Winter Dragon

Hey guys,
Last night I watched Disney's Earth on blu-ray. I always get inspired when I watch shows like that. I love seeing the different wildlife and the amazing environments they live in. While watching the segment on the arctic, I imagined a long haired species of dragon that could reside there. While waiting to go to the airport to fly home, I decided to draw said dragon. I really like how this turned out, even though its significantly more bovine and realistic than what I had in mind.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Painting Update

Hey guys,
Here's another small update on my painting. I really want to hurry up and finish it because I can feel my interest in it draining away. Once this is done I'd love to start a 2d test. I've been watching some of the pencil tests on the Pencil Test Depot and am feeling really inspired by them. I'm not sure when I'll be able to do it though. Now that I have a new assignment, my weekends will be spent working at the studio. I'm really enjoying my assignment so far and am looking forward to spending more time on it.

Elf Launcher!

Hey guys,
I hope you all watched Prep and Landing last night. Everyone at the studio watched it together during the Prep and Landing wrap party. It was amazing getting to watch the show with everyone who worked on it. There's a fantastic sense of community at Disney and everyone was very proud to see it on tv. If you didn't get a chance to catch it, I believe the show will also be aired on Christmas Eve.

In other news, the Prep and Landing project that my friends and I worked on has been released! You can find the Elf Launcher game here on the right side of the screen. We were responsible for all of the animation and poses on Lanny. I animated Lanny's dance cycle where he spins and kind of hops from one foot to another. I also did two poses of Lanny missing the roof.

Somewhat New Approach

Hey guys,
Sorry for the lack of updates on my Mickey painting. We were given the parameters for our next assignment and I've been working on coming up with ideas on what I should do. I spoke to my mentor today and had my idea approved (yay!!!!). I'm not entirely sure it will fit within the designated time limit though. I've imagined it out against a stopwatch and it comes in between 8-12 seconds. Rather that blocking it out and figuring out the timing as I go, I've decided to retry pre-timing on an x sheet. I did it with my Mittens test from last year and a little on Cat Flap, but I didn't really know what I was doing. I watched an awesome lecture on the subject by Eric Goldberg and am excited about trying to do it again.

With practice, pre-timing your x sheets will give you a solid sense of what 12's, 10's, 8's, 6's, 4's etc. feels like and in time you'll be able to pre-time out your scenes accurately with little to no revisions (performance/timing wise). Eric does this for every scene that he touches and usually gets it right in one try 80-90% of time. How awesome is that?! I know it will take years and years of practice before I can become anywhere as good as Eric, but those years of pre-timing practice have started today. =D

Glass Attempt

Hey everyone,
I didn't get very much done today but I really need to start going to bed on time. I took a stab at Mickey's glass heels. Lol, they look more like dirty ice cubes than glass but it'll have to do for now.

The Next Step

Hey guys,
I didn't get much done on this since I'm limited to painting after work. I've started working in color now and raised the saturation on his suit (again). I added a velvet texture to it as well. I also painted the fur and spots on the appropriate areas. Mickey's gloves, face, and shades got an extra splash of color too.

Today's Update

Hey guys,
I'm still working on my Mickey painting and it's getting there! I think I like the darker, less saturated color theme more than the other one. It looks more sophisticated, lol. I could be crazy, but the color in the jpg looks a bit less saturated than the psd file I'm working from. I need to find out what's causing that.
Anyway, I re-colored the red and gold parts of his outfit and added some fur to the color separation between the skin and black. I still need to figure out how to paint glass for those heels. I'm going to redo the spots once I get the fur on his hat/suit to work (its not there now). I'm also in the process of figuring out the whole coloring on Overlay and Color layers process. The colors I pick aren't the colors I get when I lay them down and I'm not entirely sure why that is. =\

Painting Update

Hey everyone,

Here's an update on my Mickey painting. So far I've been working on pushing the values in greyscale. I slapped on some more rough color for the feather, shoes, ring and part of the cane. I'm about to take a break so I figured I'd upload what I had so far. It still has a long way to go. I really need to learn how to paint glass for his heels. If anyone out there knows how to paint and has the time, it would be awesome to get some feedback on this. I really dont know what I'm doing, lol.

Wip

Hey guys,
Here's a look at my wip painting. For some reason I felt compelled to start at 1am, lol. It's now 2:43am and I'm going to bed. I dont think the values are pushed enough to officially add color to this. I just slapped some on to see how it would look. Tomorrow I'll finish adding value to the shoes and feather. I'll also push the contrast and add some highlights where needed. After that's done I'll turn the colors back on and see how everything looks.

Awesome!

Hey guys,
After working hard for last Thursday's review, we finally got the results today. Everyone's going to be staying for the second three months of the Talent Dev Program! Hopefully my fellow TDA animators and I will be moving on to production soon. I can't wait! I also want to do a 2d test in whatever free time I may have. I want to show the guys at work that I can work in 2d as well. I hope to be able to bounce from their 3d projects to their 2d films and vice versa. That would be awesome and would hopefully make me a valuable asset to the studio.

