Galaxy CRUNCH!

Holy crap, I've been busy.

Right now, I'm in the process of surviving through my last week of this semester so forgive me for the slow updates. I'll have ALOT to show by next week soon. =)

Anyway, here's a poor iPhone captured photo of my final storyboard assignment/presentation thing. It's supposed to be for an animated cereal commercial =P. I TOTALLY missunderestimated the amount of work I had to do for this assignment. I gave myself a whole weekend do to roughs and clean up and it's still not as completed as I wanted it to be! I was disappointed and upset at myself for biting off more then I could chew, at first, but now that I look back at it, I actually think it's pretty worth something. Hopefully, it'll add that little something-something to my portfolio.

One day, I will work in storyboards...one day. It's gotta happen.

My 2nd attempt at Subtle Animation

attempt #2 at subtle acting in animation...and improving veeeeery slowly

3rd pass: keys & breakdowns

2nd pass: keys only (tied-down)

1st pass: Rough, bare minimum key animation (with paste-on eyeballs)

all in all, it's better then my 1st attempt at subtle acting. What sucks is that I tired really hard to keep the features in her face more solid and in tact as she moved her head around but I got alot of floating eyeballs and morphed faces instead...or maybe not ALOT but JUST enough to ruin the acting delivery. I think you can see the emotion sneak up in some places that works but I guess the ultimate goal is to get that throughout the WHOLE thing so it's practically flawless.

I think my goal for drawing (or the technical aspect of drawing or "draftsmanship") is to be less mushy. Unfortunately, I'm not good at avoiding it :( but now that I'm more conscious about definition and sculpture and "solid drawing", I think I can hopefully improve faster...which means I should actually draw more on "my own time" but that's such a foreign concept when I'm in school...instead, I decide to think about things on my blog and never do them :)

*pathetic*

Kindergarden Recognition

EFF YEAH!!!

Dennis likes his life drawings

the first time EVER!!!

...now, that's not to say that they can light your eyeballs on fire, true...but there's definitely a difference between last year's October life drawing and this years.

yes, for something remarkable has happened: comfort. Like, really loose and relaxed comfort. During life drawing. Now don't get me wrong, I'm still on my toes and my brain is paying full attention whenever I life draw but I feel like I FINALLY developed a rhythm and a loose flow to my drawings, something I was utterly incapable of a year ago now. Look at my old posts if you don't believe me. The "quick gesture" segment of life drawing has always been the biggest struggle for me and I dedicated a whole year (practically) in trying to nail them properly and well, so much to the point where I would hardly ever go beyond the abstract and simplistic shapes that gestures serve to the drawings.

Now since I've recently started feeling more comfortable with my "gestural" drawing, I started experimenting with development to my life drawings by actually continuing to layer them with more defined anatomy and rendered shading. In other words, I'm trying to actually complete my drawings...with subtle details and some light/dark tones...kinda

I'm still trying...and ALSO I think I'm getting better at mark making! I'm trying to vary my lines with more thick n' thins, dark and light, hard and soft. It's so challenging but I keep trying. I've sat next to people who would make magic with that little black stick they draw with in her hands. So many different marks and lines from a stupid little stick! How DO they do it? *ahem, Will*

Either way...I think I may have just raised your expectations...crap.

juan-tastic

isn't it so animated?

you can tell I spend FOREVER on the animation... *rolls eyes*

Actually the drawing itself took longer then the actual animation. Can you tell who it is? =P It's a caricature of a classmate and a good buddy of mine and I had to do it completely out of memory which was hard...but I took my time and thought about "solid drawing" and was also inspired by looking at Stephen Silver's observational sketches right before doing this assignment. That guy could draw in his sleep...

As for the dialogue track...Juan provided the voice too and it's based off a sort of an inside joke. Grammatically speaking, it makes no sense but Juan doesn't speak English, no...

he speaks SPANGLISH. artfully and masterfully.

Goofy slippin' on ice

I LIE TO YOU!!!

this animation is actually about Goofy trying to catch a ball.

That's the breakthrough lesson that I had to learn about 2nd year animation.

I was listening to the animation podcast on the bus and Ken Duncan mentioned the words "character animation" in an interview and then it IMMEDIATELY dawned on me, the thing I was so confused and lost about since I started 2nd year animation. Successful commercial animation is about character more then it is about actual animation.

Animation is just a way of expressing character. 1st year is animation for animation's sake and 2nd year is animation for character's sake...at least I think.

I'm still trying to get it.

and here's my final tie-downed animation.




And here's the first "rough" pass, even though they're really clean looking stick figure drawings of Goofy. I took every conceivable wrong method and approach to this assignment...it's not timed out, I did it straight ahead, no poses or even thumbnails...just alot of experimentation on Flash for hours and hours and in the end, STILL missed the point of the assignment. Pretty remarkable stuff. I had ended up with something mechanically convincing and cool but not convincing in character. So the video above was my revival of this stick figure animation and I tried to put more character in it without over killing my brain on the work ahead of me.



I'm getting there...I'll get there.

Drawing acting

Facial expression exercise we did in class =) Suuuuper fun and creative...and endless (the best part) =D

Did I do good? I think I did but that's ultimately for the YOU (the AUDIENCE) to decide!!! and for me to nervously wait for your reply =P



Either way, I don't experiment and practice drawing facial expressions enough so I think this is a really nice start =P YIIIPPPPIIIEEEE!!!!

By the way, 2nd year has been excellent so far. Things are mentally digesting slowly but I've never been more satisfied with the constant learning and growing =) (Just when you thought you learned alot too...holy crap)

Which reminds me, more updates coming soon!