5 Second Day 2019 - POW!

For this year's Titmouse 5 Second Day I participated in a collaboration with 5 other artists at my studio! Organized my Jordan Theberge, we all got together to create an exquisite corpse animation. Here it is called POW!

Mine's the second part with the space cadet! The design for the character was a reuse from a quick collab I did with Koko Chou two years ago. You can check out the collab here:

https://twitter.com/_sbko_/status/929266490330640385

Quick colour scheme I made 2 years ago.

Koko Chou's interpretation of our Space Cadet!

I ended up adding a portal gun to his design because when I agreed to do the film the first idea that came to mind was: PORTALS. I don't know why, other than the fact that it's my most favourite game ever. I guess I'm always thinking with portals (I'm sorry). After the idea with portals I didn't have enough time to create a new character so I whipped up an old design I made that I never had the chance to finish animating. Minor tweaks to the little kid such as his limb colour because it would blend with the black background and minor simplifications to get the animation and clean up done in a week. 

Yes his own portal gun design was a reference to the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device. Let's just say this was my homage to my favourite game. I was going to make the portals orange and blue like the game but that would have been too much info going on in the screen in a short amount of time and he was already orange, so I didn't want any confusion with the colours.

Also here's some rough animation because I always love showing progress work!

Titmas 2018

For this year's Titmouse Secret Santa Exchange my person requested a llama with a poncho so here it is!

Dilemma

Here it is! My thesis film! The film that consumed my entire life for 8 months and I enjoyed every minute of it. I put a lot of work into the film and I I hope you enjoy it and take something away from it.

DILEMMA

Here are links to posts about the process and a concept art dump:

IDEA DEVELOPMENT

ART

Dilemma - Idea Development

I had the concept for the film at the end of first year/early second year. Just the look of it popped into my head: A round cartoon character juxtaposed with straight and edgy abstract shapes. That's what I wanted my film to look like. The image was there but the full idea wasn't. 

At the beginning of the second half of second year I quickly drew a concept drawing out since I didn't want the image I had in my head to go away. So here's that drawing from 2ish years ago!

Even that early on I already knew what I wanted in my thesis film. 5 things:

1 - Cartoon animation

     Because I love it and have fun doing it.

2 - Motion graphics and moving shapes  

     Because I love graphic design.

3 - Music based (specifically big band) 

     Because I like old music and big band fits with cartoon animation acting as sound effects.

4 - No layout 

     Because I'm not good at it.

That's it! I wanted my film to be about everything I enjoy and I wanted it to play to my strengths. I didn't want to spend time on things I didn't like and things I wasn't particularly good at. My thought was that if I spent time on something I'm not good at, that is time away from improving on something that I want to be better at. I also wanted it to be 1 minute since during industry day they only show 1 minute of our films during the screening. I wanted a whole product on the screen and I also didn't want to overwork myself. 1 minute was already a ton of work for this film and I would have ripped my hair out if I did it any longer.

I also wanted to incorporate a bit of fine art into it because in the end I have a huge passion for art. When I saw Michel Gagne's Sensology had imagery that resembled Wassily Kandinsky's work, I had a direction I wanted to take it to. Other works I referenced were iPod silhouette commercials, Day & Night by Pixar, Carnival of Animals from Fantasia 2000, The Dot and Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics by Chuck Jones, UPA, Fleischer Bros., Piet Mondrian, Picasso, Saul Bass, and more that I probably missed. 

Here are some stuff I made in 3rd year. Quick doodles that I made in order to get the idea across.

Although Kandinsky was my first idea, I experimented with boards and sketches with much more basic shapes. A lot of people suggested I simplify things and choose the basic shapes to make the workload a little easier for myself since I was already planning to fully animate characters for the total 1 minute. Which was a smart suggestion since in the end the workload I had was already enough and challenging for me. But I still think about how my film would have turned out with more elaborate Kandinsky style effects.

Here is the first image I made that incorporated the idea I had of using flat shapes to suggest perspective and only when placing the character in it would it give context. I created a rough storyboard sequence in 3rd year using this concept and my instructor suggested I take that idea further.

Progress Reel

Here's my progress reel! I locked down my storyboards by end of September and started animating in October. Other classes got in the way so full on animating didn't start until January to very early March. Clean up took the whole month of March and colouring was a breeze on Toonboom which took 3 days. My original plan was to finish in March but I took into account delays and revisions. I still managed to finish several weeks early! I also never pulled any all nighters and only worked at school from 9am - 9pm and took weekends off! I had to come in on weekends a few times during clean up, but apart from that I had a very healthy lifestyle in fourth year compared to my other three years. I felt great!

