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!

Recent daily routine

This is going to catch up w/ me when I'm older. Until then, sleeping has been low pri on my list!

All Rendery!

Ibuki

Sketched out tonight after work.

Hoffman

I saw Charlie Wilson's War this weekend, and then found out that this great scene was YouTubed from Victor Navone's Blog.
Anyway, a big weakness of mine (of many) are hand gestures. They always come off too forced, contrived. I need to learn how to like, not be crappy at that. So during lunch I decided to breakdown a little bit of Phillip "dude I just sharted" Seymour's performance, and try to figure out some of the things that make it work.

Release the Kraken!

Check out my good friend, Trevor's new blogsite for Kraken Studios! He's starting to fill it with some super appealing designs, check out how rad the Kamea design is.

I met Trevor back when we were courting him to come work as an animator for ArenaNet. We sat next to each other for 3 years and he's become one of my best friends. Pretty rad when that kind of thing happens.

Foot Massage

Oh Zeus, how much we have in common.

For the Chades Challenge.

Freethrow

Also, this is pretty great, found on DRAWN:

Most accomplished cartoonists will tell you that good character design should allow the viewer to recognize a character by its silhouette. Bob Flynn has assembled this line-up of cartoon silhouettes, and you should be able to recognize most if not all of them quite easily.

zombie hunter

c-viper

Ollie Johnston

Thanks for all of the inspiration sir! You're one of the people that made me want to get into this business. I'll forever consider myself a student of your work.

New Office Clip!

In that new Office episode last night, there was a scene where Michael and Jan were arguing in front of party guests. The reaction on Andy's face (screen left) here at 0:35 had me in stitches I had to rewind a couple of times, soooo freaking hilarious, and I feel privliged to have that expression grace my page:

Home sweet home.

Many of my co workers have told how great it is to come home to their kids, especially after a frustrating day. I dont have any kids of my own. But Yeah, I can see that.

So yeah, it seems lately the animation blogosphere has James Baxter fever! Kevin Koch has posted some Baxter pencil tests from when he assisted him on Sinbad. Jim Hull posted some pretty detailed notes from an animation lecture James gave at Dreamworks. And finally, Clay Kaytis has posted the third and final part of his James Baxter interview on the Animation Podcast! James talks about supervising the animation of Belle in "Beauty and the Beast," When he was 23. It's cool because....Wait what? 23?! Like 4 years younger than I am now 23? I quit art!

So here's a choice sequence talked about in the podcast that James worked on in the Prince of Egypt:
Burning Bush sequence

Cmon! Lets quit art together!

Avatar

Of Sorts.
Also, for the people coming here from Stephen Gregory's blog, I'll be putting together a section where you could see the tests I worked on with him during the tutorship. WIP's, notes, all that good stuff, so you don't have to go hunting through archives!

Easter Sunday

Cheryl and I had a nice , family-filled Easter weekend spent with our moms. Many hours were spent watching Tagalog movies and reminiscing about our childhoods . Here is a sketch I did of my mom while I showed her how a wacom tablet worked. She really really wanted me to post it here. She says she checks this site every lunchtime and that its "huuuge!"

Suffice to say she loves my pug even more than I do.

MIA

This is me trying to glean what I can from the wonderful work of Annette Marnat. How can you not be inspired by her stuff. Run , dont walk on over to her page!

Pacquiao/Marquez

Repostin this in tribute to the Pacquiao/Marquez fight this saturday! Then on sunday a bunch of my best friends and I are doin a 69 flight climb up the Columbia Tower in Seattle! I R Scared. Stephen Gregory, my past pixar tutor sent me some encouraging words about my last animation assignment, which is giving some motivation to finish that sucker up. Maybe we just might be able to find the time to watch Horton, its gettin good ratings on Rotten Tomatoes!


All this and we're dog sitting a year-old bulldog that's bigger than a bison. Freaking cute though.

Have a stellar weekend everyone.

Jermaine

Vito Andolini

WIP. From one of my favorite scenes in The Godfather 2! Don Fanucci walking up the stairs, Vito in the shadows, the broken, blinking hall light. Oh man! Intense!

and since you didn't ask, I'll subject you to my crummy breakdown!

Juno

For the win, this weekend!

**At least Juno lost to another great movie in No Country For Old Men. And, I love Pixar just as much as you do, but I was really hoping for Persepolis to take home the Oscar.

I usually dont talk about work stuff on here for obvious reasons, but last week at work I was privileged enough to see a character design of mine modeled out in 3D, for the first time ever! Excuse my newbish-ness, but it was so thrilling! I was really taken aback. To take a 2D drawing and being able to realize it in 3D without loosing anything is truly an artform. Especially when its done well. In my case, by the incomparable Tony Thai. The whole project this guy has been spot on bringing the designs to life in 3D. So big ups to him! Awesome job man!

