"People are who they are by the way they react to things."
-Glen Keane, animator
"In this class, we aren't just going to sit at the animation desk and wait for inspiration to come and hit us. We are going to animate from life!"
- Ismael Sanz-Pena, Intro to Animation instructor
Concept Art: Environment
Concept art I made for the front of "Cafe Esotera", a woodland cafe. The front of the cafe counter is integrated into a hollow tree trunk. The whole image is intended to be a background image layer for a short animation involving hipster woodland critters.
The images above are proposed model sheets for some of the characters.
I have quite a few favorite films--too many to name individually. But I will say that throughout my life I have gone through phases where the work of certain director's and animators have caught my interest. Instead of these interests going away, I would just incorporate these interests into my lists of favorite things and move on to another obsession.
For example, in the 1990s, when I was 7 and 8 years old, I went through a "Tim Burton" phase. I loved Burton's direction and art direction on Peewee Herman and the Beetlejuice films as well as the Beetlejuice animated series.
When I was older, I began reading about some of my favorite artists and I discovered that shortly after Burton graduated from Cal Arts, he made a short film called Vincent, a stop-motion film about a child who believed he was Vincent Price. Although I was at a phase in my life when I was more obsessed with recent Disney films and short student films, my initial interest in Burton led me to looking up the film. After watching Vincent, I realized that many of the stylistic touches that I appreciated from Burton's films were the very things that he had been developing as an artist and a student for quite some time.
Another example was my interest in Tom Warburton's cartoon show, Codename Kids Next Door.
I had always wondered why some of the character designs and overall style of the show looked familiar, and after watching and reading interviews of Warburton, I realized it was because he had worked on character designs and in-betweens for shows such as Doug and Pepper Ann. These all happened to be shows that I loved as a child!
Illustration.Penciled in sketchbook with graphite pencil, inked in Autodesk Sketchbook, and colored in photoshop.
"Dancing Hippo"
Keyframes from the "Dancing Hippo" mini-segment of Disney's Fantasia. Adapted from Preston Blair's Cartoon Animation. I chose this exercise to focus on consistency and perspective.
Slouch/Walkcycle
Slouch cycle and walk cycle adapted from Preston Blair's Cartoon Animation.
Lip Synch Practice
Lip synching exercise adapted from Preston Blair's Cartoon Animation.
Maya Human Figure
A human figure made in Maya. I used a joint skeleton and "skin bound" it to the model. This was intended to just be a practice in using only a joint skeleton rather than using muscles with the joints. Since I did not use any muscle constraints, the joints were not weighted to the skin. I modeled the figure using polygons and extruded faces. I made the polygons smooth by using the hotkeys.
