Life drawing trance

I haven't posted any life drawing from this semester yet!? Here's some of the stuff that I like, all in one happy heap.

I like drawing people's backs:








"Crollages" of particular models:

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Remembrance Day...

...IS FOR SHOPPING. I shopped the hell out of Lush. If you love baths, you'll love Lush; no two ways about it.
Also went to the Aquarium again, been there a few times this year, so I figured I should just give in and get a membership.
I'd forgotten my favourite sketchbook at school and had to use a tiny one, so I drew less than usual. But it does make my visit seem nicely... "sketch journal-ly".





Tiger salamander had a funny face:



^This little guy looked super evil and super cute at the same time.


^The fish is outraged.


^Scared.














^CAIMANS still my aquarium favourites!





^And the visit concluded with a happy chubby fish.
(Next post: a bangload of lifedrawing.)

Don't jump into heartache

Dumping!
Here's my first layout of this semester, the house I used to live in (I moved a few of weeks ago when our "my street / my house / my room" assignment was still going on). Obviously I made some alterations for the sake of composition.



And what the heck, I'll post my Alice "acting" assignment too...



And this is a walk cycle with a panning (and loopable!) background. I don't know if it's possible to loop Vimeo vids, but you'll see it pretty well if you hit play right after the video clip ends..? You can go on forever!


Made in TVPaint and I enjoyed it ever so much! Well, I half-a**ed the character design, but you can see a heavy Janosch influence. And unintentionally Garfield.

First animation assignments of 2nd year

Back in school! In the first animation assignment we did this year, we had to use Pink Panther, standing on a seesaw, picking up a boulder, attempting to catapult himself using the boulder, aaaaand then "something funny happens." The second assignment was to do a pose test using a line reading (and character, obv.) from Disney's Robin Hood. More wanky notes to follow after both videos...




(^Contains dialogue)

WANKY NOTES

PINK PANTHER:

I made a ridiculous foot placement mistake during clean up -- well, not clean up exactly, I should say tiedown. But I'm on to different assignments and it would take a lot to get me to clean any more of this up. For one thing, when I was rough animating (that's pretty much where the magic happens) I was drawing extremely loose, just racing away. Okay, volume I can get somewhat under control during the tie down stage, but this is the least loose character that I can think of off the top of my head -- especially when you're trying to stay on model. So during tiedown I was struggling to turn my "organic" (to use a polite word) drawings into these exhaustingly geometric ones.

For the second thing, I don't like Pink Panther all that much. Admittedly, when I was rough animating, I started to get into it more, because my whole "what happens"- idea emerged out of character. It wasn't about a gag for me, not really that much about being funny, but about trying to present a personality, and connecting/acting with a personality that I previously didn't find very interesting.
Most of the connection that happened at that time between Pink Panther and me was subsequently scrubbed away by the tedium of the tiedown.

Anyways, that whole personality thing was my revelation du jour. My way has never been the story way or the surprise way, unfortunately; I'm a terrible writer. My way is the character study way. For now at least -- who knows, anything can change.

And while this isn't saying much, I've never been more "in control" of my animating, and the bit about stuff "sinking in" during Summer vacation would appear to be true.

ROBIN HOOD:
I'm not very familiar with the character, didn't actually make an effort to match the model sheet, but I tried to let the emotion in the line reading determine the poses. That almost succeeded in the last expression, because to my ears Robin sounded annoyed by the fact that it just wasn't "done that way" and hoped that it would actually be that easy... But now, by explaining it, I obviously admit defeat in trying to make the viewer understand it without the aid of such a disclaimer. Result is meh but I had a BLAST especially during thumbnailing -- this, in all its suckidity, is a page that I doodled while I was listening to the line reading over and over again:

No other notes about the pose test itself (shock ;), but this was a mini-assignment designed to be completed and group-watched by the end of the class, which was all cool and fascinating.

Meatball movie fanart

I saw Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs yesterday, and I was -- to keep this short -- COMPLETELY BLOWN AWAY by it.
So I TVPoodled this and abused multiple different TVPaint brushes in the process.

Here's a text-free version 'cause everything's always better without text.


(By the way I'm back in school yay!)

SO much!

First, to make this legit here's a doodle.
I'm reading The Wind in the Willows, for the first time (yeah I know: FOR SHAME), and naturally was compelled to commit some silly sort of Mole and Water Rat to paper. These are only first sketches and I should return to this subject.

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My birthday's coming up. Few things would have been more glorious than spending it in San Diego visiting HMS Surprise, but that plan was woefully dependant on my finding a summer job. Can't afford it this summer -- I'll leave it for some school holiday!
Wondering what to do... For various reasons I'm not crazy about hosting a soirée at my place. And I can hardly invite people whose situation is no better than mine, as far as I know, to a restaurant. Who's reading this in the Vancouver area and would like to do something like a beach day or a sketchcrawl or another cheap thing this coming weekend? (...Jesus. :[ Some host.) Or a movie -- I love movies. As you can see I am easily amused and persuadable. No gifts. ...Because you would be left to pay for your own refreshments, so.....
Oh wait. Actually I am fascinated by "Altar Boyz". Could be funny. There's a performance almost every day. I hesitate to ask people to pay $38 for one, but would anybody be interested?

Of course, if I get this temp job I've applied for, I'm gonna go to work on my birthday. Not that I mind, and I would welcome a job even if it was friggin Christmas, but I just wish I heard from them soon one way or another, so I could know which days I'm free.

I know this whole post sounds like a cry for attention but I swear it truly is just social awkwardness. :]

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Oh yeah, by the way, I liked Moon, and Sam Rockwell is just as excellent in it as he can be expected to be. I was much more impressed by the atmosphere than the plot, but I'd like to recommend it anyway. First and foremost for Rockwell's performance, which makes you forget 100% that he is mostly interacting with a special effect.
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As soon as I read George Clooney was playing Mr. Fox in The Fantastic Mr. Fox that I wrote about in the last post, I got this dreadfully unshakable image of Ocean's 11-13 with animal puppets (as avid readers know, the original book revolves around a heist).
On the one hand, like I said: DREAD. On the other, there is something undeniably fabulous about the idea. Now I think Ocean's 11-13 with animal puppets should be done -- at some point, but not at this point, not on this movie!? "Dread", I repeated with a Jerri Blank -voice.
I told myself to calm down, Wes Anderson would not do something like that. ...And then I saw this photo.

I'm hoping it only looks worrying because it's out of context. No way is Anderson sneaking in a single Ocean's reference. By the way, yes, those animals are wearing ski masks. While that is ridiculously unnecessary, at least I can't remember any Oceanites wearing ski masks -- there may yet be hope. :P