Animations

Above is my action analysis which has been an overarching assignment throughout the semester. I finished it up the other day, which is nice because it isn't even due for another week. I certainly hope that the majority of others in my year are planning their time accordingly and don't end up frantically trying to finish this for the time of hand in. Despite the finished scene having a maximum requirement of only 6 seconds, it can be easy to underestimate how long things can take when you've never done them before, like clean up for example. Heck, even composting can take a long time if you are not an After Effects wizard, which I am not!

There are a few things I dislike about the boarded section here, and of course I could have easily taken the small amount of time to fix what I dislike about the boards, but ultimately this assignment is about the fully finalized scene so I didn't really feel like bothering with that, although I guess I could since I still have a week...but...I would rather leave this where it is and work on whatever else!

Below is more or less my first 3d acting piece. Prior to this I did a simple walk and a jumping mushroom, just to get a hang of animating in Maya and whatnot. I like this piece for the most part, and I suppose it's not bad considering it is essentially my first time ever doing something like this; I spent a ton of time on it though and got plenty of help from my teacher along the way. I really wish we had begun learning 3d earlier (the now 2nd years had a change of curriculum and already begin animating in Maya...lucky!). Since I'm enjoying 3d it is something I really want to work on. Ultimately it is up to me to dedicate my own time in practicing since after next week I will no longer have a 3d animation class...next semester it's replaced with rigging, which I highly doubt I will enjoy.

Lastly, here are a few variations of a "puppet smash" assignment for my stop motion class. Stop motion isn't really my thing...but I can appreciate the fact that for one semester we are getting exposure to it. :)

Life Drawing

Miscellaneous

Action Analysis Concept Work

Life Drawing and Story

Above are just a few pieces from life drawing. The first image is for part of an assignment that requires taking a life drawing pose we've drawn and transforming it into an actual character, one that is either a hero or a villain. I went with a villain/witch lady...even though the little sparks of color emanating from her wand are not particularly intimidating. Then below is just a story sketch for a film idea I had, which as the teacher pointed out, was more suited for live action than animation - which I already knew while working on it, but figured there would be elements to the film making it worth being animated!

Mix & Match

Design idea for an animation assignment of mine, although I'm certain that at least the outfit will change since I do not want to animate all of its components. Felt like having a bit of fun with it for this image though, hence the patterns and unnecessary add ons like the vest and skirt.

iPod Photos

Felt like knocking down the previous post on this blog, so to do that I needed to make a new post. Since I haven't really got any drawings or paintings that I want to put up here now I figured I'd put up a few random iPod photos I took during the course of the summer. I used Instagram filters on all but the first image because I'm cool like that and they are fun/easy to use. The last three photos were taken at these dunes in North Carolina when I went and stayed at the beach for a week with my cousin and her family. The last photo is easily my favorite out of this bunch, if only I used my actual camera for better quality!

First Day of School

Some kids could do without it. 

Quick Photoshop piece because it is that time of year again!

Hugo

I watched Hugo for the first time last week and ended up doing a portrait of the kid. I had heard from different unrelated people that the film was boring, so their reviews and opinions kind of kept me from giving it a watch. I'm glad I got around to it though because I personally found it enjoyable throughout. Shame it didn't really do too well in the box office...ah well.

Amon

After having come to the decision that he is quite awesome, I decided to draw Amon from Legend of Korra. Yayaaa, more Korra fanart. I'm not one to particularly care for villains, I often find them annoying or simply unlikeable. Amon's swfitness, evasiveness, fearlessness, charisma and other attributes just make it hard for me to disdain him, haha. I think I'll be upset at his demise, assuming that will happen in some way, shape or form seeing as Nickelodeon isn't going to allow the villain to win. Of course by now Amon has mainly only used his power to take bending away from those who abuse their abilities, so maybe if and when he really hits the more innocent benders, my liking for him will be lessened a bit - buuut I'm not so sure. I'm very interested to see how the final three episodes of the season pan out!

Summer

Korraaa

Korra, watercolor, ink pen... 

Sorry it isn't a scan, sorry the colors look a little worse here than in actuality, and sorry the photo is lopsided.
You gotta deal with it! ;)

Boy

I never know what to draw, which definitely proves to be a drag. This stemmed from having absolutely no idea where I was heading. A lot of the time I look at a blank piece of paper and cover it with ugly scribbles and then erase those ugly scribbles and draw more ugly scribbles until I reach the point where I crumple it up and toss it in the trash (and by scribbles I guess I do mean drawings, not actual scribbles...). What I should do is sit down and make a long list of people, places and things and just pick random items from said list and create a piece of art revolving around those topics, since going in with no idea of what I'm doing or where I want to go mostly results in failure and killed trees.

Placid

Bookworm

Random quick digital sketch thingy.

Sydney

Did this based on a photo I took back in 2008 when I traveled there. I'm liking doing simpler, more graphic pieces like this. Obviously a plus is that it is much quicker, yet still has a nice aesthetic to it.

Speed Paintings

One thing I really want to improve upon in the world of art is my overall speed. Today I felt like tackling digital painting, so instead of having to put a lot of time and effort into designing an environment, figuring out a good composition and whatnot, I just painted from photographs. Nothing special, just practice.

Random Pieces

Just two relatively quick things. With the bottom image, I didn't really like the sketch but I still felt like coloring it. I didn't want to invest hours and hours into doing that though so I decided to just color it in a way different from how I tend to, one that is quicker too...then I just added some subtle textures to make it a bit more interesting. Initially there weren't any outlines around the objects but with the lasso tool I added them, I kinda like the slight wonkiness it resulted in. I also intended for the building to have more detail and information but I just got bored with it. Also, that sign says nothing.

Start of Summer

I'm a week into summer break and I finally forced myself to be artistically productive, sooo this is what I came up with in the later half of today. :)

Legend of Korra Trio

Since having finished my class assignments relatively early, I decided to spend the last few days of school doing some Legend of Korra fan art. This was my first time drawing bending of any sort; overall, Korra's turned out to be my favorite and Bolin's probably my least, haha. The last image is just a bit of the process I took from  utterly atrocious to less so when working on the Korra piece.

Paintings

I was gonna give a quick apology to the very small handful of people that watch my blog since I have been updating often and therefore probably spamming their inbox of all blogs they follow, but then I remembered that this is my blog and can therefore update however often my heart desires without the need to be apologetic. :) So without further adieu, here are just a couple of paintings done for my painting class.

Storyboard and Layout

All of these pieces are related to a story I had to develop set in any time period/place that I decided upon (my choice being 1800s New Zealand). First up are initial beat boards, and then final storyboards for one of the sequences, and then layouts and simple shot tests. In my story, Koro (the villain), is a taniwha, which is a creature in Maori mythology. Some are considered to be good, but others not so much, and can take it upon themselves to kidnap girls/women to keep as wives/be the bearer of their children (who would turn out to be either human or taniwha). I decided to play up on the fact that they are attracted to human females, as you will see if you take a read through the beat boards...