Draw with me

This is one of my all time animations I've seen on DeviantArt.
It was made by Mikeinel, a digital artist from the Philippines, and a collaboration for the music with Daniel James (HybridTwo).
Mikeinel describes the video as as a story about a girl and a boy separated by an unbreakable glass, which sounds like a very simple concept, but the way he face this 'love' story was completely out of my expectations and I just cant get over the plot twist that exist in last few seconds of the animation.

Beautiful colour concept. Sort of surreal and artistic that fits the whole concept of a desert world where only the two of them exist.
The plot twist was a bit inspiration for the ending of 'Isolation'. A more psychopathic ending that enhances the desire/feeling of loneliness on your own mind.

Second Wind

One of my favorite videos on Vimeo is this short animation called 'Second Wind' as part of a project of Ian Worrel. It was a project on his final year at CalArts and the tools that he used where pencil and paper for the man and the cat line animation. It was coloured in photoshop, composited in after effects onto backgrounds constructed in photoshop out of various pieces of media (pen/ink, pencil, paint, photos).

Pretty impressive animation with a touching narrative that brings good memories of when most animations where hand drawn. Enjoy!

When working on the final editing for 'Isolation' I realised that there's loads of things we should have worked on. 

Things I notice is that probably the combination of having the backgrounds on a more artistic-looking with the simple front might be too contrasting. Probably playing more with textures would have been helpful.
Next project, I'll make sure to give the editing more time and dedication.

Isolation II

My responsibility for the animation this time was the scenario which is basically just the 'island' where the person is.
I thought it was an easy task to just do a few frames of the tree and some others for the grass, but my original plan was to do it in photoshop which didn't turn out as I expected:

The only type of animation I've done in the past were small gifts that didn't required much fluid movement, but I wanted to do it properly so I decided to drop it and give After Effects a try.
Thanks to some tutorials online and to the file that I had on photoshop already made it was just a matter of parenting and rotating to give it a great fluent move; and I say great because I almost cry when I saw how pretty it looked... Or probably it was just my excitement for seeing it moving.
Either way, after some tests, it was quite hard to get a realistic movement and because of the lack of time I had to leave it looking like a jellyfish:

For the grass it was the same process: drawing a few separate parts and parent them so that the rotation affects the children. It was easy up until the point where I had to duplicate for a ridiculous amount of copies, positioning them in front and behind the tree to give a more "3 dimensional" feeling and having to give them different timing to make it look more of natural random movement.

I'm quite happy with the outcome. I know there is lot of room for improvement, but we're running out of time. I'm pretty sure that the awesome animations that Ryan is doing for the character plus the beautiful backgrounds from Sophie will help a lot to distract people from noticing my mistakes (lol).
I hope the post production and editing doesn't end up being too complicated since Daryl and Tom are busy polishing the first poem.

Clouds

This was one of my inspirations that I found on the web. It was a final second year project of Sam Miller, a student of animation from the University of Hertfordshire in 2008.
I think the animation is beautiful and it has a really artistic touch on it. The fact that most of the backgrounds aren't as detailed as the main character gives the idea of it being a paint.
The concept is simple, but really original.
It really impressive how a small group of people can manage to make such an amazing project.
Also, not only is well animated, but I think it has really well planned shots and a positive editing.

The sound goes along very well and the voice of the mother at the end it's just awesome.
This kind of animation may look simple, but I'm pretty sure now that it takes a LOT of effort to achieve something like this.
I really hope I manage to improve the quality of my work on the coming years.

Also, check out Sam's website! It's got really nice illustrations :)

Inspiration for 'Isolation'

Some of the inspiration that came to my mind when thinking of a concept for the animation was a to make it simple and monochromatic like the bit of the shadows on the corpse bride song (remains of the day, starts at 0:45... good song though).

Then also remembered the video that appear on the Harry potter and the deadly hollows called The Tale of the Three Brothers.
Even thought that one was made on 3D , the concept of having very strong profiles without colours or detailed expressions push the animator to use techniques more theatrical since all the emotions have to be expressed with the bodies of the characters.

Finally, and because of our lack of experience, I moved to something more easy to animate, but keeping the simplicity concept. That's when Gary mentioned the open sequence of 300 and if resembled of something more closer to what I thought we could achieve.

Again, my experience on animation on After Effects is almost nothing, but thanks to some tutorials online, help from friends and loads of trial-and-error practice I think I got the hang of at least basic stuff and getting really familiar with the interface. 

