Kuiper’s Sail
Well, that day has finally arrived. I have finished my Senior Project and the showing went pretty well tonight in the showcase. I received some nice compliments and it really felt great to finally finish this thing! Jeez, it took me forever! Over 30+GB of assets, 25 different After Effects Compositions, and over 300 layers, it feels great to finally complete it. So much work went into this little film and it somehow feels like it could be better. There are some shots that are really bugging me, but perhaps it’s just hind-sight speaking and my OCD. I will put this film in the books and put it behind me. I need something fresh and something new to work on. The future is bright! I have posted the video below, however it will only be public until May 26th for personal reasons. You will need a password to access the film afterwards.
The working title for the film was “Nowhere to Go”, however, I had always meant to change it. I settled on “Kuiper’s Sail”, because I want the focus to be on the story, rather than the lyrics of the song. It’s about this dude’s journey across the solar system to find earth and find peace. He’s flying in a ship, sailing per-say, inside the depth of the Kuiper Belt. I like to think of him as the lost explorer, perhaps Kuiper himself. Hence, Kuiper’s Sail.
With that, I begin work on my stop-motion final. It’s ironic, because at the showcase my puppet won Best Stop Motion Puppet – Foam in the show. And, I haven’t even animated that final stop motion film yet! Awesome! I’m looking forward to it, especially since it’s tangible.
Give me feedback on my senior project if you can. I’d love to know what you think!
More Previews
Just uploading some new shots from my senior film. I’m getting excited! Here’s to hoping I finish my project this week!
Senior Exhibit
Hey guys. Been busy, busy, busy, and so I have not been up-to-speed on my blog. I just have not been able to post what’s been going on. I’m setting up for my Senior Exhibit and getting everything prepared. Yesterday I posted my Doctor Battery Acid poster. It’s going to be printed for the gallery and it will be a decent sized print. However, it will be small compared to my main one:
I felt that I had to put her as my poster. I mean, Kolevis is my character, my muse. She’s kept me going this entire time throughout my college career. It would be silly not to. My only regret is that she never made it into a film. Because my illustrations of her were done traditionally and not of such large size, I simply threw one of my paid commissioned works of her into this. She was illustrated by my pal Kanta-Kun over on deviantART. He did it vector so I could easily resize it. Props to him! I wanted to feature this illo of her, honestly. It’s too bad it couldn’t scale:
Anyways, remember to come by the exhibit sometime between Monday and the last day of class! Of course, I only say this to those that are actually in town. Please don’t fly in from somewhere, it really just wouldn’t be worth it.
Commissioned!
It’s my friend’s birthday. Caleb, haha, he loves Spiderman. Truth be told, I’ve never seriously attempted to draw a superhero before. Even though I read the comics, watch the movies, shows, etc, never have I truly given it a go. So here he is, as Spiderman. Commissioned by our friend Shar’Niese for his present. It was on the 19th, so I couldn’t post it until today. However, I drew it on Monday.
I used a pose reference off of Google images. Drawn with brush inks and sharpies.
Attempting the Profile
I always truly believed that profile drawings were extremely difficult to do. I would choose 3/4 perspectives over a profile shot anyday because I couldn’t understand how to make them look right. So I’ve been attempting them in my figure drawing class. I think I finally got a good one out of it.
One of these days I’ll have my own scanner, maybe a large format one as well so that I don’t have to take crappy photos and edit the crap out of them.
The Weather is Fine
So, we sketched outside today. It was fun. I really enjoyed the bright sunlight.
It was around 2pm, so we got some awesome cast shadows – 24″x18″ in size.
Can it Happen?
Will my film ever get finished? It seems impossible. Perhaps it’s just scary to compile this guy into the song:
Untouched waters. Stressing out!
Internship Search
So, I’ve started my internship search for summer 2011. I sent out about 25+ applications so far which is about 10 more than I did last year, so I am really praying I get something! I have received 2 rejections in just a day and a “wait until fall to apply” response. You could pray for me if you found it in your best interest. I’d really appreciate it. You could also help by letting me know of any opportunities you happen to stumble upon. I’m always looking! Perhaps share Mourou with your friends and artists you know?
Here’s a figure sketch I did last week! Haha, all this paperwork is throwing me off my game.
