Cock A Doodle Doo!

This is an assignment was that I was given for my experimental animation class. I was given a pen and ink etching of a rooster and each of us had to interpret what we wanted the rooster to do... the use of medium, sound, story, design, etc. was entirely open for me to use. It's weird being that free... lol

Here's the rooster:

This was a particularly difficult project for me because my initial direction wasn't working. I just couldn't get into it and it showed... But I realized it was because I was doubting myself and my concept was just really boring!

So, I  with the help of Kevin and Nick I decided to scrap the original idea and do something different, in a medium I've never animated with. I was inspired by some of bill plymton's animation shorts as well as Wild E Coyote! However, by the time I decided to go a different direction there were only a couple days before the deadline and ended up working nonstop to get it done.

In the end I had fun with it and I'm proud of the final result.

But most importantly, I ended up learning that I need to work on allowing myself to step outside my comfort zone more often... And sometimes a lot of good comes from scrapping an idea that just isn't working.

My First 3D Animation Class!

Hi all!

So last semester, I took my very first 3D animation class! It was soooooooooooooooooooooooo fun. I loved that class and learn so much. My teacher was Chris Larsen and he was awesome. This class was all about teaching the animation basics like ball bounce, ball roll, pendulum, etc. and ending in a character walk. Taking this class opened a whole other world of animation to me that I definitely want to do a living :)

Here is my final reel from the class, enjoy:

My Best Friend

This is a project I did for a class (Ani115) at SJSU. The class was tasked to create our own individual short films, made entirely by us. We also needed to work entirely in the program, Adobe Flash. It was a very very very difficult task for me because not only was there a learning curve involved in learning the new medium but I also wanted to create something meaningful.

I used a very personal story of mine as a starting point for my short film story. Then from that I decided, with the help from my teacher Aden Scott and Jeff Jackson, to tell the story from the dog's perspective.

Here it is, be sure to turn on the sound ;)

This project marked a lot of firsts for me:
- Animating a Dog/quadruped
- Animating 2 characters in one shot
- Dialogue (even though it's just one word) lol
- Working in Flash
- creating character designs

Below is some of the character designs/studies I did before starting to animate. Because I was struggling animating in Flash, the designs became a looooot more simplified and rough. Animating a dog was very complex and didn't feel comfortable caricaturing it before understanding the body mechanics yet.

I definitely see a million ways to improve but overall I'm proud of all that I learned from this and how it turned out. I'm also incredibly thankful for all the help from all my friends/classmates and teachers for pushing me!

Rescue Mission - My Sack Pantomime

So, there's been a delay in posting this I was having issues with my external hard drive and was fortunately able to fix it! Now I have a bunch of material to show that I'll be spreading throughout this winter break.

First it's: The Sack Pantomime, which was my final project for my Spring 2014 2D animation class (Ani 114).  What this project is: a 30 second (short) acting study using a flour sack as a character. Because the flour sack has no limbs or face it adds an extra level of difficulty to the assignment, focusing purely on body mechanics to tell the story. This was a very fun project for me and I learned so much. My teacher Jeff Jackson was a tremendous help, he gave me great feedback throughout the process that pushed me and kept me excited. This project was the biggest project that I completed at that point. I felt completely myself during the whole process realized the importance of putting personal life experiences in my work. I am extremely proud it and can't wait to learn more.

Below I'll go step by step of the process I completed.

But first, here's my completed assignment: (note: turn down volume)

So, before I get the that point, there needs to be lots and lots of planning on story. I came up with a story about a flour sack trying to rescue it's teddy from a cage in it's imagination.

Here's the first Animatic (storyboards to time). It's super rough at this stage.

As you can see there's a lot of clarity issues going on so over that weekend, I created this revised version.

At this point, I felt ready to move onto the next stage. - Animation!

During the animation portion, I referenced/studied a lot of pre-existing amazing animation.

Such as Pongo's Stretch-

Witch Hazel's zip off screen -

And Wild E Coyote's silly timing -

And Finally, Penny's hug and overall acting -

Since I was still a beginner I was looking for how these masters dealt with similar things I was dealing with. Studying these helped me understand my sack pantomime a little better. Studying these were also an excuse to simply marvel at great animation! :)

So there you have it! My Sack Pantomime: Rescue Mission. Here it is again without sound this time:

Hope you enjoyed it. This was a very special project to me because it was THE assignment that I realized that I want to be an Animator.

Thanks!!

Some Weekly Studies

Hello,

So, I thought I'd share some of my weekly animation studies/mastercopies. These are all characters drawn by other amazing animators such as David Coleman, Stephen Silver, Glen Keane, and Andreas Deja (to name a few). The purpose of these studies is to learn from the way these amaaaazing artists are able to sculpt the character's volume, capture life and appeal and create interesting poses.

I've learned a lot from this practice and plan to keep this up on my own.

Here are some head studies

And here are some full body pose studies

Here are some hand studies

And here are some eye studies

And finally here are some background studies (thumbnails)

1st Flash Test!

This semester, I'm taking 2 animation classes, Ani 115 (intermediate 2D animation) and Ani 51b (Beginning 3D animation). In my 2D animation class, we're learning/using an animation program called Flash. It is tough, At the moment, I'm having difficulty translating what I've learned drawing (on paper) to drawing on a tablet there's a definite disconnect and I'm realizing it takes me 10 times longer to draw. I've noticed that because of this struggle, when opportunities arise for me to draw on paper, it feels like freedom and it's actually helped me draw smarter!

This is my first animation test of the semester. The class was given Dean from Iron Giant's character model sheets as a rough character guide to complete a jump test. After we completed the jump we added a cool jacket on him to add some sweet overlap. It was a struggle to complete and I made a WHOLE bunch of mistakes along the way. And that's why I like this test. I learned a lot!

Anyway, here's Dean jumping over one of his "modern art" pieces. (one with a jacket  and one without) Enjoy! :)

Fred looses his Toupee!

Hi Guys!
After the character walk, my next assignment was to take that same character and make him/her see something react to it and change emotion.

My teacher has been really emphasizing the importance of thinking of the emotion of a character rather than just motion, in other words - ACTING! Through doing this exercise, I found it difficult to show all that goes into a showing a character thinking. In animation you get to play around with timing and it's tough to understand how long it takes for someone to realize something. There's so many little nuances in movement to consider, it's enough to make one's brain explode into tiny little bits. But needless to say - I had a lot of fun with this test and love this character. Maybe I'll do something with his character again in the future. Hope you all enjoy!