Meep!

Gesture Drawing Class

2011-07-27T20:56:00.000-07:00

So, I'm taking Mark McDonnell's Gesture Drawing class at the American Animation Institute. We're already half way through the class and I thought I should post some samples since it's been some time since I posted anything. :)

It's a good class. I feel like I'm learning a good deal and hope to take it again depending on my work schedule and such. These samples are from three different class meetings. The first ones are from the beginning of class and the last four are from yesterday's class.

Homework 02

2011-02-23T21:11:00.000-08:00

Here's the second week's homework assignment. We had to further develop the character and do some sketches showing the character's personality. I switched characters in order to work on the monster from my thesis film. Just in case the assignments continue to work with the one character I'd rather further develop this guy and maybe find a good story I'd want to animate.

He's a monster that lives alone and isolated in an empty crypt at the local cemetery. He doesn't venture beyond the cemetery gates and relies on mail order TV and the internet for all his needs. He has all items shipped to the crypt next door addressed to it's deceased occupant in order to not risk interaction with the delivery driver. Like most monsters he's a night owl. He spends his nights either knitting sweaters and other items for himself or watching infomercials. It's during one infomercials that he discovers a great book, The Dummies Guide to Making Sock Puppets. He sees that as a perfect solution to create some friends for himself.

What does he want: To create some friends without leaving his safety zone of the crypt.
What does he need: To gain the courage to leave his safety zone and rejoin the world.
How can we relate to him: I think most people have at some point felt alone and isolated from the world.

Taking a new class

2011-02-16T22:16:00.000-08:00

So I'm taking the Story Development for Animation class at Concept Design Academy. It just started last week. We talked a lot about character the first class and our homework was to come up with a character, do a drawing and post it to the class blog with a description of the character and what they want. Since I haven't posted to this blog in awhile I figured my homework was a good excuse to post again. So here's what I did.

Patrick. A finch that has it all. Money, power, a smashing bow tie plus he's a crooner. The ladies swoon with his singing. However, he has grown tired of his life. Bored with the ease of it all. He wants something new. Something fun. Something unlike anything he has experienced.

He decides to embrace his love of Star Trek and not hide his fascination with Spock.

I was thinking of a different character but I was at home and my finches were meeping at me, and inspiration struck. I went with it. I'm looking forward to class tomorrow. Depending on the homework I might post again next week.

How to Make a Sock Puppet

2010-10-13T22:09:00.000-07:00

Well I have an idea for my thesis film. I just have to find the time to create it. So in honor of having an idea here's some samples of designs for the sock monster and some zombie/monster socks.

I leave it up to you to figure out a story just based on that. :)

Exploring Character

2010-09-10T22:34:00.000-07:00

So I was experimenting with the cavegirl design from earlier and thought hey, why not try to make her more of a neanderthal in terms of the skull shape. And see if it's possible to do so without turning the design ugly. Not sure about it yet.

I worked on the old tourist some more and came up with this guy.

I'm liking him so far.

Let the explorations continue.

Tourist

2010-08-28T23:15:00.000-07:00

Two posts in one day. Go me!

Just wanted to post my first shot at the old perverted tourist. He's not perverted yet, unless he's just pretending to read the paper and is staring at the bikini clad college girls on the beach. But he's old. I still need to explore the character but I just drew this and was actually kind of happy with it. That doesn't happen often so I thought I'd share.

Yes I left the hands very gestural on purpose. I need more hand studies. :)

Cavegirl

2010-08-28T18:45:00.000-07:00

So hello blog. Long time since I've been here. I forgot to post most of my gesture drawing class drawings. Oops.

Well I was wanting to take some of my sketches from that class and delve into some character design. So here's a post.

This was the original gesture from class.

This was a first attempt to work on the face and then I added some of the body however, I'm having proportion or anatomical issues with the body. But my concentration was on the face. With the hair she reminds me of a pissed off Ariel.

Then I started to explore and added a cartoon tiny caveman to be her companion.

I think I like this face better.

She reminds me of a teenager.

And just to get away from the typical tiny waist woman character.

