No more Pixar class at Academy.

http://splinedoctors.com/2008/12/academy-of-art-and-the-pixar-classes/

It's sad the class is no longer available for students, as myself thought about going back and take the class once again.

I have a mixed feeling about shot animator. I have to admit that I was focusing on creating small exercises for my demo reel to get my first step into the industry. If I was creating my own short film at school, I could have gone more creative in a way, but I don't think I could have gotten where I am right now, which is where I feel settled financially and be creative at home. As opposed to what I did in order to get a job, what I've been doing at real production is more of team work. Dealing with Story point of the shot, hook ups and continuity. That's the things we've been talking about the most at work. I'm not saying we don't need polish for the shot, just saying polish without spirit of the shot doesn't do a job.

I have to admit that I enjoyed the mood they had. That was very competitive to get in to Pixar class. But even before I got in to the class there were a lot of great things happening at PC lab. I don't forget "mentorship" given to me from Denis or Tom who were already in the class at that point. Even after I got into the class I learned a lot from people around me, Tun, KC, Tomo, Hyunjung, Jin, Key and Joe. Something makes Pixar class so special, but by the time I was graduating the school, I felt things were going way too extreme. I saw many people who were just trying to figure out the formula to get in to the class and forget about the point of learning animation. The school was making things worse by narrowing the door for the class in a way, as opposed to what Dr. Gordon intended to.

I don't know what could be an alternative solution fot this. I just feel sad that they've gone. but I also know they're extremely passionate about teaching animation. So I just hope they will be back in some kind of form after they take some break.

Small Indian Dude in Progress.

It all started with small chat with my buddy. He always gives me such an exciting ideas to work on. After spending few hours drawing almost uncontrollably, I was surprised to notice it's so easy to draw when we got some inspiration going around in my head. Think about huge amount of time that I've been procrastinating...

I started to rough out the poses and tried to nail how he could be moving. Then rough ideas of faces next. I pretty much like the final result of his face design. I still have long way to go with his body tho.

Sorry for the lack of posts lately.

Doodle of the day.

4th dimension in our animation.

Today I had a small talk with my friends at work. Then I noticed very important element for animation, or maybe art in general, that cranks up our animation to the next level. Are you ready for this? That is "love".

In this episode we are currently working on, I got my favorite female character that relatively appeals to my eye more than any other characters in the show. So I kept saying the character is cute. Today one of my buddies told me that I've fallen in love with an imaginary character. I went back to my seat and thought about it. then I was like That's it!

Yes he's right! I'm in love with 3D character on my screen. sounds too nerdy eh? But seriously though, I noticed I've completely stopped surfing web site when I was animating that character. And spent time on every single details to get it right even though we are on TV schedule here.

Once we're all done with animation basics such as Timing, Spacing, Follow Through and Ease in/out. At the end of the day it's all about how we project the character's feeling into 2 dimensional screen. In order to do that right, I need to know what the character is thinking, not only surficial level but in more deeper level. If I'm in love with what I'm animating, it just comes natural.

My buddies laughed at me when I was proposing this. well, I agree this kinda sounds too geeky. But I still think "love" brings another extra dimension to our animation, so I'm sharing this with you guys here.

It's been said we'd better not fall in love with our shots because it's not our's, it's director's. But that's another story.

Panda was awesome!!

I know. I've been completely away from blogging lately. But I'm back! with crappy sketch I've done while I was watching TV show. well, that's not what I'm going to talk about. We watched Kung Fu Panda today and that was AWESOME!! (since we have Shawn Kelly here in Singapore right now, I have to say "awesome" as he says :) I'm just happy to meet this movie. I'm sure I'll look back this movie again and again as I do for The Incredibles. Congratulations to all of who worked on this one! (obviously none of those great guys will check my post but anyways! :D

I'll be back once again when I got next crappy doodle. I already realized I need to sharpen my skills up once again. so I started to attend drawing session at work. so there will be more to come.

Alex's

Who would have guessed the first post from Singapore was not my drawing? Very talented guy at work, Alexandre Espigares had sketch of me. I liked how he exaggerated some of facial parts. This is pretty much how I look like in side profile.

The work is tough, but I love going to the office.

Big move.

So, I have a flight to catch this weekend. I'm going to Singapore to join the team of Clone Wars. Since this is not a contract job like I used to have, the move I'm making is relatively bigger than previous one. I'm coming with Illusion of Life and all that stuff. So it's tough. I packed my scanner and all the art supplies that I can have fun with, but as you probably know I will be working for Mr. Lucas as hard as I'm able to, You might not be seeing quick update anytime soon. But I can show you cool stuff when the show is out, I promise.

Paint.

Hello. I was trying to get back to the world of painting since I've noticed I haven't done any of it in last few years. I put those roughs here mainly because this could be a good chance to get some opinions from people. I'm trying to get the style that I can work with for relatively longer term, that means I don't have to worry about painting style when I'm thinking of character's detail. Anyways, my current concern is how much should I keep the original lines in final painting in order to get most pleasant look. I've tried few variations on this concern roughly, the one with the boy wearing white shirt is having a lot of lines and simple/flat colors but some brush textures. the second green sweatshirt girl is having some rendering on its form but still remains some lines from original drawing. The final one is very rendering centric and some fancy lighting included. I liked the final rendered style but this might be appropriate for illustration but not for a modelsheet. Anyways, if you had few minutes please drop me a line which version would you prefer to see more.

By the way, my previous blog entry had been terminated for several reasons. but that's true I'm still busy to pack my stuff. My flight is set in the end of this month. so there may or may not be new doodle coming up soon.

La La La.

Doodle of the day.

Run!

Some of my friends remind me of trad animation lately, so I just gave it a try. First I tried it on DS Animanatee found at Goro's blog. Then I found the software is having trouble with saving file with some colors in it. So I switched into Flash. I wish Animanatee could handle saving properly tho because it's so nice and fun to play with DS all the time.

Doing 2D animation is hard! I find myself relying too much on 3D benefits these days. I find wonky spacing everywhere but it's so hard to go back and fix those, while we can tweak on curves in Maya.

Maybe I should have gone more extreme with this, or more experimental way. Because it's so much easier to do something very hard to do in 3D. maybe next time, dunno.

No, Vista didn't suck.

It's just me being lazy.

I'm a such a Mac hater, but I'm looking for to see new MacBook. Did any of you hear about new 50% thinner MacBook? Well, let's wait and see. Macworld is almost there. I'm sure it's gonna look sexy anyway.

P.S. How come there's so many sexy gadgets out there lately? Wacom 12WX is the another thing. Maybe we are living in the best era (or the worst).

Happy New Year 2008

and I'm still working slowly. Sorry for lack of post, I actually got some messy doodles to share with but I'm lazy enough not to set my scanner up here and do some settings of my newest friend Vista. I rather go to bed or go online and play counter strike (and get pwned!) Let's hope more to come soon.

I hope all of you had a great holiday.