Some fellow artist are starting a blog that has a weekly theme. I thought I would give it a try. This weeks theme was titled The Great Escape. Below is my creation. Once the official blog is up I will post a link so you can see all the other amazing interpretations.
Click image to enlarge
Here are some drawings I am doing for a possibly comic-ish idea I am kicking around. It involves the character falling. For this I wanted to play around with the idea of various poses in free fall. I used Prisma light gray pens to rough out the poses then came in with a black ink for detail.
Realized I posted this everywhere but my site. It is a simple little animation I did for fun.
Extreme Fall is about a moment in a leafs life.
A funny little animation I did wondering what it might be like to be a leaf on a tree.
During the next session it went as I thought. Don had asked to push a few of the poses further. On top of that it seemed as if I was off a bit on which part of the dialog I was adding accents to. This caused me to re shoot my reference video and change up my animation a little. It meant going back and redrawing a lot of it. On top of that he asked us now to bring the drawings to 4's. This round I decided to be way more loose and sketchy. some frames were nothing but smudged scribbles. When flipping back and forth they seem to work. My plan was if time permits to go back tighten them up later. The first round I was trying 
Flash forward one week. It definitely helped going more sketchy. I was able to push the extremes a little more. It was tough trying to get all the drawings done on time. On a couple of the days I was exhausted while animating. The results could be seen in my drawings. I had a lack of focus and it showed. To say the least a few drawings had to be thrown out. That was when I went to bed. Frustrated I did not get further but also realised I had hit a wall. I was struggling to trying and get it all done on time. Luckily I finished it in the zero hour and got it turned in on time. I definitely could have used another day to do another pass on the shot.
Don had a few small comments on the timing. Otherwise he said it was ready to move to the next stage. While this was our last class he gave us comments and recommended we all keep going. So when time permits I will jump back into the drawings. I still have to add in the secondary animation and draw the ears in. It was a tough assignment but a great learning experience.
Here are my x-sheets I made for the shot. I ended up revising them a couple more times after the ones below. I made some changes in the timing after reshooting my reference video but for the most part they look the same. This was the first time I used an x-sheet for animating a scene. A great learning experience.
Here are the thumb sketches for the Bartok animation I was working on.
I had started a post about graduation some time ago. I had it about 70% done. Some how, some where along the lines the unpublished post disappeared. With that being said I am too angry to retype it all back up. So instead I will just make it brief over view.
Day 1 : Friday was a visit to AM Headquarters. Had fun roaming the halls and meeting fellow students. I got a tour of how day to day operations work. Also got to sign the alumni wall which was an honor. Afterwords we went to Fudruckers for lunch. Feels dirty writing that...Fudruckers. Anyway I digress. We pretty much took over the eatery. After I got a chance to take a bus down the street and see the famouse enterance for Pixar!
Day 2 : Day two was graduation day. It was held at the Palace of Fine Arts. Lee Ulrich the director of Toy Story 3 was our speaker. He delivered a great inspiring speech. Then the handout of certificates part began. They went by order of your first name. Having a Z got me a spot at the very end. Kind of cool to be the last one of our class! There were a few antics that we were asked not to talk about as they like to keep them a surprise for future graduates. So I will keep to that and honor their wishes. One thing that was cool is our class had made a thank you video unknown to the founders Bobby, Sean and Carlos. When the video was done Carlos could be seen with visible tears. Bobby and Sean had a humble look on their faces. Was very cool to see as you can tell this school means so much to them. Then balloons dropped and it was official. I was an alumni. Later in the night we all met up at the Irish Bank in the city for the after celebration.
Day 3: The last day was the annual BBQ. This was my second one. Was great to meat up with fellow students again and for the first time. Lots of food and drinks. The weather was perfect. A hint of overcast but the temperature was perfect. It was a blast for sure. Albeit brief I got a chance to talk to Carlos and Sean. They did their best to get around.
The first weeks assignment for Don Bluth's class is to select a character. Then from a selected list of audio clips pick our dialog. Take said dialog and diagram it on paper like below.
As for characters we have a choice between Winnie the Witch and a little known bat named Bartok from Anastasia. I chose to attempt Bartok. So all this week I have been trying to learn how to draw him from the list of model sheets given. As of now I am still a little shaky, but that is to be expected.
We also have to fill out an x-sheet for the shot. I have never really used one in action before. I have had a couple of classes that had us fill one out as an exercise for simple animation like a bouncing ball. So it is a bit of a learning curve with an animation piece this advanced. I might post those after I get them approved and make sure they are filled out correctly. Below are a few of the Bartok sketches based off of the provided model sheets.
Just a small update. I have started taking a 5 week online workshop from Don Bluth. This class will be traditional animation with a focus on acting. I will post updates when possible. This class should keep me busy over the next few weeks.
Had to post these great pieces by Birdbox Studio. Love the style and feel of all of them.
