Progress

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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Another One

Even More LaQuandae

He's fun to draw! Lol, I got lazy with the afro pick and changed the end from the usual fist to a bone.

More LaQuandae

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

Pay Off

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.

Tangled Trailer!

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

Let the Hunt Begin!

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.

Rhythm with Danny Galieote

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...

Random Surprise for a Friend

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.

Old Farmer

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.

Proportion Practice

I've been reading Robert Fawcett's On the Art of Drawing again and came to the section about drawing naturally. Fawcett believes the problem of getting the correct proportions can be solved by simply drawing things at the size that you see them. This makes a lot of sense but is very easily said than done. He says the problem with sighting and measuring is you're trying to figure out how to resize your subject and will fail once your eye becomes tired of calculating and you start to truly draw what you see. Your calculations wont be the same as the results of simply drawing what you see, and the resulting figure will be out of proportion. I really like this idea and would like to use his method. Here's a drawing I just did to practice.

Its difficult to draw something the same size as I see it when I have to look up at my monitor and down at my sketchbook. I'm going to do all that I can to make it to the model sessions this week and use this approach there. Hopefully the results will be better since I can place my board visually right the model. Fawcett says this method takes time to learn but once you've got it, you wont have issues with proportion anymore. In fact, the whole book is basically like that. It's debunking everything I've learned/read about life drawing with his own sound logic. It seems like Fawcett's main message is once you're able to truly draw what you see, you'll be able to draw any and everything. I think thats what Glen is trying to get me to see with this assignment and from recommending that I read Fawcett's book.

Fawcett also says that lots of students have learned various short cuts to drawing. He doesn't approve of such and says that true draftsmanship can only be attained once the artist has learned how to see and how to record that which he/she see's on paper in a particular (instead of a general) way. This can only be reached with hard study and constant practice. I really want to work in 2d as well as 3d and if this is what I have to do to get my drawing abilities to the level that they need to be then I'm all for it, regardless of how painfull the process can be.

Rabbit Update 5.0

I had planned on finishing the roughs for my Rabbit test today but I ran out of time. Andreas suggested rotating Rabbits head from side to side on Friday and I ended up spending all of my time on that. It's extremely rough but the basic idea is there. I need to clean up the inbetweens though since they're the same drawings from the previous version. Once that's done, the side to side motion will be much clearer. I wanted to tie this down and finish it completely, but I think its probably time to move on once the roughs are done. I remember a quote from Glen about students who made as many pots as possible improving faster than the students who spent all of their time trying to make a one pot masterpiece. I dont want this to end up being a one pot masterpiece. I still have a lot to learn and would like to try some other things.

Drawing Before Bed

Hey guys,
I decided to do another drawing before going to bed last night. I liked the flow the model achieved through his forearm, wrist and hand so I decided to reproduce it. I've noticed that Glen draws these epic hands that always have a sense of flow to them with anatomy laid on top. Lol, my drawing is light years away from his of course but hopefully he'll like it anyway.

The model's face looks wonky though. I think faces are the hardest thing for me. On Friday, Andreas pointed out that the body parts in my life drawings were well constructed but all together they don't quite fit. It sounds like I should do more full figure drawings in addition to individual studies.

Kitty Take Over

You know, I don't think I've completely rid myself of my dislike of drawing people. Yes I want to get better at drawing them but I'm starting to question whether or not I actually enjoy them as a subject matter. These two pages were supposed to be filled with human faces, instead I ended up doing more gesture drawings of my cat, Jubilee. I find a lot more enjoyment in drawing animals and am much more fascinated by them than people. Maybe I'm trying to get better at drawing people simply because I have to. I cant be a 2d animator and not be able to draw humans. Granted, I find non-human more fun to animate (especially in 2d) I'm sure I'll have to animate a person at some point in my career. The funny thing is, this only pertains to 2d. I'm fine with animating people in 3d, I'm just dreading the day that I'll have to do the same in 2d since I'm not confident in my ability to draw them.

