Animation Tutorial- the Girl

So for my second half of Animation tutorial, our teacher was kind enough to let some of us seniors use that time to work on our senior projects, provided it had some level of thinking/acting in it. I'm kind of glad I thought ahead and had this scene for just that purpose. 

The general critique I got out of my teacher was what were the motivations behind the cuts and the people for their reactions to each other. He didn't like me going back and forth on my poses (cutting and duplicating poses for time saver) so I have to vary them up a bit and tweak some bodies and shots. The most challenging part for me at the moment is creating a believable motivation as to why the girl stops looking at the guy and looks out to the bridge. Overall this is adding more screen time and framework for me to do.

Speaking of bodies- I just realized that the costume for the girl was totally different from that of the villagers I had in mind earlier. Based on this site- the dress the girl is wearing is that of a Kimona Dress /Patadyong (a casual wear of filipino women of the visayas region), but I needed something more tribal-oriented like the Matigsalugs

new character sheet for girl WIP

SO-Week 7

Essentially some major music tweaking needs to occur:
-The two dudes and the missing pig need more frames/time since it goes by too fast, so I need to loop a music longer in that point.
-Jungle run through possibly
-The pan shot (now a pan, so Hunter needs to scootch out of the shot too) needs maybe 2 more frames an a cushion so it doesn't come in and out of the shot so badly.
-The scene with the girl also needs extending since things happen too fast.

Then the parts that need trimming:
-Hunter landing on crocodile- suggested making an overshoot of the croc's open jaws might give me the snap I was looking for.
-The entire sequence between the guy looking out the island and before he does the crab dance will be trimmed out (thank god).

Overall it seems I'm in an odd place since I'm still behind on some blocking, but went overzealous and jumped the gun on other pieces.

Two weeks left and I need half of all this already animated (not yet cleaned up, but at least the in-betweens and stuff are put down).

DragonHearts Storyboard

3rd version of my storyboard assignment of redoing a scene from 'Dragonheart'. Biggest lessons I got out of this is learning when are good moments to cut, get a point of view, close ups or not for emphasis and other things. Oh and need to learn to draw more animals. 

Dragon Riders and Ironclad

This week's assignment was making an 8 panel sequence after this image:

Dunno who made this- our teacher found it online and loved its  cinematic shot

 The original setup I had was that a mysterious something comes in and attacks the creature and which later reveals to be the dragon riders.

some unused panels

Mark fixed things up quick by simply rearranging the sequence so it reads a lot clearer.

And story impact wise, it is much much better.

We also had our discussion about the movie IRONCLAD- a medieval type backdrop for another 'Seven Samurai'-esque story. The biggest flaws to that was that while it was entertaining and all that, a lot of character goals and motivations were either very shallow (there's something there but it's all superficial) or you get situations like below. A lot of scenes could have also benefitted from a visual cue rather than a simple dialogue exposition.

  

Dem Hands

For our Animation Tutorial class- hand gesture study and animation.

Struggle

This week was doing an 8 panel sequence depicting 'Struggle'-could mean inner or outer struggle, in my case I opted for outer struggle in the cliffhanger sense.

Critiques for the sequence boiled down to 'Do Not crop the important bits of the shot'. This was applicable to panel 2 with the dude hanging on for dear life, and also with my panel 6- where I completely lost the hanging dude as I was trying to emphasize the other one pulling him up. The positive thing I got from my entry was that from the first panel- the hands holding on to each other,was a nice opening shot and an attention grabber.

13 Assassins and Bus Stop Beats

THe Horseman, BusStops and Economy of Icons

So this week we watched the 2009 australian film, The Horseman. It's a pretty raw and gorey movie about a father in a revenge rampage against men who had a hand in the death of his daughter. Andrews says it's quite a powerful movie in that as an audience we totally understand what motivates and drives this man, yet the sheer violence he dishes and receives leaves us conflicted on how deep is this man going before he's in over his head. He ain't superman and he ain't a super ex-spy like Liam Neeson was in Taken.

