Visual Painguage

MegaMan in Storyboard Pro

2011-12-19T17:14:00.000-08:00

We're switching over from Photoshop to Storyboard Pro at work, so we spent a good deal of the day becoming used to the new drawing interface. Here's a doodle of MegaMan I made in doing so:

Album cover

2011-11-30T08:02:00.000-08:00

A friend asked me to design an album cover that had the title "Like A Dinosaur." She liked what I did, but it didn't really match the song, so she ended up altering it before submitting it to iTunes. So here's the unedited version.

Drawbook 04

2011-11-19T13:12:00.000-08:00

DOCTOR WOMAN

Drawbook 03

2011-10-31T22:39:00.000-07:00

Lava monster!

Drawbook 02

2011-10-27T20:40:00.000-07:00

Some sort of summer girl, I guess!

Drawbook 01

2011-10-27T08:29:00.000-07:00

I think I'm going to start doodling in my drawbook daily, and then scanning/inking at least one of the doodles nightly (or morningly, in this case).

Business cards!

2011-07-19T23:53:00.000-07:00

So I'm heading to Comic-Con and realized business cards would probably be pretty handy- I'm going as a "professional," I may as well look the part! Serendipitously, in the process of moving to a new apartment I uncovered unused printable business cards, so here's what I'll be printing tomorrow morning:

The caricature I'm using is actually cropped- here's what I originally drew:

And because I have no shame, here's the last time I drew a caricature of myself (circa 2004):

The choice is clear

2011-06-27T23:47:00.001-07:00

So, maybe I've been playing too much TF2...

"Jefferson Hour" t-shirt idea

2011-06-15T22:12:00.000-07:00

I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, "The Thomas Jefferson Hour," and in this particular episode they brought up one of their longtime controversies over their claim that they record their show in a pastoral barn. Many listeners write and disparage the claim, as was discussed on the show, and the idea for this popped into my head:

I sent it to them and maybe they'll like it!

Drawing heads

2011-02-16T23:52:00.000-08:00

A coworker asked how I drew heads. I never got the chance to demonstrate, so I thought I'd make a post about it!

1. Draw a shape. Doesn't have to be a circle, although I'll usually use those for female heads and rectangles for male heads. Not always though!

2. Draw your guidelines. This will be instrumental in determining where to draw the other parts of facial anatomy. If you start off drawing a "piece," like an eye or mouth, you'll end up with a really well-drawn eye, a really well-drawn mouth, and so on, but the whole face will look terrible; you have to build up.

3. I usually go for eyes first since they'll dictate more about the face than anything else.

4. Adding more facial features.

5. Sculpted the face a little more (the cheek especially), and added neck and shoulders so it's not just a floating head.

6. Hair. Rad has a good tutorial on the "hair shell gap" if you want to learn from a much better professional.

7. There's more steps between the previous and this one, but it was mostly minutiae. Here's the finished product with color and a little bit of shading.

Hope it wasn't too predictable!

Moon diagram

2011-02-16T08:02:00.000-08:00

I made an astronomy diagram in Flash and put it on YouTube! Check it out:

It's still in progress. One thing I'll fix are the POV lines of the Earth and the Moon (as though someone's standing on either, looking at the other), which were washing out in the compression. Here's a pic of how it looks in a better quality:

CAD Silhouettes

2011-02-16T07:55:00.000-08:00

So the two characters on the left are supposed to be analogues of the two main characters in CAD, in order to illustrate the importance of good silhouettes and varied character structures (which CAD lacks on all accounts). Then I thought for fun I'd draw a girl to add some balance and spontaneity to the otherwise dour composition. Only after coloring did I realize in a twisted way I had drawn an analogue of another character from the comic, who also has red hair that obscurs one eye. I swear that's not what I started off to do!

(it doesn't help my claim for originality when an earlier version of the skinny was character was essentially Jamie from Megas XLR:

D'oh. I feel like Elaine ripping off that Ziggy comic.

Another installation of CAD: Fixed

2011-02-15T18:34:00.000-08:00

Nothing inspires me to art like shitty feminine poses.

This is what happens when you scoff at life drawing. I'm not kidding- the original artist, Tim Buckley, has made no secret that he never wanted to draw from life. I'm paraphrasing here, but his stance was essentially, "Why should I draw real people? I want to draw cartoons!"

