Illustration Friday: The Zoo

I wanted to draw a panda. And it came out sad.

Where'd the Cheese Go?

I made this random little cut-out film my freshman year of college. Actual paper on an actual animation stand! I should do this again some day.

Boo-o-wulf

ASIFA-Hollywood held a free screening of Beowulf tonight in San Francisco. We sat in the theater for 25 minutes while the projectionist attempted to focus the projector and get the 3D print to work. We then sat through the first 20 minutes of the film in broken 3D, where everything was misaligned and quickly gave me a headache. Eventually everyone in the audience got fed up and walked out and they shut the film off because they couldn't figure out the problem. I wonder how many other theaters around the country this is going to happen at. Funny how they seemed to have a handle on this technology back in the 1950's, but now it's much more difficult to get working! What I saw of Beowulf was ugly, raunchy, and extremely boring. Facial expressions were lifeless and the CG animation made the movie a joke...had it been real actors, I may have taken it more seriously. I will admit I saw a small portion of the film, but there's no way I'm paying to see it in the theater.

RIP Jeff Jones

Sad news today. One of the best (and most down to Earth) professors at RIT has died of lung cancer. I had Jeff Jones for Scriptwriting for Animation and had a great time in his class. There was a whole lot more to him than I realized. He will be sorely missed at RIT, I'm sure.

A Very OOO Halloween

Three Rings had a late Halloween party. (You may have seen the invitation I drew a few posts ago. Check out my Mario costume!

Illustration Friday: Scale

I really have no idea what's going on here...but one is big and one is small.

Illustration Friday: Hat

It's a Spanish "No" hat! (The little balls jingle when you shake your head.) Does anyone know what it's really called?

Illustration Friday: Trick or Treat Pt. 2

Did this illustration for a party invitation for work. (Turned off the text, tho.)

Illustration Friday: Trick or Treat

Sexy wizard! Wooo!! Finally had time to do something for fun. :D

John K Lesson - Constructing Bugs

John K just posted an awesome lesson on constructing Bugs Bunny. Here's the original image:



And my attempt:


The test:

Wow! I thought I was doing so much better! And the one you see above is after I enlarged/moved the dogs head so I could compare it better. Things I did wrong:

1. Proportions - Bugs' neck and body are too long. Dog's head was drawn way too small.

2. Angles/Direction - Bugs's ears and neck are pointing the wrong way. Dog's cheeks are funny.

There's probably a lot more wrong with it...what a great exercise! I gotta do this every day.

Adventures of Mark Twain Clip

As I was surfing through Digg today, I came across this clip from The Adventures of Mark Twain...a Will Vinton claymation film from the 80's. One of my professors from RIT, Tom Gasek, worked on this film back in the day. This particular clip always freaked me out and is definitely worth a watch.



Definitely not for little kids! You would never see something this interesting and frightening in an animated film today. Thanks for doing something different, Will Vinton! The surprising part is that this clip has over 655,000 hits, 5,000 comments, and has been favorited almost 10,000 times. Who knew this film was so popular?

More Cats

Here are the other two paintings I did for the Berkeley Humane Society auction.

Wanna buy one?? The important info:

2nd Annual
Purr-casso Art Sale and Gala

When: Sunday, November 4, 2007
12:00pm - 4:00pm

Where: Hollis Street Project - Grand Hallway 5900 Hollis Street, Emeryville

All proceeds from this event will benefit the Berkeley-East Bay Humane Society. For more information call (510) 845-7735, ext.13.

Illustration Friday: Momentum

Dancing cats! This is a piece for an upcoming benefit auction in Berkeley this November. (For an animal shelter.) I am working on two more (smaller) pieces that will also be for sale. More info on the auction to come soon. Acrylic on paper, 11x11".

Illustration Friday: Captain

Seeing as how I work at Three Rings, with people like this, 'Captain' was a very fitting theme. (I know the perspective is wonky, but I'm too tired to fix it!) I'm busy busy busy, sorry lack of posts.

Horton Hears a Who Trailer

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And just to renew your faith in CG animation (after that Alvin horror) here is the new trailer for Horton Hears a Who. This movie looks beautiful! (We'll see how the story goes...)

Alvin & the Chipmunks Trailer

Alvin literally eats poop in this trailer. Enough said.

Beowulf Trailer Hits the Net

The new Robert Zemeckis mo-cap adventure flick has posted a trailer over on Apple. The CG humans hold up decently for about...3 seconds. Then it suffers from Final Fantasy-itis, where all the characters look slightly too perfect and move just a little bit off. I love Zemeckis and Neil Gaiman wrote the script...I just wish it was made with real people. (I wonder how people will feel about a hot naked CG Angelina Jolie...why not the real thing, huh??) What's with making actors over in CG anyway? Yes, its Anthony Hopkins voice...does the character have to BE Anthony Hopkins? The official site says that the film will be shown in IMAX 3D and Digital 3D - sounds like the only option is 3D. If they could come up with a way to show 3D movies that didn't involve glasses, and didn't feel like a gimmick that took me out of the film...I might enjoy it.

Illustration Friday: Poem

It's been a little while, but I'm back with a new one for IF. I'm a fan of e.e. cummings, so I chose one of his poems for inspiration.

who knows if the moon's
a balloon,coming out of a keen city
in the sky--filled with pretty people?
(and if you and i should

get into it,if they
should take me and take you into their balloon,
why then
we'd go up higher with all the pretty people

than houses and steeples and clouds:
go sailing
away and away sailing into a keen
city which nobody's ever visited,where

always
it's
Spring)and everyone's
in love and flowers pick themselves

Vintage: The Wizard's Duel

The Sword in the Stone is one of my favorite Disney films. Well, that's a lie...I really only like certain parts of it. Namely, the part with the squirrels, the part where Merlin packs his house into a bag, and this part...the wizard's duel. I found this at a flea market on the Cape a few months ago and snatched it up for the awesome illustrations inside. I've created a .pdf of the book and uploaded it to Scribd. That site is awesome! As you can see, (I hope), it allows you to share documents easily. I would like to start some sort of animation library on there, much like a Flickr pool, except for documents and books. So scroll through the pages, then if you like you can download the .pdf through Scribd. (When you open it in Acrobat, or FoxIt as I prefer, you can view two pages side by side, just as the book intended.)

Illustration Friday: Geeky

I unfortunately missed last week's topic of 'twist' because I was finishing up this painting for the Narnia Fan Art Contest...which is by far one of the more geeky things I've done lately. It's a scene from the book "Prince Caspian"...when Lucy first sees Aslan in the forest. The contest had some ridiculous rules about not including human likenesses...I hope I can get away with tree people.