own rendition of another story, which we got to pick for a list. I chose the Hobbit and the interior of Bilbo's house. (partially because I could just watch Lord of the Rings to get an idea. :P) So here is the result.

I am rather displeased with the way this one turned out. Besides not really following the same painting method, I find I'm terrible at designing interiors. I was pretty hard, unlike the first one, to get textures, proper shades, and a direct light source. My biggest quarrel is with Gouache! It's really hard to use because of the water base and thinning out of the colours! UGH! Somehow it worked for the exterior, but not the interior...sigh...

Finally, we had caricaturing in life drawing last week. Surprisingly, I loved it! It was fun to draw some of our classmates, and because they're good sports, you could exaggerate without fear of disapproval... which is probably more than you could say about people at a fair or carnival... But anyway, here is what I got:

Scotty

Daniel

Keith

Kyle Wilson

Giovanni

Shen Ramu

Katarina Antonic

Kevin Williams

Eyassu Asalef

A lot of these turned out pretty well (or better than I hoped). All have their issues, but it's inspired me to practice caricaturing more, likely over the summer. So next year, I'll be much better at portrait and character! ;)

On a related note, I know I don't post may life drawings up here... it's because I suck at it :P But also because I'm too lazy to scan them... for now. Stay tuned, I'll post them over the summer.