Wings of Barbecue

Well, the Xeno thing sort of died at the starting gate, but never mind. I've got enough on my plate at the moment without worrying about non-course related stuff.

Namely, composition. I've got an assignment in Drama class to do a drawing with characters exhibiting joy, sadness and anger as part of a single image that tells a story. So what to do? Well, it starts with clear storytelling, and that means composition first and foremost.

I'd been planning to study film and composition starting over the Xmas holidays, but this pushes my timescale up a bit. Whadda ya gonna do, eh?

Anyhow, I started tonight by doing thumbs based on scenes from the first 15 minutes of Wim Wenders' classic film, "Wings of Desire". Being a story about an angel who walks among humanity, there are a lot of lingering images of people in a variety of emotional states as the angel observes it all, which made it perfect for a bit of practice.

So here's the page I did earlier, before getting started on comps for the Drama assignment. They're a bit on the rough side to start, but toward the bottom two rows I was getting a better idea of where I was going with it.

Love and hatred must combine

Busy, busy, busy. Work is winding up, with my last day probably either Thursday or Friday, which leaves me more or less open for the rest of the month to work on my drawing. And believe me, I need it! I've improved, no question, but I'm definitely gonna need that solid month of work to get good enough to keep up in second year.

The other awesome thing this week is my appointment on Saturday to discuss my new tattoo. Can't wait!! I've been wanting a third for a while now, and the draft design my friend did for me is awesome! Hopefully I'll be able to have it done sometime around the middle of the month, so I can show it off when school lets in. It'll be nice to have one that I can actually show people in public, heh.

Anyhow, I'm sure you're tired of my ballpoint "on location" sketches by now, although there are lots more to come. So instead have a few golf studies I did for my summer animation workshop. I'm pretty happy with what's there, I think it's as clear an indication as any that the work I'm putting in is going to pay off.

So this is it, we're going to...HAPPY CANADA DAY!

Odd experience to be listening to music for Canada Day, as broadcast by a radio station in Seattle. Why? I dunno, mostly because I love KEXP's podcasts, and wanted to check out the source. It's good stuff though, so check out their site.

Otherwise, it was mostly drawing, although I did remember to have a grilled cheese sandwich. Everyone should have a grilled cheese sandwich on Canada Day. Make it a national holiday dish, maybe serve it to the Queen. I bet she'd have gouda or something, she seems the type. Me, I had a mixture of extra old cheddar and cheddar with horseradish. Not a bad combination. Sort of like Welsh Red Dragon without the mustard seed.

Art-wise, a bit of extra stuff that targets some weaknesses from last term. My last two assignments for Character Design, head design and character duos, turned out abysmally, and almost cost me my year. I can't allow that to happen this fall, so I've started concentrating on head shapes and gesture, using Ian Jeans' method. This will also help me with the Summer Animation Workshop project, so it's win-win for me if I can really push my skill over the next couple of months. To say nothing of improving my chances at success in second year.

Anyhow, here it all is.

A bit of figure work today, although technically I did it yesterday. I can't fit this paper (12x18" newsprint) on my little scanner, so I wanted to wait until I had some daylight for digiphotos. Seems to have come out okay, though.

Haven't been doing as much as I'd like this week, which is odd since I've been doing lots of drawing in the Summer Animation Workshop with Ian Jeans. Ian's gesture technique is a lot different from what I'm used to, which is hardly a surprise since the only real instruction I've had on how to do gestures is reading about it in the Vilppu book, and a short description of the same thing from Paul one week in P&P class. In Life Drawing this year, all I got was "here's some examples of gestures, now do it", which was no help at all, so this is pretty handy.

In any case, here's some attempts to put Ian's method into practice, as well as trying to tie it into the Vilppu stuff I've been doing by way of bendy boxes. I must say, I'm finding it appealing and it seems to bypass some problems I've had with the figure in the past. Who knows, maybe this is how I'll settle on doing it in the future. I could do worse.

