Animation Mentor
After this past summer, I decided to apply to Animation Mentor. It’s a wonderful animation school, where their main focus is animation and not so much on the other stuff in the 3D pipeline. Each semester you’re given a new mentor, who is someone that is actively working as an animator (they’re mostly at big name movie studios). I was accepted and started my 18 month journey in January. Now, we’re already finishing up with week 5! Time really has flown by since I started and I have learned a lot from my mentor. I figured that I could use this blog to showcase what I’ve learned and hopefully post more of my personal art.
In this post I’ll be covering weeks 1 – 3.
Week 1 was basically just getting to know everyone in the class including our mentor and what we should expect.
Now for week 2, our assignment was to sketch from life and pose the AM rig.
This was a fun assignment and sketching people in a YMCA dance class can be a bit challenging at times, but it was good practice. The AM rig is a bit annoying with its gigantic head and lack of clavicle controls, which makes some poses almost impossible to replicate. It’s of course challenging like anything in animation, so it’s a good thing that I love challenges.
Week 3 is where we start to actually animate. It’s a bouncing ball animation without squash and stretch. The assignment is suppose to get us practicing with timing and learning how to use the graph editor.
During our lecture our mentor showed us how to copy and paste the translation Z (Tz) to the rotation X (Rx) and then to scale the keys, so that the rotation of the ball would be consistent with its size and speed. The amount we need to scale it is figured out by the diameter of the ball (2Rπ) divided by 360 degrees, which is how many degrees it takes for 1 full rotation.
He also showed us; how to do a roll back on the ball, how the arcs of the bounces should be symmetrical, the height of the arcs should descend on a curve, which is more natural looking than a line, and about timing.
We also had to do another pose, this time we were given an emotion… excitement!
That’s it for weeks 1 – 3 and next time I’ll be focusing on weeks 4 – 5.
Storyboards!
Sometimes it can be a challenge to take a script and put it into an image sequence that not only has dynamic camera angles, but at first glance know instantly what’s going on. Especially a script that was written by someone else.
When I storyboard my own stories, I know what I want my shots to look like and how I want them to flow. To some people it might sound like a waste of time to storyboard your own stories, but from my experiences… a shot may look amazing in my imagination, but after drawing out the sequences… it just doesn’t look right or have the right flow. It also helps if I need someone to help me with a shot, I can just throw them my storyboard and animatic (another topic for another post) and they are instantly caught up with what I’m doing.
When I storyboard I don’t draw most of the panels like they’re their own pieces of art. I do the storyboards just as a reference for myself. If you have ever watched the “Making of” extras on a Pixar DVD, they will show you the storyboards and animatics. They really go all out on these storyboards. Most of the people that work in the storyboarding department are illustrators, which is a good reason why they look so amazing. After looking at one of these storyboards, you can tell the feeling that they’re going for, with the colors, the textures, and the overall style in each little frame they draw. Of course, it makes sense that they make it so intense since they need to convey their sequence of shots to giant group of people.
The way I see it… it’s better to have more than not enough. If you look at your own storyboard and don’t know what’s going on… then you got a problem. Haha!
Here’s an example of a storyboard I did for my thesis…
During this process, a few shots were changed and some new ones were added in. It was all for the better and if it wasn’t for my storyboard, I would of wasted a lot of time animating shots that I never would of used.
Next up is another storyboard of a Work In Progress animation which will be a 2D animation…
Until next time!
Evolution of Blazey
She is definitely not my oldest character, but she is one of my favorites. Created to be my animated self.
Stats…
Created: February 2003
Race: Half Zombie, Half Cow Demon
Age: Looks 18, but is actually… well… the dead don’t age. They just rot.
Super Powers?: Can set people and things on fire with just one punch! Also she can eat human flesh raw and not get sick. 
Personality: Goes from extreme happiness to rage fits in a matter of seconds. Most would consider her bi-polar, while she sees it as justified anger towards life’s retarded obstacles. She is very animated almost to the point of being over the top. When you get her going she never knows when stop talking, usually it turns into some sort of rant or a story that never seems to have an ending.
Now that you know a bit about Blazey let us begin this evolution waaaay back in 2003…
This was basically how it started… I picked a name, Blaze-chan. Keep in mind, I’m not Japanese or any sort of Asian decent, I was just completely in love with anime and manga at the time. Then I drew a character resembling me. That’s how most tweens go about character creation. Haha!
After reading a lot of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac… Blaze-chan turned into a very crazy, angry kind of gal.
Lets skip ahead a bit…
The only image I have on hand with this next incarnation… Blaze-chan soon was dawning a pair of wings, a fluffy tail, and a pair of cow horns.
Taking a few more steps down the evolution line…
This is when I first started getting more into zombies. Blaze-chan lost the eyes, the wings and the tail since… well… it was a cliché tween thing to do and by this point I was one mean, keen, radical, teen! Ha!
Jumping ahead a bit more…
This is almost the Blazey we know and love. She got her horns back and…
Now for the current Blazey!!!
After being completely tired of everyone thinking I’m Asian… I dropped the “–chan” from my character’s name and from my alias, then I added the “y” because Blaze is just too boring of a name. The only physical thing that has really changed since that last picture was her hair; instead of the part being in the middle, it shifted to the side.