And that's the result. If you don't know basic anatomy/proportions you have no idea what to exaggerate, and the result is a hideous cavewoman.

Fixing CAD

2011-01-21T08:05:00.000-08:00

So there's this webcomic called Ctrl-Alt-Del and it's utter trite. So much so that there's a thread on SomethingAwful dedicated to following the comic, making fun of it, and critiquing its writing and art. After Lackadaisy, another webcomic, posted a tutorial for drawing facial expressions, I just had to redraw the latest CAD comic and bring attention to how shitty and bland his expressions are.

Here's the original:

And here's mine:

B^U

Unused T-Shirt idea

2010-12-03T21:15:00.000-08:00

In the post department we kicked around the idea of making a shirt that read "No Fett Chicks," and I tried to come up with a design for fun.

DoM sketch

2010-11-08T22:57:00.000-08:00

I drew a character (a female mage named Alex) from my friend's comic, The Dementia of Magic.

Happy Everybody Draw Muhammad Day!

2010-05-20T09:10:00.001-07:00

Reverse Fan Art

2010-05-14T09:05:00.000-07:00

It's been a while, huh? I don't update that often (read:at all) because I rarely draw anything for myself. I feel more motivated to draw other peoples' stuff for whatever reason. Maybe because's there's an impetus to finish. Either way, here is something I drew recently:

I sort of have a comic on the side called "Carzorthade" but I rarely update it. A reader recently wrote and paid me compliments, so I took advantage of my work Cintiq during my lunch break and drew that.

Also, here's an in-progress version:

Difference in hair aside, I found the pose in this older version boring and too flat. I think by bringing the arms closer together to a half-crossed position and slightly in front of the body, rather than hanging limply at the side, makes a more interesting pose.

Robot President #3

2009-10-14T21:35:00.000-07:00

Now with official layout!

Robot President #2

2009-09-11T10:21:00.001-07:00

Robot President (or is it President Robot?) gives a speech to Congress:

Style Update

2009-08-13T23:11:00.000-07:00

About 6 years ago I drew a friend's character in my style. Two years ago I tried again. Recently I "cleaned" that up, and here's the result.

I almost stopped with "3," but then I realized the character had bangs, I had been drawing her with a butt-head.

Random Comic: Robot President

2009-07-31T07:28:00.000-07:00

Taking a page heavily from Chainsaw Suit, I present Robot President:

Indies Flash Class- Week 2

2009-05-16T20:30:00.000-07:00

Lip Sync!

We created a character with a nested mouth symbol and we lip synched an audio file they provided. I ended up having extra time so I animated the eyes too.

They liked it!

2009-05-06T15:56:00.001-07:00

I was accepted into the Indies Flash Class! I'm beside myself... I also just found out it'll be held at the studio that creates Metalacolypse. This is crazy exciting!

Tried out for a Flash Class

2009-05-04T08:04:00.000-07:00

I've been attending a Traditional Animation class offered by the Animation Guild and this week my instructor sent out a link to a Flash competition. As it turns out, local Los Angeles Flash animation studios are banding together to offer a professional Flash animation course that's free, but you have to compete to gain entry. You download a test, make an animation, and resubmit it with a resume. By the time I received the e-mail with the link and began to compete I had only 3 days to make an animation. I tried my best, and here's the result:

It's pretty stiff competition... there are only 24 seats and its open to ANYONE in Los Angeles. Even if I don't get in, although I hope I do, I'm proud I was able to put this together and meet the deadline... with an hour and a half to spare (a new record)! According to the contest website winners will be notified starting May 5th. I'm all a-twitter!

Redrawn Robot

2009-04-27T10:11:00.001-07:00

I used to draw a webcomic more frequently and one of my favorite things to give/receive is gift art, with someone else's character drawn in your style, or vice versa. I found out one of my old webcomic buddies had a kid recently, so I took his titular character from Girl/Robot and redrew him!

Original:

Redrawn:

Comic- plight

2009-03-25T21:00:00.001-07:00

Nope!

2009-03-16T19:58:00.001-07:00

I've decided to make this blog art and animation specific and create a tangent LiveJournal that I'll update with my more-personal posts:

The Lost Angeles

Production: casting

2009-03-12T20:20:00.001-07:00

The producer I'm interning under is working to develop a show for television and today I helped with a casting session, which was held in a room at a casting studio. This was all new to me, but the way it worked was we hired a production director who helps us (and other productions that hire her) cast actors.

