A letter

Few days ago, I found there is one competition going on in Japan, which requires to use software called Art Rage. I'm not familiar with that software tho, I found it fun to use, so at least I can try. Since deadline is due to end of this year, I should finish this by now. Well I should call this more like quick painting since I couldn't spend much time on it, but yea I got almost everything what I had in my mind. So I will be fixing this when I got more time.

These are preliminary sketches. I wanted to draw Kimono girl with colors of red, black and white. That's what I had in my mind.

Well, after I started to paint on this, I realized my work might be inappropriate for that competition because my work seems way too dark. I will submit this anyways.

For the one who is curious about strange size of composition, I have some explanation on this. Whenever I do drawing of Kimono girl, mainly I'm inspired by Japanese Illustrator Yumeji Takehisa. And he was painting on Japanese folding screen called "Byobu". Since I never tried that form, I thought this is good time to try.

I won't have any new year celebration party tho, I have tons of animation work to do instead! I hope you all have happy new year!

WIP

I feel like I'm painting Japanese Kimono girl every winter. Well, don't ask me why.

Yellow shirt

Trying some anime style. Sorry it's very rough. I've got to go now, I need some food.

Little cutie

Just small doodle, been busy for working on animation.

Eternal sunshine

My study was not successful.

The way to tell a story

Tried to study composition and silhouette from the movie Twilight Samurai.

Lighting does a lot of job to tell the story, but yeah for me as an animator, there are some interesting things I found. The direction of the body, Angle of head, What hands are doing when 2 ppl is talking. Those things are subtle thing, but it conveys a lot of emotion of the character.

I found this study fun, I might do this again for another movie.

Value study

From picture of my girlfriend imitating my stupid face. Well I should consider to use another photo instead before go to bigger painting. Water color is always fun.

Ahh I love holiday season! I can practice my animation and draw whatever I want! I especially love spending some time to improve my animation because I've learned a lot about animation this past 4 months.

Mouth study

Spend some time to study mouth shape mainly from KingKong trailer, Incredibles, Once upon a time in the west and Twilight Samurai.

That's so amazing how much mouth shape changes and we read many emotions from its shape. It's still hard for me to transfer what I know into 3d animation tho, There is too many things I hafta learn.

I shaved my head btw, I feel cold now. And my friend will be laughing at me in next semester for sure. Happy holiday for everyone. Maybe I will post more sketches later.

A day for Kong

Yup. My class is all over now. So I went to see King Kong today.

Watching a movie here is totally different than watching movie in Japan. Theater is big and well equipped, ticket is cheap (it costs around 2o bucks usually in Japan, you won't believe it ehh?) And audience knows a lot of movies. I love spending time with my friend at theater. I love to watch a lot of previews before feature presentation. I love to talk about movie with my friend after the presentation.

I was not big fan of movie before, but since I came here I watched a lot of movies. And I realized how amazing is that many talents are gathering all together and accomplish a great movie such as King Kong. There must be tons of people involved in the movie. Matte painters, Storyboard artists, Costume and Art directer, CG Modeler and Animators, Technical directors, Camera operators and Lighting directors and of course Director. They are all "professionals" and that's why I love them and respect them and want to be one of them some day.

Sorry for my crappy sketch. I sketched little quick before the movie starts.

Too much anime kills me.

I saw many of anime these days. Yea, Mindgame was awesome. love it. This semester is almost over now. Yay!

She got a baby.

I was doodling during writing class. Funny I just note one sentence other than drawing. Sorry my teacher.

Appeal

I saw sign reflected on the mirror in the city one day, and thought the flipped version of character 'g' is really appealing to me. Maybe I'm weird guy that cares about how cute the alphabet is. But when the alphabets flipped as the way they are not supposed to be, don't you feel it's kinda cool? That has great design in its shape I think.

When I saw my friend's hand writing, I thought that's so cute to write character 'a' in the way how it's looks in computer. I mean I know almost ppl write character 'a' in easiest way, and I don't like that shape of 'a'. It's not appealing. Here is her hand writing, she wrote all alphabets for me to show how she handle with alphabets.

