I’ve been doing some sketching here and there, but I haven’t done nearly as much art as I’d like. Yesterday was the first time in months where I had a sustained session. I ended up doodling and just getting comfortable with painting again. It felt awesome to be painting again.

I’ve finished up with school for the time being. Well, what I mean is that I graduated, but I do love school so I’ll see how long I stay away. But now that means it’s time to really focus on what I want to do for work. Right now that’s two things: illustration and animation. I really need to build skills in both areas. With illustration I need to work towards creating finished pieces versus just quick sketches. I also need to continue working on basic drawing skills (which means I can’t shy away from drawing people!). I did a bout of figuring drawing last week that was like pulling teeth. Every time I put my pencil down to the paper I was almost overwhelmed with the idea that I was about to draw crap. That’s a tough hurdle to overcome. In the animation category, I need to start building what I consider a professional portfolio, rather than a student one. A lot of that is going to come from just putting in the time and getting more experience.

Anyhow, that’s a whole of things I need to do. I talk a lot about things I need to do, so now comes the tough part of doing them! Here’s a little sketch on newsprint paper done with a prismacolor pencil. I thought I was done with newsprint paper (and charcoal for drawing), but I’ve been feeling a draw (ha ha) towards it recently. It ends up being a nice complement to figure drawing for me.

I’m almost done though and while I had initially had no interest in this class, I’m very glad I took it. I’ve taken color theory before and so the thought of retaking such a class sounded like a drag. This class though ended up being more of a painting class and we just applied color theory to our projects. I like that.

I have a few work related projects that are really coming together, I’m having fun drawing in my style, but for others projects.

My main computer got hit by a virus of some sort yesterday, so I’m in the process of getting that taken care of. I really hate it when my computer goes down (for whatever reason). It ends up being a splinter in my mind that I can’t really forget about until I’ve fixed it. Luckily there’s a lot of scanning time involved so that’s allowing me to step away and get other stuff done.

Some exciting news, last Friday I got an email that I had been accepted into one of the Pixar animation classes. This class is taught at the Academy of Art, but has instructors from Pixar coming over to work with us and run the class. I’m looking forward to really nailing down my core set of animation skills and building out from there. A good goal for myself is to do more animation “studies”. The same idea as quick sketches in drawing, I need to be exercising my animation skills in smaller, easier to finish, projects. My drawing skills have been really benefiting from that type of exercise, it’s really time I applied that to animation as well.

Now that I have more time again, I’d like to start putting at least an hour into my dailies. I have some illustrations I’d like to work on, so I was thinking of using my daily images as a way to explore what I might want to do.

I also want to be animating at least a little each day. I want to start with some simple exercises to get warmed up, then start doing some longer pieces. I want to tackle a physical and action oriented piece as well as some more dialogue tests.

First, a cup of coffee and some relaxing in bed, I feel so tired! I have a lot to get done still, but I feel okay with where things are going. My animation is the farthest along I’ve gotten on any animation project, although even there I see how much better I could have done. Just shows me where I can improve!

For this piece I need to finish the lip sync, smooth out some awkward movements, finalize the arm motions, finalize the ending and then polish, polish, polish!

This animation is for my Lip Sync Animation class; I find it funny that it’s only in the last week I’m tackling the lip sync side of things. When a character speaks, the actual lip movement is such a small part of the whole. I’ve been so much more focused on body language and expression changes.

Beyond my animation class which finishes up tomorrow at 12, I have both my Character Design and Clothed Figure classes on Thursday. For Clothed Figure, I have to choose 12 of my in class pieces and snazz them up a bit. For character design I have to get all my model sheets together in a portfolio, get together my sketchbook and mainly I need to finish my maquette of the Great White Giraffagator.

There shall be much posting of school projects in the next week!

Both projects are far from where they should be, according to our class schedule. I’m hoping that over the next eight or so hours I can get caught up.

Today I’m jumping back into my lipsync animation. I had been behind schedule on it and have until next week to finish it. Considering I have only four days off for spring break, I’m getting started now!

I’ve been getting a lot of art supplies recently. As mentioned earlier, I got a marker set and then today I bought a few oil paints. I got a black, white and a burnt sienna. They’re water mixable oils, so I don’t need any turpentine, no fumes sounds nice! They take a while to dry though, I was told two to three days. There are different mixable oils you can add, one of them speeds up the drying process. I’ll see if that’s necessary.

I’m going to be going to the S.F. zoo this week, at least twice. I want to get a bunch of sketching done while there.

I’m going to be changing my site structure around a bit. Originally I was setting it up as a portfolio, but my focus recently has been more on the sketch side of things. So until I’m actively job seeking, this site will be a sketchblog. What does that mean? Not much as far as the presentation you’ve seen so far, but more how I think about the site.

I think this will be a nice opportunity to practice various motions; lifting, pulling, throwing, jumping, walking, running etc., outside of a film environment.

Today I started with a basic walk cycle. I need to figure out the overlap for the antennae (it’s looking funky at the moment) and I need to offset the arms. I wasn’t sure how to offset them though in a 24 frame cycle, I’ll have to look into that.

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Every so often I start to rethink whether or not I’m on the right track at school. When I’m at home, I’m much more likely to draw than anything. Looking back at my 3d origins, I was always into modelling and texturing. So where does animation come in? My thinking was that I had the least experience with animation and based on my research, it was not something I’d easily learn on my own. I also have a desire to bring my characters to life and animation seemed like the way to go.

After my Thursday animation class, Character Development, it was reaffirmed I’m where I want to be. I am so incredibly excited by the projects I’m starting and what I’ll be learning. I am so inspired by my instructors and the experience and knowledge they’re passing along.

I have a decent amount of homework for the first week. I’ll be doing two lipsync animations, one in my 3d class and one in my traditional 2d animation class. I’m very interested to what the similarities and differences will be in both mediums. I have to choose my dialogue for both classes, I’ll be gathering a handful of possible options to bring. I also have to start designing characters for my dialogue and film projects for 2d animation. I already have some of those done for the film, as I’m continuing my Stitched Together project from last semester, but I’d like to flesh out the character some more (and I still need to design the dog).

I have to do four “flour sack” drawings for my clothed figure drawing class. I have to show realistic compression and stretch of the sack. The samples our teacher showed us looked really cool. This project is going to be very helpful for my film, as the main character Elwyn is a sack himself.

Yesterday was the start of my fourth semester at the Academy of Art in San Francisco. My first class, advanced animation 3, started at 8:30, which meant I had to get up at 6:00a.m., ouch! It actually wasn’t too bad, I got to see a pretty sunrise.

On the BART I saw an ad for Burger King’s new Whopper called the “Angry Whopper”. Bizarre.

I had a good time at my first class, my teacher Michael Berenstein seems very knowleagable. He worked at PIXAR for a number of years (I’m not sure if he’s still working there or not). He worked on Toy Story 2, Bugs Life, Finding Nemo and Monsters Inc. It’s kinda exciting having teachers who’ve worked at some of the big studios.

My second class of the day was clothed figure drawing. We did a number of two sets of 5 mins drawings, same pose, one nude, then clothed. It was a neat excercise and I was rather happy with how my drawings turned out. I hadn’t done any figure drawings over the winter break and that usually spells disaster when I start a new drawing class. Typically I feel like I’m learning to draw all over again and though it felt a little rough, I still felt there was something there.

The next day…

I feel rested up, but mediciney. I’m taking stuff for my cough and I’m feeling it today. maiki brought me along to Sufficient Grounds, a sandwhich shop in Berkeley. I’m glad I came along, now I can draw and hang out rather than just sleep ^_^