Hey guys,
I went to my first model session at Rhythm&Hues on Wed. I was pleasantly surprised to see Karl Gnass as the instructor. I knew he taught at Disney and Dreamworks but he apparently teaches at R&H as well. That's quite awesome as he's a great teacher and an amazing draftsman. Here are some of my drawings from this week's session.
Sketch dump of drawings done during today's zoo trip and my visit to the Norton Simon museum a few days ago.
Hey guys,
I have awesome news! I've accepted an offer from Rhythm & Hues and will be starting at my new job on Monday! I'm really excited about experiencing another studio and meeting more animators. Plus, this is my first job as a full on character animator! Rhythm & Hues also allows the artists to bring their dogs to work every day, how cool is that?! I wish I could bring my cat in too but I don't think that would end well lol.
After going out to lunch and watching Despicable Me with my friends/fellow fixers I returned home to do some life drawing. I started out doing full figure work and decided that I would benefit from doing some chest studies after making the horrible drawing #3. I broke out Atlas of Human Anatomy For The Artist and The Human Figure to do some research before starting. I've noticed that I was having trouble finding where the sternum ends and the bottom sides of the ribcage on some of the models. Reading a section from those two books was really helpful. With practice, I should be able to draw an acceptable torso now that I have a better idea of where my landmarks are.
After my pages of life drawing, I figured it would be fun to do another LaQuandae drawing as well. These are posted in the order they were drawn.
Wow, I'm clearly out of practice with life drawing. I now know what I'll be doing after I wake up.
After another fun round of LaQuandae and Cookie OC with my friend Bri, I decided to do some more Dae Dae drawings. I need to work on his full body proportions, facial expressions and making a simplified/cartoony version of him for OC-ing. Lol, despite that none of these fall into any of those categories.
Hey guys,
Sorry for the lack of posts. I've been REALLY busy in crunch time for the past few months. I'm free now and am looking for work. Now I have time to draw again and update my blog more regularly. In the meantime, enjoy these crew pictures that were taking while working at Disney. =D
Tangled Animation Crew
Tangled Fix Animation Crew
After all of my talk about not animating straight ahead yesterday, guess what I ended up doing today. Lol, this time it wasn't as bad since the action I was trying to capture was more familiar. I decided to make a quick trip to the store after the drawing of the deer turning. It seems like that was a mistake since all of the ones after that don't make much sense. I had fun doing this one and would like to do it again (and finish) properly. I think the straight ahead pass captures a bit of the energy/feeling that I wanted though so it was a somewhat success in that aspect.
Hey guys,
I got my traditional animation lightbox and a new disc in the mail the other day! I'm really excited about finally being able to work in 2d at home. I tried it out for a couple of hours this evening and its working great! This crazy straight ahead animation test is what I ended up with. Lol, its a great example of why I dont work completely straight ahead. I haven't gotten to the point where I can just sit down and coherently animate something without planning everything out first and starting off pose to pose.
Tomorrow I'd like to start on a real 2d test. I'm stuck between animating Bambi prancing around in a circle, some kind of flying creature or a dog going through an agility course obstacle. So far, I'm leaning towards the first one. It sound extremely challenging and its a variation on an assignment that Andreas suggested during our meeting.
Man, having a character really makes me want to just sit and draw all day. It's awesome to feel that way again! I feel like I lost that somewhere in high school. Anyway, I'm working on figuring out the structure of his face since I seem to have trouble drawing him from a few different angles. Hopefully the skull drawing will help. I also need to figure out a permanent pattern for his markings.
Hey guys,
I got a tripod in the mail today for my video camera. I hooked it up and am very pleased to report that it will do fine as my poor man's capture station. Now I just need to receive the portable light table that I ordered and I'll be in business. I'm planning to do significantly more 2d work in my free time. I really want to work on the next 2d film at Disney but I don't feel like my traditional animation skills are where they should be for that. Hopefully they will be by the time the show is ready for production.
In the meantime, one of my friends surprised my by drawing an awesome picture of LaQuandae today. I figured I'd return the favor and draw another Cookie picture. I'm not very happy with either of tonight's drawings though. I used a different person as my model for LaQuandae which seems to have thrown me off. He looks completely off model in this drawing. Cookie is better but I'm not happy with her mouth. Lol, they both look wierd but LaQuandae is especially creepy.
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He's fun to draw! Lol, I got lazy with the afro pick and changed the end from the usual fist to a bone.
Hey guys,
After filling a page with thumbnails last night, I somewhat randomly ended up throwing a drawing of LaQuandae in there. Lol, I'm sure the fact that I was listening to Mos Def while drawing had nothing to do with it. =P Anyway, you can see it if you look through the mess on the page. Today I did another drawing of him in a more realistic manner as well. I think his design lends itself well to this style and am looking forward to seeing how things turn out.
In other news, I've decided to purchase one of those fold-able traditional animation tables. I was debating against getting one of those or a cintiq and the traditional workstation won. It costs significantly less and I've solved the problem of not being able to capture drawings by purchasing a tripd for my video camera. I still really dislike drawing in the computer so the cintiq was an option simply because of my lack of capture station. Now that I've figured that out, I'm definately going with what I really want. I cant wait, I'll finally be able to produce traditional animation whenever I want (provided I have free time to do so, of course)! I hope to use these things to greatly improve my 2d animation abilities in the hopes of being able to work on future 2d films at Disney. =D
It looks like all of my life drawing is paying off. I drew this from my head a few minutes ago. =D
In other news, the job hunt is in full swing. I have an interview with Pixar at work on Tuesday and am looking forward to meeting with people from Dreamworks and Rhythmn&Hues next week.
Hey guys,
It looks like the official Tangled trailer has been released! Its awesome to finally have this available for viewing. Lol and I even have some animation in the trailer. I animated the crown in Flynn's hand and Rapunzel's hair (with hair sim on top of my animation) in the shot where she's sliding down out of the tower. =D
I made a few updates to my website last night after work. I found out that I will be rolling off of Tangled at the end of July, so I'm jumping into the job hunt now in the hopes of preventing months of unemployment. I'd really like to update my gallery section with a nice slide show widget but I feel like my time would be better spent working on a new test for my reel rather than messing around in Dreamweaver (especially since I don't know what I'm doing, lol). As the result, my Rabbit animation will have to be put on hold so I can work on this new test. I would love to finish Rabbit and put it o my reel as well, but unfortunately most studios don't seem to care very much about 2d animation and it would be more beneficial to include a new 3d test than a new 2d one. My drawing time will also have to be cut down so I can animate when I get home in the evenings.
Yesterday everyone at work received a fantastic announcement, Danny Galieote would be doing three classes on getting rhythm in your drawing!!!!! If you're unfamiliar with Danny, he's an animator at Disney (2d and 3d) and an amazing draftsman. You can check out some of his excellent drawings on his blog blog. Its super nice of him to do this for us since I know he's busy just like the rest of us on Tangled. Here are a few of the drawings that I did in his class today...
I thought it would be fun to do a quick drawing of a cartoon character using the things I've learned from the past few weeks of life drawing. I wanted to do a character that I had no clue how to draw so I would be forced to use observational skills. My friend's character Cookie came to mind almost immediately. I figured it would be a crappy drawing so I used it to fill up the rest of a page in my sketchbook who's upper half was filled with notes. I actually like how this turned out though and regret having all of that writing in the way. I erased as much as I could (with a mouse, lol) without losing some of the drawing.
We had a costumed model in life drawing today! I remembered what the instructor told me last week about drawing inside the form rather than just doing outlines. There are a few proportion issues (as usual, lol) but I think the drawing turned out nicely.
