These are my three big projects from the Color & Design course I took over the summer. They were all done in gouache paint, the self-portrait was around 4″x7″, the mandala around 10″x10″ and the landscape 15″ x 9″ .

I had really been dreading the class, but I had a blast. I really enjoyed painting and felt I learned a lot.

I had my first Pixar class last Tuesday evening, I’m really not used to night classes any longer! When I first started at this school I had lots of night classes, but eventually shifted towards early morning. It was much harder to actively concentrate, I need to have coffee a little later in the day and make sure to eat a good meal before heading to class. That’ll keep me charged up!

The class is really focused on the fundamentals of animation. My animation classes the past few semesters have been focused on more advanced topics and it’ll be really helpful for me to get back to the core skill set that I need to build.

Over at Sketchoholic they’ve started running drawing marathons during the week. The format is very similar to the Intensity Club or ChiuStream, in which there’s a topic that you have one hour to draw or paint for. In the case of the marathon, whoever gets the most votes chooses the next topic. They’ll run these back to back, usually doing around 2 to 3 at a time. I’ve started attending as much as my schedule allows and I want to keep up on it as much as I can, it’s really helpful to work with these types of deadlines.

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.

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!

Between the pain, dental visits and needing to work to pay for all this, I haven’t had much energy for anything fun. I’ve also fallen behind on my design work, something I plan to rectify.

School starts in just a few weeks, I wish it was starting tomorrow! I’m taking four classes this semester and I’m excited by each one. I have an animal drawing class, a character design class, a lip sync animation class and a digital clothed figure drawing class. Take note; I’m an animation (3d) major, yet I have three drawing classes. Why? Because it turns out that’s where my passion is. It also turns out that many of the instructors and department heads encourage animators to pursue these types of classes as it can really help. Sweet.

Some months ago I finally started using a feed reader. I do not read news. Instead I subscribe to art blogs that inspire me. I have a few links of inspiration on my sidebar here and have thought about updating it with the new artists I’m following, but the list is ridiculous now. Instead I think I’ll put a link to the shared google reader feed I created. I’m also thinking that from time to time I’ll write up a post about a particular artist or art book.

I keep having this issue of comparing my work to these artists I follow and how much better their work is than mine. And then I remember that they have been working professionally at this for years, and I’ve only really gotten started. So I’ll go through this cycle daily. I find art that inspires me and motivates me to draw. I draw, but my work falls short of the inspiration. I feel discouraged. I remember that I just need to keep practicing and I’ll get there. Rinse and repeat.

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.

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 ^_^