A sketchy look at family life: Daddy's on childcare duty while mummy gets the ice creams. As seen on www.bbc.co.uk/comedy
As seen on http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/extra . A Clumsy soldier with an ill fitting helmet gets himself and his country into a spot of bother. A series of funny animations featuring the confused, the pathetic and the hopeless. Produced by roughcutpresents.com
http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/extra One man challenges another rather more reluctant man to a duel in this funny animation. The loser will die in an instant, from one swift shot. Or not... Produced by roughcutpresents.com
Here is a sketch I did of a character I have been working on and off for some time.
Here is a little description about him:
Here is a little dragon character I have been working with on and off. All he wants to do is fly. While he has wings they are too small to give him flight.
Some days he flies a kite as a way to try to imagine what it could be like. It makes him happy for a few minutes but eventually gives in to a reminder that he can't fly.
Just wanted to pass along a shout out for GIRAF: Independent Animation Festival. They are looking for a call of entries. Information below
Giant Incandescent Resonating Animation Festival (GIRAF)
Wednesday, Nov 3-7, 2010
at Plaza Theatre, Calgary, AB
Call for Submissions
The Giant Incandescent Resonating Animation Festival is the only exclusively independent animation festival in Canada, with a focus on experimental and self-produced animated film. GIRAF plays an essential role in the promotion, education and appreciation of independent animation from around the world, exposing hungry local audiences to the best animated content from at home and abroad.
Important Note: Submission deadline August 2nd, 2010
Visit
http://www.giraffest.ca/
Here is a sketch I did of a WWII soldier. I was trying to capture the feel of someone who is a bit shell shocked and has been walking for days with little food or sleep. I did post this drawing up for Don Bluth to Critique. He gave some good advice. He had mentioned the soldiers gear is still to neatly in place. Everything should be sagging more or off center. Like his back pack might be leaning more off his right or left shoulder. The rifle could be hanging off the shoulder as opposed to strapped perfect against his back. Also He felt the face did not quite portray him being shell shocked. I have started some thumb sketches of the revisions. I hope to get some free time to do another round.
Wanted to give some props to my Class 4 Mentor Brett Coderre who worked on Toy Story 3. I feel this film is the best in the series. I think it was by for the most emotional. It still had plently of laughs and light hearted moments. The cool thing I have noticed is that one of Brett's shots is the one being used in promo's for video and magazines. How cool is that. Below is a photo of his shot from Entertainment Weekly (or as long as it is live)
I also recently discovered that Brett had dug up some of his old work for Finding Nemo and updated it to use in the new attraction at Disneyland called world of color. More can be seen in the Video Here about it including comments from Brett himself. So Congrats to seeing his work getting out there!
I thought I would have some fun and color my drawing I did for the Bluth competition. Which by the way I completely for got to submit :( . Thats ok though because in the end all I wanted a new character drawing. That is what I got. Sure it is not perfect but was a fun learning process.
When it comes to my portfolio I still have a lot to work on. The good news is AM has given me the road map to keep going. To keep refining my skills long after being out of AM. AM does have a alumni section of the site where we can still work on our animation and get feedback from fellow alumni. I am looking forward to utilizing this. I am behind on updating my AM blogs. Once things calm down I will have some time to update and organize the AM blogs. To put a big shiny bow them and call them done. Later this summer I will be planning on heading out the AM Graduation as well as their annual BBQ!
Over at DonBluthAnimation.com we are focusing on character design. We have to draw a character with an emotion picked from a list supplied by Don. It is up to us to convey that emotion along with a few lines describing the situation they are in. The deadline is the end of March. Until then we can draw as many characters as we want. Each Wednesday we can post our drawings and Don will take a look at them. At the end of March we submit which one we feel is the best. Below is my first sketch. It is a Jackalope aptly named Jack A. Lope.
This character is Jack A. Lope. He Lives out in the desert where food is sparse. So when he finds it...He is very excited. Being a jackalope he is thought to be fictitious until a burley transient comes across him as a money ticket. Currently Jack has just discovered food left by the transient.
My main focus I wanted Don to look at in this drawing was my line work. In particular my straights against curves. Or also called active and inactive lines. As the name states it is how you have the drawn curves balanced out by angles.
This past Wednesday Don took a look at it and was positive about the drawing. He did say I had the straights and curves working. He said it might have been nice to see a more pronounced French 'S' curves. Where one of the lines has a stylized S shape to it. He did spot a subdued one in the right ear. Otherwise he did get the feeling and ideas I was trying to convey about the character.
This is big news for animation. Up has been nominated for Best Picture category. This marks the second time in the history of animation. Beauty and the Beast was nominated in 1991. While Snow White won a special Oscar it was never nominated. A few years back a new category was created specifically for animated features. This was considered a double edge sword. On one side animation features were getting recognition. On the other people wondered if animation would ever now be considered to compete in the best picture category. It was believed that it could alter voters perception that animation is even a best picture contender. So it seems that the voters do indeed accept animation as a best picture. However it is "up" against some stiff competition and probably is the long shot to win over it's live action counter parts. Would be cool to see it win!
Congrats to all who worked on it!
;)
