Rough Animatic Final for Marshall's Class!

So today was the last day of my Sketching for Animators and Illustrators class with Marshall Vandruff, which was probably one of the best classes I've ever taken :) Marshall is SUCH a great teacher, and this class basically encompassed everything from drawing to story to tension to character development etc etc...whatever awesome stuff he could fit into 7 hours every saturday. We were lucky enough to create our own project and work on that during the entire term, so I chose to finally make something that could eventually be turned into a short film. I wanted to do an animatic to prepare for someday fully animating a short, which has always been a dream of mine. And... for some reason... creating an animatic was always a lot easier in my head. No idea why. But yeah... this was REALLY HARD, especially because I've never done storyboarding before (seriously anyway), and I avoid learning perspective like the plague... which CLEARLY has to stop if I ever want to progress in my artistic career. :\ SIGH.

ANYWAY. I was hoping I'd be able to finish this animatic by the end of class, but that just did NOT happen. I got really hung up on writing the story itself...trying to make it flow, and have all the necessary beats that comprise that definition of "good story structure"... which is ALSO way harder than it looks. GOSH. This story must've gone through 12 rewrites and at least 6 story variations, which I'm sure is normal, but I've just never done anything like this before. Writing stories is fun and great, but when you're trying to do it SERIOUSLY and wanting SO BADLY to make it good? Man... that's another story.

So yeah. That story hurdle was huge, and cost me a lot of time on actually doing the animatic. I also spent a lot of time trying to design the characters, when really I should've focused on story first. Oh well. Now I know. The animatic itself made me realize how much I still have to learn, and it also made me decide to isolate myself for 6 months and just focus on foundation and drawing simple shapes in perspective... I REALLY need that. CLEARLY. It was such a struggle to try and put out what was going on in my head. Trying to have interesting shots and angles is really difficult when that knowledge of perspective isn't there. I watched this Feng Zhu video recently that was really inspiring, and made me  REALLY WANT to go to Singapore for a year and go to his school. Him showing before and after stuff blew my mind! And also made me realize just how important foundation really is. Doing this project really made me feel that lack of foundation in my own training... and I really just CANNOT WAIT to really jump on that and GET BETTER ALREADY. ARGH.

Here's that video :) Really, really inspiring! FOUNDAAATTTIIOOOONNNN!!!!



Another thing about this project was that I got to work with a composer to create MUSIC for my characters, which was a COMPLETELY SURREAL EXPERIENCE!!! And REALLY FREAKING AWESOME. Too bad I didn't finish my animatic so he couldn't create more than demos for me without having anything to time it to, but all the more reason to work super hard to get it done! My buddy Jared Scott is ridiculously talented, and watching him create music out of thin air that made me actually FEEL my characters was just... really, really amazing. One of his demos is playing in the background of the animatic for test purposes, but I seriously can't wait to actually work with him on this for real.

And also huge thanks to Ben Juwono for helping me out with the boarding of my "action sequence" which I was COMPLETELY lost on. I dunno how storyboard artists do it man... mad respect! I learned so much! :)

Okay so this is a really long post, but I haven't posted in a while so whateverrrrr! :) All good.

Business Cards

I had to make last minute business cards for CTN... I wanted to make 6 different designs but didn't have time :( :( :( I guess I'll just print out more later. Hopefully they print out alright! These will be my first business cards EVER! I'm kinda excited :)

Willa Character Sheet

I was kinda in a bad place last night… I wasn’t having fun drawing Willa at all and she’s the main character of this story I’m working on! So yeah… was kinda depressing. I drew her like a bajillion times and she just had no life to her… but then today I got the “Art of Wreck-It Ralph” book and boy was that an inspiration :) Before I was so focused on keeping her simple that she was all stiff, but after I started loosening up, she started to have some personality. I still have a bajillion more drawings to do of her before I’m comfortable, but I think I’m finally heading in the right direction maybe~

Willa Color Attempts

Soooo this proves that I'm just now learning how to color. It's pretty frustrating. Apparently I didn't know anything about values before yesterday. Here's my progression from that first attempt... Doing it in black and white first REALLLLYYY helped. I need a lot of practice. But that's what this blog is for right??? To show progress! :D Let's hope I get better soon.

Sketching for Animators and Illustrators Midterm

So this is the first time I've combined my inspiration in the same area as my drawings... and it actually looks pretty cool :) It's nice to see it all together! It's kinda big so it'll probably be impossible to see anything unless it's opened in a new window or tab... haha :\

Oh man... this is gonna be a huge project. I'm so excited!!! :D

Willa and Fritz

Alrighty...I might finally be starting to like them :)

More Willa

I think I'm getting closer, but she's still not totally locked down. Her body looks too flat... gotta find a way to remedy this and make her volumes apparent.

Fritz & Willa Concepts

My midterm for Sketching for Animators and Illustrators is on Saturday, and I'm feverishly trying to get my main characters locked down. I posted some Willa before, and now I finally have some stuff on the main guy, Fritz.

Here are the more developed Fritz sketches. I like the way this is going :) If only I could get Willa to such a state... blah. I'm hoping I can find her soon!

And here are some of the scribbles it took to get there. Process process process! 

Here's an attempt at Willa... but it's pretty weak compared to Fritz. ARGH!

I still don't like where this is going. I think I'll give her long hair.