Assignment wise we had to do 5 different ways of drawing a dude waiting for a bus at a bus stop.
I thank the lucky stars a friend and classmate tipped me off that the key to this assignment was that one had to see a road, a person waiting and a bus stop.

The red notes basically indicate why the shot doesn't really read as 'waiting for bus' and could be

interpreted as something else entirely.

 So when story boarding, one doesn't give a lot of care on making really well rendered settings or scenes. This is storyboarding, not scene building. If we're going to be doing 300+ shots, we need to be as efficient and economic with what we draw to get a point across. The bottom half is basically a note that visually intense shots are best made when a visual pattern was established first before breaking it.




And finally, Mark's comment about Storyboarding to answer a classmate's question about the difficulty of the subject.

Comedy comes from Character

Mark Kennedy articulates something that was bugging me about my Senior Project class for awhile now: Comedy comes from Character. I've done a couple of doodles out of the croc for a bit and his whole being just boiled to the one doodle on the lower left:

Im still debating how wacky I want my story to be to have that in the short.

He's just a bit of no-nonsense, cool kind of croc who knows want he wants and frankly he 1) doesn't like the dude or his attitude and 2) is gonna make sure he can't cross the river. The girl kind of shares that same attitude which is why they sort of click with one another.

The dude on the other hand-is a mystery to me. So unless I know my opponent everything is up in the air.

For now I'm just basing my drawings on one of our Filipino Heroes Lapu-Lapu, as he is the 'maniliest' filipino dude design i've come across in terms of looks. We'll see how this plays out.

Floating Lady

So our assignment for Visual Storytelling was to make 4 panels after this image:

After a bunch of doodling, I came up with this sequence (read left to right):

8.5x11 folded twice, done with pencil hence smudgapalooza.

 The critiques I mostly got with this sequence was:
-Panel 2 had 2 things happening- the primary point I wanted was someone getting out as the second dude was making a call. The solution was to push back the secondary one and try to show the first more clearly.
-Panel 3 and 4 were redundant, in that both were showing the man about to take his glove off. Every panel should be bringing in new information and insight. So panel 3 ought to be indicating his approach to the body, and panel 4 reveals what's underneath the glove he's taking off. Also the depiction of taking the glove off was not clear and the focus (oooh shiny hand) in panel 4 was too low and ought to be in the center of the frame.

Storyboards Mark also critiqued on, my stuff are in the lower right. 

Digital do over, applying the critiques. 

Everything you need to know about Kalkie in 2 pages

These were (hastily) done comic strips on our second meeting in Graphics Novel Class. It's a little embarrassing gushing about myself-the last time I ever did so where in my Reflection papers back in High School-confidence, where did you go!? D8

But still, the class has been pretty insightful so far not only because of the technical aspects of comic making, but it just makes me excited to draw my own comics and apply everything that I learned.

Oh-and cause I'm a silly sap-comment note from teacher:
'Simply put, this may be the most technically proficient and gleefully enjoyable two-page bio comic I've come across. Can't wait to see more of your work.'


GLEEEEEEEEEEE. :D

The Adventures of Captain Conroy, Storyboard 101 and Breaking Away

So last week Mark Andrews narrated to us this sci-fi space adventure he and a friend of his was working on, and our assignment was to illustrate one scene that struck with us.

Since this was a week ago and I barely remembered most of the details, I decided to go with the beginning, when the Captain and his motley assortment of aliens were held at gunpoint by spider-men with big guns and he was coolly relaying all his achievements in his nigh-immortal lifetime.



This being my first critique encounter with Mark Andrews, the only thing that held me back from crying like a little baby (from being the second person critiqued on and the class laughing at the work) was the fact he pretty much treated everyone the same way.

That and he drew out all these awesome alternative shots. A lot of which, as someone who drew comics and knows the importance of composition, makes me wonder 'Why didn't I think of this?'

