Street Saviore Faire

Just a little something I did for myself before I went from school chaos to job searching chaos. If you haven't guessed already, a friend was playing "Why Should I Worry" from Oliver and Company and gave me the idea to do this. Gio is the spotted hyena and Oliver is the lynx (in a kitten form). Both are shapeshifters. I'll put their human forms up here as soon as I get other things done =)

Animation Demo Reel, 2010-2012

A sample of my work from my freshman and sophomore years at SVA. Here you'll see a collection of work-in-progress animation, pencil tests, full colored animation, and even some experimental animation.

Also, I did put some clips from my final sophomore film in there. I will probably not be posting the whole film here anytime soon for two main reasons:
1. It's not quite finished yet...there are parts I have not even fully animated just yet.
2. If the final results turn out well and I get the thumbs up from my professors, I may consider entering it into some festivals.

I'm Back...Sorta!

Haven't posted here since winter break...yikes. Been pretty busy though. I plan on posting a bunch of art and animations on here once again. It's been tough keeping up because it always slips my mind. Not much room left up there. This is one of the projects that have been keeping me busy:




This is the animatic for my final film this year. So far, I'm still in the process of working on the keys...so I'm pretty behind. Almost done though, and once those are done the animating should start moving along faster. Then comes inking....definitely got my hands full, but I'm excited for the final results.

This film features two shapeshifters: Harper (deer) and Oliver (lynx), that is..prey and predator...and how they end up saving each other from a pack of hungry coyotes.

Happy Holidays!

For the holidays, I was going to try and do a "12 Days of Christmas" series, ending on Christmas day, but because of finals and everything else, I ran out of time. Instead, I did a few sketches I liked enough to finish as paintings. Unfortunately, I still only had time to do one:

A nice wintery portrait of Christian, Kit and Christian's little sister, Evelyn. This was my first time with soft shading in photoshop, and I'm glad to say I think I understand how to do it now. The upside of this being the only picture I could finish is, I think it will be my last finished artwork for 2011. And with all the issues I went through this semester, this year in fact, I'm glad to have finished on a good note with this. 

I will be finishing the other sketches I planned on doing, of course. Hopefully before schoolwork piles on again. 

I also got some nice gifts this year:

A popcorn maker for my dorm 

How to Train Your Dragon: Gift of the Night Fury/Book of Dragons

The Lion King, Diamond Edition

A nice Moleskine sketchbook

Giftcards

A nice new watch

and an Iphone!

My relatives from my mother's side came up from Florida tonight and will be coming over tomorrow for a "second" Christmas dinner. We haven't had this many relatives together in quite some time, so it only adds to the good note this year's ending on. 

I wish this post could be longer, but between the holidays, and recovering from finals, my brain is gone! I wish everyone a Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!!!

Animal Animations!

Our last assignment for the Fall Semester in Animation was to do different animal gaits (walk, trot/amble, canter, gallop). We could use different animals or the same for each gait. I chose different ones because I had several types of animal characters and wanted to practice. It really helped a ton with understanding each animal. 

This was a fun assignment to do. Unfortunately there were some exporting problems and everyone's animations were glitching and sticking between each loop. I did my best to smooth out the glitch but it's still there. I will try and find the problem and export it again if I have the time. For now though, I suppose they are tolerable enough to watch.

For the walk cycle, I chose to do a Lynx because I developed a recent character who shapeshifts into a Canada Lynx. I've grown fond of him quickly and the animal it's self so you'll be seeing plenty of Lynxes in my gallery an animations I'm sure.

My old friend, Trey, finally became animated. I was excited and pleased with how he turned out. Had some issues with the tail earlier but fixed it. Still could be a tad better in my opinion but it still came out just fine. The rest of him moves nicely (if you can look past the stupid glitch). 

I had animated a deer cantering, but that is sort of a work in progress. I have all the keys done but wasn't thrilled at how it looked. The head movement was good and the legs, but the body barely moved. I need to fix it. Once I do, though, I'll be putting it up here as well.

Finally, I did a horse galloping. Reference, for all these animations, is your best friend. Slow motion videos, pencil tests, pictures, anything. There's no shame in using a ton of reference. I loved this one. It was nice and smooth, but thanks to the technical difficulties, it looks choppy here. I apologize for that. 

Lip Sync Work in Progress- Sophomore Year

Another project for my Digi Comp class. I used Trip! Finally, got to see the guy in color and I've had him for how long? I think Jonah Hill as his voice is fairly fitting actually. I decided to put this up before I finish it because it shows the three different steps in making it. The first part was fully colored and inked, then it goes to just the inked frames I did. The last part shows the rough version. I have rough keyframes done for the other two characters. I'll be finishing this sometime soon with those other two and a more finished background.

The audio is from the movie Knocked Up, but Trip belongs to me.

Puppeting Assignmnet- Sophomore Year

Another assignment for Digital Compositing class. I used Niko again for old time sake =) This was a lot more tedious than I thought! Once again I hand drew the model and scanned it in to be inked and colored in Photoshop. Then I copied and pasted the separate joints into different layers. How many layers? A lot. Her tail has 4 joints in it, body has 2, the neck and head moved separately and her ears had 2 joints. The limbs are pretty obvious. It was a lot more trouble than it's worth to make sure the outline matched up at all times so I just got rid of it and ended up liking the vector look to it. After it was all assembled I imported it into After Effects and began animating, joint by joint. At first I thought it'd move a long faster than the traditional way. But now...let's just say my admiration and respect for claymation artists has doubled. You have to have so much patience for it.

Anyway, enjoy this little animation of Niko =) Next week I'm going on a field trip to Titmouse, where my digital compositing professor work. If I can take pictures I will. If not, I'll still share my experience on it!

Prepare yourselves for a slew of pencil tests coming up as well involving Kit playing tennis and another one of my characters, perhaps Ali, cracking a whip. Also, I have another assignment coming up in 2 weeks of a fully colored lip sync (exciting!) There will be a lot more animations to come this year. Lots.