I think its safe to say that my seemingly sudden drive to get better at drawing people over the past few weeks is because I feel like I have to rather than simply drawing people because I want to. Hopefully this will go away as I improve, because right now it seems like the desire to get better at drawing people and the desire to simply draw them are two separate things. >_<

Trip to the Zoo

I went to the LA Zoo for the first time today to do some animal drawing. I was pleasantly surprised by how close it is to where I live. My main purpose for going was to do some lion studies but I wasn't able to find any. I'm debating on whether or not I should get a membership and come to the zoo more often. I like that idea of that but I don't think I'll have the time to do so. Anyway, the tiger was the only big cat I was able to find and he spent most of the time pacing around his enclosure. Unfortunately, I'm not fast enough to successfully capture a moving target yet. The orangutans and goats (I don't remember their specific breed) made up for the lack of cats though. Both were active but held still long enough to draw.

The lion skull was done prior to going to the zoo. I planned on using it as a reminder of what's going on beneath the lion's fur.

Life Drawing Session

Hey guys,
I was able to make it to today's lunch time life drawing session at work. As usual, I'm really glad that I went and wish I could go to every session. The instructor suggested a different approach for me to take when drawing. He said to draw really lightly and then pay attention to the center of things. He said I tend to pay attention to the outer contour of the figure while leaving the inside blank. His technique can be seen in my drawing of one of the model's legs. I worked on defining the shapes inside the leg and then worked on the contour, only darkening certain areas while leaving other faint. He said that helps to give the drawing a sense of personality rather than having a consistently dark contour line. I already draw lightly, I just end up going over my lines so many times that they end up all being the same shade. I'll have to make a conscious effort to work on that.

Studying

Today ended up being a study day drawing-wise after a few failed attempts at sketching Rapunzel. Andreas said he'd look at my animal drawings so I figured it would be a good idea to have an animal as the subject of one of my studies. After failing at drawing this sailor guy, I decided for my next study to deal with the face and eyes in particular. When I finished the horse drawing, I pulled out one of my anatomy books and studied the muscles in a horse's chest area. Lol, it probably would have been more beneficial to do that prior to actually drawing the horse. I think the eyes were a success as well. I feel like I have a better understanding of what exactly is going on there anatomically. The evil eye on the top left is my favorite of the bunch. =D

Catching Up

It seems I forgot to post my gesture drawings from yesterday. I finally worked up the courage to go to a Starbucks to draw people. I've always been afraid of getting caught drawing someone and having an awkward situation. Thankfully that didn't happen at all. I just avoided eye contact with people and glanced at them with my peripheral vision if they were looking in my direction. I found it to be a very interesting experience and saw all kinds of people. I wish I could draw faster so I could have gotten a better image of what my subjects looked like.

Sunday:


I did some gesture drawing today as well. I went to Issuing a bit early and drew the animation supe's and our two directors. Once again, it will be nice once I'm able to draw fast enough to actually capture their likeness as well as their pose lol. The guy in color is a character I'm fleshing out for OC improv sessions with one of my friend's from school. I'd never done OC before and tried it with her last night. It was super fun and a great exercise for drawing quickly and acting in character. His name is LaQuandae "Dae Dae" Ray and is meant to be used with her character, Cookie (the one on the far left).

Rabbit Update 4.0

Hey guys,
Here's another Rabbit update. I feel like its finally getting close to where I want it to be. If I was able to work on this all day I could have all of the roughs finished. Unfortunately I had to leave early since I really need to wash clothes to do some more life drawing. As usual, I've created a list of things that need to be fixed but any comments and crits are always appreciated.

Back Online

Sorry about the lack of updates! My cat, Jubilee clothes lined herself with my internet cord on Monday night which caused the cord to rip from the plastic end in the wall. I've been internet-less at home since then. That didn't really matter though since this turned out to be an overtime week and I didn't leave work until after 10 each day. As the result, I don't have any drawings between Monday and today since I went to bed when I got home all of the other days. Today was normal hours though, so I was able to go to the store to buy a new cord. Here are the drawings a I did on Monday after I lost my internet and the drawings I did tonight.

Monday:

I've found that my drawings of human faces always turn out weird and wonky if I start from any place other than the eyes...


I dont know what happened with the face in the middle. It's quite hideous, lol. The other two are examples of how much better my human faces look if I start with the eyes. I'm not sure why that's the case.


Tonight:
I was able to shot Glen the drawings I'd done so far. I told him the blind contours are from life but the others were drawn from photos. He updated my assignment and now I'm only to draw directly from life. I guess that means my plans of drawing animals from my Planet Earth dvds is no longer relevant. I wonder if drawing sculptures in a museum counts. I dont feel like my drawings are good enough yet to try to quicky capture moving people without inadvertantly reverting to my previous ways of drawings.