What's the point of the moment, and how best to relay that point in the simplest and clearest way possible. My shot was a mess in that the lighting and tones were everywhere and nothing really popped. Conroy looks more angry than cool in the face of weapons (which you can baaaaarely see in upper left corner).

I also jotted some thoughts on the movie of the week, Breaking Away. The movie bored me to tears about this small town kid who wanted to be an Italian bike racer. It felt shoddy being one of two people who didn't like the movie and having to articulate my why's and being told I was thinking 'Dated'- taking the movie expectations of today with it's fast pacing to back to the 1970s.

I still didn't like it- maybe cause I couldn't relate or felt little empathy for the main dude. I just saw Mr. Smith goes to Washington last Saturday with friends and that's an older film and also slow movie but I felt more for the character there than Breaking Away.

Kathryn Spence and 3D animation

Today just did some more notebook scanning more back posting.

When I got to my Inter-D class today, I was rather surprised we were heading out for a field trip to see SF artist Kathryn Spence- doubly surprised there was an email palooza last night on getting rides there. GEH.

Fortunately I managed to squeeze in a ride and the trip was pretty awesome- Kathryn makes animal sculptures out of a mess of fabric and dirt and whatnot to create the faux color and textures of the animals she makes. http://mcam.mills.edu/exhibitions/current2.php

Afterwards it was just more 3D animation.

I'm doubly frustrated by the fact that 1) I'm still struggling just getting the motion right- Brett always stresses that I should work on the ball/core first before I end start to think about tinkering with the legs.

 2) I sit right between the two of the 'best' student works in the class. Wargh.

Animation at the Seniors Room

Woke up this morning with the resolution to get to school today, grab my 3d animations and script (which I left in my account desktop because of the blackout).

Woke up 10:15, bus leaves at 11.

Grabbed all my veggies and laptop and just ran to the bus.

Since Colleen is actually a senior level, she let me into the Seniors room- basically a small room of maybe 10 of these babies http://computershopper.com/shoptalk/peripherals/wacom-cintiq-at-new-york-comic-con

Gods it's awesome *w*

I finished blocking in most of tellou's hair and clothes, and sort of fizzled out after 3 or so. (Roughs ver 1) http://kalkie.deviantart.com/art/Character-Weight-Shift-263318744

I don't know where the hell the others have the energy to keep drawing. Well at the very least, I finished my obstacle course in 3d and more or less did more work on the single leg walk cycle, i think.

Dunno why, but there's nobody at the anime club at the given time, so I'm just going to wait for the 8pm shuttle. at least I can go home earlier and eat something.

Character Weight Shift Blocking

Rather nice today that I woke up without having to cram for the Acrylics color class.

In 2D today I did some character weight shifts-

but since Jamie didn't have the videos with her, we just did some new ones with a webcam and from the bunch me and the teacher settled on this one.

Tiles and Weight shifts

Tile thing didn't turn out so well, and it was because of the lack of contrasting values in the hues- though teacher did say that the color palette had a nice, summer feel to it.

For 2D animation Ryan gives me another positive feedback on how fast I can doodle out my blocking. |D;

It's pretty easy once you know the steps on blocking out. (well these simple cycles anyhow)
Draw out the first and last poses.
Then the middle pose/passing.
Then the in-betweens (They're called squash/reach in a walk cycle)

I guess I work so fast because a lot of people already draw out their forms and outlines, I'm just more concerned about seeing the flow and will worry about the real proportions later on.

A happy turn of events in Color for Illustration

Holy damn- pulled a 5 hour miracle cram of printing/tracing, copying to new paper, and painting 2 tile patterns for Color for Illustration. Also good that QB gave me some of that bread we baked last night so I had some carbs through class. 

Wouldn't you know it- I spent more hours/time planning the Pacman Tile and they all preferred the Bee Tile. Kinda wanted to laugh and punch the classmate who explained the reason he preferred the Bee one was because the other one looked like 'a simple screenshot that was taken and then pasted diagonally'. 

