Professional contacts can still something that looks more like a portfolio at my Flickr page here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/51468378@N07/
Friday, December 2, 2011
So...remember what I said about not being a terribly frequent blogger? I changed my mind. For now at least. This is a sketch I did last night, while not sleeping due to drinking coffee at 5 pm. (I don't recommend that.) I'm rather pleased with it. The character is named Zini, she's a the counterpart to Mr Chubby Satyr. You could also call her Skinny Satyr Lady. I started sketching her face and basic pose and decided that she looked like she was late for class and wanted to sneak in quietly. And yes, I did think up some more risque classes that satyrs might attend than wine making 101. But. I'm going to leave them off this blog.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Flickr, the best place to see my work for now.
After having this blog for a while and noticing that blogging my art is just not really something I do very often, I would like to redirect all readers interested in seeing a more comprehensive selection of my work to my Flickr page instead. There you can find, in organized, categorized sets photos of my stop motion puppets, their armatures, and even more pictures of fat satyrs. Because everyone likes fat satyrs, don't they? If you click on a set, you'll also be able to read my own comments on the materials and methods I used for each. To me, it's just a more organized way to make a portfolio.
Here is the link:
Thanks for looking!
PS - I will be down at the CTN Animation Expo networking like mad this weekend. See you there!
Friday, February 25, 2011
Satyr sculpt! More finished than he was before!
I've been getting my hand into more projects that I'm really excited about, and people involved with those projects are seeing this blog, so that means I've got to update it on a more regular basis!
That said, here are some pictures of my more finally polished satyr sculpt. In progress shots can be seen in an earlier entry. He is made of sculpey over a copper whire armature that kept breaking because all the clay he's made from got quite heavy. If you are going to sculpt a heavy character like this...reinforce your armature with LOTS of magicsculpt or epoxy, and bulk it out a fair amount with foil. And yes, he is quite naked, but that's just how satyrs are. Clothes don't really agree with them. I hope sensitive blogreaders don't mind.
That said, here are some pictures of my more finally polished satyr sculpt. In progress shots can be seen in an earlier entry. He is made of sculpey over a copper whire armature that kept breaking because all the clay he's made from got quite heavy. If you are going to sculpt a heavy character like this...reinforce your armature with LOTS of magicsculpt or epoxy, and bulk it out a fair amount with foil. And yes, he is quite naked, but that's just how satyrs are. Clothes don't really agree with them. I hope sensitive blogreaders don't mind.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Brisk! Eminem! The SuperBowl! My first animation related paycheck ever! Sandpaper!
A month ago, I got to work as a rapid prototyping sander on this spot for Brisk that aired during the SuperBowl. Eminem's facial animation was done using rapid prototyped replacement faces. This is the same process used in Coraline, in which the facial animation is done in a 3D animation software like Maya before stop motion begins. Each frame is printed out by a 3D printer as solid object. The stop motion animator attatches the right plastic face to the puppet, moves the puppet however much they need to, takes a frame, and then puts new faces in place as s/he animates. This picture I found online gives a pretty good idea of how it works:
The faces come out of the 3d printer without color and covered in a waxy residue that needs to be sanded off before paint will adhere to them. That was my job! As you can see, those little faces are full of crevices and detailed areas that required lots of vigourous but careful sanding. The process took practice - we were all worried about sanding down any details on the faces, so for a lot of the time we didn't use high grit enough sandpaper. Often sanders could be seen brushing the little puppet heads against their faces to check for smoothness; after a while your fingers got numb from the sandpaper, and I know my fingernails got sanded flat!
I got to work alongside many talented people, learned to work a flocking gun, and ran some pretty nifty errands, too, like going to a Japanese stationary store for some mini burger erasers that got doctored up and then not used in the final spot. It was a great learning experience, and I'm happy to have participated in something that was seen by such a wide audience!
Here is the final ad:
The faces come out of the 3d printer without color and covered in a waxy residue that needs to be sanded off before paint will adhere to them. That was my job! As you can see, those little faces are full of crevices and detailed areas that required lots of vigourous but careful sanding. The process took practice - we were all worried about sanding down any details on the faces, so for a lot of the time we didn't use high grit enough sandpaper. Often sanders could be seen brushing the little puppet heads against their faces to check for smoothness; after a while your fingers got numb from the sandpaper, and I know my fingernails got sanded flat!
I got to work alongside many talented people, learned to work a flocking gun, and ran some pretty nifty errands, too, like going to a Japanese stationary store for some mini burger erasers that got doctored up and then not used in the final spot. It was a great learning experience, and I'm happy to have participated in something that was seen by such a wide audience!
Here is the final ad:
Sunday, June 20, 2010
More cafe sketches
Here are a few more drawings from a recent sketching get together at a cafe.
This is Connie, animator and graphic design student! My first drawing of the night. Schnazzy magenta pen, yes?
Partway through the evening this guy came in and played guitar! He asked if we were a study group and promised to play quietly if we were. He seemed quite amused by us and was very chatty, telling us that when you play guitar, people respond to a fat sound more than a thin one. I'm not sure exactly what he meant by that, as I'm not so musically inclined, but he sounds like a man after my own heart!
And to finish things up, a few more of Charlie. He is really fun to draw; you do have to get over natural tendencies to draw him all round, as he actually is made up of plenty of angles and square shapes
as well as circles.
This is Connie, animator and graphic design student! My first drawing of the night. Schnazzy magenta pen, yes?
Partway through the evening this guy came in and played guitar! He asked if we were a study group and promised to play quietly if we were. He seemed quite amused by us and was very chatty, telling us that when you play guitar, people respond to a fat sound more than a thin one. I'm not sure exactly what he meant by that, as I'm not so musically inclined, but he sounds like a man after my own heart!
