First Monday Art Dump

Here's a combo of art from the last week or so. Been drawing a bunch of stuff out of the thick Preston Blair book, and there's also a page of random doodles. Nothing fancy, but hey at least I'm drawing.

Art & Life

Often I find myself wanting to become a better artist, and yet I do nothing about. This has always been a problem of mine. For example in high school I knew I wanted to become an animator, but I never animated or took drama class. In college I knew that I needed to learn anatomy but again never put the time into doing it. It is the same for me now in a life without school. I still say I want to learn anatomy and become an all around better artist, but rarely take the time to really study it and practice it outside of work. My ultimate goal is to become a great animator, but when I get home I don't animate thus doing nothing to reach that goal.

This thought is not something new to me, but I have finally reached a point of really wanting to change and do something about it. I am tired of saying that I want to be able to do this or that and not following through with it. With that said I am going to change. 

I am aware that this will take time and change does not happen over night. The first change is that I WILL post some piece of art on this blog every Monday. If there is more then... Yippee! Secondly I will make sure that I am always working on something related to finishing some kind of animation; be it tests or short films, story sketches, character studies, rough animation or goodness forbid even a cleaned up finished piece. 

P.S. Thanks to all who have encouraged me to keep working on my dreams. It really means a lot.

Home

I thought for everyone back home that they might want to see where I live, and yes I did clean
the place up a bit. P.S. More art is on the way.

Updated girl

Here's an updated version of the previous post. I lightened the barrel in the back and tried to make the tree a more interesting shape. May still do more to it, but not sure yet.

This is a work in progress that I'm making in Flash. It is based off of an old photo that my mom took when i was really young. I haven't seen the photo in years, but i wanted to see what I could do with it. I'm going in and adding some more work in the bkgd, but if you have any comments on what is working and what needs tweaking I'd love to hear them. And the kid in the drawing isn't supposed to be me, I just took the pose hair and outfit from the photo.

Teddy

I had this cute little doodle in my sketchbook from work and thought it would be fun to take her to completion. I forgot how good it feels to bring something to finish. Sketch in pencil, art in Flash, and the texture is from cgtextures.com. 

random

so i thought i would post the ink pen and mechanical pencil that my dad turned to show everyone. the pen was made with wood while the other was from acrylic. the bottom 2 pictures are of sketchbook covers i sewed together this summer.

demo reel as of august

sorry it's been so long since i posted anything so i thought that i would just through up the demo reel that i've been sending out to places trying to find work. still haven't found work yet, but i'm going to keep trying. i'm really excited for my animating in flash course that is going to start on tuesday! other than that not much else is going on, except it is fall now and i forgot how cold it can be up here.


SHOT LIST

Shot 1: Animation, Layout, BG Painting
Shot 2: Animation, Layout
Shot 3: Animation, Layout
Shot 4: Animation, Layout
Shot 5: Animation, Layout, BG Painting
Shot 6: Animation, Layout, BG Painting
Shot 7: Animation, Layout
Shot 8: Animation, Layout
Shot 9: Animation
Shot 10: Traditional Animation Only
Shot 11: Animation

all traditional animation is by myself. The last of the pieces is my friends film Child's Play where all I did was the traditional animation

another watercolor

learning how to use watercolor to paint people. i have a few others that i will post later. sorry for not posting recently. schools just been really hectic and IOH is in 2.5 weeks. AHHH><

thought i'ld temp you all with a bit of a teaser with images from my film. these are the first two images colored in. i'll post some animation up soon.

landscapes

Today I went to the beach to plein air paint with my watercolor class. I spent the time painting/hanging out with Bethany and Sencia. I found that candle wax worked really well to keep the white of the waves. Of course I figured the sun wouldn't bother me that much. I was wrong. I really noticed it when after painting we decided to jump into the ocean in our normal everyday garb and the water really hurt wherever I was burned. It was a lot of fun painting at the beach, and I think I'm going to try and do it more often, with sunscrean.



A few weeks ago in class we copied a winslow homer painting off of the projector. The projectors color was quite off from the original so I decided that I would use it for a starting point (color wise) and make everything a bit brighter than what I was seeing. Everything else is the same though. I really enjoy the wet into wet technique in watercolor. You can get some really interesting effects with it.