I love this shape of 'a', and she even mix capital letter and small letter when she writes sentence. And I found that really cute way to write alphabets. After all these, I was trying to change my style of hand writing, Here is what I had before.


It reads, not well tho. It doesn't have any visual quality for me. I want make it cute in sentence somehow. Here is my recent hand writing.

I changed my shape of 'a' as following my friend's one. And I do mix capital and small letters sometimes if it's gonna look nice.

Well, maybe I'm strange that I care how my alphabet looks like on the notes, but hey, why can't we have appeal on the letters? Make it fun to read at least.

I had big discussion with my friend before that whether we should draw what exactly see in figure drawing class or not. My opinion is that I should not draw what I see in front of me, By saying that I meant that I should make it fun to see since it's my art work. If I have mechanical arm and be able to trace what exactly I see in to a paper, why do I still have to draw anyways? We should use camera then. By using pencil or brush or whatever, we can eliminate what we don't want to show, and exaggerate what we want to show. That's where appealing comes in my opinion.

What is the good line?

doodle of the day.

Another classmate

Hellboy

I sketched my classmates in class, and end up with Hellboy.

Back to Analog

I keep hearing the suggestion that it's better to have a marker so that we can draw some arc or lines on the PC monitor. But I'm using wacom tablet for all of my PC work then, I thought it's okay if I use jsGreasePencil. I had been so stupid that I didn't try by now even though my teacher suggested me to do that.

Just grab a cheap transparent sheet (I'm using left over of trasparent shopping bag), and cheap china marker (just 70 cents in my nearest art store). I just taped the sheet on top of monitor then I can flip that whenever I want to.

The thing is, I feel the same feeling as 2d drawing when I grab the china marker. It's different feeling than grabbing tablet pen. So I seriously feel my brain is switching away from 3d technial brain into 2d drawing brain. In that way I found it easy to pick up some bad tangents, tenshion and better line of action.

What makes pose readable?

One of my assignment was make 3 poses that has some attitude in it.

It is not as easy as it looks. Small detail can bring more life. Tiny changing of angle will make more better silhouette. And Props help sometime.

What I found most interesting is, 3D sucks. I mean, I need great Modeler, TD, Texture Artist, and Lighting/Rendering guy to make it appealing. But hey, It's really easy and quick to draw lines on the paper with some appeal in it.

Please give me blue COL-ERASE pencil! Not IK-pop.

How to not waste my tution.

I went to quick sketches workshop. I was used to go there, but in this semester I have big animation class then, this time was my first workshop in this semester. I love drawing.

I'm, still, reading Walt Stanchfield's notes. I'm really fascinated by that notes. This time I tried to get "essence" of that pose. I don't think I've done this right.

I also tried to make desicion in one stroke, I couldn't do this well either.

My friend told me that I should push more "essense" further. I totally agree that I have some tendency to draw what exactly I saw. I hope I can make some time for another workshop soon.

Battle Bits!

In my storyboarding class, we were doing group project that we make 30 seconds TV commercial for any of imaginary product we can think of.

I wanted to make new type of cereal. My Idea is like this.

The Cereal has 2 flavors in one box. Actual flavor could chocolate and rice general cereal taste. In TV commercial there is 2 characters that represents 2 flavors. Sergeant Sphere(Rice cereal guy) and Captain Cubic(Chocolate cereal guy). Both captains have their own troopers. They both have visual quality in character design so that kids can distinguish which is the cool guy and which is the villain. They gonna fight in space with weapon made by cereals. Once they got shot, their troopers turns in to cereal then kid in the kitchen found the bowl of cereal saying "WHOA!! This is the coolest cereal ever!!"

I did some sketches of character design and logo for this product.


And here is final version of character model sheet. I designed 2 main characters and logo. Color is done by my friend Vanessa.

doodling

I will kick off my blog by posting some of my recent sketches I did lately.

At that moment, I was trying new way to do sketching. Instead of doing accurate sketches, I let my arms go. Forget about drawing courses that I learned, I sketched whatever I want and combined them together.

the first post

so, I've just started blog, this is completely my first blog ever in my life. I will post some of my sketches here, hopefully I can get some feedback.