The Jalloo Festival of Animation and Games was this weekend, and as a graduating student, I got to be a member of the showcase! :)
As such, we had to have a prototype demo reel to demonstrate our work. I'll be working on it further over the next few days, but since I have the video uploaded anyway, I figured it would be worth posting up on the blog.
On the topic of Jalloo, it was a blast! I enjoyed attending and volunteering previous years, but it was really cool to just see the other graduating students' displays, and to talk with a lot of professionals at my own booth. Of course, the panels and arcade were also pretty fun, and it was super cool to meet Jim Hickey. I hope I'm able to return next year, too! :)
As I now have a few animations uploaded online, I figure it would be best to upload a little of what I've worked on this term for animation too!
We had a different instructor this term, and as such, instead of Flipbook, we've been animating a lot in Flash. I've definitely gotten better and more confident with the program as a result!
This was the first animation we did this term. It was part of the 11 Seconds Club back in January. It's all rather rough, and there's a lot of animation to finish, but for my first actual animation in Flash, I feel I did alright! I definitely learned a lot from it, which helped speed up the next project a fair bit!
I got some revisions recently on this animation, so if I have the time to revisit and finish it, you'll be seeing it again! :)
Our second project was a team project for the 11 Seconds Club in February, in which I worked together with David Phan. We each animated a character, and the cleaned up each other's characters. I did the rough animation of the scientist, and cleaned up the cat's animation. It's the first time we've cleaned up someone else's work, so it was definitely a learning experience.
Unfortunately, I have neither the finished combined roughs, nor the finished combined cleaned up animation, but I will do my best to get a copy!
This was the most recent animation of ours. Our instructor, Tara Audibert, designed a snow ferret character for the class to use in a daisy chain animation. The very first frame of the animation is supplied by Shelby Christie, and using that frame, I had to get to my last frame (which was made before the rest of the animation).
Our combined animation will be added to the monthly loopdeloop contest, which had the theme of rainbows for this month!
One of our assignments this term was to create a pitch poster and pitch page for a fake series of our creation.
My series is evidently Paranormal Detective Agency. The focus isn't on the creepy aspect- it's more of a fun creepy atmosphere, if anything- but instead on how Dorothy and Andrew have to step up and take responsibility in order to help uncover the mystery. They're inexperienced, but they'll learn and grow throughout the series because, even if they don't want to, they'll have to, if they want the disappearances to stop. Through solving the smaller mysteries around, they gradually uncover what's really going on behind the scenes in the city. Whether they save the city or not... who knows? :)
Oh! And the little animal on Andrew's head is Spi, the family's familiar. It's through him that they're able to track ghosts from a distance.
That's about all I'll say about the series for now, ha ha. I don't know if I'll ever develop the idea more- if I do, no doubt a lot of changes will be made- but it was a fun little project to do!
We recently had a project consisting of drawing the model as a character! It was really fun to do, and pushing the poses while simplifying everything in the given amount of time was definitely a challenge! I feel like I have improved a lot this term, and I hope next term turns out just as well!
As usual, colors are a blast to work with! Some of the colors were added digitally, while some were added with colored conté during the poses. The cowgirl on the first page actually has cut out scraps of paper for color! :)
My second page of café sketches for this term! We got to see some of Stephen Silver's café sketches, and I noted that he liked to use blocks of color to help the drawing stand out from the page, so I tried it out for myself. I like the way it looks!
This drawing jam consisted of taking one of the outfits, and designing a character in them. The extra challenge was to do it in How to Train You Dragon's concept art style, so while I didn't copy the style exactly, I used it as influence on the character design. :)
In this drawing jam, we had to design a character that would fit into the stock backgrounds supplied. I thought it was a good opportunity to play with some fun magic stuff!
This one is pretty self explanatory, ha ha. We took a character and had them do 25 expressions. Some of the better ones have already been posted on the blog. :)
In which the challenge was to draw a muscular character, bonus if in the style of Mike Mignolia. Again, I mostly used the style challenge as influence and went off on my own path from there. It was fun, though! Seeing his art really makes me want to read Hellboy now!
This drawing jam was the Lady Knights Randomizer by http://dogbomber.tumblr.com/. As I originally posted just the sketch, it's only fair I keep the sketch up along with the clean version!
