Sketchy BART People

Here are some folks I sketched on my morning commute yesterday.

"John Carter"

Saw "John Carter" Friday night with the animation club. At IMAX. In 3D. Oh yeah, we went all out. It was quite a joyous experience - nothing like seeing a movie after six hours of drawing on a four-story screen with fellow animators who are gung-ho for fantasy action sci-fi epics.

This movie meant a lot to me in particular because I wanted to see what Andrew Stanton (he of "Toy Story",
"A Bug's Life", "Wall*E" and "Finding Nemo" fame) had to bring to live action. Stanton is my hero for he epitomizes everything that I want to do with my career - animator, screenwriter and director of both animation and live action.  If I can follow in his footsteps, I will be a fortunate woman indeed. 

The movie does not disappoint. If you've seen Avatar, "Last of the Mohican's", "Tarzan" or "Pocahontas", then you will enjoy "John Carter". That's because A Princess of Mars introduced the first fictional hero. Every action-y sci-fi story owes itself to Edgar Rice Burroughs's novel's 1912 roots.

The visual effects are quite good, although there are times when you are lost in the action and it's a little difficult to tell who is shooting at who, especially in 3D, where stuff tends to blur. I will say this movie does an excellent job of blending CG with live action. Even though you know the four armed Tharks were made in a computer, they interact exceedingly well with their real counterparts. It amazes me how far 3D animation has come even in the past 5 years. The music is epic and the costume designs are fabulous. Taylor Kitsch's performance as the titular character is so-so, although I attribute that to some of his dialogue, which is a little clunky. However the Princess Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins) kicks serious butt. She's awesome in the book, but is given an added layer by being a regent of science. She also slices and dices through enemy ranks rather well.

The film takes several liberties, however they are all in service to making the story more entertaining and in my opinion, more accessible for today's audience. And it's just a great deal of fun to watch.

You can view a cool video that Andrew Stanton did for Ted Talk back in February about the film here.

Photo from scifimafia.com

Walk Run First Pass

Here is the first pass of my Walk/Run cycle for Animation II.

I discovered that frames 2 - 6 were not scanned and added to Toon Boom, which is why the walk seems out of place. I find it amusing that I can never just do the assignment as is. It's not because I want to make things harder for myself by adding tons of secondary action, it's that I want my character to be interesting. I was going for a "woman with no name" character a la Clint Eastwood in "For A Few Dollars More." Hence, the hat, boots and poncho. As I began the project I realized I did not know how to animate hair, a hat and a poncho as someone walked then ran.

My teacher gave me a lot of good ideas for fixing this, mainly he suggested that instead of trying to animate it in three quarter view to stick to the main principles and save the fancy stuff for later. The next pass is going to be WAY simpler and the body mechanics will make sense. And more arcs!

Sketchy BART People AND Heads and Hands Day 6

I drew people on BART today. And they all have heads and hands. So this counts as Heads and Hands Day 6 also. Sure.

Heads and Hands Day 5

Had an excellent weekend working on Storyboards and celebrating my friend's 32nd birthday. No hands today, but lots of heads, courtesy of IMDB Pro and my imagination.

Heads and Hands Day 4

Shorter day today - working on my figurative concept homework.
Had fun though. Went with a wine theme for the hand drawings.

5 minute hands:

15 minute head drawing:

Original photos courtesy of Depositphotos.com, Yaymicro.com, Boxwoodwinery.blogspot.com and Celebritywallpapers.org.

Gesture Drawing Workshop

Attended the gesture drawing workshop for the first time today. It's like the clothed figure drawing except the facilitator gets really into it. He walked around and gave suggestions to everyone as they drew the model and gave mini-lectures during the breaks on how to strengthen the drawings. Didn't get to stay very long however I enjoyed myself.

The model's back was turned towards me during one pose and since drawing people's backsides is boring, I started drawing the other students drawing her instead.

And here's the model again:

Heads and Hands Day 3

Two minute hand drawings

Five minute hand drawings

Ten minute head drawings

Drawings based on original photos from iStockphoto.com, Depositphotos.com, Dialoguemagazine.com, Fanpop.com, and Tanakamusic.com.

Blade Runner Storyboards

Today we presented our storyboards for this week's assignment. Each group was given a clip from a movie and each person in the group had to board out a scene. Our teacher gave our group "Blade Runner" and I storyboarded the scene where Rick (Harrison Ford) is trying to escape from Roy (Rutger Hauer). I thoroughly enjoyed this assignment. Unlike my last assignment, this one conveys a great deal of depth and perspective. The cinematography for this film is fantastic, and showed me how a film can be composed to create a sense of mood. I am looking forward to using the techniques I learned on this project for my thesis. Here are my thumbnails:

And here are the final boards:

Heads and Hands Day 2

Went to the Heads and Hands workshop at the Federal Building today. When I become a filmmaker I am hiring the person who found the buildings for our school as my location scout. Our campus is super spread out in the craziest of places and the buildings they find are rather nice.

Hands are 5 minutes, complete faces are 20 minutes, incomplete faces are 10 minutes. 

Heads and Hands Day 1

I got tired of not being able to draw heads and hands. So I am practicing everyday until I figure it out. Here are my 5 minute hands and 20 minute heads.

Drawings based on photos from IMDB.com, iStockPhoto.com, BigStock.com, Shutterstock.com, Flickr.com and Superstock.com.

The Human Muscular System

Here is the type of homework you get in a figurative concepts class. I will work on my line quality so that the viewer can tell which muscles are in the front and which muscles are in the back.