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!

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.