A few of my friends kept asking about how I time manage well. Here's the secret: JUST WORK ON YOUR FILM. Don't get side tracked. Fourth year was deceiving with all the "free time" you have with less classes, I just spent most of that working but still took time to have fun. So to any upcoming fourth years working on their thesis films and are reading this: work on your film as much as you can. Lock down your boards as soon as possible. Aim for something manageable and to your strengths. And most importantly sleep. Don't work tired, it will just make the work you output worse. Good luck!

Dilemma - Concept Art Dump

Some art I made during the process of making the film! I'm just going to dump them all here:

Original Dilemma title design by my good friend Juan Munoz! Really great but I felt it was too serious and didn't convey the fun and energy of my film. I really liked the colour choices and the placement of shapes a lot though and wanted to keep that. The final title design is by me taking inspiration from old UPA cartoons whenever they used type in their films as well as old cartoon episode title cards. 

Some colour schemes and images that I referenced for them. I referenced a lot of Rothko's paintings for colour schemes. 

Some super early thumbnails playing around with colour and composition. The large orange and yellow one was an attempt to see the least number of colours to create a space, in this case a down shot of a room.

Colour Script

Making the colour script was difficult! Certain colours needed to seep into the next sequence but each sequence needed to have a different mood. There are 1 or 2 moments in the music and timing that allowed me to cheat and change the colours in an instant. I wanted primary colours at the end due to their abundant use in minimalist paintings but I didn't want one of the three colours to just appear out of nowhere in the end. So I decided to make the first four sequences focus on one primary colour and transition into the next. 

Here are some old in progress colour scripts:

Here's the only layout that I had to do and I needed to get it right. I looked into that Gobelin film, Stewpot Rhapsody as inspiration. I needed Art to fit into the world and also be a contrast to the clean flat painting in order for it to stand out. I ended up picking a the one with the least noise since I wanted to audience to focus more on Art and Dilemma. I was close to choosing the second but the frame took attention away from the characters.

I have posted a lot about the character design process of Art, but here's one of the (spoiler) second character that appears at the end. His name is Intrigue and rather than base it off a question mark ?, I wanted this character to be based off an exclamation point ! Even though he's there for a very short time I imagined his personality is that of genuine interest in contrast to Art who was curious. 

Animation Tests

Here are some animation tests I did very early on while I was still storyboarding. I wanted to make sure I was able to manipulate the characters and shapes in a way I imagined. I also made it as a means to test character timing and emoting basic shapes.

Intrigue

I needed a character that fit in with Art's design but still be different in order to contrast him. All Intrigue's shapes and gestures, from his arms to his feet, are based off thin triangles and circles to mimic the exclamation point. 

Meet My Thesis Film...Dilemma!

Since there's only 3 months left of me in the animation program, that means only 3 months left of production on my thesis film! Since there has been such significant progress on it and it's pretty set in stone I thought I'd give some info on my film as a treat and something to look forward to in the coming months! So here's the title of my film and a brief synopsis!

" Art connoisseur Arthur comes across a minimalist painting titled, "Dilemma", and he doesn't quite understand it. After a moment of struggling to figure out what it's supposed to mean or represent, he begins to walk away...only to be stopped in his tracks and finding himself face to face with the painting once again. Arthur is lured into the painting and has a desperate struggle to understand what Dilemma is about and what it's trying to say. "

Here's a sneak peak at my thesis film! This clip is used in the Sheridan College Industry Day Commercial 2017.

Every year the school changes its login screen with a collage of the fourth year's film characters. Here's Art and Dilemma together in an Atlas pose which basically sums up their relationship.

And the login screen in all its glory!

(High quality version)

Final Life Drawing Portfolio...EVER

That's right! I finished my last life drawing course ever this past semester. What a long journey it's been. Since my first ever life drawing course in 2010, to my heavy obsession with it around 2012, and my final course dedicated to it now in 2016, I've taken such giant strides that I'm quite proud at where I am now. I never had experience with it until I came to college for art fundamentals and it's quite amazing to look back. I originally started with chicken scratch and now here I am!

Here's my final life drawing portfolio for my fourth year in animation! I focused more on improving caricature and acting this year. Of course my final pieces could be stronger in that regard but I am still pleased and proud of what I was able to create. I was even surprised at myself while making it, I didn't know I was capable of doing some of these pieces. I made the effort to attempt many different styles and approaches with my final portfolio and it led me to expand my shape language and learn a lot of things along the way. It's important to stray away from what you're comfortable with to learn and expand your work!

Without further ado:

"Pest"

Played around with a more sketchy style with a bit of Ronald Searle, and also played with different shapes and texture that I normally don't do. I looked into some french animation for other shapes! Even though I suck at layouts, I wanted to incorporate a minimal one to give it some grounding and a bit of context sort of like Hank Ketcham. 

"Cold Water"

I wanted to push the proportions of this model as well as make it more graphic. I used a lot of shapes here that I normally don't and incorporated some more modern aesthetics into the design. 