We were given a room in her casting studio, while the other rooms were being used by commercials for Intel and Geico, so I saw a lot of their actors come and go. My duties were to stay in the lobby with a copy of call sheet of the actors, copies of the asides (excerpts of scripts for character-specific dialogues), and help check them in and keep track of who was here at what time for each role. It took about six hours from start to finish.

Probably the most interesting thing that happened was a woman auditioning for a Geico commercial brought in a small white dog. Next thing I know, I've got the dog in my lap, holding onto it while she auditioned! Even while actors for our production checked in I held onto that dog (it was a wiggler), giving out asides and checking off names with only one arm available.

One thing to note was half of the actors were late and a handful simply didn't show and with no explanation. My producer later told me that was typical.

Some Flash intros I've made

2009-03-11T18:53:00.000-07:00

Towards the end of my senior year at UCF I worked on creating a new animated intro for CUNY TV's program, "Brian Lehrer Live." I did, they loved it, but I never uploaded the entire video. Until now!

Music by the amazing Chris Heckman!

And then, about a month ago a friend asked me to create an animated intro for his graduate thesis, a game about a man losing his moustache and going on a quest to get it back. All that he gave me to go on was "guy waking up, going to the bathroom and looking into the mirror and freaking out when he realizes his mustache is gone."

In less than two weeks, I sent him this!

Spy poster

2009-03-11T18:39:00.000-07:00

I draw a comic on the side called Carzorthade, which is about a kid's online avatars, specifically his forum and chat usernames, crossing over into his world. Along the way I introduced a few new characters, some of which entered permanently into the cast, others gained a spin-off series, and some vanished entirely.

One of the characters, Campion Blaine, an obvious parody of James Bond, was one character that was almost entirely forgotten. That is, until a comic-making friend sent me a few guest comics with Blaine in the starring role. I enjoyed them so much I asked him to take the character for himself, which he declined. Instead, he wrote a small miniseries and asked if I wanted to illustrate them. The material was so good I immediately agreed. However, this was in the middle of college which was taking more and more of my spare time, causing me to drop comics altogether.

Well, I'm managing my time more efficiently now.

I drew a lot of inspiration from this:

This was an experiment as the inks are in Flash, and the colors in Photoshop. Previously, I only made comics in Flash. However, my previous job (the one I was laid off from) gave me a lot of work involving Photoshop so I've since become more comfortable with layers, brushes, and colors. I'm hoping that as I draw the actual comics, which I'll upload here, I can continue to experiment with brushes, color, and texture.

It's the year of the blog

2009-03-11T18:17:00.000-07:00

I realized I haven't updated this web log in waaayy too long, so to sum up:

I was laid off from my previous job (they ran out of stuff for me to do and weren't willing to keep me on nor move me to a higher position)
I lucked into a part-time Production Internship (volunteered at the Annies, met a producer who mentioned they were looking for interns)
I landed a Story internship with the same studio, also part time (adding together to 5x a week, or "full time")

Both internships are unpaid, which sounds like a bummer but I'd rather be unpaid and be making contacts and building resume stock than simply being unpaid. Plus, I'm fortunate to have money saved up and supportive parents.

Check back again tomorrow and I'll post images of where I live!

Pony Animation v3, and learnings

2008-11-30T22:38:00.000-08:00

I said last month I was going to upload model sheets of the characters I'm (attempting) to animate but then I realized I'm trying to emulate a style where there is no consistent way of drawing a character. Here's a rough version of the animation:

I mostly worked on this when I had a lot of free time (read: unemployed) and so it's fallen by the wayside. But! I'm trying to jump back into Flash in a big way so not only am I going to finish this animation (or as near as I can get it), I'm also reading a big book on Actionscript 3.0. The goal is to broaden my skillset to include Maya and Flash, as well as any relevant programming languages I can get a grip on.

UPDATE holy crap

2008-10-30T10:07:00.000-07:00

Hey all! I've graduated from UCF with a degree in Digital Media: Visual Language and I've since moved out west to California! I've got an apartment, a job, and I'm stil alive to boot!

So many things going on. Work keeps me busy and I was surprised to find out the average workday in the CG industry is 9am-7pm (bummer).

I trying to decide which "path" I want to try to follow- 3D or 2D, animator or rigger, or Production. All interest me heavily but it's hard finding the time to work on personal stuff for the more art-related fields (animation especially).

