No Cuttin' Corners!

Did some UmJammer Lammy fan art the other week because I was listening to its soundtrack at work all week.

Leave it to MilkCan!

Titmas 2018

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

Titmouse Secret Santa Drawing Exchange!

At work we did a Secret Santa drawing exchange and the person I received asked for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles so here's what I gave him! He like it! Also really awesome to hear other people in the studio enjoyed it as well.

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. 

Dilemma Film Poster!

Here's my film poster! AND tomorrow is the class screening!! Super nervous and excited. 8 months of hard work and finally seeing it finished on the big screen is exciting. Can't wait to see everyone else's films too! Then after that it's industry day prep at the end of the month!

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Here's some of the posters I did along the way towards my final design in the order in which I did them:

Originally I started with the most minimal style I could go for, which was just putting the painting in my film as the poster. A friend of mine was unimpressed with what I was doing and said I should go a little more with it. He was right. He suggested to throw in more shapes so...

I came up with this one quickly. The colours were not intended to be final. He seemed to like it along with some other people but I didn't like how random the shapes were. There was just no reason for those shapes to be there the way they are so I started to just move away from it.

Started making something along the lines of old title cards, Looney Tunes designs, and 60's design. I abandoned it fairly quickly.

Rothko's paintings were one of the main inspirations for my film in terms of composition and colour. So I decided to do the painting of Dilemma in the style of Rothko. I was digging it as I was doing it until someone pointed out that it did not whatsoever convey the feeling of my film. She was right, it looks more gloomy and gritty which is the complete opposite of my film!

So then I went back to my original idea but looked into french new wave posters as well as Saul Bass stuff. I liked this general composition and worked more with it afterwards. I broke shapes into smaller ones like french new wave posters and at one point even incorporated some key poses into the shapes. It ended up looking too busy with Art in many shapes and sometimes it was even distracting. I looked more into old cartoon posters, I liked the minimal use of colour in them, and Saul Bass then decided to go with a The Man With The Golden Arm style poster with Art featured on it. 

The broken up shapes gives it an organized chaotic look and the spaces give it a maze-like feel which captures the feeling of confusion in which Art goes through in the film. The shapes can be interpreted as other paintings on a wall or anything that the viewer thinks of which is the main theme of my film: interpretation!

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.