Isolation - I

Finally talking something about the second poem we're doing, I'm glad to say that we decided to make an animation! (nothing to do with the fact that I kept insisting over and over) 


Now, it was great the fact that we decided to go for that, but being realistic... we have no time for it! so despite the fact that we probably went too ambitious with it, we decided to carry on with it but at the same time to keep it as simple as possible.
The poem itself helps:

Isolated like the emotions I have held for many years.
The cold weighs hard on my bones.
As the dark clouds begin to gather,
quiet surrounds the air.
The rural space echoes with stillness.
The picturesque image engraved in my mind.
Like a single tree embedded in a field,
The wavy grass hangs around to help ease the loneliness it feels.
The sheep wander aimlessly in this desolate sphere. 

Zenam Bi 

Getting on with this subject of loneliness we also integrated the part of simplicity. 

This are some of the ideas I came up with as 'concept art' : 

 

After some discussions and brainstorming we came to this storyboard:

My job in here is to do the scenario. Even thought I haven't try much on animation other than simple gifts, I'll give it a try, and specially because Ryan is in charge of doing the character and he is AWESOME! so I'm sure it will look great at the end :) 

Key image for the front scenario. Something I did quickly to give us a point of start. 

Next I'll put the animatic and some of the sound test my friend Adam has made for us.

Dust

Found this video online a while ago. The animation is extremely cute (BEWARE!) and well made. The texture it has resembles a watercolour technique very well achieved, but what catches my attention the most in this case is the narrative part which in some way relates to the animation we're making for the second poem.
I now notice the importance of the music and sound effects for a film/animation and even more for those without dialogue.
Anyway, I leave you this peace of beauty <3

Poussiere-Vic Chhun, Leyla Kaddoura, and Nicolas Ughen

Weightless

Dance + Architecture + Awesome concept = THIS VIDEO!

This video that a friend of mine whose studying at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance showed me was simply beautiful.
Love the way they  played with the scenario and the whole concept. My favourite part of the scenario is the  'water on the wall'. Couldn't think of a better way to express the concept than 'moving the whole world' just to defy gravity.
Very well planned scenario. Simple yet beautiful.
Sure it helps to think outside the box and imagine different ways to come with a solution.
Also, it really enhanced my desire to get involve in more interdisciplinary project. Sure I'll ask my friend for a collaboration soon :)
Anyone interested?

[Let your values guide you]

On January the 10th we had the a special guest called Andy Peers. He went on about part of his life and experiences that got him to where he is now (Love enterprise). More than talking about how to be successful, he mention the importance of your own values and how by sticking to them you create your own and personal success. Having said that, I started wondering about my values (since it was one of the questions that came on the exercise sheet). I believe that my values have always been really strong thanks to my family having loyalty, honesty and responsibility in hard work as the strongest ones. I've always had them in mind, but then I started wondering: 'what about the ones I lack the most?' After some moments of self reflection I started to realize that I often forget to analyse my own limitations, and I suppose it is still a sign of what's left of my young and naive side. Is not that I'm getting old, but certainly not getting any younger (lol) and this kind of reflections help me recognise myself as an individual. Being away from my family and most of my friends has help me to encourage my dedication and commitment to the games and animation world.

"It's not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are."       Roy Disney

Another of the questions on the exercise sheet was something like Why are you studying this course? (or something like that)  
Loads of things crossed my mind at that moment. My answer was 'Because I believe that I can create life that will inspire someone...one day' ...pretty lame, but I was thinking of the people that inspired me to decide to take this course, to drop my whole past and embark on this new adventure.

I found this on tumblr and decided to put it here. I know that posting about Pixar must be cliché by now, but I do believe that they all share really strong values that it's reflected on their work.

Creative - Courageous - Valuing Difference - Inspiring - Honest - Thoughtful

"Let your values guide you"  is a phrase that I'll try to make mine, hopping it will help me to be less scare about the future and focus more now on growing my talents and improve as a person. 

