Trees

Just playing around with some trees.

OMG! OMG! Update! UPDAAAATE!!!!

Yeah. I know. It's been forever and a day. Almost a year, in fact. But here's a post for you guys.

This second year at Calarts, has been really hard for me. First year, even though I complained of long hours and lots of work, it was generally straight forward as far as what I was to accomplish. This year, there is no real goal in mind. I came into this year eager to work, but I didn't know what to work on. I already made a film, what now? Should I basically keep going down the same path and make another one that has no real value?

So rather than create a film with little meaning, or one that doesn't teach me much, I've been spending a lot of time thinking about what I want to accomplish with my films here at Calarts. Each film, of course, is a learning experience. Ideally, I'd like to take that learning experience and hopefully create something of value with it.

So, I've been doing a lot of stuff this year that I'm not necessarily used to. For example, I spent A LOT of time in the story phase of things. Last year, my story was basically get a boy from point A to point B. This year, I'm trying to actually say something with my work that may find resonance in a context outside of a student film. Whether it will be successful or not, I have no idea. All I know is that even though I'm really behind on everything, I'm pretty proud of my story work. I consider story to be my weakest area, so this year I decided to focus on it.

Also, I have a tendency to render things to near completion. It's an almost anal-retentive quality. You guys could probably tell from the layouts I posted from my last year's film. This year, I'm trying to explore a more loose, graphic style. This switch from realistic thinking to flat graphic thinking is more painful than I thought, however it's also exciting. Currently, I'm designing my backgrounds, and I'm experimenting with minimalism, since my character designs are basically cartoonish abstractions of human faces. How much do I need in order to get the story across? How much can I omit? And most importantly, how do I compose all the elements in time to get the strongest storytelling image possible?

Animationwise, I decided to animate in Flash. I've been wanting to learn Flash for a while, but it never really seemed to suit the quality of work I'm used to. With this film being a break from my typical style, I decided to use Flash to see what it could do. It's actually a pretty interesting and, dare I say it, fun program to use. The "symbols" feature, is really a time saver that I wish existed in other forms of animation. However, I could see where Flash would be impractical, but for the style of story I'm telling, it works remarkably well. I'm still exploring my backgrounds, but I think I will compose them in Adobe Illustrator, because it's also a vector based program like Flash, but one that offers more flexibility for texures, line quality, etc. With Flash, Illustrator, Photoshop, and After Effects all included in CS3 the compositing process should be more streamlined than in the past (in theory).

On top of all those new things that I'm trying, I'm also not too concerned about length or even finishing my film. Of course, in a perfect world, I would have my story done and finished at 3 minutes for the open show. But I've come to the realization that the learning process is more important than the finished product. And since I'm doing so many new things with this film, I feel that if I even finish it, it will be an amazing accomplishment, moreso than if I was to do a traditional "Tom-type" film.

Let's see, what else..... Oh yeah! And I got a bright and shiny Macbook Pro! It's awesome! My first computer ever! It's name is Lily. She's beautiful.

Here are some character designs (in Flash) and inspirational material that I'm using for my film. The backgrounds are From 101 Dalmations, Triplets of Bellville, and a book callse "I Go Out". The character and layout sketches are some of my first forays into creating art on a computer. Ahhh.... technology.

Oh lordy, it's been a while.

I was going to post my film, which is as finished as it's going to be, but I'm having difficult compressing it. So when I get back to school and have the software, I'll post it.

I haven't been doing much this summer except for catching up on some much needed rest. I've been itching to start doing art again, but for some reason I have a block. I was going to attend life drawing sessions around town this summer, but I either didn't have the funds to pay, or the time. sigh. So unproductive....

Anyway, one thing that was productive this summer was that I went to the Platform Animation festival a few weeks ago. For those who don't know, Platform is a brand new international animation festival, and the only one hosted by the U.S. in a long, long time. And it was held in Portland! Which was an awesome thing because not only could I attend, but I got to introduce a few friends to the city I love. To my knowledge the festival was a big success and it will hopefully be held here in future years. You can view the films that were included, and other tidbits at platformfestival.com.

At the festival, I attended a few lectures on portfolio making and half the portfolios shown were from recent Calarts grads. I was so proud. And about a whole third of the student films at the festival were from Calarts kids too.

School needs to start now. I'm excited to get back, even though it's in the black hole of Valencia.

Oh, and congratulations to the animation freshman of next year! I know a few of you guys have posted on my blog, so congratulations on acceptance! I'll see you in fall.

I'm a nerd.

I was browsing Wikipedia for my daily dose of knowledge, I found this really cool video. It's Ferrofluid, which is basically magnetically charaged particles (like iron, or any other metal type) in a suspending fluid (like water, oil, etc.). When strong magnets are placed towards it, it reacts in some fashioin. It's amazing. Think of all the artistic potential for weird fountain sculptures and stuff. Awesome. I think right now, It's used primarily in robotics and lubrication.

I swear, Wikipedia rocks.

Just some thoughts...

So I have to take a break from drawing to charge my ipod, so I thought I'd enter a little blog entry.

I started animation about a week ago. It's going relatively well, but it's quite difficult. I have a hard time keeping loose with my character, so a lot of the time he moves very rigid. I'm only in the rough stages right now, so maybe in cleanup I'll try to assuade this. I think all of the first years have started animating already, which is cool, but I hear from people that some of the upperclassmen still haven't started. And they have more than a minute and a half to fulfill. I hope they start soon. They say that if you don't start by the end of February, you probably shouldn't even bother.

Now that I'm in the stage that brought me to this school, I'm finding where most of my interests lie. I really enjoy layout and conceptual design. That's what everyone says I should get into after school. I don't particularly like the storyboard phase, but I may grow to love it during my time here. Animation is a really difficult, but once you get in the zone, the hours fly by. And if you get your scene right, it's amazing to see your drawings move. But it's a lot of tedium to get there. The initial story phase is really exciting because you can just let your ideas run wild, but again it's also difficult because you have to pick one, and flesh it out to a level that you can handle and that makes sense, etc.

While I am most interested in the design area, I don't want to set in stone that that's what I want to end up doing after school. I want to get better at all the stages and then pick from what I enjoy most when I know more about everything. Then I feel I can make a more informed decision as far as what I want to REALLY do in this exciting field.

Blah... Enough of these "thoughts". How about some action. Enjoy!



My friend Eddy and I couldn't stop laughing at how absurd this is! We are bad people.

Steve Macleod's interesting discussion.

http://clockroom.blogspot.com/2007/02/calarts-style-john-k.html

Steve Macleod, a Calarts fourth year, has an interesting discussion going on about John Kricfalusi's ideas of Calarts. I would suggest you all check it out (that is for some strange reason you frequent my blog more than Steve's. Ha!).

Other than that, just finishing up my layouts. I'll post more when I finish more. I'm kind of half taking a break.