Quick Breakdown

Someone wrote me recently asking how I approached animating more physical shots, like my work in games for example. So I thought I'd post my general steps for a more physical shot I had done for AM. Not to say this way is the best or only way, but its what made most sense to me. I still have a lot to learn.

The assignment was an exercise in weight. So I chose to show a sense of weight by way of a heavy pulling situation. I'd never do this for every animation at work, but the intent here was to clarify my ideas to my mentor, Greg Kyle:
Once I was sure it all made sense to him, I went off and shot some video reference. Again I don't always do this at work. But I can say that my better stuff has come with the help of shooting or frame-by-framing video reference of some sort. This helps me break out of my cliche thinking of how I "think" something would move:
From that vid ref, I try to start cherry picking stronger poses and accentuating them. Here I'm just trying to focus on a simple clear lines of action, reverse curves, that sort of thing. This is the thing I always do at work. Except they're always messier than this. I think, again, I was just trying to clarify my ideas for my mentor to see:I jump in and try my best to match those poses. I treat the keys like drawings and spend alot of time trying to execute great poses. After that I space them out and play with the timing. Just making sure theres enough variety in both of those areas. Oh and I never really use stepped blocking at work. Again, I guess this was just my way of clarifying myself to Greg:

To get to this iteration is like a hundred steps later, haha. But after the timing on the main keys are working. I convert to spline mode and by then it looks ridiculous. So I added breakdowns and by then there is a key at about every 2-3 frames. Then I go in and just animate the root node
so that its arcs are nice and that spacing works. Then to the spine, head, legs, arms, usually in that order. By the end I make sure every thing is delaying or leading where it should, and all the arcs are ....."arc-like"=P. Even tracking the arc on the nose to ensure the movement on the head is solid, which is a trick I learned way later:
So there you have it! Far from perfect, but I hope this made sense and was of some help. Now, if you want to see some real animation, check this out.

If I were marooned..

.......I might find the time to catch up on all of my DVD's on queue.
With my pug, naturally. Who might also start to come in handy when bananas run sparse.

*This was for the Unleaded Artists blog, done at lunch.

Love is in the air

Kimbo Slice wishes you a Happy Valentines Day!

This monstrosity of a man throws down with Tank Abbott this Saturday. So guys, after you take the ladies out to watch Atonement, make sure & catch this "clash-o-the-titans" to level out your weekend!

**For anyone interested Here's how it turned out!

Quickie.

Quick sketch playing with making PS brushes during lunch.

A little more progress, A little less Stephen.

Here's a revised blocking on my shot even though the tutorship w/ Stephen is over. Although he said to keep sending WIP's his way , which I thought that was really cool.

I look back at the work I did for the tutorship and cant help but feel like I didn't "bring it" like I wanted to! I certainly couldn't have worked any harder. But I knew I wanted to zero in on acting , specifically characters interacting, cause thats what I felt I needed the most improvement on. And who better to get that kind of feedback from than a Pixar animator right?
One of the biggest things I'll take away from my time w/ Stephen is the idea of striving of a certain level of sophistication in your animation. And there are alot of elements that go into achieving that. He breaks down what some of those "elements" are here. I tell everyone that Stephen has set his standards extremely high for what he feels like is the good stuff, and it was cool to be able to tap into that .

I'm back to my "trying to stay as productive" routine of animating during the day at work, squeezing in some drawing during lunch, coming home and working on my shot until about 3-ish. I don't think I can sleep before 3 comfortably. I dont know when that started happening, but I always feel like I have to have something going on, and get really antsy when I dont. Which made 2007 just fly by!

Yo Picasso!

A WIP started today at lunch. Seems like a real pleasant person to be around eh? Yo Picasso! Lighten up a little, son!

The Shoulders of Giants

I'll have to, once again, direct your attention to Brian McDonald's Invisible Ink blog. I've been making my way through the amazing entries in his archives, but this one in particular struck a chord with me:
Standing on the shoulders of Giants.

In one section , he mentions telling his students to find what he calls a 'virtual mentor'. That is they should find a person or two or three (giants) to follow. That "When you find these virtual mentors try to be as much like them as possible and they will teach you things about your craft that you didn't even know were there to learn."

I thought it'd be cool to share the people who, consciously or subconsciously, I've used as "virtual mentors." (up to this point.)