Speaking of personal animation I'm in the process (ie, started but shelved due to lack of time) of animating a comic from one of my favorite authors, Kate Beaton. You can read the comic here.

Hopefully I can find the time to finish that up. I'll post the character sheets later too.

I'm also working on webcomics to keep me dedicated to art every day and you can view them here.

Update and Evolution of a Scene

2008-07-09T06:21:00.000-07:00

Lots of news since my last post which was, good lord, almost a year ago. We finished our movie, Ladybug Action Hero, and I'll try to get some scenes that I worked on up. I've graduated from UCF with a BA in Digital Media/Visual Language and I'm planning to move out to LA by the end of July.

I've also been involved in a bumper (intro) for a local TV show in New York City. I don't know if I can say which one or show that much of it, but in the process of creating the animation I made many, many graduated saves. I went back through them and took several interval versions of the same animations and uploaded them to YouTube so you could see the progress one shot went through, from start to finish:

Beat Board

2007-09-19T05:59:00.000-07:00

Lack of updates due to nothing actually being technically "due." Deadlines are now starting to take effect, so here's a beat board.

A "beat board" is a single frame that sums up an entire sequence from the movie. This way, you can look at 12 frames and get the "feel" of the entire movie and story. I was assigned the "comic book" opening sequence. Below is the rough layout I scanned and below that is what I churned out in Flash.

Artificial Environments and Effects Final

2007-05-20T05:41:00.000-07:00

For our final assignment we had to break down the movie once more based on the winner's idea (thus, reinterpreting it). For our group, my role was to create the plan view and elevation.

Plan View:

Elevation:

Texture assignment

2007-05-08T07:29:00.000-07:00

An extension to the "Pallette Swap" assignment. We had to take the three pallette pictures and apply different motifs of textures to them to elicit different moods.

Idea Illustration

2007-04-29T16:19:00.000-07:00

For Artificial Environments and Effects, we we were given idea topics to illustrate. I was given "Lust" and "Death." Since we had to get the topic across as easily and as visually digestibly as possible, we were instructed to look at advertisements or guerilla marketing.

See if you can figure out which is which. Should be easy.

Finalized breakdowns

2007-04-20T08:14:00.000-07:00

These were all part of my pitch for my take on our senior movie:

Plan view:

Elevation

Illustrations:

Preliminary Breakdowns

2007-04-18T07:44:00.000-07:00

In Artificial Environments and Effects we're breaking down our senior movie "Ladybug Action Hero's" script. We were assigned to individually break down the action into plan views (bird's eye view) and elevations (profile view). Here are the first versions I created:

Plan view:

Elevation1:

Elevation 2:

Stepped Character Animation

2007-04-11T07:46:00.000-07:00

For the next assignment in Artificial Characters, we had to do a character animation that carried a certain "attitude" or "motivation"... generally, some sort of "gimmick" that would make a basic action more interesting/entertaining. For mine, I had my character getting out of a(n invisible) chair that he was stuck/glued to.

3D Walk Cycle

2007-04-10T14:14:00.000-07:00

First assignment for Artificial Characters Workshop: 3D Walk Cycle. We had to take our 2D walk cycles we hand-animated as our final projects from our first semester and use an already-rigged character model and translate the walk cycle into 3D by keying the character to match every frame of our 2D walk cycle as best as we could.

Pirate backgrounds

2007-03-26T17:57:00.000-07:00

I volunteered to create the backgrounds for a friend's share of another friend's pet project he was doing for a friend of his own. So, I the first friend in the previously mentioned chain of comrades gave me two sheets of thumbnails, 21 in all, as well as two backgrounds she had created before I opted to take over. I modeled the first two backgrounds I created on hers so I could get the style right (although it was right up my alley anyway).

Thumbnails:

Hers backgrounds:

My backgrounds:

Palette swap

2007-03-22T21:02:00.000-07:00

Another Artificial Environments and Effects assignment: Palette Swap. We were to take the color palette from three different impressionist paintings and replace a singular landscape's color scheme with the three impressionist's palettes.

However, I misheard/misread the directions and instead used three different landscapes to alter a fourth landscape.

Style switch

2007-03-22T20:58:00.000-07:00

Here's the assignment that's clogged up my blog: "Style Switch" we were given this photo:

From that, we had to "stylize" the image into being cartoony, gothic, and impressionistic.