A Bit Slow

Not much to show for yesterday and today, I'm afraid. Yesterday, the whole house got up turned upside down with organizing for a charity event happening in the living room, which made it hard to really concentrate. Then last night, due to various unfortunate events, I ended up with almost no sleep (less than 4 hours) before going off to my first day at work. So you can imagine, I'm not braining today.

I am excited about tomorrow, though. The summer animation workshop starts tomorrow evening, and I really have no clue what to expect. I know I was recommended as someone who'd benefit from it, and there will be students from other grades there as well, so I doubt it'll be "one size fits all". Beyond that and the instructor's name, I don't know a thing, so it'll be really interesting to find out.

A Bit More Mojo

So I didn't get as much done today as I'd like to have, since I spent a lot more time out of the house than planned, but it was a good drawing day anyway. For one thing, I moved on to boxes as planned and managed to get a good solid page of the silly things. I'm shooting for two pages of these a day as well as two pages of spheres as my warmup, then moving on to an indeterminate number of pages of blobs and maybe in three or four days start adding soft, bendy boxes. I don't want to rush things though, so it'll happen when it happens.



What's cool here is that I did end up doing a page of blobs today as well, and they turned out WAY better than expected. I think I'm finally starting to internalize the concepts of volume and depth, which is seriously positive if I want to make characters and environments that really grab a viewer. What I need more than anything is to capitalize on that progress and really push the concept as much as I can, even if things get seriously weird in the process.



As a bonus, I've added a couple of pages from last Friday's life drawing session. The group keeps meeting until the end of the month, but my last week is going to be this Friday, sadly. I'm going to be starting the animation workshop on the 15th, and I can only justify so many nights out of the house to myself. As it is, for those first two weeks it'll be Tuesday/Thursday for classes, plus Wednesday for life drawing at Sandy Hill and I gotta fit groceries in there somewhere. So something's gotta give, and it might as well be the thing that's gonna end soon anyway.

In any case, my gestures have really transformed in the past couple of months, which is really amazing. I had no idea there'd be such a change from just using Vilppu's method, but wow. That stuff's seriously powerful.

Easy money

Turns out work was way easier than I thought, giving me some time to putter about in my cute li'l 5x7" purse-sized sketchbook with the Robert Batemen cover (goat!). I probably should have done more, but it's really hard to get into it when you've got interruptions every 10-15 minutes or so.

My output tonight seems to be more on the "disturbingly biological" side than the "impressive megafauna" that I had been doing, but that's how it goes. Tonight seems to have been the night for slippery flukes and gnarled pseudopenii in any case, so that's what y'all get to look at.

Oh, one other thing, it seems I've got something cool to look forward to this summer. I was contacted by Algonquin about a summer animation workshop that's going on, and it seems I was identified as someone who could really benefit from the extra instruction. Well now, it might come off as "remedial" or whatever, but you know what? It tells me there's somebody out there who wants me to succeed, and they're tossing opportunities at my feet, that's what it tells me! And damn if I'm not gonna pick them up. It's 27 hours of class time spread out over the whole summer, starting on the 15th, and you know I'm gonna be there.

I'm pumped about this. So that gives me another week and a half to push my basic drawing ability, so my goal right now is to post new stuff every day until then, at least. Mostly Vilppu, of course, since that's my focus, but if anything else happens to get done, I'll toss that up as well.

Anyhow, blobs. Enjoy!

From Life

Clearly it's been too long since I posted. But summer is here, and with it a lot of free drawing time, so hopefully I'll be able to provide some worthwhile work to show you all.

So first things first, I managed to pass first year Animation! Whee! Which doesn't let me off the hook or anything, it was way too close for my taste. That means this summer is going to have a lot to do with bringing my skills a lot closer to where I want them to be. To do that, I've been starting to work my way through the Vilppu Drawing Manual, in an attempt to make my basic drawing skills stronger, as well as doing a lot of life drawing.

That out of the way, here are some selections from this week's sessions at Sandy Hill and the life drawing club that's running at the school until mid-June. I'd love for it to keep running all summer, but we weren't able to get enough sign-ups. Totally disappointing, I was hoping to see a lot more familiar faces.

Not that something like that's gonna stop me.

