justin owens

I got a new plastic overlay for my graphics tablet, the last one had gotten quite scratched. The tablet is working better, but that unfortunately didn’t entirely fix it. Compared to Kimi’s tablet, it just isn’t as responsive or sensitive. It’s frustrating when it doesn’t work right, but with the new overlay, it’s at least better.

I’ve noticed an improvement in my digital painting recently which has inspired me to finish some older works. I want to finish my three point perspective illustration from last semester. I had been a bit daunted by the image, but I feel prepared to get back into again. I’ll start on that tomorrow after I get some web work done.

The final for my perspective class was to take some written material and turn it into a three to four page comic. I really got overwhelmed with my other finals and didn’t get as much done as I’d have liked, but here are the page roughs.

I based the comic off of a story, Skyships and Tech Chips, by Tim set in the Cloud World universe.

I focused on one small section of the story to make it easier on my self. It was an interesting exercise, taking someones written material and creative ideas and making my own interpretation. I have a lot of other projects I’m working on right now, so for the moment this one is set aside, but I do hope to revisit and finish it.

I’m just about done with finals week, I’m finishing up my perspective piece tonight (a three page comic) and then I’ll be done!

I turned in my animation project on Monday and got some nice feedback. It’s still far from finished, I unfortunately got way distracted by Lord of the Rings Online. I like where it’s going though and I’ll be finishing it up over the next week. In fact I’ll be working to have all the animations I did over this semester polished by June 30th, the deadline to submit demo reels for the Fall ‘08 Pixar Class.

 

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The premise for this animation is a businessman sits down at a park bench to eat his lunch, when he notices a group of pigeons watching him. He gets nervous and transfers to another bench, for a moment feeling safe, until he realizes there are even more birds in that area.

I have the first section blocked out, I need to add in the second bench section and then refine all the keys (as well as adding the pigeons and lunch box).

I’m just about done with the blocking stage for this animation. I still need to block in the character kicking open the door and also running off screen. Then I need to add a few sections, him scanning around, making the decision to jump the gap etc. I also need to tweak the run cycle so he has a bit more weight.

 

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Our current animation assignment is to have a character jump over something. We have complete freedom to choose what they jump over, I went with the rooftop idea. This piece is a short exercise in a more action oriented direction. I wanted to emphasize that idea, so I’m doing a sort of rooftop chase sequence.

So far I’ve just been blocking out the run cycle, this is my first time to attempt one. I spent a good 5 or so hours on the first 7 frames of animation. It took a long time for me to work out the pacing and to get a good idea how far each cycle would go (distance). I needed that information to block out the rest of the steps leading up to the ledge. I feel happy with where it’s at right now and I’ve since moved on to blocking out the rest of the animation. I took a break and did a little scene building as well.