The. Thick. Of. It.

So busy lately. Sleep deprivation. Mood swings. Exhaustion. Poor diet. I found myself weaping profusely at 2am one night, watching some rap video on youtube, scrawling grad school assignments that I’m dreadfully lucky are all seeming to work out. That’s not really luck though. I’ve always been perfectly comfortable letting myself fall apart, but the work is easy. Hopefully I’ll have some professional stuff to bandy about here soon-ish. Just wrapping up an interesting little thing that I’m excited to see out in the world. Till then, have a storyboard exercise: A


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Apparently this is the kind of thing you do for clients when you’re making advertising boards. They’re called Production Boards, which I guess makes them a little similar to Color Scripts or Lighting boards in animation. We were encouraged (commanded?) to use photographic reference and to trace the photographs, but I had a real hard time doing that, and really had to be forced. Regardless, it all worked out in the end. This is a real ad campaign for some auto dealers. I’m not sure how or why this is used to sale cars though, since the cars are always secondary to these lame gags with the Monkey (Who is an ape, it shoudl be called trunk ape. Morons.)

Posted in Grad School, Illustration, Life Drawing, Storyboard, Storyboarding | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Revisions and additions: Goose Sneak and Zip Out Edition

So this was two assignments combined, and will probably be the only one I do in color this semester. It’s too time consuming, and the benefits are nill when you have to rush the ink and color. Plus, I like working on paper more, it retains more life. Anyway, I addressed the notes on the Duck’s body and neck to make it more consistent, and then added a little take and a zip out to complete the scene.

The new note on the zip out was that I could make the hold a moving hold, have his legs churn a bit and the whole figure shift slowly to the right before FFFTTPPPTTTHHHH! Zip out. We agreed it works fine this way, but that change would definitely plus it.

It wasn’t originally planned, but since it’s already happening, I’m hoping to have some version of Dracula and the Wolf Man appear in something I do every semester.

Posted in Animation, Grad School, Monsters, ToonBoom Animate Pro, Traditional, Traditional Animation 2 | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Standing from sit, walking from stand…

There are two versions of this, mainly just so I can show it to students as an example of coming up with something, not testing it appropriately, and then realizing when you’re done that it’s kind of garbagey. The first one is fine up until the walk out. The anticipation to begin the walk is adequate, but the walk is too bouncy and loose. It’s inapporpriate with all of the character set up before hand. It’s a kind of loose mediocre walk I can do in my sleep, and for some reason I chose to do it that way for this project.

Everything is cool and suede, and then he suddenly herpy-derps off screen. The thing is, I could tell that was going to happen while I was doing it, before I even shot any of it I knew. Why didn’t I stop myself? That’s a thing a lot of animators could work on.


This second one is much better. Everything about it feels better. The strides are longer, but not too fast. It’s important to recognize mistakes, and try to correct them when you have time.

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Storyboarding Exercise….

I know, this blog has become a real window to the soul huh?

This is an exercise I am definitely going to steal for my students. I’ve thought about a similar one before, if not for the simple exercise of forcing them to think about what they are seeing, then at least to force them to realize that you can’t tell even a simple story with 10 drawings. You need to break things down.



Posted in Includes Audio, Reference Video, Sketches, Storyboarding | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment