Parallel Dimensions

Its been a while since I updated here, and the reason being is because I started a new one. In my school we are required to maintain a professional blog, which means to not litter it with witty anecdotes about friends or opinions as well as just writing about non animation related work.

To read my new blog with the latest updates on school work, follow this link

Its been suggested that I maintain both blogs, keeping this blog as a way to give behind the scenes opinions and other subjects, while maintaining the professional blog as well.

Thinking through

We were told to think through carefully with which character we decided to continue with this week, to give reasonable cause for our choice and to remove second guessing and thus allow the full alloted time to finish it up by Friday.

So there you have it, I have chosen Madame Medusa, the nastiest villain Disney has ever produced. Despite her complexity, I hope my pure love of the character will allow me to finish off this assignment gracefully.

I want that DIAMOND!

Today we got a new character, Madame Medusa from The Rescuers! Man, she's an awesome character. Complicated as all heck, but still really cool, and lots of fun to draw and animate. She is just so packed with personality, that despite her villainous behavior, you can't help but like her.

Below here are some studies I've done while watching the movie. We will continue with her tomorrow, since we are making a 5 second scene that involves her comforting Edgard from The Aristocats.

Walking through the forest

Yesterday we were given a really cool assignment. We have to draw Little John from Disney's Robin Hood being sad in a bar!

The only bad part of this, is he is an absolute pain to draw! Well, thats a hyperbole, but he is quite complex. I'm learning that even for a simple character in terms of personality that they can still have subtle nuances in terms of design. We got a model sheet, but that alone wasn't enough to learn how he is constructed from all angles and expressions, so youtube is a must when studying him.

But otherwise, this is turning out to be a rather cool assignment. I just can't get it out of my head that we are animating a character that was approved by the Disney Animators of the time, that an actual veteran drew this guy, and that we are doing the exact same thing now.

I'm psyched!

Ball with attitude (and tail!)

Well, update time :)

This time around its a ball that has a hateful personality. We all drew cards from a hat and each got a unique and difficult emotion or personality. I found this emotion very tricky, since the ball could not bend out of its shape in its key held poses, and the tail could not be used for acting. So little less of a week went through to make this little gem :P

In all seriousness, my teacher said that the ball itself was drawn nicely and had some good poses and ideas, but the follow through of the tail was rather chaotic, and as a whole, its difficult to read the personality properly, both due to some choices in action as well as the tail (someone mentioned that it looked like he was wagging his tail in the middle).

Oh well, I learned alot from it, and now its an exciting exercise, we're doing the flour sack animation! :D

Illusion of Life!

Finally a post, and such a nice one too :)

These are all the little short exercises I have done since after the first film, but that was a collaborative effort. Now these are all 100% me, and am quite happy with a few of them. I didn't know I had could do stuff like this. We have learned all kinds of stuff about timing and spacing, two key things with animation, as well as squash and stretch. Next up is secondary action.

My first collaborated short film

This is it, two weeks of work created this! And I couldn't be happier! :D

Now, to make sure everyone understands, I haven't done EVERYTHING in this. For example, I only did one background, the one with the bones, and didn't do all the coloring on all scenes and such. However, I did do alot of the animation and colored alot of the 'cels' and did some editing and timing, all in all making my contribution 1/4. Fitting, since it was a team of 4 :)

Tell me what you think, and use this as a reference to see how much more amazing I will become later :P