Storyboard Beats

*Updated*

Our first assignment for storyboard was to create beat boards from 2 poems that were given to us. We were to interpret each poem however we wanted. 

I had another idea for the Mistake poem that my instructor liked except the ending, so I decided to change the entire first one's story to what it is now. I will update this post later if I manage to scan those, but my scanner at home currently isn't working properly.

After pitching these beat boards we are to expand and actually storyboard one of them. My instructor extremely liked my Good Little Girl idea but thought that the story had already resolved. So I am currently in the process of elaborating on my A Mistake idea.

I found the process of figuring out a story was extremely fun, I was able to flex my storytelling imagination. My whole process was thinking of the first idea I had and then completely scrap most of it if it wasn't at all interesting. Surprisingly my prediction that my first ideas would be filled with cliches was true as I saw many other stories with similar ideas I originally had. That's not to say that my stories are free from cliches, I just think that these are stronger than what I originally had. 

Rough Work

Character development of Isabelle, my favourite is the bottom left. 

Two other characters from my original interpretation of the Mistake poem, the couple Bruce and Holly. I did keep the name Bruce for the bear in my final idea.

The two pictures above are roughs of first idea I had. The top one of the first page and all three panels in the bottom page were used to pitch. It involved a couple snowed in their home, Holly giving Bruce a snowblower as a gift, Bruce riding and crashing the snowblower into their home, and finally them celebrating Christmas while using the crashed snowblower in their home as a Christmas tree/furniture. It was a decent idea with an okay ending, I decided to change it because I wasn't really satisfied with how the plot develops, it required decent perspective/layout which I'm not so good at, and the fact that it was too "realistic" and not really animated. 

Early Bruce and Bib designs, Bib remained pretty much the same.

My original idea had Bruce swinging at the hive only to have it get stuck at the end of the stick he used. The bees would then swarm and attack him. This idea didn't work since in the story the characters didn't accomplish much. Plus I had no clue how to conclude it in the final beat. 

The final roughs of Bib and Bruce's designs. Keeping these character very shapely (oval and circle) helps a ton when having to draw many storyboards with them, and makes them extremely easy to identify. 

How To Train Your Dragon Portrait

My year decided to make How To Train Your Dragon-themed portraits for a banner. I've never seen the film in its entirety, I know what a sin. But I have seen the beginning and the end on two separate occasions, I just need to see the meat of it all.

Apart from that, I do love the art from it and I absolutely love the dragon designs. For my portrait I attempted to mimic, Nico Marlet's style while maintaining a bit of my own. I like how it turned out a lot and I hope you do too!

Doodles From Week 3

Since this year has already been hectic and busy, this past week I've tried my best to take a bit of time every day to doodle and create something not school related. I started on thursday and I'm going to try my best to post frequently on my tumblr, instagram, and twitter. After the week is up I will round whatever I have drawn and post a total recap here. 

So here's what I have made so far these past few days:

Lady Astrid

The first thing that came to mind when I drew the thumbnail was some sort of drunk and/or insane queen telling guards to get rid of someone. I took some inspiration from The Earth Queen from The Legend of Korra but mostly from the costume designs from the film The Fall (specifically this) and it's beautiful colours and headdresses. As for the name? I just came across the name of the author of Pippi Longstocking close to when I was doing this project.

Sketch

Original thumbnail

Human Character Line Up

Tried something a little different today. Drew extremely small (thumbnail size) human character designs in 15 seconds or less.

I noticed I've been spending a lot of time with non-human character designs, so I thought I should exercise on human ones by making as many as I can in as much varied silhouettes as I could and as small as they can be to be readable.

There's a few I really like and a few "wtf is that?" Excuse my imagination, it can be bizarre at times.

After this I started to develop a couple of them, I'll be posting those characters in the next few days.

Stay tuned!

Art of Marco Rivera on Instagram & Twitter!

I have finally entered the 21st century with one of those gadget things kids these days call, "smartphones". Now you can all stop badgering me to upgrade and teasing me as though I was still living in 2009 with my sliding phone with a qwerty keypad (which by the way I still prefer over a touch keypad with haptic feedback).

So just like everyone else in the modern world I've decided to up my hipster cred with Instagram and take my extremist vocal opinions onto Twitter.

Follow @artofmarcor 

(unfortunately my usual "artofmarcorivera" is one letter too long for twitter)

Just like with my Tumblr, these will be more casual with Blogspot still being main site with large text posts and pictures that delve into the process. Instagram/Twitter will also be acting more like a visual diary of sorts throughout my school year.

Links will remain in the sidebar, now go follow me as I figure out how to use them!

No posts on them right now but...

I will be making a new post this afternoon, so come back later!

Acting for Animators

Back from a brief hiatus. 

During the month of May and the first few weeks of June I took Nancy Beiman's Acting for Animators workshop. It had an odd schedule at first with 2 classes per week, then once for one week, then the rest was 3 days a week hence the lack of posts. 

It was an interesting class where we watched many videos from animated movies, live action films and a ton of silent films and early talkies. I heard the name Laurel and Hardy before but I never really knew who they were. After watching a number of their films, I have grown to enjoy their films quite a lot! Consider me a fan of their work!

Through the class I learned about the importance of timing and how it affects acting. We looked at the likes of Chaplain vs. Laurel and Hardy and the differences in their timing and how they're different in humour due to their timing. I also learned the difference between acting and just making something move. I learned a few other things such as charting and exposure sheet protocol as well as a workflow that makes making animations much more easier. We also got some neat handouts that are an interesting read regarding acting as well as animation principles. 

It was also pretty nifty to hear some anecdotes from Nancy about things in the animation industry, her time at CalArts and people she met there who are big names in the industry today, as well as just some interesting little stories that didn't involve animation.

But the class wasn't just all movies and talking (although most of it was), we had two assignments. 

One was to take her neutral character she gave us, Seti, and animate it showing either a sense of pride or shame. The idea I had involved a transition from being proud to being ashamed. The initial idea had the same actions in the final but Seti was facing to the right the entire time. Nancy decided a simple head turn to the left for most of the animation gave it a lot more acting, context as well as personality and it really did turn out better than the first pass:

The second assignment was to take 2 inanimate objects and give it distinct personalities and make them interact. I originally chose a broccoli and carrot dancing but at the last minute thought of a carrot acting as a matador, which my instructor thought was far more interesting. So I made the bull a potato and added the sprouts to be like horns for it. This assignment made me realize the importance of acting since these are just objects without any life at all; I couldn't make the potato look vaguely like a bull, but rather I had to make the potato be a bull through animation:

Some other drawings done during the class:

We had I think 1 min (I think?) to create a pose showing pride with a prop.

The above 2 are a series of drawings to show pride (top) and ashamed (bottom) with a prop.

Early thumbnails with the broccoli idea. Then some early thumbs of the carrot matador.

A few thumbnails of the carrot matador before starting it.