As seen here and in EndlessSilence.com’s layout those cute little evil kiwi birds just happen to show up out of nowhere, following her wherever she goes. They kind of get annoying when she wants some privacy like in the bathroom.
Friends…
Naill:
Without a doubt Blazey has always had a partner in crime, Naill, who is my real life best buddy in the whole, wide, world’s character. Well… her human persona character called Naill… which is also my friend’s name. Got a headache yet? Her art will soothe that brain of yours…
Naill’s drawing of us, basically says it all… Naill has always been the sarcastic, straight faced kind of character and Blazey the very animated, crazy sort of gal.
There was a comic many years ago that Naill and I came up with while in class.
This is just one snippet of one of the strips I drew. There were many more that never made their way to my scanner… someday… someday I will re-scan the pages I re-did and the ones I never showed the world.
Azreal:
Yes, he is named after a fallen angel… he is yet another character I started drawing back in the embarrassing tween years and I’m just too lazy to come up with another name. Anyways… he’s quite the fan of Blazey to the point of obsession, kind of like a sick puppydog that just doesn’t know when the hell to stop following her around.
Advisor:
He was created as an image of my conscience. Then he just turned into this character that tries to keep Azreal from basically destroying the world.
Chaos:
My first character to have lived this long and have not grown tired of. I suppose “friend” is the wrong term to call her relationship with Blazey since she really just wants Blazey dead.
To finish up this post, here are some more Blazey images some new and some very old…
Next post… Storyboarding! Storyboarding! Storyboarding!
Lighting Cabin WIP
I have always wanted to try my hand at this Lighting Contest. I would never call myself a Lighter/Render, but it has always interested me. More so than modeling. Haha!
This is what I started with…
From there I threw in a physical sky and tweaked some of the textures; the grass, the beach, the rocks, the tree trunk and the water. After that I dove into the physical sky settings. I want a soft almost serene kind of scene with that in mind…
This was how my camera was set up, but as you can see the windmill is almost cut off and I didn’t like how much head room was over the tree.
Here is camera number two. I tightened up the composition a bit, but I’m still not 100% satisfied with it. I honestly don’t like how they set the scene up. I kind of wish I could move the beach over… along with some of the mountains, but oh well. At this point I’m fiddling with the shadows trying to soften them.
In this one, I moved the camera again and I think I like this one the best. Then I threw in a mountain, extended the grass behind the cabin and added fog. I’m still fiddling with the fog settings, it’s a bit too opaque.
I toned down the fog and haze settings to look more like rolling fog, but I feel like where the water is needs more fog effect. So back to more fog tweaking and adding in some clouds.
Next Friday… A look at the evolution of a character of mine….
Sketch Dump Sunday #1
Well here it is! A few pages of sketches and doodles….
If you couldn’t tell I’m a big Nightcrawler (from Marvel’s X-Men) fan. I also have characters of my own that I always just kind of default draw if I can’t really think of anything else to doodle. This is just half of what I have done, but I don’t have the time or the patience to scan anything else. There will be more Sketch Dump Sundays to share more of my lovely doodles.
Next Tuesday… WIPs of a scene that’s for a Lighting and Rendering contest.
Lets Talk About Layouts
I’m one of those people who just loves to redesign the layout of my website. Especially if I haven’t done so in over 6 months.
I always start by pulling up some of my favorite artist’s websites for inspiration….
Next I just put together a sketch of what I want either in my notebook or in this case in Photoshop:
This was my first attempt. More of a typical blog like style, but I found it to be too summery and since summer is almost over it just won’t transition well into the fall or for the winter.
This is the next sketch, which if you couldn’t tell is basically what the site looks like now, with a few slight changes to make it look nicer.
The next step was actually creating the elements in Photoshop…
I started with the polka dotted background. I needed to make it seamless, so using the wonderful internet, I found a seamless dotted background. It definitely wasn’t what I was looking for, but I was able to use it as a template to create what I wanted.
I honestly cannot find that template picture I used, but this is the result.
Next is the corner navigation…
Comparing the mockup and the finished product, I decided that there is enough room for more of my little evil kiwi birds. Also I didn’t think there was enough color. After having a black and white design for well over a year, it was time to thrown in color.
Once these elements were completed, I went into Dreamweaver and coded everything. I started by making “hotspots” or an image map for my navigation. Then I threw my background in and placed a floating frame next to the navigation. The last leg of work was just going into my CSS style sheet, changed some color values and cleaned up some of the old coding.
In the end, I have created something that has more of a 90’s Nickelodeon type of feel to it, which I love. Definitely not another cluttered artist’s website. I always try to design my site, so that it’s easy to navigate and it doesn’t take a million clicks to get to where you want to go. It should never take more than 2 clicks to get where you want to go.
Next Post… Sketch Dump Sunday!
The Beginning
I've never been satisfied with the way art sites like DeviantArt.com and Side7.com have people upload to the site. I find it too clunky and just a pain to use. So, now I have jumped on the bandwagon with wordpress and so far... it's just so much easier to post and such.
Now that life is settling a bit, I can finally put more focus on my artwork and animations. My goal is to post a picture a day for a month. It doesn't matter if it's a page of doodles, a speed painting, a study of some sort, or a completed piece... just has to be something I created that day. I also want to get back to animating, so 11 second club here I come! I may post some WIPs... hopefully I can just suck it up and animate a little bit each day.
Next post... Process of Designing EndlessSilence.com's Layout
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