But what got me in an overtly good mood was the fact I was doing much, much better in workshop today! Teacher said I was getting better with painting in acrylics and was more confident in my colors. HAPPY. :D

In Animation we did some more refining with our walk cycles. This was on Monday.

This was after teacher's critique- mostly about doing more ease in and out of the arm swings, and then fixing the positioning of the feet so it wouldn't make a big pop when the left foot swings across.

He also left early because he felt sick. Spent the rest of the time goofing off and listening to classmates belt out Disney songs before we all left at the usual class time. 

Acrylic hate, demo, Bread demo and Tiles

This took forever to plot out.

I wanted to freaking cry today because my acrylics and exercise on chroma colors sucked big time and this was already the 3rd attempt. I went over to Chinatown to buy groceries and then called my sister and then later called Kyla for help. Thank God she decided to go out of her way to give me like a small painting demo of how to mix paint and lending me her brush- BIG DIFFERENCE. D'8

By 7 I finally just slapped some last minute paint because I signed up for our dorm's bread making demo and at 9 I was cramming in the lounge till 1 coming up with these tile designs for the same class. QB kept me company all the way and helped figure out the pathways on the Pacman maze.

This, not so much.

Good Day

Morning-crammed for Color for Illustration about our emotions around the time of 9/11. Did bleh on critique corner since my illustration pieces were far too literal (eg. drawing the burning towers), so have to think more metaphorically And send a new sketch either tomorrow or before weekend-
-as I struggle to try and finish my grayscale exercise And my painter's circle And my hue comparison exercise this weekend.

Damn you acryliiics~ D8<

I'm super super glad that I have Animation 2 on the same day, just being able to doodle and animate stuff makes me feel better.

Well that and the fact
- our teacher (Hans Brekke) brought in a friend from Tippett studios (who'll also be our sub for the next 3 weeks while Brekke's in Norway).
- Despite my cruddly squiggly flash linearts, both teachers didn't mind and I actually did fine on blocking the walk cycle. (walk cycle with teacher critiques implemented)

-He showed us this lil film he and the rest of the Tippett studios did on one of their slow production days. XD And he's the protagonist to boot.

-Then after class I helped out a sophomore who's doing walk cycles for the first time so it felt great being able to be of help.

Then on the bus ride back to Webster I got free ice cream from Colleen and listened to Cel's 'Celphiphany' on the parallels between George Lucas' career and his own movies.

Nostalgia and Pose Push

 I was still pretty bummed over my shoddy grayscale work in C.F.Illustration, so I tried doing some exercises in my ntbk. Now if I could only just do the same with freaking acryclics. The others were doodles for the illustration ideas I have in mind for the 9/11 assignment, mostly the moment when my ma woke me up in the middle of the night (Philippines) so we could watch the news on the twin tower attacks.

Afterwards, I went over to my InterDisciplinary Class wherein I had a bad case of the heebie jeebies, since I wasn't so sure if relating Fernando Amarsolo's work to my WIP of my GGKids based on Personal Nostalgia* is what the teachers were looking for. I mean, some people were going deep with their symbolisms and metaphysical interpretations (of their source or own works).

Fortunately, it worked out all right for, and some people even gave me compliments to my presentation.

*Fernand Amarsolo- Filipino painter, dude who pretty much captured the 'Idyllic Nostalgic Filipino provincial lifestyle' with his always sunny and lively colors and use of the Backlight technique. I related this to my illustration, which when I think about it, was an unconscious nostalgia for old times- that being these kids and just doing their story; back when I was in High School, just doodling comics and their adventures for the hell of it and getting praises from friends and family. Not having to worry about character design, plot, story, future, school tuitions, etc.

For 3D Animation 2 we did some more ball bounce tests (bleh, think I did worse than before) and some pose  modelling. Teacher generally said push the poses more.