Moving Forward
Well, the week is coming to the close and I am desperately trying to work up a new demo reel to send in with my applications for summer internships. Hopefully my stuff will be good enough to land some interviews, if at least one. I’d love to have a job opportunity for the summer in a related field to my line of work. I’ll soon be posting some tests of new demos to be critiqued. So stay tuned. Once I have a good reel and get my applications out there I will feel more motivation to finish this senior project. I’m more worried about jobs now than I ever have been so I need to act on it first.
Little Ruiner Concepts
I just wanted to post some more of the concept artwork I did for this past weekend’s competition. This was the official character sheet for our “little ruiner” of the speech. I thought you might enjoy it.
Good day today. I think Mourou is going to move into production over the summer for “This Chilling Air” if time permits. If I get an internship we probably won’t start until the fall, but I just wanted to put it out there. This competition has given me a renewed sense of self as an animator/art director starting out his career. The bigger challenge will be to finish the Teach Me How to Fight film I’ve been working on.
As for now, I’ll be cutting a new demo-reel and applying for more internships for the summer. Here’s to hoping I land a good opportunity!
49-Hour Animation Competition 2011
Well, my team put up a good fight. We got a lot of work done! I felt privileged to direct and lead this fantastic group of individuals to getting a film done in just a weekend. Fantastic experience. While we did not get our film rendered out in time for the deadline, we did get a film out of our hard work. File management bit us in the end when we accidentally overwrote four hours of work – two, complex, fully-animated shots. We just couldn’t get caught up after the setback. But alas, it wasn’t about winning, it was about competing. Take a look at our film!
Be sure to crank up the sound! Keff worked his butt off to give it some amazing sound effects. I consider this a success and had about 20 seconds of animation that I would consider putting on my 2011 demo reel. Let me know what you think!
Bride Concept Art
Pumpkin Pie
Finally finished cleaning this up. Started it a few weeks ago and added the plate wobble at the end after all this time. Felt like I could finally post it. Let me know what you think! Good practice for this weekend’s competition.
49-Hour Animation Competition
So, my professors sent me a link to this amazing opportunity. I was instantly excited. I really want to enter a competition and compete for something. And if it’s in animation, all the better! I was really itching to do something like this last semester with the William Shatner Toon-Boom contest. But, I never entered it and regretted it ever since! The premise is pretty simple. Create an animated film from scratch in 49 hours. It starts on Friday April 1st at 6PM and ends on Sunday at 7PM. There will be a viewing of the films in Indianapolis later on. The films will get reviewed by some top animators in the industry! I have managed to scramble together a pretty awesome team of my fellow student animators. Nathan Welch, Chad Bierdeman, Keff Beasley, and possibly Drew Vosberg are going to team up with me for this animation experience. You may find the respective links to their works in the sidebar! We will be doing ours hand-drawn in Toon-Boom/Flash. Keff is going to do sound-design as he is just phenomenal at it. Chad, Nathan, and I will be doing the animation, and Vozzie will head up the concept and pipeline work if he decides to give us his 100% decision to join.
Hopefully this will turn out to be a wonderful test of our skills. We don’t know what the topic will be or what prizes there are at stake. We will receive a topic at the very start of the competition so hopefully we’ll get something fun to animate! Wish us luck, pray for us, and root for us over this weekend of slavery to the art of animation.
Spring Break Progress
Hello everyone. Sorry for not posting over spring break! Believe it or not, I was not out partying or anything like that this past week. In fact, I was working hard on my Senior Project, trying to get all the technical issues fixed and making it look better and better. There is just an issue or two left that I was able to spot in these frames, but otherwise I think they are complete. This will be actual footage of the final video. Let me know what you think!
Thrust
Hey guys. Just a quick little update. I worked all yesterday on a new thrust for my little astronomer. Tell me what you think and how it compares to the old!
Figure Drawing Finals
Hello everyone! Late post, I apologize. I have for you now my figure drawing final! I hope you enjoy it. Instead of a female I chose to draw my good friend Derek Morin. He was rather pleased with how this turned out. The final was 3 hours long and I had to use nothing other than pencils and bristol board. It was 18″x24″ in size. I was pretty impressed with myself that I was able to whip something like this out so fast! I guess I am learning something. I am not entirely happy with the face in this, but mostly the body. Funny, how I spent the least amount of time on it and mostly on the portrait. Let me know what you think!
3hr Drawing - Pencil + Bristol @ 18"x24"
As for the previous class, I thought I had a pretty good final drawing in it. It was our longest drawing yet with a live model coming in at 45 minutes! I found the pose to be exciting and it had some good lighting and shadows to work with! I apologize for the crappy photos. The quality isn’t as good as my scans, but I don’t know how else to capture these large images other than my cell’s 5MP camera. Here it is!
