Designage

Some preliminary designs for the Character Design project:

(A Hitman, A Trucker, A Lunchlady and a Librarian)

Reading (Translation: "Work Ass Off") Week Starts!

Hey everyone,

Just finished Week 7! Can hardly believe that I'm now at the halfway point of first semester. I guess time flies when you're not sleeping!
To recap, here's where we are in each course:
Animation - walk cycles.
Character Design - doing research and head designs based on character types.
Digital Tools - animating a walkcycle, scanning the drawings into 2D animation software (Flipbook) and digitally painting the drawings via a colour model
Layout - FINALLY we've started full composition work. No more intro exercises. So now we're starting to prepare layout packages based on defined criteria.
Life Drawing - Skeletal studies of the torso.
Storyboarding - Adapting existing source material (comicbooks) and producing film storyboards (full cleanup!)

Whew! We've definitely come a looong way in just a few weeks. They put up the second semester layouts in the animation corridor at school and they are just AWESOME!! I can't believe that's where we're going to be in less than 4 months! They're not sure if Brian Lemay or Jim Zubkavich is going to be teaching us this summer. Either way, we're pretty much set!
Now we're at our 'reading' week. So happy! But I'm not planning on taking any time off. I've got a list of exercises and optional assignments that I want to do in the time off. There are a number of animation exercises that we could have done, but didn't in favour of other ones that used the same principles. I intend to do them all and redo some of my last exercises from the beginning. Animation is one of those things that I really want to excel at. When school starts again, it'll be full steam ahead and no looking back. I want to make sure that I'm as solid as I can possibly be. The better my basics, the better everything else will be also. I also want to spend some time at the ROM (Royal Ontario Museum) and do some drawing there. I really just plan to use this time to shore up my skills and get ready for what's coming next. I do plan to relax and get some SLEEP because I won't get another break until the summer!

Branch Out.

(Oh, the drawings are from today's storyboarding class. Since we already have a major project, Flagg wanted us to try working from a given premise and create a single panel to encompass the entire idea:
1. Kid in bathtub/Doesn't realize there is a monster in the tub!
2. Kid turns into monster/ Doesn't want his mom to discover him!

Very fun stuff.

Where's Your ANIMATION At?

Hey all,

I realize that as an animation student, I should probably put up my animation work also. The only problem is that if I turn my work into an animated gif, it doesn't seem like Blogger can load it properly. So if anyone would like to see my animated work from this summer, please visit my animation thread at Drawingboard.org:

Branch's Animated Sketch Thread

(There is a TRUCKLOAD of work in this thread! Everything from head turns to jumps to walk cycles. I even have some scans up from my entrance portfolio to get into the AAC. This is how I spent my summer vacation: doing as many exercises as I could from every animatoin book I could find, plus one hour quick character sketching each day, plus studying anatomy, perspective, character design and life drawing). Makes my head hurt when I think about how hard I worked during my break from Max Animation school when I was trying to get into Seneca. I'm glad it was all worth it!)

Unfortunately all my current work is too large to post on the board, so I'll probably wait until I have something worthwhile (like a full walkcycle) and I'll upload it to a video host site.

One week before BREAK WEEK!!!

Yah!
Branch-out.

Work in Progress: Final Colours!

So here it is, my first digital painting. I'm marginally pleased with the results. I would have preferred to spend more time working out a proper colour scheme before throwing on paint, but there just wasn't any time. I spent about 3-5 times MORE than I should have on this piece. I'm still not really satisfied and I had to rush parts of it because I just can't spend any more time on this thing. The good thing is that I've really got my feet wet with digital inks an paints. I definitely feel much more comfortable working in the photoshop environment. There will definitely be more work coming.

Aside from this project, school is just starting to take off. I'm now in Week 6 (time is rocketting by!!), and I've noticed that in all my classes the training wheels are coming off:
Animation - walk cycles start next week!
Character Design - no more practise exercises, now just research and design projects
Digital Tools - We start animation painting with PS and next week we're on 2D computer animation!
Layout - Full compositions
Storyboarding - No more rough boards, only cleaned up final work

In terms of grades, I've been doing extremely well. I'm not really concerned about the marks part of the program, but it's good to know that I'm meeting their expectations. I generally set my standards much higher than required, so I don't usually have much to worry about.

Okay, onto my layout assignment. I talked to one of the guys in 2nd year and he says that he averages only 4 hours per night, so what I'm going through is pretty normal.

That's "good", I guess.

Lata,
The Branch

Work in Progress: Part2b: A Revelation

"Painting is like an ant inching his way across God"



lol.
Full cleanup/paints/effects will be up tonight.
(By "tonight", I mean "sometime before school tomorrow afternoon", and by "will", I mean "hopefully by some miracle"!)

Branch.

Work in Progress: Part 2: Final pencils

Final lines done with a "B" pencil. (roughly 5 hours of work).