Pan's Labyrinth

I just finished watching the audio commentary on Pan's Labyrinth by Guillermo del Toro and recommend it to anyone who is interested in visual storytelling. It also gives you a great insight into his mind. Throughout the commentary he discusses the juxtaposition of different elements of the film: fantasy vs reality, fascist vs rebels, good vs reality, childhood vs adult. The color scheme was planned out so perfectly in the way they started out differently with the real world in blues, the girl is in greens, and the fantasy world or the world of the mind is warm colors and as the stories intertwine so do the color schemes. Guillermo del Toro uses a beautiful shape language with the characters. Only with Ofelia do we see circular elements while with the captain everything is very hard angles. If you haven't watched this film before watch for different sequences where they mimic each other almost exactly. He spent so much time discussing the little details of the film that make it work so beautifully. You also get to hear how he created many of the effects and the reason behind doing so.

favorite shot of the film

cows are evil-guillermo del toro

film progress

thought i should show something more from my short film "A Windy Day" so here are a few of the paintings for the backgrounds. they haven't been cropped yet so the edges are still a little everywhere. i painted all of these before i took watercolor. lots of experimenting to get them done.

old paintings

these were done for my figure painting class. all are on sketchbook paper with oils. not sure the lengths, but the longest was more than likely only 20min. this is where i started to understand how color works.

another flower

watercolor

just thought i'd post 2 of my flowers from class.

Watercolor Mastercopy

this is my first watercolor mastercopy of a piece by Jessie M. King. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out even though there are a few areas that could have been better, but not bad for a first try.

hand mastercopies

hands came from the book Disney's Never Faries. all designs are theirs. this was mearly a tool to help me learn to draw hands in shorthand better. will post some of the work from my film at some later time.

film progress report

I thought that I should write something about the progress of my film and how it's coming along. Finished the boards and workbook some time ago. I've almost finished all layouts, except the larger ones where i need 16 field paper, started to animate a short scene on my film along with thumbnailing out a few more. hopefully i can get quite a few scenes thumbnailed out while i'm at home for the break. I'm really excited about doing the bg painting over the break. I'm going to do a watercolor wash using payne's gray. also a bit nervous since i have never really done washes before. i'll post my first test bg as soon as i finish it. been trying to figure out different ways of cutting down on animation time. as of right now i'm thinking of doing the whole flashback on 8's or 12's. keep it really limited. have another where the only part that is animated is the face. found someone who is willing to take on a few scenes as well. we'll see how it all turns out. i'll try to keep you all posted on how everything is coming along, and if anyone's got advice on how to actually finish a film on time i gladly accept all of it. hope everyone has a good holiday.

this is the only surviving drawing from this weeks class. the rest died in a program failure.

minangery of vis dev from my film

figure drawing 11/29 dump

did these in class today. I really like the top 2.

heads

various days throughout the semester

figure drawing 11/1 dump

more figure work

figure drawing 10/25 and 9/27 dump

Drawings from class.

so i haven't posted for some time. thought i'd post some drawings from lou's figure class. i'll post some more work later on.

figure drawing

Just did this one in class. 20 min.

deviantID

So I got a diviant art account and I wanted to make an ID for it. I was just playing around with some doodles and liked this one so I decided to use it. I hope it looks something like me even if somewhat idealized.

my business card

real versions to come in time

quick study

~30min

earl

quick study

trying to learn how to use the computer so here's a quick study

We got our animation senior studios about 2 weeks ago and it's really interesting to see each persons personality in their spots.

Darrel

Mike


Edan


Dave

Red


John

Tovo

me during capstone

This is what happens when I am set free during capstone week.

normal everyday



capstone during the daylight hours

all hell breaks out during the night



and when it's time to go home

another day of life drawing

old stuff

just a page of comps i did. some are trying to remember others works and some are of my own. i like the kid, but need some kind of story for him. there's also some quick animal sketches and a page of real quick gesture studies of tennis players.

figure drawing

here's some work from today's figure drawing class. Nothing seemed to feel right when it came to drawing though. Went and saw the jungle Book at the El Capitan in hollywood this evening and it was stunning. By far the best restoration of any disney film yet.

figure drawing

here's some figure work from lou's class today. it's a tablet class, so i'm getting use to that. also i'm trying to think more in terms of composition. times range from 3 min-20 min.

gestures and animals

old figure work

this is some older figure work of mine

These are a few pieces I did for my Visual Developement class. They are inspired by Claire Wendling. They are from the top down: Athena, young Hermes stealing Apollo's cattle, a Tree Nymph, and a Water Nymph.