I ran out of time on the gothic image and wasn't able to color it. So, I kept intending to color it before I uploaded it to the log, but I only ended up not uploading anything at all.

Visualizing Poetry

2007-02-24T21:55:00.000-08:00

For Art Env & Efx, we had to visually represent that feeling we received in reading both a poem and a death metal song's lyrics.

Hatebreed-"Not one Truth":

EE Cummings- "Since Feeling is First"

I'll leave it to you to figure out which is the deathmetal song.

Ant model

2007-01-29T05:23:00.000-08:00

We had to create a model sheet of a character that we'd then model in Maya. Our teacher recommended that we create bipedal bugs, so I made an anthropromorphic ant.

Ball and Teacup

2007-01-28T18:30:00.000-08:00

For Artificial Characters, we had to animate a ball entering the frame and then interacting with a teacup in 3D space using physics as accurate as we could manage.

Wormholes are an accurate depiction of physics, right?

Instructions and pictograms

2007-01-18T08:35:00.000-08:00

The first Artificial Environments & Effects assignment of the year: create a diagram of instructions and two pictograms from a set list of options.

For the diagram, I opted for "How to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich." I wanted to go as aesthetically simple as possible:

Then, for the pictograms, I chose "College" and "Animation."

Thumbnails

2007-01-14T07:28:00.000-08:00

First new assignment of my second semenster!

In Visual Development we were given a slip of paper with an animal and an object/action. Mine was "An ant and a ping pong ball." From that we are supposed to create a visual story in 10-15 panels.

2001: A Photo Composition Oddyssey

2007-01-10T21:26:00.000-08:00

This actually preceeded our Shake Tracking Project, but I forgot to upload it.

Photo composition: we had to insert ourselves into a photo from history. However, the teacher also gave us the option of inserting ourselves into stills from movies, which most of us opted to do instead.

Here's the pic I was working with:

Here's the photo I took of myself:

And here's the finished result:

Gold's House Interior- Illustrations

2006-12-07T23:25:00.000-08:00

Our last assignment for Artificial Environments and Effects: illustrate the interior of the character Gold's house.

Life Drawing Sessions

2006-12-04T18:16:00.000-08:00

All of the drawings I created in attending the Life Drawing sessions this year are due tomorrow. So, here they are on the blog!

9-1:

9-8:

9-15:

The skull drawn in the right-hand corner was put there by my instructor to further illustrate to building blocks/components that go into drawing the human skull.

9-22:

9-29:

10-6: Hopefully you'll notice a mark-up in quality. If you do, it's because I started using a different sketchbook with a better quality paper. For anyone that doesn't think money=better drawings, they're dead wrong. If you have crappy materials, you're going to make a crappy drawing. Not to say skills aren't a considerable factor, but a great drawing is poorly rendered on a shitty sketchbook. The previous sketchbook's pages would literally come apart while I was erasing. These drawings are more "crisp" because I could erase without smuding everything up.

I made the mistake of not sketching the entire figure before going into the details. Because of this, his legs taper off because that's where the edge of the paper was. It's a mistake to draw larger than the pad. You will subconsciously alter the proportions to fit more onto the paper.

10-20:

10-27-06: These sessions were faster-paced, with an emphasis on quick sketches upon which you could base the rest of the drawing. For the first drwing I didn't make it past the sketch. For the second, I finished the sketch, but the session ended just as erased the lower-half's sketch so I could add cleaner, darker lines.

11-3:

The beginning of the day's session started with a flurry of fast-paced sketches, where we were to draw the model's figure, emphasizing the "line of action" as quickly as possible. The model would change her pose every 30 seconds. This was the first of 6 pages of sketches. I'm particularly fond of the sketch in the upper-left corner.

To relate back to animation, the instructor had the model change positions in a series of poses meant to resemble an action taking place, so we could practice "thumbnailing" the key parts of an event. In this, the model saw something, walked to it, and gave it a closer look.

Same idea as above. In this, the model is sweeping.

Shake Tracking Assignment

2006-11-30T11:25:00.000-08:00

For this assignment, we were given a piece of footage shot by our instructor and we then had to insert something into the footage as seamlessly as possible. For mine, I shot myself in front of a bluescreen and then inserted myself into the footage. I removed the blue background with chromakey, matched my colors with the footage, and then tracked myself using reference points in the footage.

Here's the leveling guide:

I think it was pretty successful, or at least as good as I could get it.