So there's some rough characters. Next up old perverted tourist man. :)

Gesture Class

2010-03-08T21:24:00.000-08:00

So I'm taking a Gesture Drawing Class at the Union with Steve Brown. It's a pretty awesome class. It's not so much about making an anatomically correct drawing in 3 minutes as it's about drawing a story in 3 minutes. I find it a very challenging and fun class. You really have to work on thinking quickly and being willing to use the model as reference only really.

These drawings were done in class and I would need to rework them for any other purpose. I just wanted to share them in their really messy glory.

From the first class.

From the second class, the model was dressed as Aladdin.

From the third class. The model was dressed as a medieval court jester.

For this pose the model had his hands tied behind his back but this scenario popped into my head.

I'm also taking an animation class with Alex Topete at the union. I'm enjoying that class as well. We were supposed to do some caricatures last week. I forgot and then spent some time at work drawing these two. Not really caricatures to me because they can be pushed so much farther. But it was silly fun drawing some iconic poses.

Giraffes

2010-01-15T19:50:00.000-08:00

First post of the year!

I went to the zoo today during lunch with a friend. We drew the giraffes and they were in a playful mood. They came over to us a few times and sometimes seemed to pose just for us.

Back at work, when I had some down time I tried to take a couple of the rough gestures I had and do a memory sketch of them trying to capture the mood I saw at the zoo. So here's a few samples of the day.

The first two are straight sketches done at the zoo.

I liked how this guy was stretching for the food on the tree.

This one was just acting so regal, going look at me. Draw me. Although I noticed that a lot of my drawings were of profiles. I have to remember to not do so many profiles.

This was a gesture I didn't capture well of the baby giraffe leaning against what I assume is the mother, but could be the father.

So back at work on a trusty post-it I worked out this memory sketch, switching the position of the baby for composition reasons.

And this was the last gesture at the zoo. This guy was so haughty in the way he/she strutted across the grounds.

So back at work on another trusty post-it I tried to work out a better way to get that haughtiness across.

I unfortunately couldn't remember the walking gait of a giraffe. Later I checked and yep the leg positions are wrong. The back legs should be switched.

I wish I could get a sketch like this started at the zoo and then have the animal in front of me to study and get the drawing right. But for some reason I always get flustered by the moving animal and try to capture exactly what they are doing instead of just looking. Finding a pose I like. Work it out as a gesture and then use the live animal in front of me to complete it. Maybe one day I can stop being flustered by the motion.

Assignment #7

2009-11-13T22:19:00.000-08:00

Yes I skipped assignment #6. It was a character turn. I did it, but since I still don't like the character clean I did, I didn't want to post the turn of that clean character.

In assignment #7 we had to do six facial expressions of the character and then two attitude poses.

I'm kind of rushing through these assignments because I got behind in the class and I have to have the next two assignments done before next weekend. Yeah, so things are a little rushed, but here's my expressions and attitudes.

Assignment #4 and #5

2009-11-01T19:07:00.000-08:00

So back to the character design class. For the fourth assignment we had to do a page of different features. Some real, some more cartoony. So below are my noses, mouths, hands, ears and eyes.

And the fifth assigment we had to do a clean-up of one of our character designs. I went with the pirate Hyde I was working on. Not really happy with it and I suck at ink lines. I'm better with a pencil but tried something different this time and the lines are too shakey and just overall the design sucks. But I'm running out of time in the class and had to turn something in. Next I have to do a four point turn of the character.

Hyde design

2009-10-21T22:36:00.000-07:00

Well what do you know. I actually had some time to try to catch up with my character design class assignments.

Remember my first pass at Hyde as a pirate done awhile ago.

Well after a bit of exploring I have this rough of Hyde as a pirate.

For this assignment I have to do a cleaned drawing. So I think I'll stick with this version and tighten it up a bit. Maybe.

Portfolio

2009-10-21T17:04:00.000-07:00

So, I guess I'll spam my blog with several portfolio pages since I'm way behind in the character design class. This is all I got to share at the moment.

Portfolio

2009-10-06T19:57:00.000-07:00

More drawings.

Hands.

A day at the zoo.

Portfolio

2009-10-04T21:24:00.001-07:00

Animals....yay!!

Portfolio

2009-10-01T21:56:00.000-07:00

So I was working on some heads and then moved on to hands and ended up doing a portrait with hands in it. I'm actually kind of happy with the drawing. Not sure I want to put it on the page with these heads like I did here. But here it is.

