Lunchtime Sketches

Bubblegum Contest

Hey all! Here are some sketches done during lunch this week.

Yesterday my Mom told me she visits my blog everyday. To see more posts and read people's comments. I asked her why she never commented herself. She said "Ahhhh I wouldnt know what to say." How cute is that. Mom. It's me , cmon.

Alright so, tonight is my Animation Mentor q&a. I'm gonna plead my case and try to convince my mentor that keeping the "belly bump" at the end of my animation test is an idea worth keeping in. Wish me luck.

Usain Bolt

Thanks for your feedback on my work in progress shot everyone! I really appreciate it!

Here's a lunchtime sketch of one of my favorite moments of the Olympics. Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt celebrating way before he even reaches the finish line, and still breaking the world record. He broke two more in the 200m and 4x100 relay before the games were over.

Here's another memorable one:
Cuban TaeKwonDo Olympian kicks referee in the face. What?! Such a horrible thing! Poor guy.
I just wish it wasn't such a funny picture. I dont think I could've posed it any better. The formation of his hands lead me to believe that he was actually a few microseconds late to kung-fu block it, or catch his foot or something.

Well so, to make it relevant to this blog (and so I dont go straight to hell) , I'll try and break down why I think this image works so well. And I'll try to keep the giggling in. Wait. Just. Give me a second........Okay, whew. Here goes

click for bigger image.

I couldn't fit this in the picture but there is also a little bit of overlap on the tie. Which, again, also follows the line of action.

Awful sportsmanship, kinda awesome image.

Shot Update

Finally, an update on the Pontillas/Coderre collabo! About 3 weeks and 1,000 changes later, here 's what I turned in yesterday.

Obviously, lip sync still has to be done, mechanics polished, and a I got a few other change requests (I'm changing the end so it doesnt feel like she is pushing the dude back with an invisible pregnant belly forcefield) . But I'm gonna hit the ground running because I got 3 more weeks until class is up!

For Macy !

In Reverie

Wasn't that the name of an old Saves the Day song? Ha, I dont care what you say, I still love those guys.

Also, here is some rough shot planning for my new 2 person dialogue piece.Zenner said:
"try to keep us updated about the shot :)"

Totally man! Heres what I turned in yesterday for layout:

SDCC !

We're back from San Diego! Check out some of the photos we took here !

04-21: Art, Animation, & SDCC !

More random drawings!

This is how my dialogue piece came out. When I get a breather, I want to post more about the things Brett's been going over in our class. There have been some great sessions so far and I shouldn't keep all that great info to myself. So yeah, hopefull after the comic -con.

Wait what? Comic-Con?! YEAH DUDE! A couple of my buddies, Cheryl, and I are going to the San Diego Comic Con this year, it'll be my first time. And I love San Diego so it should be an awesome time. I know I'm gonna get there and discover a whole lot of artists whose work I haven't been exposed to yet, but here is my "must check-out" list:

-Imaginism Studios
-Shelly Wan /Mindy Lee
-My buddies at Fleet Street
- Red Window, Inc. booth (Scott Morse, Bill Presing, Jeff Pidgeon)
-E-Ville Press
-Flight
-Benton Jew
-Who is Rocket Johnson?
-Udon
-Pascal Campion & Mike Daley
-Eric Goldberg ( Character Animation Crash Course)
-Louie Del Carmen
-Chris Sanders
-Scrambled Ink
-Dude! Jim Lee!
-Kristin Kreuk (hehe)

So yeah, shorter list than thought I was gonna have. Looking forward to being introduced to unfamiliar work! But some of these guys of I've been a fan of for a while now and I feel like I'll completely geek out meeting them. I'll make sure to take some pics so you could bare witness!

Nom-Nom-Nom

...this blog is getting to random, even for me.

Uncle Manny

Oh man! Pacquiao won his latest fight so I'm keeping tradition and did another sketch of him. Look at him, all stoic and stuff.

CHA-DES Challenge: Touchy-Feely College

"I just.........I thought she was different man."

Haha awww.

AnimationMentor- Class 4

Sweet! My new mentor for class 4 (Adv. Acting) is Brett Coderre. An animator at Pixar since A Bugs Life. We had our first q & a session last week where we all introduced ourselves. Brett seems genuinely committed to helping students become better ( he's been doing AM for 2.5 years!) and I get along well with my classmates really well, theres a lot of positive energy going around.

Some expression thumbnails for my shot.