In case you're wondering what I was doing, my original plan was simply to stand in front of the blue screen and do nothing. However, one of my VL colleagues suggested to instead "rub my beard," so I did. Here's a pic:

Walk Cycle Animation

2006-11-29T15:14:00.000-08:00

For this assignment, we were to create a walk cycle of a character with a certain "attitude" that corresponded to a loop of music of our own choosing.

I chose "Black History Month," by Death From Above 1979. The loop of music isn't perfect, but the cycle's pretty consistent with the beat, which was important.

Space Pandas... IN SPAAAAAACE!

2006-11-27T21:05:00.000-08:00

This isn't really related to my Visual Language track, but I suppose this is also an art blog:

A random favor for a friend. He had to have a graphic for a website class, based on the theme "Pandas in Space." Here's what I came up with:

Final Strip

2006-11-22T21:12:00.000-08:00

Final (inked) version of the Comical Strip. Big change in the 4th panel. Before it was a subtle change in the characters demeanor, more of a "lack of reaction" as the reaction. However, the instructor emphasized that the change in expression from one extreme ("high and happy" in the 2nd panel to "low and sad" in the 4th) would produce a more humorous effect.

Floorplan and Elevations

2006-11-22T05:26:00.000-08:00

In further deviations from our "The Chain" breakdown, we had to create the floorplan of the character Gold's house, and do the elevations for one room.

Floorplan:

Elevations:

Perspective Shots

2006-11-16T05:51:00.000-08:00

For "The Chain," we next had to "zoom in" on our map and create a layout of one of the characters' neighborhoods. Then, we were to show four views of the neighborhood from a ground-level perspective.

Overhead view:

North:

East:

South:

West:

Comical Strip- Rough

2006-11-15T05:24:00.003-08:00

Our Visual Story assignments so far have been culminating to this: the Comical Strip. Having studied the visual language (ie, shots, pans, perspective, visual space, etc), we are to create a 4 panel strip using characters of our own design to craft a joke of sorts. I opted to use the ones I created for the class. Here's the rough draft (the final draft is due next week... he'll be critiquing these today):

Map assignment

2006-11-13T05:05:00.000-08:00

For The Chain, we had to create a map that fully represents the story and all of the events that take place. A good starting off point is that a dog attack happens where a Colonial House stands n the fringes of a park. Therefore, the "Attack Site" is located close to the edge of a park.

Facial Animation

2006-11-08T17:43:00.000-08:00

Facial Animation assignment. From the characters we designed for Visual Storytelling, we were to choose one and animate that character going through a change of expression while dubbing it to sound. Originally, I was going to do my hero character. A peer of mine suggested doing the Old Man, but I was against it then. I thought having to animate the follow-through on the jowels would be too much. However, as soon as I drew the single frame for the Hero character, I realized how much more fun it would be to make the Old Man as jowelly as possible.

Sure enough, it was. I'm very happy with how it came out. I did thumbnails as a preview of the animation, then from the thumbnails I did the keys, then shot the keys. Once I viewed the keys, I in-betweened them and then shot those. After some tweaking, I cleaned up the keys and the in-betweens, shot the whole thing, and then synched up the sound using Final Cut Pro.

So far, it was my favorite animation to do. Took the least amount of paper, too! Only 20 frames!

Flour Sack Animation

2006-11-07T05:02:00.000-08:00

Like the standard Disney animator test, we were to give a flour sack "life." However, our assignment differed in that whereas the Disney test asks for a walk cycle, ours was to make the Flour sack do a jump, all the while giving it thought and character in the process. I think I did fairly well. The only part that wasn't well received was the impact on the other side of the gap. If you compare it to my "Bouncing Ball" animation, the flour sack has no contact process; the flour sack is in the air one frame, and in the very next frame has been squashed on the ground, as opposed to making contact with the ground and then squishing. I thought leaving out the moment of contact and instead skipping to the flour sack at its most squashed state would make for a more jarring impact, but our instructor disagreed. Lesson learned.

On the bright side, everyone liked the "flailing kicks" at the end.

Teapot Animation

2006-11-01T18:26:00.000-08:00

Teapot animation, due Sept. 20th. We had to either animate an egg cracking to reveal a surprise inside, or a teapot with a "mystery" effect. I waited too long on mine and the result is sloppy animation (quality of line especially). I resorted to using spirals for the effect, which certainly do their job, but certainly aren't very interesting.

