Happy Holidays

My friend Niv (www.nivsekar.com) and I made a little animated holiday greeting! Below the video are some process photos we snapped on our phones along the way. We had only my deskspace to shoot in, and we had to work around our internship/freelance schedules through December, but it was nice to do a low-key little project. I thought if I ended 2013 without new work I'd really hate myself HAHA. Luckily I had a lot of cardboard (I might be a cardboard hoarder), fabric, and paper so we didn't have to do too much buying.

We began with the idea of small houses, tiny flowers, and something spinning. We knew our resources were extremely limited, so the stopmotion animation was limited to something simple, like rotation.

glued cardboard to a lazy susan piece

looks like a third grader's school project hahaha. just some floral foam.

stuffing to give the mound some shape

Niv designed the flowers. We glued Hanji paper to copper wire. Colors were chosen based on what we had available in our closets/apartments.

tada~

paper doll also designed by Niv. I was lucky that my roommate had the perfect colored bedsheet we could use as a backdrop HAHA.

my other roommate had a nice tripod, whew.

Working in a team is really nice because you can keep each other motivated and accountable. You get new ideas but you also have someone to edit yours. So thanks, Niv!! It's a small piece, but I'm really glad I can end this crazy year of transitions with something I'm proud to share with my family and friends. I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas, holiday, and wishing you all a Happy New Year 2014.

It's been really fun doing these little pieces. I usually put on a movie that I've been meaning to watch but never got around to, and just play around with my paints and pastels. In the previous post, I made one of the blue pieces while watching Ponyo, and for this post's yellow piece, I watched The Royal Tenenbaums for the first time. Lovely film :)

"Hush, now."

8x5.5 in.

"Blue with stripes, a portrait."

7.5x11in.

"Go ahead."

8x5.5in.

I've been telling my friends and family in the past few months after graduating that I think I want to leave the animation world behind. But I'm not so sure it'll let me. I think I'm still struggling with what happened in the production of my graduation film, haha.

Whatever happens, it's an amazing, crazy labor-intensive, usually collaborative art form. 

Wish the U.S. didn't dismiss it as a children/family "genre." Genre is category of subject matter.

Animation is an art form. It can express ANY genre, and sometimes it's most effective in dealing with heavy subject matter because it allows you to be subtle and abstract. 

Anyways, it's just really disheartening to see people in their late 30's and 40's who are still struggling to be a professional animator, still clinging on for their big break. They work their whole lives trying to stick to it in the "system," while becoming jaded and bitter that they've never been able to really make the film they've always wanted to. The way they talk, it's like there's this big knot in them, and it can't be undone. I don't want to be like that. To be honest, I really dislike like 90% of the animation that gets produced in the U.S. But I've always been sort of outside the popular opinion. And at the end of the day, something has to sell. That way more things can be produced.

I wonder if I'd rather get a day job that I feel useful and appreciated in and then make work that I really want to make in my spare time. People say it's really easy to let it slide and never get to your own work.

And others say that doing professional work in the commercial world can really help inform your personal work, too. 

But why do they talk with so much frustration.

This post is getting real long, but I'm almost done. 

The thing about doing art, is that I let myself get caught up in the idea of success and recognition. I thought if I worked hard, that was enough. 

But you know, that's not why artists choose to be artists.

I always wanted to learn how to make animation, and I did. I've gotten the very basics now. I realize now that it's not the technical animation that I love, but creating a feeling, an experience.

And that's enough, isn't it?

while I am swimming alongside my year-mates in the sea of unemployment and generalized floundering, I have made these things! All are acrylic, chalk pastel, and charcoal pencil on cardboard. Seeing as I can't be splurging on nice paper, and I have a lot of cardboard boxes lying around from the recent move..........

working with my hands is the absolute best feeling. it feels weird to say it like I hadn't really known, because I definitely realized it sometime during school.

I don't know if it's selfish or stubborn of me for thinking that I can get a job that fulfills the creative itch some day.

for now i just need to find some kind of. employment. 

the masses weren't kidding when they said it's gonna be a rough first three years out of school HAHA.

GAMBATTE EVERYONE.

day 3 in brooklyn!
job hunting is as harrowing as they say.

i've been developing two story ideas, one dark, and one cute. i think i need both to keep my brain entertained, lol.

the above character has no name, and doesn't speak. i think in his story there will be no text, and no color.

i have named the above characters Gochi, Nimo, and Ko, who live in Tojii. still tweaking their designs and color, not quite there yet. but minus Ko who doesn't talk, they are lively and chatty. Tojii is extremely colorful.

