New Year's Resolution.

Why, hello there! I know it's been ages! I picked up my Col-Erase literally for the first time in 2 years or so, it feels so good to be back on the desk though. I'm still in the tropical island for those who wonder. It's been more than 4 years and counting, which surprises me more than anyone else as I myself never thought of staying here for a such a long time. Noriko and I also got our first baby in October, and my daughter has been the best thing that ever happened to our life since then. Work has been great as well. I didn't really feel that I could ever call myself as a professional animator 3 years ago as I was so fresh out of school at that time. But now, with a huge help from the company, I feel more comfortable pronouncing my title as an animator more than ever.

Though I wasn't fully happy being here for all this time. As I become more comfortable animating for the client, the job became somewhat more task-like. I started to behave like a mindless robot to accomplish whatever is asked. Don't get me wrong though, I'm not unhappy being here either. Most of the time I get excited over my shots and cannot sleep at night thinking about it. Seeing the other animator's work also never stops entertaining me. It only happens when I get tired or simply burned out. Those shots eventually turned out to be great nonetheless, thanks to the awesome lead Cedric, but I always felt that I lost my initial drive somewhere.

I reckon that's partially due to the type of the shots that I do at work. My initial motivation to get into this animation industry was more for a character driven animation, but most of the work that I did here has been a pure vfx work except for the Rango stuff. Again, I'm excited to do those vfx shots as well, it just happened to be that my affection is leaning more towards to the character piece.

Lately I've been thinking of making my personal piece more seriously than ever, for my own satisfaction and/or for the possible future job opportunities. The fact is that once you start it, it's a lot easier to keep up with it! A lot of good old memories started to come back as well. I'm a keen reader of Walt Stanchfiled's book for all the sudden again!

I thought the year end holiday was a perfect time for me to think about the plans for the next few years, and so did I. Then there's this art themed podcast thing here. I completely forgot where I picked up from but it was on my Read It Later list, so I had a listen. Quite surprisingly the host was talking about the dos and don'ts on making a new year's resolution. What a perfect timing! I believe the show is quite entertaining apart from the fact the he is recording the podcast while he drives, so there's an awkward pause here and there. But anyway give it a try while you are still in the new year's mood.

Enough of my story. I hope you got your own resolution ready to begin a year. Happy New Year to all and see you in a bit.

Winter Hat.

Doodle of the day.

I found this software called MyPaint the other day. It's quite simple and it's free! I especially like the feature of having unlimited amount of space when it comes to the paper size, so that I don't have to set up the paper size before start sketching nor adjust the paper size due to the size of the sketch ending up bigger than expected.

Me 2011

Doodle of the day.

Totem

Doodle of the day.

Spoonfed.

Doodle of the day.

Choose a cat, Draw a girl.

Howdy bloggers! Sorry I've been away for a while again. Work has been busy but I'm pretty happy to get back on track especially after 2 months of doing-nothing-but-do-not-slack-off period. Well Australia trip was ton of fun.

Anyway, believe or not I'm here to promote yet another internet meme. Great Illustrator Harvey James has a live journal blog where this art challenge sort of session is happening. I was late at the game but I thought it would be fun and gave a try. Turns out it's helluva fun! Idea is simple, you pick the cat of your choice, then draw a girl based off the design of the cat. If you have some time, I would strongly encourage you to try your version of cat girl.

Here's a link. Choose a cat, Draw a girl.

A Man

Doodle of the day.

I'm slowly catching up with my old habits.

Influence Map

I don't usually participate those internet meme, especially when I'm not even a member of deviantArt. But I found this very entertaining for both audience and myself as well.

Uwe Heidschötter http://heidschoetter.blogspot.com/

Guilherme Jacinto http://www.guilhermejacinto.com/blog/

Ghostbot http://www.ghostbot.com/

Erwin Madrid http://erwinmadrid.blogspot.com/

Calvin and Hobbes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_and_Hobbes

Katie Rice http://funnycute.blogspot.com/

Dylan Forman http://dylanforman.blogspot.com/

Shane Prigmore http://shaneprigmore.blogspot.com/

Blacksad http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacksad

William Trebutien http://singeclub.blogspot.com/

Shiyoon Kim http://shiyoon.blogspot.com/

Mike Thomas http://sketchmt.blogspot.com/

Dave Pimentel http://drawingsfromamexican.blogspot.com/

Walt Stanchfield http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Stanchfield

Rango

So it's finally out. Rango is an upcoming animated feature film directed by the man who created The Pirates of Caribbean, Gore Verbinski. And this is very first time for Industrial Light and Magic to take a crack at making an animated film, apart from the short film named "Work in Progress" done back in 2000. As you might have guessed by now, I happened to be the part of the crew.

It was back in 2002, I saw one of the most anticipated animated film at that time, Monsters, Inc. I was completely blown away by its sincerity of the characters. I never thought I would be moved so much by watching CGI characters acting out on the screen. It was then I made up my mind to become an animator. It took me a while to prepare all the money that I needed for the university, then in 2003 I was in San Francisco biting a burrito.

7 years flew by, I ended up being in a bunch of places around the world. I went back to Tokyo for an unfortunate visa issue, then I gained quite few but trustworthy allies during the time I was in Sweden. Here I am now. Miles away from the equator. Still animating.

The movie won't come out until next year March. But I'm sure those patience would be paid off when you got to see the actual thing in a theater. As much as this movie means to me, this means a lot to all of hardworking talented crews who's involved in making this film.

I hope this triggers some of the new generations to consider their career path to be in the field of animation much alike what Monsters did to me.

Watch gorgeous HD version of trailer at Apple or click here to see it on YouTube for your convenience.

Someone out there.

Yes, I know it's been ages. I'm actually quite surprised to see it's been a year since I did last post. To be honest, I felt my sketches were getting worse and worse, not in terms of draftsmanship or technique but style. I always felt that I was just reproducing what's been done by someone else, not creating something by my own. At some point I got sick and tired of watching my own stuff, and I quit drawing.

A work has been busy as well. It's been almost 2 years since I moved to Singapore. I'm now officially moved in to ILM Singapore and still animating. One of the movies that I worked on will be coming up in theater very soon but I can't talk much about it and the one I'm currently working on either. It's been hectic sometimes, it sure is not an easy job. My hair was and is always gray but I've also learnt how not to sacrifice my life for the job. I hope those sweaty hours that I put into my animation will pay off when I got to theater.

As I see a new way of communication is evolving past few years, I thought of closing the blog once again. But I'm not here to say I'm discontinuing the blog. But I've started to use Twitter instead. It's been quite useful for both communicating and gathering information. Then I thought about those people who is still reading this blog should be notified at some point, right? So here it goes. Though I'm not twitting about anything work related, if you are interested, follow me, or you can always remove from your list as you wish. I will try to follow you back as long as you are not posting 100 tweets a day.

http://twitter.com/atsbomb

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.