Still, I chose the teapot because it seemed like the tougher of the two. And, I feel that I benefitted from it in the long run.

Rough Character Sheets

2006-11-01T16:40:00.000-08:00

Here's the rough character sheets that accompanied the facial expressions.

The Bouncing Ball

2006-10-24T20:56:00.000-07:00

This was done at the beginning of the semester, on August 29th.

I'm particularly happy with it because mine really shows "easing in" and "easing out," or basically the effects of gravity. It increases speed as it approaches the ground and decreases speed as it nears the top of its apex.

Serial Planes project

2006-10-19T19:10:00.000-07:00

Had to recreate an every-day object using "serial planes" (out of foamcore) that showed gradation of size and variation of spacing.

(it's a glue bottle)

Character Design Exercises

2006-10-19T19:04:00.000-07:00

In Visual Story, we had to create four character faces based on three shapes: an inverted triangle, a rectangle, and a circle. From those three shapes, we had to come up with four characters: a Villain, a Hero, a Toddler, and an Old Person.

Then, we had to do 8 expressions for each face- Confused, Angry, Happy, Surprised, Love, Disgust, Fear, Sadness:

Commercial Pitch

2006-10-19T18:56:00.000-07:00

The next Production Process assignment was to come up with ideas for what would eventually become a real pitch for an intro to a series of local TV shows. Here are my storyboards:

This was for the show "One on One," an interview-format program. I'm happy to say out of 8 possible ideas for the category, mine was given the most votes. So, I've been placed in a group to finalize the pitch for next Wednesday.

Did I mention that if the pitch succeeds we'll then get/have to execute it?

Animation Pitch

2006-10-19T18:30:00.000-07:00

(this project might actually have been chronologically before the character/space exrecises, but eh)

In Production Process, we had to create a mock animation pitch to a network. My group and I were assigned Cartoon Network, so we decided to pitch to their subsidiary, "Adult Swim." I was the team leader, art director, and co-character designer. The idea we came up with was "Wasteland University," an animated comedy about college in the post-apocalypse. Here's the show's "Bible," reposted for your viewing/reading pleasure:

Introduction
Only two things are known to have the tenacity to survive an apocalypse: cockroaches and college. In a world devastated by several such society-ending catastrophes, several small colleges are scattered throughout what’s left of the earth. One of these is Wasteland University. From all around the world (or what’s left of it) young adults travel to Wasteland University in hopes of picking up a trade that can lead them to a better life. That, or simply to have a few good years while they can. Regardless of their intention, Wasteland University is a shining beacon of hope and adventure to an exhausted planet.

Characters
Eric: After a nuclear winter set in, no one in Canada really seemed to notice. However, tourists stopped visiting and Canada’s government collapsed. What was left of the citizens took up jobs farming in central communes as a means to scrape by. Eric was part of such a family. After living a basic life for most of teens, Eric was immensely surprised on his 18th birthday to learn that his parents had saved up enough money and resources for him to make the journey to Wasteland University, the closest University to them. After loading the family’s Volvo with his things and then hitching the Volvo to the family’s donkey, Eric promised his parents he’d make a new life for himself and be someone, somebody that could bring sense back to the world. However, Eric hasn’t a clue what he wants to do and is currently undecided, He’ll decide someday, he swears.

Naros: After the ice caps melted, Mexico, Texas, and Southern Florida were completely flooded. However, civilization survived by means of remote floating atolls in which a small community could thrive off the sea. However, after living so long out on a remote island left to themselves, distant cousins soon become immediate cousins and, well, certain irregularities begin to appear. Naros is the latest batch of children born to one such atoll, and is sporting the latest developments. Naros has webbed feet, hands, and gills. Shocked at this state of existence, Naros’ parents cast him out in search of more refreshing waters, namely that of a separate gene pool. Naros swam until he eventually reached the shore of a larger land-mass, and wandered for days. He eventually found himself on the doorstep of Wasteland University. Although he’s enrolled in classes, he has his eyes on other sights: the ladies. However, he’ll need the best of luck in picking them up, as he only speaks Spanish. Chicks dig accents, though. And webbed limbs too, right?