I have been thinking about painting a lot. and felting, haha.

it is time for a new post! this one's super wordy. scroll to the bottom to skip to the new drawings ^^

for the month of September I traveled to South Korea with my mom :) Somehow it had already been 9 years since my last visit. Did a lot of things, saw a lot of things, met family members I hadn't seen in a long time. I'm really glad I went. I haven't organized all the photos from the trip yet, so that'll be another post. My trip can be summed up in these words: food, mountains, dragonflies, and weird family dynamics, lol.

But big news! I'm making the move to Brooklyn in less than a week, joining a handful of my classmates and a lot of alumni. No, I don't have concrete plans, but I'm determined to try a lot of things and meet a lot of people. Try to figure out what it is I can do. How to make money! Haha. *sob* I'm interested in a lot of things...different kinds of puppet fabrication, set fabrication, visual/concept design, children's book illustration, 3D illustration. But I'm not quite good at one thing, so. I'm hoping through experiencing different "jobs," I can start to funnel my skillset into something marketable.
There are a couple things that are consistent across my work, though...whatever medium it is. I place a huge emphasis on color, and character. I find the details of a small moment just as fascinating and important as an entire story.
I LOVE watching detailed character animation, but DOING it is another beast. It's just. so. difficult, lol.

Anyways! So I've always enjoyed using chalk pastels, but my first real attempts began sometime in sophomore year, for fun. My roommate had a new box and gave them to me. That summer I took a children's book illustration class, and used pastels to do some of the assignments. Then junior year happened.....that was a crazy nightmare lol. Used pastels for my graduation film's visual development. In the middle of senior year I was so stressed that I sought out my pastels again as a kind of mental break from the frenzy of trying to make my graduation film. Ended up using pastels in the film itself. For one of my last semester painting assignments, I used pastels again.
and on my Korea trip, I packed my pastels. You never know.

I wrote all of that because I don't know what it is about them, but I don't fight them like I do with pencil. I think it's because it's similar to sculpture? You have to push the material around; it's very physical, yet forgiving. It's hard to be very detailed with pastels from the getgo because it'll get covered up anyway, so your brain doesn't even think about details when you begin.

Two new recent drawings. Each is about the size of a large hand.
this one I tried combining with charcoal pencil.

heavily influenced by Joe Sorren, a contemporary painter. I absolutely love, love his work. joesorrenart.com

it's alive!

website is good to go! gogogo! TOOK FOREVER.

an update

website resdesign, woo!!! i've been working on it pretty diligently for a little over a week. the address is the same, but instead of using a blogger template, i'm using weebly.com to help me build all the things.
i'm hoping that i can publish it by saturday! all that's left is making the drawings for navigation icons, haha.
i'm really excited, i've put a lot of thought into it. my skills are pretty limited, but luckily there was a super clean template on weebly that gives me just enough flexibility to get creative with the organization.
i find that my best work comes from problem solving within strict limitations. *sigh* haha.
anyways! here is an image preview; i will post when the new site design is published. slightly worried about redirecting the domain name thingy (i always get flustered when i'm dealing with this kind of stuff HAHA), but weebly is so helpful and user friendly, i think i will be okay ^^

also, here are some drawings i've cleaned up to put on my website. you'll recognize the yellow monster. i've sort of grown attached to him after two years, haha. 

finished this in photoshop. the original sketch for it is in the previous post. i've liked fauns since i was little, probably when i first watched fantasia as a tiny child, lol. harpies, centaurs, fairies, etc.

i guess i should try to put in a background? nothing crazy, just a nice suggestion of trees/woods.

i hope i don't ruin it, lol. i'm not very good at backgrounds, but it does look a bit empty.

i'm thinking about how i first used photoshop 3 years ago as i began sophomore year. and oh GOD it was so terrible HAHA. 

a photo post to follow soon.

3 months after graduation

ah. it has been nearly 2 months ^^
have been doing a freelance job that ends this week.
in september i am taking a month trip overseas, and in october i'm going to do my best to find an apartment in new york..somewhere..haha.
i've been really confused about how i should "market" myself.
i have trouble trying to call myself one specific thing, like "illustrator," or "animator," etc. etc. because i don't think i'm any of those.
i'm probably a bit scared, because i'm not quite good at anything yet, and in the industry, they say you get your foot in the door by doing one thing really well. a technical skill.
.....aiya.
honestly, more and more i think i'm not an animator. i love and appreciate the medium so much, but actually doing it is a little bit like torture. is it because my technical skills are too lacking? or am i genuinely not interested in animating in and of itself?
i do love most the design and development part of production.

so while i flounder around hopelessly, i've been developing a story. it's been fun just drawing, like when i was little. the ideas have been floating in my mind since may.