Off to the races

So I introduced Wendy to you already. Looks like she's gonna be a part of my life for some time, which is hardly a surprise. She'll be the standard model for the rest of first year, and probably the bulk of second year as well, so you'd better get used to seeing her here a lot. That's a good thing really, since she's such a nice, simple model that I can actually comprehend the mechanics of, which I really need at this point. Working with Wendy will seriously improve my figure drawing, and there's nothing bad about that.



So on the topic of projects, the latest is to animate the character from sitting on a box to standing upright. So to figure out the best way to do that, we've done thumbnails to work out each part of the action. I'm kinda new to thumbnailing characters, so it's really valuable information for me. And I see right away the use of it, it's great stuff. The ones with the stars are the images I picked for my progression from sit to stand.

The order to read them is 1, 3, 2, 5, 4, 7, 8, 9, 6.

In with the new

Not much to say, since it's late. But here's the first page of sketches of "Wendy", the character we've been given for the sit-to-stand project that we got assigned today, and I suspect we'll be using through the rest of second term. She's fun so far, although I've still got a ways to go to really familiarize myself with her.

New video

Try to contain your excitement.

Holiday Time

So school finished for the term on Friday, leaving me to my own devices for three solid weeks. Which would make for a nice break, if the last animation assignment hadn't taught me that I have to improve my basic drawing and sketching skills a lot. My instructor says I'm where I'm supposed to be for a first year, and that I have strong draftsmanship skills, but that doesn't mean I'm a good artist, at least in my own eyes. So the next three weeks are going to follow a simple, direct plan:

Draw like crazy, and it doesn't matter what. The sketchier the better, so long as it's got structure.

That's pretty much it. No particular goals, other than sheer volume. Just getting used to drawing all the time, sketching and experimenting and just plain learning through experience. Which I should have been doing last year. But to hell with that, I'll do it now and do well at it.

So here's three pages from today, mostly studies from people I think are pretty damn good and want to emulate. Needless to say, none of them are mine, and if you can identify them all, congratulations. Apparently you're me.

Done like donair

So that's it. I just put the finishing touches on my last project of the term, which was to design "a room with personality". I decided to go with a 70's designer's living room, and fortunately from the three concepts I submitted as thumbnails (I also submitted carnival ringmaster's bedroom and retro future living room) that's the one that got picked. Turned out pretty decently, although my plan is to set it aside for a few months, then return to it once school is finished in April to try to make it into a portfolio-worthy piece. It's not there yet, of course, but it will be.

So now I just have to go in EARLY tomorrow, pop into the print shop when it opens and get this photocopied onto 11x17, trim it and submit by 9. Easy, except the getting up at 5:30 am part.



Dangit, now I want donairs, Halifax-style. They sell things called donairs here, but lemme tell ya. They ain't donairs.

Such a nice smile

Well, the craziness that is finals continues, with an exam on Monday morning, an 8-second animation that I've already done more than 200 drawings and re-drawings for due on Tuesday (and I'm not even done yet!!), and a room layout due at the end of the week, and on top of that I get this bit of silliness I have to do. I guess they assumed the rest wasn't enough, they might as well toss in a bit of make-work on top of that. Ironic part is, this would have been loads of fun if it weren't for the timing, I guess they just wanted to mess with us.

In any case, the assignment was to draw a skull, freehand, in 3/4 view and lable to the parts. Then once that's been prettied up a little, do another skull based on the first one, but this time altered to become an alien skull. Surprisingly enough, it was a lot easier than I'd expected.

I've heard a few people in class who were in Pre-animation last year talking about using the skulls they did last year. Obviously they'd be using some of their better skulls. Which they would have had in their portfolios. WHICH THE TEACHERS THIS YEAR HAVE ON FILE!

I dunno. I'm paranoid like that.

Giving you the sack

I might not be doing anatomy as much at the moment, but that don't mean I'm not drawing! Here's a few pages of sketches getting ready for my term final, the classic flour sack animation.

I need a lot more work to get anywhere near good, but there's definite improvement since the beginning of the year.