Super Science Friends Episode 2: Electric Boogaloo

The new episode of Super Science Friends is out and I had the awesome opportunity to animate on it during my internship at Tinman! I did FX animation, character animation, and posing on this episode.

Check it out and enjoy!

First On Screen Credit!

Check it out! I had the wonderful opportunity to animate this whole episode with a fellow Tintern, Tex Minos (check out his stuff it's amazing!), with the help and supervision of Larry Berriere. Although I've worked on several projects already, this is my first on screen credit! WOO! It's a small thing but a big deal for me :)

Enjoy!

I learned a lot animating on this project especially with Flash rigs! I didn't understand Flash rigs 2 years ago when I first learned it but thanks to Larry's help the process went so smoothly. Some hurdles here and there but it was a fun learning experience and it's wonderful to see it all come together! 

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!

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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.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

From my thesis film characters! :)

Art was hand drawn and scanned in!

Super Science Friends!

Here's a trailer for upcoming Super Science Friends episodes! This was a fun project I had the pleasure of working on during the summer at Tinman! Really cool to see it all come together. A couple of scenes I worked on are featured in the trailer!

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.

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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!