more to come. i don't know in what way this story should be executed. but if there's anything i learned from school, it's that every time i think i "should" do something a certain way, it always fails. some things are their own thing, have their own innate way of expression.

i guess it's my job to try and let that happen without letting my own brain get in the way.

photos and doodles

I've been in Brooklyn for the past week and a half, and I have one week left on my brief stay. I grew up in the suburbs, so the city feels so big. Have been really enjoying it all.

my lovely RISD friends ^^

the lovely moon

I'd like to make a little model of this little guy. I've found some scraps of fabric from when my roommate and I went wandering around the area....deep red, deep orange, and mustard yellow :)

aaannddd I recently was told how I can make models in a super cheap and easy fashion without sacrificing too much detail, so I started making a fat little horse this evening, lol. Newspaper and tape. I'm going to buy some paper tape and do the detailed layer in the next few days. see how it goes....

it's kind of fun! I can take away from the shape easily with just a simple exacto blade. clunky sculpting.

some random things. 

I have to get better at drawing...I should do lots of observational stuff. 

Have been in-between animating on a former teacher's film. It's kind of fun because I haven't done a lot of 2D animating in a while. Frankly I did very little of it in school.

Does this technically make me a freelancer? lol.

charcoal pencil is so nice ^^ not sure why, but I tend to feel much better when drawing with "messy" material, like charcoal, fat graphite stick, or pastel. 

sketchbook photo, then the cleaned up version in photoshop. I wrote on my art Tumblr that I made a rookie mistake about the cape. It should probably be stretched taut, streamlined behind him, haha. 

I graduated!

I graduated!
tada.
my school has a fun tradition of decorating/altering the cap+gowns for graduation, so the night before commencement, I put a little bird on top of my cap with computer paper, hot glue gun, and one Q-tip in the bathroom of a hotel room whilst my family snored in the room outside HAHA.

there's a lot I could say about my time at RISD, but it was probably the best three years of my life, and I'm so happy and blessed to have been able to go. I miss my classmates so much already. We basically lived together in studio, every day of the week, morning til night (coughcough...more like late afternoon til the next morning HAHA), ate together, pulled a million allnighters together. laughed together, got mad together. 

It feels weird to be back in my hometown knowing I won't be going back to school, and it might be some time before I can see anyone from school again, but this is where I say THANK GOD FOR FACEBOOK.

Never really thought I'd be "one of those," but yep, I have absolutely no idea what to do next, lol.

I'm quite good at rambling, so I'll cut it relatively short. Frankly speaking, I'm terrified of what I'm "supposed to do" now that I've finished college. I love animation, but I also love many other ways of creating art, and I guess now it's up to me to decide to what extent I want to devote my time+energy to making stuff. Because that's what art is....just making stuff, because you just have to do it. It's really not complicated, lol. 

But this is also the exciting part, too...where I am thrown into the unknown, and unceremoniously confronted with my insecurities. So congrats to all graduates, and let's do our best to keep making stuff. 

Here are some old little iPhone+Tumblr things, in the meantime. (Also, I'm hoping to upload my film online in the next couple months!)

never used paperclay before...i quite like it!! needed to do a time-based project for my weird painting class, so i'm planning on trying to project something inside this little house. but things always change last minute...so we'll see how it goes this week. 

i'm really confused about what i want to do or be...graduation is really soon. but they say the most important thing is to just keep making stuff. i can do that, lol. 

i was thinking the other day, that when i was in kindergarten, i wanted to be an artist. and i never really wanted to be anything else. even in high school when i thought becoming an artist was something meant to happen to other people. 

i must say, it's been little over a week since finishing my film and it's been....really nice to be able to think about other things. like reading~ 

FILM COMPLETE

I FINISHED MAH FIILLMMMM

ho mai gaht, that was way more difficult/emotionally challenging/humbling than I ever thought it could be, and I can't judge whether it's good or bad, but I have to say I did my best! And I did a lot of failing, but somehow I have a short film now. You wouldn't know it by looking at it, but the entire process from character conception to final render took NEARLY 9 months. ACCHhh.

Lots more to think about, especially now that I have to switch my brain mode into looking for a way to earn a living. Somehow. Some way. LOL. oh dear. Not sure what my "career goal" is anymore. I just want to experience as much as I can in a way that lets me explore without false intentions.

But that is the most difficult part of calling yourself an artist, no? I assume so. I mean. HAVEN'T GRADUATED YET. It happens on June 1 :)

Can't wait to post it up soon ^^ Not sure exactly when that will be, but thanks to my friends for your encouragement, and to the random passersby who sent encouragement as well. Means a lot when one person believes in you! There is a big difference between someone complimenting your work, and someone telling you that they think you have the ability to make good work.

I wonder what will happen next.

4 more days!