thank you picasso

i don't care what happened in his personal life, the man was a blessing to art. inspired by picasso's Trois Tetes: Le Soleil et Deux Plongeurs. i tried looking for it on google images, but i guess it's not that well known? i saw it today on an old Sotheby's auction catelog from 1995 i bought at the library for 25cents.

today's inspiration

fruition

Here is the link to my stopmotion partner project. We had compression issues and were sort of fumbling around with the exporting in final cut pro, but the basic picture edit is done. We worked on it a total of 21 hours this week, and we thought very hard about character. Was a long process but we're very glad we took the time to finish. Enjoy!

Gwen and Tim

my intuos3 has arrived

it works like a dream. let the fun begin.

getting somewhere

character sketches for my first big animation project! granted, it'll only be about 1-3 minutes, but still exciting!
at first i was going to do something serious and about self-realization
but then i thought if i'm going to be working on this everyday for 6 weeks, i might as well enjoy myself
so my animation is going to be about a group of kids and a group of monsters (2 of my favorite things to draw) who are down to the last hit of "rock paper scissors" game.
feedback, if you please? i find character design really difficult, so any comment would be much appreciated. (my friend told me that the 2 monsters on the left don't really match, and i think i agree)

puppet test

(there is a better quality video on my vimeo page: http://vimeo.com/30776648 )
i admit i rushed through this animation test, because it was close to 1am, and i still have a lot of things to finish before i leave for class at 8:40am, so it's rough.
but it's my first puppet made from scratch, ever!! his name is tim, and he is part of the underworld, though he's not evil at all. he tries.

his face is inspired by a skull mask i saw at the british museum last year from 15th century (i think) mexico.
yep i did the armature, sculpey, wire, propoxy, latex, acrylic, foam, ....it was a bigbig learning experience.
actually, having to build the thing helped me understand character design a little more.

i have absolutely no idea what this is. just continued working on a doodle from my sketchbook, and this is what my brain came up with. (blogger made the colors a little dulled, but. yep.)

more stop motion exercises

 

i have some tweaking to do with the pauses, but i just posted what i showed during crit this week. his walk off screen in the light object exercise is very awkward, yes, haha. i tried to make him look like his arms were moving together as they held the ball, but it came out a little funky.

sketchbook

i have been trying to tell myself recently that i need to stop caring about what style i SHOULD be drawing in, that my tendencies are not good enough.
usually when i stop caring
that's when things start to happen. i think because it's when i stop thinking about definition and just let loose.
luckily, you know what they say. the more practice you do, the better you'll get. i will get better at not-caring what i think i SHOULD do, and as my animation teacher says, "remember to play."

 

i drew these guys randomly while trying to stay awake during a screening. i started with the guy in front, and then i thought he needed a friend. and then another. and then another. the little dude is probably eating a sandwich because i was hungry then. oh, they have no feet because i had drawn them at the bottom of some tracing paper. i should go back and give them some feet.

it is good to stop forcing yourself and let your brain be happy and breathe.

first stopmo walk cycle

here it is! not perfect, but i'm really excited about doing more (did 2 more walk cycles with emotion but blogger wouldn't let me upload). comments are welcome/appreciated; they will help me get better. my teacher did say to pay more attention to the spine. i will have to plan out the walks on paper...this week i just went sort of straight ahead, haha.

sketchbook

I need to make better use of my sketchbook. Met a high school kid today whose sketchbook was AMAZING. Kudos, kid. Good encouragement for me.

Yes, I have perspective issues with the building. I'm trying. HAHA. I think it's mainly the arch-y part, though. If you sort of cover it with your finger, it looks ok. I didn't think it was that bad when I was sketching it, but now I know it's way off.
confession: I originally typed this in all lowercase, but I realized that I had used "u" for "you," felt embarrassed, and I went back and made things make a little more sense. I swear I really value good grammar HAHA.