'Alienated' Character Exploration: Willa

Soooo I'm taking Marshall Vandruff's Sketching for Animators and Illustrators class at Fullerton College right now, and the cool thing about it is that we get to design our own project... so it's basically like independent study :) Awesome. Therefore I'm taking this opportunity to FINALLY create a short film. My midterm is next week and we have to show a pre-production presentation board, so I'm kinda freaking out since I wanna have as much material as possible for it. For my final I'm planning on doing storyboards and hopefully an animatic for the film I wanna animate early next year... never done that before so I'm preeettttyyy excited :D Just wish I had more time to work on this stuff. Ugh.

Anyway. Here are some early character explorations of the female lead, Willa. I'm still trying to figure her out, so it's a lotta scribbly diarrhea, but I figure I'd post it anyway.

Some Girl

Some sketches from a story that I'm putting on hold for a while. 

Earl and Kat Color

First batch of finished drawings for Kat and Earl's wedding. They are such an adorable couple! :) So honored to be doing this for them! :D

Self Portrait

Sooooo a couple friends and I have started doing this independent study thing to strengthen our foundational skills, and everyday we have a daily exercise. We started today, and the first one was a self portrait! So here's mine! Yay! :D

Wedding Stufffff

My friend Kat is getting married and she asked me to draw her some stuff for table decorations and things :) It's SUPER fun!!! Figured I'd post my progress on here. 

In-N-Out!!!

In-N-Out is great for AC when it's super hot...and it's also really yummy and has interesting people :)

Sketching for Animators and Illustrators Week 2

So 2 weeks ago I started taking Marshall Vandruff's Sketching for Animators and Illustrators class at Fullerton College... and let me tell you... it is AMAZING. I feel SO PRIVILEGED to finally be taking a class (not a seminar... a 16 week class!) with Marshall :) It's only week 2 but I have already learned so much, and I have a feeling I'm going to be improving a lot in the next couple months with what I'll be learning this term... it gets me all giddy inside! :D

Anyway. Here's an in class exercise we did...a study of one of Frank Thomas' pencil tests, "The Laughing Gauchito." It was really fun :) Each of these were about a minute or two each. I'm going to be posting a lot of studies from Marshall's class on here in the weeks to come to track my progress.

This class is REALLY making me want to animate! ARGH! Especially because we're going through the Richard Williams Animator's Survival Guide DVDs. SOOO GREAT.

Here's the pencil test the study is from :D

Girls and Boys

The dynamic between girls and boys is really interesting, especially in children. I thought it was SO adorable when I saw this little boy at Disneyland stop to tie his shoe, but apparently he was doing it either too slow or completely wrong because this little girl came outta nowhere to tie it for him :)

August Disneyland Sketchdump

I kinda went to Disneyland a lot in August... so I figure it's about time I posted some of the sketches I did there. I'm posting in order of oldest to newest (two sets from August 16, one from August 27 and one from August 30). The first set has my buddy Alex on the left with the Minnie ears, and a lot of sitting kids from the big animation building in California Adventure. We did Turtle Talk with Crush... love that place :D Then the 3rd set is a lot of people from New Orleans Square... that day I got stickers from a guy at the Disney Vacation cart because he liked my drawings! Then the last set is mainly from the Golden Horseshoe, which is a really great place to get work done because of the hilarious show and also the AIR CONDITIONING!!! UGHHH WHEN IS IT GONNA STOP BEING HOT ALREADY?!

Freelance Work!

So I've been focusing on some freelance illustration work lately... this is kinda the first thing that I feel is decent enough to post. I DO want to post all my process sketches, but they're so embarrassing. This style is a HUGEEEE challenge. I'm basically shooting for something that's completely opposite of my natural style...yippee. I guess it's a really great learning experience? DEFINITELY facing a ton of hurdles. This is far from done by the way. I am not very used to drawing men. The lack of curves is something I have to get used to. Haha.

Disneyland Is My New Office!

Now that I'm jobless, I can go to Disneyland however much I want... which is like... everyday. Since there's no AC at home, I'd rather just hang out at the park. It's pretty nice :) I've actually really taken to watching the various musical/performance groups around both Disneyland and DCA. I'm planning on sketching ALL of them!!! :D I'm starting with the Bootstrappers in New Orleans Square. They're pretty awesome :) Here are some sketches of Grieving Tim, the accordion player. I REALLY LOVE how all the pirates moveeee. Very... piratey :) I am soooo glad Disneyland exists.

Scrooge Final For David Colman's Character Design Class

So, when people see this, they usually say something like "Wha? Scrooge is a woman? What is this?" and yes. For our redesign project, David made us design Scrooge as a woman, and one of the ghosts as an animal. Anyway!

I still have a lot to do for this project... I really fell in love with it after really thinking about the story :) You can really change it a lot, just thinking about the premise of Scrooge as a female. Women deal with many different things, especially emotional things. I had a lot of fun coming up with a story I could relate to more. You know, as a woman. 

I definitely plan on going back and refining these, designing the whole cast and adding color. I'm just posting this because it's my presentation for class tonight. I didn't finish nearly as much as I wanted to finish, but boy did I learn a lot about the character design process. That's the most valuable thing :) I think this class made me realize everything I still have to learn to be adequate... so I'm going to go into MAJOR study mode now. 

Especially because I just quit my job :D (Last day was August 10! WHOA!) Time to chase those dreams, Elora! :)