Brett definitely takes a less is more approach. And sure enough, tonight he really ripped into my lip-sync test! Which, I kid you not, felt kind of reinvigorating because I spent a week away from it during break. Even though we are focusing on facial animation , he had a real chip on his shoulder about simplifying the acting to be more natural. He felt like I was hitting too many beats than I needed too, especially with the arms, which made it lose a lot of the intensity.
I remember watching Brett's critiques on students' work earlier on when I was in class 1, and I distinctly remember that that was his major comment on most people's work. To simplify! To break down those several main key poses into 1 or 2, and work within those. Or to hit this pose and "work within it". I went in to this one thinking I was simplifying, but I need to work to boil ideas down even more. Ha, I dunno, most days I feel like I get it, other days I get knocked on my ass.

Brett going over some of my work during my first e-critique of class 4.

Wuuuaaaallllll-eeeeeee

Poster Art by Eric Tan

Not sure if you heard but a new Pixar film about robot love came out this weekend. I wont give anything away but I must say that I loved this movie very much. Maybe it was a sensitive day, but I must admit that I got a little choked up at parts. Dont judge me blogspot, Cheryl teared up 3 different times! Ha! But really, part of it was getting caught up in Wall-E's story, and the other was taking in how much unique, beautiful, sincere, honest work this animation medium is capable of.
Andrew Stanton makes you really care for this character, and after watching the movie I felt like we became really good friends and I, I miss him! Thats right world! I genuinely miss, and am concerned about the well being of a trash- cubing, pibsqueak robot. If there would be anything I would want audiences to take away from my work, it would be to for them to really care about my characters. Its the reason why Kiwi! is one of my favorite short films of all time, student or pro.

Wall-E and Finding Nemo are the Pixar films that tug right at the heart strings to me. Remember that lump you got in throat when Marlin found that he had one egg left? Daaamn, thats some pretty powerful stuff man.

You've probably read most of the pre-release interviews Stanton has been doing, but I came across a particulary good one with Andrew here. Interesting stuff like the "power of using your personal experiences to fuel certain moments in movies" , and the perceived political & ecological messages in the film.

D & D rules

A "quick n dirty" for one of my co-worker's next Dungeons N Dragons character. His name is Ghor, and he is a Warlock Dragonborn. He was made fun of as a little one for being short, but had his growth spurt just around the beginning of adulthood. 30 and bitter, he finds beauty in sociopathic things.

I'll let you know how he does in the upcoming 4th edition campaign!

Game design students rule.

Best shirt ever.
AND his critique on this drawing.

Matt Rules

Hey Mom! The new "Where the Hell is Matt 2008" video is up.

I dunno what it is, but I can't help but get a little choked up watching these videos. He even goes to the Philippines.
Oh man why didn't I hear he was coming to Gasworks in Seattle!

Class3 Progress Reel

This is my latest Animation Mentor progress reel going all the way back to Class 1 ! The opening dialogue piece is a Work In Progress and is supposed to be completed in Class 4. Much thanks to Dave Vallone for a great class.

Because childhood drawings rule

Know what else rules? Drawings from your childhood! In this case, a sampling from one of my co-workers, Paul Z, age 8. How rad is "Picasso"?! You come up w/ these kinds of designs when your're an adult! And yes those ARE character stats thank you. As you can see, strength is through the roof!
He's got a whole book of these, including another one of my favorites; A character that is......half lion, half tank. Half freakin' tank son! I love that free-thinking, anything goes, throw-logic-out-the-window, "makes sense to me!" mentality we have when we we're kids. How cool would it be to make a feature and let kids art direct the whole thing?!

Principles rule.

Get ready to bust out your "Amen's " , "Hallelujah's" , and "You go girl 's". Over at the Spline Doctors site, animator Travis Hathaway has made an attempt to boil down his process into a simple set of broad animation principles. They are so on the nose, your head will explode. I've spent the better part of the day thinking about them and the list is pretty bulletproof. Not only in the criteria of the list but the order of importance that they are listed.

I must admit that these aren't so much the order that I've been placing them in my work up to this point, but they should be if I'm going to really step my work up. I struggle with them all!

My(not necessarily THE) principles of animation.
-Travis Hathaway

Bill the Butcher rules.

I caught There Will Be Blood recently, and Daniel Day Lewis's performance was so great that it made me want to watch Gangs of New York again. Daniel rules. Period. "Ears and noses will be the trophies of the day." WHAT?! Sick man.

Nico Marlet rules

To acknowledge how great I thought Kung Fu Panda was, I thought I'd write a little bit about one of the film's strongest suits, character design. In particular, some of the work of character designer, Nico Marlet.

I'm not saying that the following are the only elements of drawing that constitute great character design. But this is my attempt to break down and articulate what I'm seeing and why his current work appeals to me. I've wanted to do this immediately after seeing his work in the recent Art of Kung fu Panda book.

