Summer Break 2012 - Sketches 06

Two sketches I did yesterday at the mall! 

P.S. I'll be watching Prometheus tonight with my friends and I'm ubber excited about it!

Summer Break 2012 - Sketches 05

Alright, today's sketches from Burbank!!!

And some environmental pieces from the same area! I was exploring more with angles and these little guys were really fun to do!!

I also went to a bargain bookstore there that I've always wanted to checkout throughly and after stranding myself in there for 2 hours searching for the RIGHT book, I found "Acting: The First Six Lessons" by Richard Boleslavsky and "Shot by Shot: A Practical Guide to Filmmaking" by John Cantine, Susan Howard and Brady Lewis! These two books were mentioned to me by my animation teacher, Matt and a friend of mine Steven, who works in the industry and I consider myself lucky to get them off the shelf at a really cheap price! Can't wait to see what I can get out of these books !!

-Yon

Summer Break 2012 - Sketches 04

I biked around Newhall today and I really liked some of the buildings they have on Lyons and Walnut Street ! I spent some time sketching those buildings and then decided to bike to the closest park to catch a crowd but a sheriff called out on me since the park was closed so I had to go look for another place, and then I got hungry on the way so I stopped by at Popeye's for dinner and sure enough there were a couple of innocent souls for me to prey on! The lady in the blue shirt in the picture below noticed that I was drawing her and asked to take a picture of it!! 

I'm going to downtown Burbank tomorrow to do some more sketches and hopefully I'll be able to come up with some amazing ones! I visited there once and I really liked the place so I'm super excited!!

-Yon

Summer Break 2012 - Sketches 03

Here are the set of sketches I did today at Jamba Juice!! 

The last drawing above with the mom tying her kid's shoelace was the most challenging one I did today! The hardest part was to divert the viewers eyes to the kid's shoe. I redrew this six times and still didn't get it to look right but my visual memory of the scene was decaying after each attempt so I decided to go with the closest one.

-Yon.

Summer Break 2012 - Sketches 02

I biked around the neighborhood with my sketchbook this evening! With my bike I can now GO THE DISTANCE and EXPLORE new territories! At the moment, Valencia doesn't seem to be as boring as I thought it would be since I found myself a new sidekick, my BIKE! HAHAHA!!! Not only will it take me to places but it'll also keep me healthy! The biking around the neighborhood in the evening was super fun since the air was chilly and I haven't biked in the longest time! Anyway, here are some of the sketches I did around the neighborhood! Enjoy!

I'm hoping to keep up with these quick sketches! Doing each within 2-3 minutes helps me loosen up my drawings! Of course the color is added later in photoshop! More to come!!!

-Yon

Summer Break 2012 - Sketches

Summer break is finally here!! For the past week I've been living most of my life on craigslist looking for places to live over the summer. I traveled a lot to Santa Monica in the past week to look at the places I was gonna rent and I really liked the neighborhoods I visited! They were really beautiful and I was gonna make my final decision in renting one of those places, but after a looooooong and paaaaainfullll consideration, I chose to remain in Valencia. 

The main reason why living in the city was so important to me is solely because I wanted to be in a place where I can feed off the communal energy without needing to take X amount of public transportations that takes a huge toll on my time, and Santa Monica is just the perfect place for me! Needless to say the biggest catch is of course THE BEACH! But then thinking of how I'll probably be committing a huge chunk of my time to a project that will probably require a close teamwork with some people here in Valencia, it might be best to remain where I am now. I guess in the end it doesn't really matter at all whether or not I live by the beach, or in the city or in the suburb because a good artist should be able to work anywhere! Inspiration is out there and you just gotta go out and look for it! SO, I got myself a bike today thinking that over the summer, I can bike to the train station more often to catch the train down to the city to do more sketching, especially in Santa Monica! It's gonna be a pain going down there without a car, but that's gonna make me treasure the time I'll be spending there! Since I'm settled with my summer housing now and I also got my scanner today, I can resume working after having such a long break!! SO EXCITED !!!

Anyway, here are some sketches that I did in Santa Monica a few days ago while I was on room hunting there! I did them on my new CACHET sketchbook I got from Michaels and painted over them in photoshop! 

More to come soon!

-Yon

Goodbye BFA-1

Today marks the official date of the end of my first year at CalArts. Why? Because I moved out of the dorm room that I've been living in for the past 9 months and I bid my goodbyes and gave hugs to my classmates and friends who are leaving school for the summer.

It's sad to end my first year knowing that no other year will be like my freshman year, but I'm also excited for what's to come next. Over the past 9 months, I've been constantly challenged to push my boundaries and expand my creative horizon in many different ways. I've met so many people here who became the driving force and inspiration behind my works and I've learned how to develop a more professional working habit. The picture of my goal seemed more vivid now than before and the required positive energy that resonated through the character animation department, cubes and students helped add up to the momentum that drives me energetically to work!

Attending the seniors graduation ceremony last Friday (May 18th, 2012) reminded me again of how CalArts is both aesthetically and socially different from any other schools! Again, this comes from a perspective from somebody who hasn't attended a graduation in America, so the whole graduation ceremony in addition to the extreme casualness, to me it was a complete blow away!! Graduates from their line of majors each had theme musics of their own when they graced the stage to collect their diploma. A female voice major acted like a total diva and threw kisses to the crowd like she had just won an Emmy award or something and another theater major walked up the stage swinging around a light saber (yeah, a LIGHT SABER)  It felt like all different award shows interwoven into one (think Tony, Emmy, Oscar and Annie), that's what it's like! Those that I felt mostly connected to was of course the graduating Character Animators! There were two graduating character kids who had "My Neighbor Totoro" as their graduation theme music and it was SUPER COOL! Watching them walk up the stage receiving their diplomas for some reason bitterly touched my heart. Thinking of how in 3 years time I'll be up there receiving a piece of paper that'll draw the end of my student life and bidding goodbye to teachers and friends I've made here made me feel sad for a moment, but then thinking again, the animation industry is so small it's actually not hard to run into one another!!

My experience as a character animation BFA-1 was incredibly good and I've never felt like I've grown and received so much in barely a year! I'm missing a lot of my friends who left for the summer but 3 months will go by in a blink and I'll be back at school as a second year even before I know it!

So, have an awesome break everybody and see y'all next year !!!

Yon.