Coming Soon!

So, Thesis Year has finally begun and my film "Bear Appetit" is underway! I'm currently still in the storyboarding/animatic phase. Right now just trying to whittle down the film from 5:30 to 4:00. It's turned out to be quite a chore, but I'll be happier in the end. But right now, it's still all a surprise! For now..the most I'll show for now until things are set in stone is the characters that'll be in the film:

The actual animating is due to start around Halloween the latest!!

Thesis Year!

I now have a solid reason to update this blog more regularly. From now on, this will be my "production blog." So any films that I'm working on, or any production work in general, will be on here.
I also have NOT forgotten about Totem. The whole film will probably not be found anywhere online anytime soon, but I will work on perhaps whipping up a teaser just to show how it looks now. 

In other news, summer is moving fast and thesis year is just around the corner. I got the green light for my film idea, but I won't be telling too much about it yet. It's a surprise! As a bonus though, here's a first draft of one of the characters who will be in the film:

I will be posting stuff as soon as I get things rolling but for now, I'm just announcing what will be on this blog from now on. I'm hoping that should make it lot more interesting to look at. 

Third Year Film

Once again, it's that time of year where I must make a "short" Short animated film. This time, I have the absolute pleasure of working with one of my good friends and classmates on this next film: TOTEM.

During one of our Wildlife Watercolor Painting classes, we had to take a trip to the Museum of Natural History. There, we began tossing ideas back and forth and came up with a common interest and inspiration: Northwest Native Americans. So during break, we had some lunch and wandered over to the Pacific Northwest section and studied the clothes, houses, jewelry and, of course, totems. We did our research on color choices and what animals were often represented in the totems and boiled it down to 4: Eagle, Salmon, Bear, and Coyote, 3 of which are the main characters of the film. 

I am trying not to talk about the film too much because I feel I shouldn't really talk about it until it's complete.  I will, however, show some of my rough, unofficial concepts of the characters.

Coyote Early Concept

Eagle Early Concept

Bear Early Concept

Unfortunately, my scanner isn't working with my new laptop, so I had to rely on my phone to take these. Thank goodness it takes good pictures! 

This was the final color scheme for Coyote, but in his final design, his face looks more like the original sketch. 

With the designs just about set, and storyboards currently being drawn, the film is coming along nicely! As the film gets closer to completion, I will be posting some stills to show how it looks. Stay tuned!

Happy Belated Holidays/New Years! 

I remember saying several times that I would update more. I understand a bit better now why I haven't (but will soon!) First reason is that, being a student, I am very limited on time, so other that class assignments and exercises, I really don't have any spectacular artwork or animation to show at the moment. The second reason is that I haven't had any exciting news just yet, but that's what I'm working on this semester. I really need to buckle down this year as far as jobs and internships go and a lot of my New Years resolutions involve overcoming several personal obstacles that have been in my way of getting closer to a job or internship for a long time. 

I won't say anything more though; don't want to jinx anything! I hope that in a few months or so I'll have something come up and therefore, will be able to put this blog to better use!

Pencil Tests - Rough Stages

So, another semester is coming to an end and I just have to say....when did that happen?? It went by so quickly I barely had time to realize I have a ton of finals piled up. With that said though, I figured I would put up the rough animations, some just in the key and breakdown stages, that I've done so far.

This was the first animation assignment I did for my junior year. I had to practice showing weight by having a character lift a heavy object. It came out fuzzy and dark for some reason. Definitely going to reshoot once it's fully inbetweened. You may have to view it larger for now. Good old technology...

For this, we had to have one character passing an object to another character. I already decided I wanted to use Kit and Christian, but originally I was going to have him give her his necklace. However, it snowed the day I started and I just got in the mood for doing a winter theme...and a snuggly one. This is also just in the rough stages.

More roughs! This time of an expression change. I was going to try a funny gag, but I thought it'd be more of a challenge to animate deeper emotions. I feel like I wasn't at my best for this one. It looked a lot better in my head, but my classmates knew what the emotions were so that's good. 

I really am going to push inbetweening at least the passing one before the semester's end and hopefully the bear. Next time, I hear I am going to be animating 2 lip synchs and a finished film! Seeing as how last year went, expect this year's film to be a lot simpler, but more animated!

Anywho, back to work!

Animals and Watercolors

Well, it's been quite sometime since I've last posted here. I have a feeling I'll be posting more frequently with the work I've been doing in school though. I'm excited! 

This year I'm taking a class called Animals in Motion, where each class we take a trip up to the Central Park Zoo or, more frequently it seems, the Bronx Zoo and paint animals in water color. Although it's not my best medium, I still enjoy it and it's been helping me tremendously. I've let go of small details, even when animation or drawing, and I've been focusing more on the movement and the big picture. That's huge for me. Plus I get to draw/paint animals for hours too. 

Here are some paintings I've done so far from the Madagascar, Jungle World and Bird exhibits at the Bronx Zoo:

Starcrossed Storyboards (WIP)

Not sure why I haven't uploaded these yet, but here are 3 pages from my Storytelling class. For the class, I wish I chose a different story, but I chose this because it was the only one I could think of that was most developed story-wise. I'm still actually glad I did, because it really helped flesh out the storyline for me. 

This section is sort of in the middle of the story actually. I'll try and explain this without having to explain the whole story.

The main protagonist, Kit, has moved to Ireland (where she falls in love with Christian) and her absence has really upset her best friend Ali, who has been left behind in North Carolina. Their friend, Aidan, is worried about Ali after she's been out of school for a week. He goes to check on her...only to find she's gone insane and destroyed her beloved wooden sculptures!

I will finish this section up and repost when I do.