45min Drawing - Pencil, Charcoal, and Marker @ 10"x24"
I have a Toon-Boom animation that I’m working on. I’m cleaning up just a little bit of it to give it that “icing on the cake”, but it should be ready for upload soon. I really want to show it and do more of them! Hopefully I’ll have it tomorrow!
Clock Sketches Round 5
Quick Gestures
Fullview!
More sketching from my Clock-Sketch channel. Good poses here, I think I did most of them justice in the time frame I had. My favorites would be the top left and middle right underwater poses. So much fun! I love drawing characters in these exciting poses. It’s especially great to have underwater reference photos! I hope you enjoy. Feel free to give me constructive criticism on these quick little drawings!
As for today, I have a figure drawing FINAL in the mid-afternoon. I’ll be doing a 3-hour drawing on Bristol Board of either a male or female model…or both! I know the male model is one of my good friends so it’s really exciting. It’s about time I break in these new LYRA drawing pencils I got a few months ago.
Clock Sketches Round 4
Quick Ink Gestures
Fullview!
I personally feel that these latest Mercenary gestures are the best I’ve done so far. I think I can get this guy down pretty quick. Maybe it’s all the lines in the clothing and props. I understand that it’s not exactly studying the weight and form of the body, but I think they turned out pretty well. As for the female archer, I think I’m getting the form down pretty well in the time limit I’ve set for myself in the Clock-Sketch videos. I think I should stop attempting to do her face in the amount of time I have until I have a decent face to come back to each time like with the Mercenary. Females are harder with such harsh strokes – it’s difficult to bring out the femininity, especially when working so fast. These were worked from my Clock-Sketch channel on YouTube. I’ve stopped posting the new videos, as they would easily clutter my blog. I think if you want to take a look at the videos, just head over to my channel @ Clock-Sketch
I welcome any feedback, especially constructive criticism.
Fox
Here, have a fox this morning. May he bring you joy. This was a quick sketch I did on Saturday morning this past weekend. Trying my hand at animals for once. I did it with a 0.5mm fineliner and used a photo reference. I think he turned out pretty well! This was after I spent the morning watching the 3D animated film “Igor”. It was a great movie! I really, really liked it. The thing that bugged me was that a lot of the film was blatantly exploited. I see Megamind and Despicable Me stealing directly from it and it makes me a little irked that it’s so obvious. John Cusack was amazing, as always. It’s really too bad that a great film like this was so unpopular. I never heard anything about other than like one newspaper article a few years ago. Oh well. However, the movie obviously inspired me and I had to draw something while I watched it. So I drew this slightly cartoony angler fish with the same fineliner:
I kind of miss just drawing on an open canvas and just seeing where it goes. This is an example of doing just that. It was a fun little doodle, I guess. The even cooler part about it was that this drawing was featured on Shadowness’s Daily Inspiration for Sunday! It’s always exciting to get featured on an art site. This weekend was a weekend of drawing. All of Sunday was spent in my sketchbook. I don’t know when I’ll get around to uploading them, but I’ll do my best to get them sooner rather than later.
Back to animating.
Pincho
The Unicorn Boy Returns
Decided to sketch one of my favorite characters, Pincho! You can probably see the influence from Barth in this piece – I rather like it. Comment and tell me what you think! I have also sketched below a caricature version of myself. I felt I need to let loose and do some personal sketches rather than constant figure work. These flair pens are just great. I’m addicted. I really hope that I can eventually do the Body/Mind/Soul comic one of these days.
Clock Sketches Round 3
Click for fullview! I am rather happy with these. I did them yesterday with the pirate videos, but decided to wait to post them. I really enjoyed the cape dynamics and so I spent double the amount of time on the top gesture. It was just too much fun. I’m going to have to make some new videos to sketch from! Please, if you use them, send me your suggestions for poses and props!
Clock Sketches Round 2
So, I did these sketches today with pal Keff, the two pirate videos I had just recently posted. I always seem to do my Clock Sketches with him. It’s a really good exercise a load of fun. What made it even better was that I picked up probably my favorite marker in the entire world to sketch them with. They are called PaperMate “Flair” Markers…not super expensive, but I really hope they last a while. Click here if you’d like to see them: FLAIR MARKER
もうろう 