Pablo Picasso- Like many others I've talked to, I was initially turned off by his work, and also like many others, was shocked to discover the virtuosity of his work as a youth. Here was an artist that spent his lifetime challenging and reinventing himself. He kicked off the modern art movement w/ a few paintings. Picasso came in, learned the rules, broke all of the rules, and changed the way people looked at art forever.

Glen Keane- What can I say about this guy. He is the single biggest reason I'm an animator today. I was in the 3rd quater of art school, I saw Tarzan, and it was over. The timing was perfect as I had no idea what I wanted to do for a career. We all know of the rest of his illustrious career, but you listen to the guy talk now, and his passion for animation has not waned in the least. 35 years into his animation career and he still feels like there are things he could be better at. His work is always coming from some place personal and emotional, because that is the only way he could work. He's very candid about the struggles he's had in his career in a way that is completely relatable for someone like me.

Michelangelo Bounarroti- Every time I come across something I think is completely beyond my capabilities, I tell myself that Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel. The effing Sistine Chapel son! And he didn't even think it was any good, he thought it would surely ruin his career. I could go on and on about this man, most of which wouldnt be news to you. But after all of his accomplishments , I recently found this quote from him.
"If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it wouldn't seem wonderful at all. "

Suffice to say there are many many, many other artists along the way that I've followed to a greater or lesser degree. But I'm comfortable with these 3 sitting at the top.

Tutoring w/ Stephen Gregory - Last Session!

Last night was my last session with Stephen. Here is the blocking of the new assignment I've been working on. I'll post the notes I took on it when I get home tonight. Because of his busy schedule, he'll be postponing his next tutorship session until the summer time.

On another note, I wanted to share an amazingblogsite that I stumbled upon yesterday. I check out tons and tons of art blogs, but Brian McDonald's Invisible Ink blogsite is chalk full of insightful, well thought-out, theories and opinions that artists, from many disciplines can take away from. I've been missing out and you have too! I'm still making my way through the archives.

This Weekend

Seattle vs. Green Bay.
Go Seahawks!

A Gamble

On Roy Disney and the features:

"He was wrong most of the time. The only time he might have been right was with Fantasia. It was a gamble. They were all gambles. Anybody who tries to do anything great is gambling. " -Bill Peet

Amen Brother!

The whole Bill Peet interview here

Tutoring w/ Stephen Gregory Update

For reasons unbeknowst to me, my notebook started to steadily decline again last week. As it was slowly self corrupting, I scrambled to back my files up on an external hard drive! After the dust settled, and I re-formatted/reinstalled everything, I found out that in my haste, I didnt back up the right files, and the work for the latest exercise was gone. So it was just as much my fault. Pretty lame right?

I've spent my time being disheartened by it, and I've already hit the ground running on a new test, and since there is only a week left of our tutorship, I' ll have accomplish the most work I can in less than a week!

So I'm tellin ya right now, don't expect anything fantastic, but I'll do my best. At least you'll still get to hear some great insights from Stephen! Thats where the gold is!

Happy 2008!

I had a great vacation. Hope you did too. Alot of time spent with my fiance,friends, family. Not a lot of drawing or animation done unfortunately, but here are some things we did do, in random order:

-I finally got to see the Wu-Tang Clan perform (12 years in the making!)
-I went to my first Sonics game. We walked away with the W (against the worst team in the NBA, and Durant sprained his wrist, but still.)
-The Patriots went 16-0. I celebrated.
-Picked up Rock Band!
-My countdown to New Years was actually about 15 minutes off. WTF? When was the last time you had some one tell you that.
- I got some really awesome family portraits painted by Cheryl's sister for Christmas, maybe I'll scan and post them.
- Caught up with a lot of old friends from Bremerton/Silverdale, at the War Room.
-Finally got into Heroes. Pretty good stuff, if you muscle past the cheesy first episodes. Also got the 3rd season of Lost for Christmas (Thanks Ev!) But didnt get around to watching it.
-Out of all the movies I wanted to see, I only Caught Sweeney Todd. Which was pretty good, though I didnt expect a musical, I know, ridiculous.
- Yuji Okumoto (the bad guy from Karate Kid 2) made us drinks at his restaurant, Kona Kitchen!

I'm really looking forward to this year.
I'm getting to go to my first Seahawks game this saturday, which is a playoff game! Nice ! Yes! Aaaand my 10 year high school reunion is this year, holy crap no.

With all the great holiday cards we've gotten this years, I offer you my embarrasingly unfinished holiday card that I couldnt finish before vacation!It's supposed to be Cheryl and I being pulled along on a sled by my two pups. Charming? Unfunny? Downright cruel? Why are those pups so huge? Sorry, I promise to work more on my storytelling skills this year!

I'll be posting more WIP's of my assignment with Stephen soon. Our last session is now on the 14th!