I just realized I haven't updated my blog at all this term, so here's a few things I've done for life drawing that haven't been uploaded, newest to oldest.
We've recently been experimenting with branding, so my name style and the colors on the pages are, for now, all different, ha ha.
We've been focusing a lot on force and characterization this term in life drawing. It's been challenging to loosen up, but really fun so far! I can see a lot of improvement! :)
A few things I've done from this term that I should post up!
We had to design a creature and skeleton for a class project. I made sure to challenge myself by making something that wasn't supposed to be cute. Well...too cute; it's still a little cute.
The shoulder pads look like they don't belong because they don't; I didn't get to play around too much for this, but he tends to steal body parts from his enemies and use them as extra armor. :)
We had a project where we had to design a character using the style of Xmen Evolution, using only the model sheets the instructor provided. It was actually really fun to do, and I learned a lot from it!
Doing clean up with pencil again was odd, I'm so used to digital clean up now. But it was fun!
Life drawing assignment focusing on gestures. Most of these were 30 second to 1 minute long gestures, with about one 2 minute gesture- the one in the top left corner. It was challenging, but I definitely feel I improved in speed and accuracy with this assignment!
My drawing jams for this term. I had to rush a bit of them, but they didn't turn out all too bad!
I tried a completely new brush when coloring the warrior lady; it's obvious I'm new to it, but it was fun to use, nonetheless!
The eyeball and lips were character design concepts for an actual production our class will be working on. None of them were picked, but it was kinda fun to try and come up with different looks for such simplistic characters!
I've managed to forget about this blog for the better part of half a year or so, ha ha. So I'll post some stuff I never got around to posting from first year!
LIFE DRAWING
I really enjoyed drawing fabric! And I feel like I really, really improved during this year for life drawing!
LAYOUT
I improved a lot for layout too! I learned a lot about staging and such. We also got to use flash, which is what I used to color the few with color; overall, it's a pretty fun program!
ILLUSTRATION
I wish we had gotten to do more illustrations for class, they really are fun to do!
First one was a clean-up assignment, in which we needed to try and ink a digital drawing like a comic. I'm going to work on improving at this sort of inking in my spare time, for sure!
The second one was another illustration for clean-up class; this time we had to mimic a style and color it, all while using a dynamic pose; I learned that Panty & Stocking's art style is fun to draw, ha ha!
And the final one was done purely in flash; we had to take a character and, well, clean and color an illustration of them using flash. I chose my superhero character, Irene, since she was one of the few characters I had a sketch of with me.
So we recently had a project in which we had to design 5 elves. Three of them were pre-described in a cute story given to us, while two of them were left to whatever we wanted to do. It was a really fun assignment! c:
This one is Fixly. He was one of the ones in the story. I didn't push his design all too much; as he seemed to be the main character, I wanted it to look interesting, but not too exagerated.
Postly is another from the story. I tried pushing the design a little more here, but not as much as I was trying for. Still, he was fun to work on too, and it gave me a good opportunity to try pushing more force into my poses.
Snootkin was the final one mentioned in the story. I'm not all too fond of the design, I feel I could have made him look more appealing had I spent more time on him. I struggled to pose him, too, but I think I got something okay in the end.
Neige was the first elf completely of my own design. After my previous project, in which I had tried to make a male character who was noticeably male, I took this opportunity to make a pretty, girly elf princess. She was the most fun to design, although I chose not to push her exageration too far.
Cook's the second elf I made. Since I already had Neige, who was a little tall and fairly skinny, I wanted someone short and stubby- but still cute. Having him as an energetic kid really helped me find a dynamic pose, too. If I were to redo him, I think I'd round his face off more, but I'm pretty happy with him!
This is actually a pretty early on drawing in my sketchbook. I like it, it was fun to work on~
Of course, now that it's been a while, there's quite a few mistakes I can see, ha ha.
This is mostly a doodle of Frankie, also from a while ago. We had a project concerning Foster's Home, and I really liked Frankie's design.
This is from a project we had in character design class. We had to design a halloween-themed character and their sidekick. After a million pages, this was the end result.
This spawned from me just wanting to draw a crazy, frilly dress. It was fun!
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