And to finish things up, a few more of Charlie. He is really fun to draw; you do have to get over natural tendencies to draw him all round, as he actually is made up of plenty of angles and square shapes
as well as circles.
Cafe sketches - she does draw things!
So! It's been forever since I updated. That, my blog reading friends, was because I was making a film and finishing school. But now you can expect to see me post far more regularly, because I have all sorts of interesting things to report, from notes on machining armatures and casting puppets, to meeting animators in bars, how to charm bakery owners so you can shoot the live action component of your film in their establishment, and all the weird psychological things that go on in your head when you do stop motion animation. (An area that I think warrants further research.)
Right now, though, you actually get to see me draw things, just like it says on the tin! A few days ago, I got together with some friends from school (including http://brendenoshima.blogspot.com/ and http://charliecorriea.blogspot.com/, but also several other talented blogless buddies) and drew people in a cafe. Ok, so we mostly just drew each other, but it was a good way to stretch the drawing muscles none the less. And since most of the drawings are of people drawing, I like to joke that it must be a statement on the artistic process.
Here are some of the sketches!
This is Jan. She is a pirate. At the time, she was drawing me and said exactly what I put in the speech bubble, as if it was a very major revelation.
Here is Charlie! Winner of the Princess Grace Award and my favourite TA ever. He said my sketch of him was a very "me" sort of drawing, which I think was a nice way of telling me I made him look fat. Apparently being drawn by Chantal adds about ten pounds...
This person was actually a cafe patron and not part of our sketching party! He was reading a really thick book and texting. Apparently he did not mind the crew of sketching animators, because he stayed the whole time we were there.
Right now, though, you actually get to see me draw things, just like it says on the tin! A few days ago, I got together with some friends from school (including http://brendenoshima.blogspot.com/ and http://charliecorriea.blogspot.com/, but also several other talented blogless buddies) and drew people in a cafe. Ok, so we mostly just drew each other, but it was a good way to stretch the drawing muscles none the less. And since most of the drawings are of people drawing, I like to joke that it must be a statement on the artistic process.
Here are some of the sketches!
This is Jan. She is a pirate. At the time, she was drawing me and said exactly what I put in the speech bubble, as if it was a very major revelation.
Here is Charlie! Winner of the Princess Grace Award and my favourite TA ever. He said my sketch of him was a very "me" sort of drawing, which I think was a nice way of telling me I made him look fat. Apparently being drawn by Chantal adds about ten pounds...
This person was actually a cafe patron and not part of our sketching party! He was reading a really thick book and texting. Apparently he did not mind the crew of sketching animators, because he stayed the whole time we were there.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Hello, internet!
Hello all!
Just wanted to put something up here to say hello to all the people I met at CTN animation expo this weekend. It was fantastic meeting so many creative people! Everyone, whether they were student or professional, was so friendly and informative and really interested in talking about what they were doing and sharing their experience. It was great!
Anyway - more on that when I'm feeling more eloquent. Instead, I shall temp you with pictures of an in progress maquette I'm working on. This character is my first try at maquette sculpting, and though he's not finished, I quite like the way he's turning out. He doesn't really have a name other than "chubby satyr." Although I've occasionally called him Lowrey, I'm not sure where that name comes from, and I don't feel it fits him very well. He does have a story, though, because he's from a storyboard project I did last semester.
Constructionwise, he's been a bit of a challenge - at one point he got so heavy his leg support collapsed and he fell right over. He does have some foil inside him, but unfortunately most of that big belly is clay. If I'd been staying closer to the dimensions of my initial drawing, I would have known just how much foil to use, but I wanted to be able to be more flexible with the design as I sculpted. Which was not the worst thing - his design did get more refined throughout the sculpting process. However, he still had the same armature, making some things harder to change. (But not impossible - I talked with Damon Bard at the CTN expo this weekend, and he told me about a maquette whose armature he had to reconstruct during sculpting!)
Anyway, enough talk - here are the pics!
Special thanks go to Drew Williams at Satyr Sculpting Studio http://www.satyrsculptingstudio.com/ for teaching me lots about maquette sculpting.
Just wanted to put something up here to say hello to all the people I met at CTN animation expo this weekend. It was fantastic meeting so many creative people! Everyone, whether they were student or professional, was so friendly and informative and really interested in talking about what they were doing and sharing their experience. It was great!
Anyway - more on that when I'm feeling more eloquent. Instead, I shall temp you with pictures of an in progress maquette I'm working on. This character is my first try at maquette sculpting, and though he's not finished, I quite like the way he's turning out. He doesn't really have a name other than "chubby satyr." Although I've occasionally called him Lowrey, I'm not sure where that name comes from, and I don't feel it fits him very well. He does have a story, though, because he's from a storyboard project I did last semester.
Constructionwise, he's been a bit of a challenge - at one point he got so heavy his leg support collapsed and he fell right over. He does have some foil inside him, but unfortunately most of that big belly is clay. If I'd been staying closer to the dimensions of my initial drawing, I would have known just how much foil to use, but I wanted to be able to be more flexible with the design as I sculpted. Which was not the worst thing - his design did get more refined throughout the sculpting process. However, he still had the same armature, making some things harder to change. (But not impossible - I talked with Damon Bard at the CTN expo this weekend, and he told me about a maquette whose armature he had to reconstruct during sculpting!)
Anyway, enough talk - here are the pics!
Special thanks go to Drew Williams at Satyr Sculpting Studio http://www.satyrsculptingstudio.com/ for teaching me lots about maquette sculpting.
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