Here's Mickey dancing to celebrate!

Big Pimpin'

Hey guys,

I went to Disneyland yesterday and thought of this image. I'm not sure what prompted it but I really like how it turned out, especially after spending a couple of hours drawing horribly off model Mickeys last night.


I'm not sure if I need a disclaimer or not, but this drawing is in no way related to Disney or the work I'm doing there.

Life Drawings

Hey guys,
Here are some life drawings that I did today. I can see improvement in some areas but I'm not very happy with them overall. There's still a lot of things about anatomy that I don't know yet.

Quick Sketch

Hey guys,
This week's sketch theme at AnimationMentor is Narnia! I loved the books and really enjoy the films so I though I'd participate with a quick sketch of one of my favorite characters: Reepicheep.

Gesture Drawing Class

Hey guys,
We had an awesome gesture drawing class today. I don't remember the name of the instructor (shame on me!!!!!) but he's been animating in 2d for 15 years, and recently worked on Charlotte with Nik Raneri from Princess and the Frog. The focus of the class was on getting a nice sense of rhythm and flow into our drawings. I think I finally started to grasp the hang of it at the end of class, lol. I'm really looking forward to next week's session. Plus I was told I can stop by his office anytime to get feedback on my drawings. =D

5 min warm-up drawings


2 min gestures

Hands!

Hey guys,
Today I attended Glen Vilppu's class on drawing hands. I still find them difficult to draw, but I learned a LOT from his class. Now I feel like I have an idea of what to look for when drawing hands. With practice, I hope to go from having to draw what I see to being able to draw what I know. I'm excited though, the partially drawn hand in sienna was done by Glen himself in my sketchbook! He's so awesome!

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More Drawings

Hey guys,
Here are some gesture drawings that I did at work last week. Each of these are 5 minute poses.



Last night I felt like trying to draw a cartoon human and I came up with this drawing of Rachel Alucard from Blazblue. I like how this turned out for the most part, but I still feel like I struggle with drawing people much more than I should be.

More pics

Here are two more pictures from the wrap party. Dan, Mike and I got there just in time, as Princess Tiana had to leave right after our picture was taken.

Wrap Party Pics

Hey guys,
The Princess and the Frog wrap party was amazing! I feel so honored to be a part of Disney and to have been there. First off the film is awesome! It's a true Disney movie that's worthy of standing next to the classics. Watching it made me feel like a little kid again, excited about the next Disney movie. I highly recommend seeing it at least once when its released! Princess and the Frog looks like the start of something great at Disney. I've always loved Disney through the good times and bad. Disney films have made me who I am today and I am truly honored to be here.

Anyway, the party itself was beautiful! I've never been to a wrap party (or any real party for that matter) before so I had no idea what to expect. All of the food was New Orleans style. It ranged from gumbo and po' boys to hurricanes, blackened catfish and jerk chicken. There were tarot card readers and photo opportunities with some of the characters from the film. Not to mention the building itself was decked out like the bayou, a voodoo emporium, and a palace. I really cant wait until next year's wrap party for Rapunzel. That one will be even more special since my friends and I would have actually worked on it (I still cant believe it)! Unfortunately my camera died early on that evening so I had to take pictures with my phone. They really don't do the place justice.

New Trailer

Hey guys,

It looks like the trailer for Prep and Landing has been released! You can check it out here: http://abc.go.com/shows/prep-and-landing I didn't work on it but my first production assignment is directly related to the show. I'll post a link to it once its finished and online. We were send the rendered versions of our animation this morning and it looks really cool! This is my first time having my animation lit and rendered by the pros and it looks awesome! I cant wait to show you guys what we've done! =D

Arriving LA Style

Oh snap, check out how my fellow TDA's and I will be arriving to the Princess and the Frog wrap party this weekend! We'll be in the black Escalade EXT, complete with scissor doors!
http://lahopper.com/main.php#/vehicles

This Past Week's Drawings

Hey guys,

I have some drawings to show from the past week or so from work and my trip to the equestrian center. I really enjoyed drawing horses last week and would love to go to the zoo to draw the animals there. I just need to tear myself away from my new PS3 and BlazBlue long enough to do so, lol.

In other news, my fellow TDA's and I finished our first production assignment earlier this week! All of our mentors and the directors really liked everyone's animation which was awesome. It was great having my work reviewed and approved by a director. Lol, I felt like a "real animator" as everyone clapped upon the director's approval of our work. The project will be online within the next month or so and I will definitely post a link to where it can be "viewed" once it's been released. =D

30 sec to 1 min gestures from Disney's Improv Gesture Drawing sessions:

Horse Studies and Gestures from last Sunday's trip to the LA Equestrian Center: