Life goes on

So it's been a while since I've posted here. I am no longer teaching at ITT... there were a lot of great memories and there's a lot to be missed... but I've not sat idle since parting ways. One of the things I have wanted to do was improve my skills with digital painting and illustration. I never received traditional training in this regard, so taking part in a group called Crimson Daggers has sufficed nicely. We can be found there at www.crimsondaggers.com with links to everything.

During this I've been doing studies on anatomy, painting from portraits/photos, studying the work of old masters, etc. Here's a link to my photobucket album with most of the studies for that.

http://s26.photobucket.com/albums/c129/mantisazure/CrimsonDaggers/

Another thing I've wanted to do is back up my animation skills to start from the top..or bottom... or beginning... whatever you want to call it. At any rate I am learning traditional animation by way of various kits, dvds, sites, books, etc. Some of that can be seen in the aforementioned Crimson Daggers blog.

I am officially looking for work, including freelance so I'll probably be uploading some of my 3d and various other images into this blog.

Enjoy the album and pop in to the Daggers stream to say hi some time.

Demo Reel 9-9-09

Well, here's my most recent demo reel.. It has a lot of 2-legged characters and very short shots because of the amount of it that was done as studies. I'm developing shots with more complex characters and a bit more depth. Enjoy!

Animation Tips #1

Here I've uploaded a clip that I've been working on. Normally I wouldn't show something this rough but this part of the process is very important for those who are learning animation.

What is this? It was originally going to be what is called a pencil test. A pencil test is a rough series of sketches to get a basic idea for animation (motion, timing, etc). I would take this pencil test then and either clean it up (which is what I'm doing) or take it into 3d and use it for a loose reference for my character posing.

I decided to clean this up and turn it into a full 2d animated piece, and this is part of that process. Normally, I would draw just the story-telling drawings, then the "key" drawings (the ones that are important to movement and timing). This would be all that is necessary for a pencil test, but I'm not just doing that anymore. I made the decision though to clean up the key drawings before doing the in-betweens (all of the little detail drawings that smooth out the animation).

In this part of the process I noticed a few problems.
1. The gag where he stretches and snaps his back is weak... it really needs to go... This detracts from the character and the main action of the shot because it diminishes clarity and creates a duality of his character type.

2. There are a few key drawings missing... without them.. the animation seems to go from the leg stretch into the squatting stretch and then stand and launch into the butterfly kick... there should be keys for holds in there... (a hold is where the character stays in the same position for a bit)

3. There are some in-betweens already in there (this is a problem because it makes re-timing a pain in the ass).

4. I am working in a really small resolution... this wouldn't be an issue except it is so small that a 1pixel pencil tool is big... which means that cleaning my lines is very tedious.

The first lesson? Pay attention to what you're doing... keep your ideas simple (simple means clear!)... don't try to take shortcuts (the small resolution).

Construction Exercise pt2

Woke up, fed the dog and started away on some more construction exercises. This time I dug through the kid's toys and found a dinosaur toy from the land before time. Got working on that and managed a front side and 3/4 view from construction.

For the Bowler Hat Guy, I had used Autodesk's Sketchbook...for this one I used GIMP. I think I like gimp a little better but I can't figure out how to get the eraser to bind to the stylus :/
That and I realized at the end that I had been using GIMP's paintbrush to sketch rather than the pencil....

Oh... for those who aren't aware... this is a study of the style of drawing known as Construction (duh) and it's used by many 2d animators as a way of templating characters. It's different from traditional sketching in that you have to train yourself to build the object from circles and other basic geometric shapes while following guide/proportion/negative space. See JohnK's site in my links to the left for more info.

Construction Exercise 1

Well, the third post in 1 day after such a long break...
I took a swing at doing a construction study of a toy as per JohnK's suggestion.
I present: "Unintentionally creepy looking Bowler Hat Guy from Pez Dispenser"

I'm not really happy with the results but this guy is alot trickier than I originally thought. I'm really having a hard time figuring out where the origin sphere "should" be in all of this and trying to line up to the center line... The only thing I can guess that starts off of the center line is the cheeks, as everything else seems to sit a little higher on the face.

I was going to do another angle on this but after drawing pictures of high-tech mice all day my hand is killing me.

Anime Studio

Rarwarg... just thought I'd drop a quick post about the frustration I'm having with this program... I've worked with Flash, Pencil, Toonboom, and Flipbook among other software packages.... I opened up this program and was ready to do some JohnK exercises using my Wacom tablet... call me crazy but the normal tools for lightbox/onion skinning are not there and when you set a key it's almost like the only thing they expect you to do is move portions of your previous lines or shapes made with bones around... aka... cutout animation... I was pretty excited about this software because I can see bones being useful and it was only $50... but frankly I can't figure out why they would give you that option but not the option to hand draw your keyframes...

That or my excitement for the JohnK lessons destroyed all 6 of my remaining brain cells... I'm moving my tablet to my desktop so I can do the exercises in Flipbook :(

Been busy

Well, to anyone that reads this site on a normal basis... okay... that's probably all of ..me...since it's my homepage... but at any rate it's been a while since an update.

So... the first thing's first... since the last post where I was bashing Fatkat... they've gone under and re-formed. I feel pretty bad about this but at the same time I'm pretty fed up with cutout animation... I'm not going to beat that drum anymore but I felt it was worth mentioning.

I had to leave Animation Mentor... namely for two reasons...
1. It is more expensive than I can afford right now.
2. I am determined that I want to become more involved with 2d animation, which they do not offer.

In keeping with that, I've created a curriculum for myself that is essentially geared towards helping me acquire the skills I need to successfully do this. Chiefly, I'll be leaning on the great products that are out there from Gnomon workshop, Wowio books, my library of drawing and animation books (including the Illusion of Life and The Animator's Survival Kit, and JohnK's online training.

The first thing I think I'll be doing is going back to the basics. I never attended formal art school on drawing. I've picked up the basics along the way and can form shapes that are recognizable as what they are...but there are finer points I missed along the way. The first "semester" I've set myself to the basics of drawing. This will range from technique to concepts and will cover construction primarily. Perspective and more specifics (such as mechanical, cloth, and figure drawing) will be approached later on...but for now I'm keeping it simple.