12th Week ( Nov 28 )

Here's my character design assignment for the week. We were told to design our own character and pose them according to Roger Radcliffe's poses in his model sheet from 101 Dalmatian ! So it was a really cool assignment !

I came up with designs of 2 mimes since I'm planning on making a film on mime for my first year film. The first design is a homage to the great "Marcel Marceau". :)





I'm still thinking of how to end my mime story in the best possible way now, so hopefully it'll turn out great ! :)

11th Week -Thanksgiving ( Nov 24 )

So Thanksgiving break is over and Aron was nice to have me and Isaac over at his grandparent's place in Ventura to celebrate Thanksgiving with his family ! Everybody was super nice and it was my first thanksgiving so it was a vulnerable experience ! We also took a walk by the beach after dinner since the house is next to the beach. The view was amazing ! Here are some pictures I took with my mobile phone.


Awesome houses by the beach !!


The Pacific Ocean !! :)



The pier that takes forever to walk to.


This is the furthest we were able to walk to. It turned really dark so we had to turn around, but it was fun :)

Being part of the celebration was awesome and I was constantly reminded of my own family on how we would celebrate the moon cake festival together every year, but I missed it this year. Having your family around is the greatest :')

My brother's coming to LA this Thursday with his girlfriend so I'm super excited to meet him ! So, can't wait !! :)

11th week (Nov 21) CTN 2011 !!

Okay, so I was at CTN last Saturday and it was AMAZING !

Meeting all my favorite artists was so surreal ! Even talking to them ! It just didn't occur to me that I'll get to meet so many of them in a single day !

I even got to show my portfolio to Pascal Campion, Lorelay Bove, Bobby Chiu, Kei Acadera, Mark McDonnell, David Colman, Brittney Lee and so many other great artists !! I got lots of feedbacks and comments on ways to improve my work and it was just so inspiring being able to talk to them in person !! I also had the chance to meet new people from the industry and several other art students from art center and other colleges as well ! It was really a very rewarding experience !

The event was really awesome but expensive so I didn't go on the following day ! Waking up the next morning felt so surreal. I woke up feeling like a newborn baby but with more motivation to draw !!

Anyway, I worked on some character designs on the following day after coming back from CTN and wow, I do see a difference in my work now !

Here are some satyr designs I did for Character Design class ! Took a lot of advice I've gotten from the people whom I met at CTN and threw them all into this assignment ! The design process was a lot easier ! Had lots of fun working on them, so here they are !

THE EXAM



LINE UPS





I also did another piece of the Satyrs, but I'm going over it again after Rik Maki gave me some really good pointers on how to enhance the work ! I'm looking forward to post that up here within the end of this week, so stay tuned !! :)

10th week

So here are some character designs I did for the class last week ! The goal is to come up with designs of toys when they're in toy mode and one where they come to life.

Monkeys





Killer Toys

My 48 hour film ( CAPOP )

The theme for this year was Cactus ! I had lots of fun working on this, but animating on photoshop gave me a really hard time ! I like the way it turned out in the end though, and it's my first CalArts short !! HOORAY !!

8-9th Week ( Nov 11 )

Okay, so 2 posts a week didn't quite work. I was really busy last week so I didn't have the time to update this blog, but I'm glad I'm doing stuff I like, except for my critical study class this semester, but whatever. I'm gonna upload some character designs I did over the past week, and I'll upload other stuffs tomorrow.

Character Design

Here are some that I really liked from this assignment :)

Cats


60's Girls







Rik suggested that I could maybe make the strippers more athletic to bring up the stripper quality in them, and since the goal of the assignment is to also make the girls look pretty, he said I should draw them prettier too, lol.

Grandma & Little Girl






Monster & Little Girl







Overall it has really been a good and fun assignment to work on. I feel like I'm getting stronger in terms of working around with simple shapes. I'm actually liking where our Character Design class is going right now. In all the designs that we have been doing, we were told to come up with a story behind the characters. Perfectly fit for what I wanna do ! I definitely agree that everything should have a story behind it. There's always a purpose behind a design you do. A well designed character with no story in it is like a peanut shell with no content in it.Or whatever. I don't eat peanuts anyway.

Oh and also, I participated in the 48 hour film event ! The theme was chosen in Keane Street last Friday night at 11:30pm and this year's theme is 'Cactus' ! I heard the theme for last year was 'Coat Hanger' so I'm not sure how it turned out last year, but Cactus sounds like fun and besides, it's a tradition for first year Character Animation Students to participate in it anyway and I wanted to experiment on my first year film's style.

I decided to do the animation in Photoshop and I wrestled with the animation feature in it ! Animating in Photoshop is not my style, but I'm glad I'm done with it ! I did a really short animation and I spent 16 hours in the whole thing. It's really simple but I liked how it turned out, and it's the first short that I've produced in CalArts.

The screening for the 48 hour film is gonna take place in the Bijou theater tomorrow at 10pm ! I can't wait to see all the amazing shorts already ! I've been seeing people working on really cool stuff !

Oh and it's PIXAR day tomorrow !! But I won't be talking about it that much now, I'm just gonna expect a lot from tomorrow !

So yeah, this is it for today !!

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 !!