Portfolio

2009-09-26T19:08:00.000-07:00

So working on the portfolio and thought I'd share.

And a day at the ballgame.

Assignment #3 last time

2009-09-13T22:10:00.000-07:00

Yay, assignment number 3 done.

Here's a rough sketch of Jekyll and Hyde as pirates.

Assignment #3 again

2009-09-13T18:31:00.000-07:00

So I've almost finished my assignment. I have the portrait and the caricatures. I just need to flesh out some Jekyll and Hyde designs from the silhouettes I posted earlier.

So here's what I have so far.

The portrait with the photo comparison.

And the caricatures.

In other news I learned that "Snuggle Time" got accepted into the Ojai-Ventura International Film Festival. That's my festival run almost over. :)

Assignment #3

2009-09-08T20:00:00.000-07:00

So I was away this past weekend at Dragon Con in Atlanta, GA. If you're a sci-fi fan it is a must. I had loads of fun and was screening my film "Snuggle Time" at the Film Festival. I ended up being one of the three finalists for the Animation Comedy category. That was neat.

So I haven't worked much on my third assignment for the character design class. We were supposed to draw a portrait of a given photograph and then do at least three caricatures of the same photo. So far I have two portraits and I still don't feel like I'm getting the portrait right. I've discovered I'm a bit rusty at this. I'll hopefully finish it all up by the weekend, but since it had been awhile since I posted. Here are the two portraits I've done so far.

This was the first full attempt.

And this is the second try.

That's all for now.

Snuggle Time Update

2009-08-28T17:40:00.000-07:00

So I recently learned that my film Snuggle Time will be screening at the Chicago International Children's Film Festival this October.

The film was also a Semi-Finalist at the Angelus Student Film Festival.

That's all for now. Hopefully after the weekend I'll have some more assignment drawings to upload.

Class Assignment #2

2009-08-23T14:45:00.000-07:00

So as promised I am posting my assignments from the Silver Character Design class.

This week we had to create silhouettes of our design of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. We were supposed to concentrate on the shapes of the character. I'm making my Jekyll and Hyde pirates. With Jekyll being the Errol Flynn type of romanticized pirate and Hyde being the more real, dirty grotesque pirate.

And I discovered that with the self taught class I get star ratings from the teacher. So I got a 3 out of 5 stars on my first assignment which was a good. :)

Character Design Class

2009-08-15T15:48:00.000-07:00

So I signed up for Stephen Silver's Character Design class at https://www.schoolism.com/.

I'm hoping to improve my drawing and design ability. I unfortunately couldn't afford the full class in which Stephen personally critiques your assignments. I'm just taking the self taught version.

Here's the first assignment. We had to create a character based on a description he gave us. I haven't turned it in yet as I'm debating continuing to work on it. But I also want to move forward in the lectures and this first design is supposed to represent where we are now before beginning the class and then we redesign the character at the end of the course so we see the improvement. At least I hope there's improvement by the end of the course.

I'll try to post my assignments as I do them, one so this blog gets updated and two so I can hopefully see a progression in skill.

Snuggle Time

2009-07-15T23:36:00.000-07:00

Some stills from my second film Snuggle Time. The tagline for the story goes like this: It’s bedtime and everyone needs their favorite toy to snuggle with in order to sleep. Snuggle Time is the story of a little girl, a vampire and the stuff toy lamb that is caught between them.

The film will be screening at the Comic Con International Independent Film Festival and the San Diego International Children's Film Festival next weekend. Then during Labor Day weekend it will screen at the Dragon Con Independent Film Festival in Atlanta. I'll find out towards the end of summer what other festivals it will screen at and I'll update this post.

Some old sketches

2009-07-15T20:21:00.000-07:00

Just to get started with posts, here's some old sketches that I already had on my computer.

And then some real old sketches from 2005 when I toured England following a musician with a few friends. Just tried to document our adventures standing in line in the rain for hours and being attacked by a giant cockroach in our London hotel. Ah..good times. :)

Hello Blog World

2009-07-15T17:35:00.000-07:00

I figured it was about time to start blogging. Hopefully I'll actually remember to throw some sketches up here from time to time.