I have to say that I'm really enjoying this piece. It's been a ridiculous amount of work for a simple digital painting assignment, but I'm really pleased to have such an interesting piece to paint. I find that unless I'm inspired by my work, it's next to impossible for me to feel the motivation to finish and give it everything I've got. It's one thing to get an uninsipiring assignment and do the best job you can, just for the principle of always doing your best, but it's quite another thing to *choose* uninspired work for yourself because you're too lazy to push yourself. This, for me, is one hell of a "push"!

Well, onto digital cleanup and paints...

Branchout.

Work in Progress: Part 1: Blue Rough

Most of what I post tends to be finished assignment pieces, but our latest Digital Tools assignment requires multiple individual steps so I thought it would be fun to post the progression pics as I go.

Our assignment involves doing a composition, cleaning the lines, scanning the drawin into photoshop, applying digital inks/paints and then printing out a colour copy. So I spent a few hours the other night working out my design. I decided to use a graphic novel concept that I've been developing for a few years now. I already had the rough character designs done, so it made it a much easier choice. I decided to go for a "Lesean Thomas" style title splash page with all the characters. It was a ton of work, but I really enjoyed just cutting loose and drawing my guts out. So these are the rough blue pencils and today I'll clean it up and apply final lines before scanning.

Now off to work!
Branch.

No rest for the Wicked

First layout assignment: Room in one-point perspective. I spent way too long planning this assignment. I borrowed a copy of Brian Lemay's book on layout drawing to help me work out a new strategy for approaching future assignments. I still have a two-point room to do for class today and it's 3AM and I haven't slept yet! This "OCD" is going to be the death of me! I just keep pushing myself to come up with better designs rather than just settling for what's easy or expected. Each drawing should be something that I'd be proud to show a Pixar rep if they came into the school. Each drawing is a portfolio piece, if I've done it properly. I hold myself to really high standards when it comes to my work, the only problem is that it often means that assignments take 2-3x longer than they should because I'm pushing for higher quality but I also force myself to hit all my deadlines. So something's gotta give and unfortunately the usual casualty is sleep. I don't want to burn out, so that's why I'm continually researching better methods of producing high quality work under limited time constraints.
I think I just need a good night sleep...

The Branch.

Week Four: "Sleep is for the WEAK!"

Hey all,

Another glorious week in the Core. I had to pull 3 all-nighters this week just to get all the work done! I seriously thought I was going to be sick after night 2. I can't keep this up for too long. I've decided to start planning to spend the whole day at school instead of coming home after classes are done. This way I'm not tired out by the commute and end up not starting my homework until about 8. So I'll stay all day, do extra-life drawing in studio at night and then come home and just go to sleep.
We'll see how it goes this week...

As for last week:

We were given a massive storyboarding assignment involving redrawing 35 establishing shots from a defined angle. This was easily the hardest drawing assignment I've ever had to do. Half the battle was figuring out how to make the perspective match the required shot as well as redrawing all the elements so they match the scale and position of the establishing shot. Very tough. Plus this is just our THIRD assignment of the year! I'm so stoked about this class. Every week, the work gets harder and harder. I really love the challenge. We got back our first assignment and I did extremely well, but my real reward was John Flagg saying "Thanks for the hard work. It was very good." Sweet! (The attached set of boards is a sample from that assignment)

I finished the perpetual bouncing ball tests and shot them on Monday. Next week, we have to hand in a diminishing bouncing ball. So it loses its energy as it bounces across the screen. I've already done two tests that I like, so I'm going to do one more, then do it in perspective, then do a simple character doing a standing broadjump. I really try to do as many attempts at a project as possible. I want to squeeze every drop of learning that I can out of each step. SQUEEZE!!!
I found out that at Seneca we don't have a scheduled plan for learning animal animation or 2d effects animation! That was a big disappointment. I can understand the focus on human animation, but so much of animation involves animals. I hate that we aren't going to study it on any real basis. I'm glad that I know this because I'll just have to start putting animals and effects into my later animation projects to essentially supplement my education.
In Digital Tools, we're taking photos of our head and aging half of the image in photoshop. I can't say that I'm really excited about this stuff. I want to do graphic novels, and so this photo manipulation stuff doesn't really appeal to me. But it's important, so I guess I've just gotta slog through it. Nothing much in the other courses, a 1 and 2 point room is due for Layout, some character head studies are due for Character Design, and some cafe sketches for Life Drawing.
(These are the evolution of the "Blockhedz" rough sheet. The assignment involved taking a sphere, adding the cross-sections, then adding facial features. I decided to push the assignment and take one of my own characters and try to do a model sheet. I used a hand mirror to help push the expressions. Again, this wasn't part of the assignment, but I wanted to see what I could do. Pretty pleased with the result. Hope I don't get in trouble for going too far!).

Sketchbooking

A subway lady from my little sketchbook that I take on my "super fun" 90 minute commute to school every morning.


"Hard at Work"


Quick sketch of Jason Groh (our first year animation instructor). He had been admonishing us to keep drawing all the time. So I thought it appropriate to draw him while he was lecturing us.
This weekend I'm going to upload all of the links to my instructors' blogs and websites. Also our first storyboarding assignment will be back on Friday, so I'll post up some pages from that also.

Back to work!


Branch-out.

Blokhedz

Some quick perspective head sketches for our Character Design class.