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.

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.