Drawing from Life- I think its very apparent that Nico has gone back to study reference of the actual source material. Haha, when I look at this design of a Monkey, I feel like he's forgotten about every simian design in any cartoon that came before him.
Come on! That dude is a bad ass!

And check out this design of a viper. The way its more than a simple tube shape, but that added detail of v-shape that defines the spine, I feel like I've seen in particular snakes before, but never would've thought to incorporate and emphasize it that way. I've heard alot of people complain that you can't tell that the tiger is a female. Are you kidding me? I said he looked at life, not every other cartoon feline out there.

I'm glad that Nico didnt take the easy way out and slap on breasts and wide hips to convey a female tiger like I would've done. Those choices that came from looking at real life make the character feel more real, different, and genuine to me.

Textures as Pattern- Something I see alot in his work is the treatment of different textures (fur,scales,fuzz) and how they are designed into patterns.
Take this Sheep's skin, (I even love all the implied texture that white space has):
or the way he's describing the "fuzz-like" quality on a bee's ass.
Alot of times they involve small shapes in even repetition, that when
looked at as a whole begin to describe a very specific texture or surface. Here are some on a mantis and a croc.

Clean,Flowing Gesture- Take this character sketch from a Bee Movie. Every line laid down is meant to emphasize the overall gesture. Even details inside the clothing (wrinkles, etc.), are meant to emphasize, and tie into the flow of her pose.
And speaking of strong posing, Nico comes from an animation background, and his work shows it. And it goes beyond the classic S and C-curve gestures you've seen in the Preston Blair books. Look at this pose man!
It has a "rounded-off blocky" quality to it that I love. The shape of the gesture itself is just a great design.

Shape Language- Nico's work has a specific and personal "shape language" that is applied to what he's researched, and becomes the foundation to all of his drawings.
I'm a big fan of real graphic stuff. So I love to seeing really clean, simple, and sometimes flat, graphic shapes. Whats great about Nico's work is that it is all of those things, but it still feels dimensional. That is, you feel like you can move and rotate these
around in 3D and they wouldn't fall apart.
This is great too because it shows that he's not just making drawings for great drawings sake, but these eventually are to be turned into a 3D characters. How brilliant is that pig though? I dont even remember him in the movie but I feel like a whole feature could be made around him.

Thats all I got, for now. Obviously there are so much more to successful design; attitude, personality, uh, drarwing good, etc. But I feel like these are known and universal and should be applied to ALL character design. I'm trying to hone in on some of elements that make his drawings stick with me.

You can check out all of these samples in these books.
The Art of Kung Fu Panda
The Art of Bee Movie

Oui!

This sketch was done while the room was watching Paris Je 'Taime. And might've been influenced by it.

New Dialogue *wip*

This is what I've been working on, outside of work work. Not too much to say this early on, except that I love this piece of dialogue. I wanted to get into some juicy, dark, serious acting. Since I never am any of the latter two. *wink*.

I'm also trying to take more time to do as much prep work as I can, top chef-style. And man, that included everything from scribbling on paper, shooting numerous clips of video reference, studying actors I admire that fall along the lines of this character, asking my fiance what she thinks. Every time out of the gate I want to make sure I shaking things up as far as my approach goes. This stuff takes sooo long and is such hard work that I wanna make sure I'm learning a little something.

Planning:
Mapping out the idea, with a general idea of the character's attitude.

Embarassing Video Reference:
Trying to get specific.
A big thing I've learned this time around is that it helps me when I shoot reference for everything, like ev-er-ry little thing. Well so like this for instance, theres a specific gesture I wanted to hit on "today". I was well into blocking in 3D already and I just could not get it to work! So frustrating! So I was like f*ck it, I need to know what the hell my arm is really doing, so I shot it right there, frame-by-framed it, and was like , ooooooooooooh. I did that again for so many different parts.

So after initial blocking pass and feedback from my mentor, heres where it stands so far, kind of at a blocking plus stage:
*Updated 06/16*
Deep into splines!

Still have a ways to go, so I'll be updating as it comes along. I'm always open to feedback. You have the power to save this animation from being crappy! Haha. But seriously, If you've stopped by my space on AM to leave me your thoughts and feedback, thanks man!

Sasquatch Festival!

I went to the Sasquatch Festival at the Gorge w/ Cheryl and some good friends this weekend! Suuuuper nice to get away from computers for a weekend. Thanks for the pics Les!

Leslie, Cheryl, Me.

The Blue Scholars

With Trevor
James and Katy

Katy,Trevor, Cheryl, Les, and Wiggs.

Jacob Sisters

See Katy's rad sketches here!

the Flaming Lips with the Epic finish!