Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Update and Portfolio Picures 3

I've been animating up a storm, but none of it is ready for the eyes of the internet... I have this short short, "Huggabear" that I basically finished in I don't know, September maybe, but I have yet to fully finish the clean-up and coloring of it... shame. I guess I've been too busy working on my longer short, "The Conjurer of Spheres." It is kinda like my first film in that it is a collage of little bits (I swear, someday I'll spend three minutes with one or two characters, promise,) but it has color, some camera movement, and the eerie feeling like there might be a plot. "Huggabear" is succinct, has cute characters, and is a story... which is probably why I'm reluctant to finish it. Or again, maybe I'm just too goddamn busy. It's at that time of the semester when school has become burdened with deadlines and I fear I'll never finish my sculpture. Damn Cintiq, you've got me so 2D... literally, I mean do pixels even have depth? Lines don't exist in the real world, and neither do my paperless drawings.

So what the heck, why not some old analog drawings to spice up the night:































































With an old digital one I made this summer for good luck:






















Looking back at this one, I'm fairly certain I was influenced by the colors in Paul Driessen's "The Killing of an Egg." Noticing that is the same feeling I got when someone pointed out to me that I used an idea from Jan Svankmajer's "Dimensions of Dialogue" in a flipbook. I've been concocting up a whole bunch of walk cycles and I'm sure it's not just from reading and watching Richard Willam's "The Animator's Survival Kit," not just from my own curiosity and desire to develop my skills, but from seeing Ivon Maximov's "Fru 89" a couple months ago. How good it is to subconsciously connect with great artists, how bad it is to copy...

Sunday, November 8, 2009

The Promise Land

I'm going on exchange here next semester!

And while you're there, virtually, check out the film "Beton." I think it's the reason why I started using TVPaint Animation Pro. I know I should learn Flash if I ever want a job someday (although I did have an animation internship this summer, but they used Photoshop, which I really don't recommend,) but as a pencil person, lines that can undulate in texture and opacity are very important to me. Plus, it's really nice to not be using an Adobe product. Plus the interface is pretty much intuitive as long as you know how to animate and use alpha channels. But back to that film, it is gorgeous, uses perspective in surprising ways, has many frames you could pause and hang up on a wall, plus it really makes you think.

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Moab or Portfolio Pictures 2

I made this:










Plaster, Paint, and Canvas on Plywood
7'8.5" x 5' 8"


Wearing this:

Grey Zentai Suit.
Still from the super 8 film, made to play along with the piece,
The Making of Moab.




Someday I'll go to Utah and see Mars.

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Welcome to November!


To christen this wonderful month I bring you a picture of me from a year and a day ago.