"You've got to find what you love. The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking and don't settle"  Steve Jobs

Design in Animation

Here are the 20 tips for the design of character for an animation:

• Research & evaluate
• Design & plan
• Target the audience (who is it aimed at?)
• Visual impact (what gets people's attention?)
• Line qualities & styles
• Exaggerated characteristics
• Colour to communicate character's personality
• Adding accessories
• Thinking in three dimensions (all angles) 
• Conveying personality
• Expressions (character's range of emotions
• Reasons (goals & dreams to achieve)
• Building back stories
• Quick on the draw
• Hone, plan & polish
• A character that works on any media or material
• Real world drawing (drawing outside computers) 
• Release the beast (show and ask for feedback)
• Beyond the character (environment) 
• Tuning the figure (question each element) 

3D Matryoshka

For my project of 'Fundamentals of 3D modelling and animation' module I decided to keep it simple and go for a Russian Doll (Matryoshka).
I've always like this dolls and it perfectly fits the idea for the project 'Large and small'.
The concept of its movement seems limited by not having any arms or legs, but that's where I plan to practice and apply the principles of animation. Also I plan to animate their faces to enhance the movement and give more narrative to my animation.
This are some of the pictures I used as reference for my modelling:

 

And obviously the modelling didn't took long:

Also...I know this isn't 3d (more like stop motion)...but I will use it as a reference for some movements. (Although, this dolls have arms )

BC Dairy Foundation "Russian Dolls" from Bent Image Lab on Vimeo.

Outline your implications - II

Because the video had no lines at all we thought the music composition should be something important to consider and luckily a friend of mine, Dr. Adam Fergler, agreed to help us with it.
The video below is a quick animatic that I made for him estimating the timing for most of the shots that would give him a good start for the melody creation.

This is just a short preview of what the final melody will be like. Basically he's waiting for the real footage to be done and once we get closer to the final product after some editing he'll be able to finish some details to fit the video correctly. 

So far Adam is also going to work on the melody for our second poem. Can't thank him enough.

Visit his website!!! : http://adamfergler.eu/

Outline your implications - I

Right as part of our task on the Digital Film Production module, we're meant to be working on videos that respond to some poems. The first one is called 'Outline your implications' written by Razia Afzal. Basically the video is about a love story between a guy and a girl who belongs to a different religion, and is this religion that is going to keep this two separated since she has to respond to her 'duties'. From the many interpretations that we could make from it, the one that we all agreed was that this girls belongs to a religion similar to Muslim where women have to have a partner from their same religion.

Even though it was hard to define jobs in the group, I've been working in stuff like Concept art, 'script' [the video has no lines, but we've been writing the process of the scenes] and also part of production [just helping with some of the organization].

This is part of the concept ideas that I came up for it:

This one was the original one of the first ideas:

 
 



 This one is the final storyboard:

Lake Hurwitz

Lake Hurwitz is an absolute fantastic digital concept artist that lives in San Francisco. His work focuses on a realistic imitation of traditional painting, and the real part that attracts me from his work is the way he captures expressions, moods and colour in a way that he considers 'speed painting'. Now I've seen a lot of speed painting artist, but no one as accurate as him. Anyway, here's some of his work and a link to his CGhub account to see the rest of his art:

• Professional for 1 year, 8 months
• Field:
  GamesConcept Artist - Illustrator

- practice -

Now I know this might be irrelevant to the course, but it's most of the practice I did on during this holidays.
Instead of doing some proper post or thinking of something that will actually help me to get a good grade (any grade at all ...) I've been working on a book cover.
Now I've done this in the past and the only reason why I'm doing it again is because I quite like the experience and practice that you get out of it (plus is nice to put something in your CV that is actually true).
Rather than the pay and the fame that I might or might not make out of this, I decided to keep working with this author because now we became friends and I feel like I own him for giving me the chance in the first place.

Anyway. The book is now very (VERY) dramatic, since it tells the true story of the author when he went through really hard times while having a kidney disease, so in comparison to the last book, which was a teenage  novel, this one required a lot more of seriousness. His idea was to go for something more realistic, but being honest with him... I'm terrible at drawing realism, or at least is not something I'm familiar with specially when it comes to creating something out of nowhere. (with realism I feel more comfortable if I have a model to copy, but I wont bother for that).

The author was fine to do it in the way I felt it was right, and for some reason he keeps thinking that I'm a professional and that I got everything under control... so I keep making him to believe that.

This is a screenshot of the progress so far. I did loads and loads of sketches and none of them reflected that semi realistic and relief feeling I was looking for, but as one of my friends pointed out, my best option was to  keep his eyes close. That did helped me to keep it slightly more realistic. 

Anyway, I still like to play with colours even though it completely kills the realism and also working with loads of different brushes makes the skin look sketchy, but truth is I'm still working on it so any suggestions and critics would be really appreciated.