Erma: Erma and her family lived quite peacefully in Melbourne, Australia… that is until a nuclear strike in China caused the tectonic plates to shift, sending the Australian continent in several directions. While they drifted across the ocean to parts unknown, a savage impromptu government was set up by biker gangs, dividing the already-split land-mass into territories. Always in search of the fuel for their motorcycles, wars were commonplace. Erma adapted quickly and fought for her life on a daily basis. After many years of drifting, Erma’s little piece of the ol’ Outback nestled itself onto a larger, unknown landmass. Once the gangs left in search of better things, Erma ventured out herself. Being an orphan, she had little choice. Eventually, she came across Wasteland University. Being the only source of stability in her life, Erma attends WU although she has a hard time adjusting to a schedule of classes, instead sticking to her old ways of patrolling the streets for fuel.

Red/John: Friends since birth, Red and John always looked out for eachother. John, the oversized African-American, and Red, the quick-thinking white kid. As they grow up they grew inseparable, eventually proving themselves on the football field as a phenomenal Quarterback/Block combo that led their local High School to a series of undefeated streaks. After a belated nuclear blast during a football game in an already-post-apocalyptic world, Red and John awoke to find themselves quite literally joined together. However, being BFF’s they just laughed it off and went on their merry way. As anarchy spread across the globe, Red and John’s combined talents of quick-thinking and brute force brought them many a victory in defending their hometown. Hearing of their skills, Wasteland U enlisted them in their own “Football Team,” which is used for protecting the campus’ land from invaders seeking to conquer more territory. Despite their deformity, Red and John are quite happy with their new bond. They’ve found themselves to be quite the success with the ladies… after all, two is better than one, if you catch my drift.

Here's a cast pic, for size reference:

Finally, here's three episodes (out of 10) that we came up with:

101: Pilot "Noobie First Years"
Today is Eric's Orientation. Jostled and pranked on by other students, gaping at all the strange people, unable to find the important places on campus, he's the only "normal" person on campus as well as the only one to seem surprised at the oddities that the Apocalypse has rendered on the world and humanity.

106: “MAH: Mututally Assured Homecoming”
Homecoming. Parade, football game, banquet, everyone has a part (something to do) except Eric. While at the same time Wasteland U Intelligence gives a report that the rival school is planning a covert attack to vandalize their mascot. With this information the school decides to launch a preemptive nuclear attack of their own. Half the school wants to, the other half doesn’t. Eric sees this as his opportunity to play peacemaker.

110: “Spring Breaking Point”
Party at the end of the world! It’s spring break and the whole gang is going to Ft. Lauderdale…or what’s left of it! The Atlantic Ocean is gone; all that’s left is a crater with a diameter from West Palm to Miami. Everyone just wants to have fun, but after a massive earthquake the city is destroyed again and they’ll need the help of Pike (a Snake Plissken wanna-be) to Escape from Spring Break. Along the way Eric falls in love with a replicant (Blade Runner).

... and this was all for a mock animation pitch.

(©Us 2006)

Character Space Exercises

2006-10-19T17:58:00.000-07:00

We had to draw a simple "character" (provided by the exercise) rotating three times to work on our character consistency.

Then, we had to draw the character walking into and out of space.

(Added in blue pencil is the instructors critique)

Now that's criticism I can get behind!

Stick Tower assignment

2006-10-19T17:54:00.000-07:00

Here's my stick tower:

The "/" down the middles were supposed to be more like this "\/," but I ran out of wooden dowels. But, it still held up a brick, which is more than I can say for my paper bridge and tower, both of which couldn't hold any weight at all.

Buuuut I still got a B- on the project. Don't know why. I thought if it held a brick you'd get an A, but apparently I was wrong.

Paper Bridge project

2006-10-19T17:46:00.000-07:00

I'll start posting all the assignments I've already worked on so there's some semblance of an idea of where all this stuff is coming from. But, I don't think I'll be posting my animation assignments necessarily... not sure how to handle video yet. Anyway, here's the first thing I have chronological records of: the paper bridge.

It failed miserably. The half-circles in the middle (as I realized later) would have been better served as one large half-pipe with an opening at either end of the bridge. As the way it is, all the weight is being dumped out to the sides where there's no support. If I used the half-pipe instead, all the weight would've instead been relocated to where the bridge is supported at the ends, so whatever was in the in the middle would've held out.

Start

2006-10-19T11:27:00.000-07:00

I've kept up with others' blogs chronicling their journey through a program so I figured it was high time I made one too. Right now I'm in the middle of my first semester at UCF's Visual Language program so there's still plenty of stuff left to write down.