Thursday, April 26, 2012

First Bite is being animated! Its beyond exciting to see this guy in 3D!! Our rigger, Ayan Akbar, did an outstanding job and was able to get everything I was looking for in this guy. Many thanks to him.

Here is a screen shot of what I am currently animating. As you can see, the MAYA interface is extremely intimidating, especially to a 2D animator like myself. I feel like I'm getting the hand of it though and with the help of my animation supervisor, Sean Carrow, I know it'll all work out just fine.

More First Bite stuff coming soon!!!

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

I haven't drawn this guy in a while. He doesn't have a name despite the fact that I've been drawing him for about 22years. I just did this after looking at the time and seeing it was 6:20 in the morning. Yeah...one of those night again.

I hate the coloring in the eyes. It needs to be a bit more subtle. Lighter, if you will. Too tired to fix it though....Goodnight. I mean Good Morning......#!%$@
Another still from the frog Flash cartoon. Be forewarned....frog on right isn't as dumb as he appears :)
Hello All!

Here is a still from a Flash animation I am currently working on. The piece is about a frog who is later joined by another fellow frog and is not amused. The two end up duking it out over a fly. Pretty exciting, eh?.... It's my first Flash animation piece I've done completely on my own, so needless to say its a little messed up and needs many tweaks. I do, however, like the character design and the "Maurice Noble" approach I imitated in the background. Attempted I should say. Anyway I'll hopefully post the video once its all fixed. Enjoy some still in the meantime!

Friday, April 13, 2012

For whatever reason I made this. I titled it "Jesus Frog" to boot. I honestly have no idea why. Long live art school, right?
Here is a page from my sketchbook. My next assignment in my Digital Cel class is creating a  very limited piece of animation accompanied by a soundtrack. I was deciding between the "Spanish Flea" by Herb Alpert, or "The Popcorn Song." I think I'm going to go with the popcorn song, seeing as I've used the Spanish flea in previous animations.

Anyway my idea features frog(s) and here's a doodle I'm pretty pleased with. I may explore the shape more for different frog body types but I'm really digging this guy!

Monday, April 9, 2012

Here's the same assignment with my clown character added in. I think he helps!!


Here is my clown layout, complete with field guide. A field guide plots out porportions, layout, and movement of a character. I usually don't do this kind of work. I'm much more into character design and animation. This assignment was quite hard at first but thankfully I have a good professor who helped me out here and there as well as show me Maurice Noble's wonderful backgrounds. I've been loving the mans work for years and never knew who he was until now. I suggest you look him up....you may recognize his stuff!!

Overall I'm pretty happy with the end result. I added a blur effect to the tent opening which I like, and I'm pretty happy with the color choices for the most part. It really reads as a Flash background, something I kind of wish I would've avoided, but hopefully with time that"ll change and I'll get better. I may do another color version without outlines and with a limited color palette. For now, not too shabby I'd say.

Thursday, April 5, 2012

Here's another version!!!! Super excited!!!!!

Created by Sean Carrow.

Here is the official poster for my short film entitled FIRST BITE!! It's a short project myself and a talented bunch of classmates are working on for our 3D collaborative class. Click to enlarge to see my talented crew and fun details.

Poster created by Sean Carrow.


So here are a few facial expressions that are going to be used in my film. I had to go through my entire animatic and make frontal expression sheets so that the rigger on the project, Ayan Akbar, can create blend shapes for the 3D version of this guy. Blend shapes are deformers that let you change the shape of one object into the shapes of other objects. In this case, facial expressions. This is one of five pages!

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

I am currently taking a collaborative class this quarter and part of the class is pitching an idea  in hopes of making a short animation. I pitched an idea I had about a vampire who went to claim his first victim, only to bite the guys dog instead. I had a previous post showing an image pertaining to said idea.

Needless to say my pitch got picked up and my short is currently in production. I have an amazing, talented team behind me and its beyond amazing to see this come to life. Above is the vampire model sheet I made. From here, my producer, and extremely talented modeler Danesh Taraporevala, will be bringing this guy into the third dimension!

I will post more along the way, but this is the official post for my directorial debut!

Sunday, April 1, 2012

I have a feeling this is going to be small....

...For my Digital Cel Class, in which we use Adobe Flash, we have a layout assignment. Layout is not a strength of mine to say the least. However I am attempting to create a background for a clown character I did (see previous posts). They always say stepping out of your comfort zone only makes you better, so with a little luck, this assignment will improve my background/layout skills.

Here is a very rough version. The clown character is difficult to see, I know. My professor said to stay away from horizontal lines and try more diagonal line work. Horizontal lines tend to lead off the page, where diagonals are more dynamic. I will be posted more as the class progresses.