7th Week - ( Oct 24-26 )

I'm thinking of updating this blog every 2 or 3 days so I don't have to pile up all of my artworks and write a long entry by the end of the week. So here comes the first few updates !

Character Design
The assignment was to come up with either designs of bears,apes or gorillas. I was meaning to design bears, but It didn't work out that well for me, so I designed the gorillas instead.

Here are the few that I did, I really liked how they turned out ! It was a fun process overall ! :)







This is definitely my favorite piece of all ! I wanted to take it into another direction, something more personal. :)



I remember talking to Steve Brown on my first day of Orientation week at CalArts, and he gave me a very useful piece of advice. He told me, " Whenever you're stuck and you can't draw, think of a story and your drawings will come naturally ".

Many times I've wasted my hours away trying to figure out ways to create beautiful and appealing designs that I get caught up in fancy design elements which has no relation to any story telling at all. Rik Maki said, " No matter what you design, it has to have a story. A beautiful character standing in space doing nothing ain't gonna work".

Research is another vital element you don't wanna lack in whatever you do. Abraham Lincoln once said, " If I have 8 hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend 6 hours sharpening the axe". That makes me think twice before I start putting my pen down on my paper trying to ace for the perfect drawing or design. Spending 6 hours researching on your character is better than wasting 24 hours searching for the right design without prior research or knowledge of your subject.

I find more solidity in my artwork often when I have both research and story contextualized in my work !

Digital Methods
Another Monday class ! I'm learning so much about TV Paint now and there's so much it can do with it ! Fran has been showing us so many cool stuff we can do with it ! TV Paint rocks.

We learned to play around with the camera the other day. It's pretty cool cuz it has a multi-plane camera option. Here's a test I did with a single-plane camera option during Fran's class.



I'm experimenting on my first year film's style right now, and I want to be able to catch up with TV Paint before the end of this term so I don't get bogged down by technical issues when working on my short film !

2D Animation
Ok, so 2D Animation has been really fun ! The assignments have been pretty forgiving so far and I can't wait to start animating the real deal, but at the same time, I'm really honing my animation skills to prepare myself for my first year film.

So here's the head turn assignment which I turned in for class today.



I had fun working on this assignment and it was really challenging. Most of the challenges came from the graphical design that I have in my character. Matt Williames, who's our instructor mentioned how some cartoon characters weren't meant to be seen from certain angles due to the design. Daffy duck, for instance.

I've been learning a lot in Matt's class from the videos he's been showing us. Matt has been stressing on how important acting is in animation, or in any film at all, and that we should really watch and study more films. I have to get started on watching more films! I really don't know enough films out there! I downloaded an iPad program called "Film Study" which comes with a list of films in it of different genres ranging from the 1910's to contemporary films. The coolest thing about this software is that it allows me to pause at a certain frame of the movie, and analyze it with some cool features available in that software.

So, more research, more film study, more hard work !

I'll be updating pretty soon again before the end of this week !

See ya !!