"Hitchhikers"

I wanted to play around with the physical format on this one. After struggling to figure out a decent composition for these two I had the clever idea of putting them two in a polaroid and it fit with the theme and tone of the characters that I was going for! Afterwards, I even printed it to scale of an actual polaroid. The style I did for this one was SUPER loose, I was holding my pen by the eraser side with my finger tips and just scribbled and scratched until I made shapes I liked such as Raff's head tilt. 

"Regicide"

I really enjoy the style of Riccardo Guassco and Conor Whelan for its beautiful simplicity and basic shapes and colours. I wanted to take a tiny sketch/composition I made into a style similar to theirs with my own flair as well. I had a ton of fun making this the most and it took a lot longer to make because I was figuring the method out as I went along. This one is the one I learned from the most and probably my favourite from the bunch!

Here's an extra one I handed in with the portfolio. My teacher liked it a lot and thought I would throw it in there as well!

***

Here are some life drawings throughout the semester! Apologies for the photo qualities, they're not the best...they were just quick pics to take home so I can work off them to create other pieces. Some are the original drawings of my final portfolio pieces! So it's cool to see progress! So enjoy some scribbles and gestures from my last life drawing class:

These were two separate drawings that I was going to combine, maybe I will someday soon.

Hippie

Been super busy with my film as well as those damn electives lately. I haven't had the opportunity to work on my film as much these past few weeks due to the amount of work that piled up for them near the end. Bit of a bummer since all I want to do is work on my film. 

ANYWAY...less electives complaining since that happens too often at school, here's a doodle of a hippie I made today as a warm of that is sort of based on a life drawing to tide you over until I post thesis film stuff again. 

I'll post film stuff very soon such as my animation tests. I'll also probably post during my winter break of a description of my film! The break's in a few weeks and although I'm excited for it, I'll be spending those 3 weeks still at school in the studio working on my film. 

NO BREAKS UNTIL I'M DONE!

The Evolution of Art

Meet the main character of my thesis film Arthur, or Art for short!

This is a page of gestures I made of Art not too long ago and his design has changed a bit since then. He is based on a question mark due to the theme of my film as well as him being a curious character and the embodiment of intrigue. I'll reveal the story premise soon!

I've done some animation tests recently which resulted in me changing his design a bit mostly on the legs to be more tube/rubber hose rather than thin tapered legs, they still taper a bit. This change was recommended by one of my teachers pointing out that since in my story the character is seen in varying distances (close ups to extreme long shots), thin legs would be lost/hard to read at certain distances and actions. This is why animation tests are important! I'm glad I started them early.

***

Below are, in order of my progression, of the character since last year when pitching the idea in 3rd year to more recently. Originally he was very nondescript character so that anyone can project themselves onto it, he still is but less so. Although I haven't revealed the story these drawings might actually give a hint to what I'm doing...

Originally I wasn't sure if I should give the character a mouth or not. I want him to be expressive but more through body language and pantomime. In the end I went with a mouth because I ended up making certain poses that looked weird when you couldn't see his eyes, such as looking up so a mouth was necessary. 

During a lecture in 3rd year a friend of mine was cutting some paper so I decided to glue it into my sketchbook and use it.

Here I was recommended I put pants on the character which I ended up liking a lot and went back to some old drawings and threw it on. Afterwards I felt like he looked bare chested now with just pants hence why I added suspenders and added the hat for secondary action later on.

Here was when I went more with a curvy approach to the design and started to implement the question mark as a gesture. I was really leaning towards the design on the top left but after some critiques from several people it seemed to be really 50/50 with people liking it and people thinking I could push it further. It looked too "basic", very standard. and in the end I agreed. 

I approached a former character design teacher of mine, and although he did like my original design  he agreed it could be pushed further. So to start from scratch he made me consider parts of the original design that were "Non-negotiable" or parts that I NEEDED to keep which ended up being:

-big eyes for clear expressions

-big nose because it looks funny and cute

-big hands for clear body gestures

-a bean structure or bean like body

       Art needed to move certain ways due to my boards, so a unibody couldn't work.

-question mark gesture

He also suggested I work graphically then complicate the character the moment he moves in dimension, such as opening its mouth and revealing complex shapes within a simple circle head. The above drawings were leading me really close to the final...

Then I made this drawing! THE drawing that led me to my current design. It had everything I wanted and more such as his design making him gesture in a certain way. His hips are wide so he can't really put his arms down so instead he puts his hands on his hips for resting, which gives it this bit of a judgmental feel from Art and fits his personality exactly. 

One of the advice I got from my previous character design teacher when I was redesigning Art was to, "Create a design that makes them immediately laugh. The moment he appears on screen and the audience laughs, they're on board with it." And ever since redesigning him I've gotten chuckles and laughs when I've shown him around!