Week 4 - Fundamentals of Character Design

     Week 4 was about Character Personality. Starting with correct gesture, a clear silhouette plus understanding the character from within would help design or draw the right body poses to express character's personality and/or emotions. So that week, we were given a number of descriptive scenarios to draw.  

     Heinrich Kley was the one of my favorites and the inspiration for that week.   We're also to do a master copy of one of his drawings while studying the loose and gestural quality of his characters' poses.   I chose his famous dancing elephants.  I've always admired Heinrich Kley's drawings, but not until I was copying them that I got to see it more clearly how much personality, energy and anatomy he integrated in those anthromorphic characters. Simply awesome!  I got a glimpse of how a master artist like him thinks. I'll definitely be doing more master copying on my own after the course. Simply a fun way to learn.

      So, here are my assignment drawings.... ( click to enlarge)

Week 3 - Fundamentals Of Character Design

     Week 3 was about Visual Association.  Using the shape language of square, circle and triangle, we're to design three barbarians, one male, two females, describing the following archetypes:
- Routine, orderly, rule follower - but also timid and shy.
- Leader, proactive, aggressive -but also selfless and warm.
- Peace keeper, kindhearted - but also slightly sadistic and cynical, including their props.
Plus more sketchbook drawings, designing from life.

     David Colman always tell us, drawing or designing is more thinking than actual drawing.  By using the shape language of square, circle and triangle and combining them will achieve the design that conveys the personality and appeal of the characters. Each of the primary shapes is associated with certain meaning or evoke certain feelings, that we consciously or unconsciously perceive and understand. And if the right combination is done, good design results.
 

     So I spent most of the time thinking about the designs, poses, shapes, their meaning and doing rough sketches in the process. Part of  the challenge was to illustrate what seemed to be opposing or contradictory character descriptions like,

"kindhearted but slightly sadistic and cynical".  Wow, that really got me thinking. Nevertheless, that week's lecture have been very enlightening for me.

     As for the sketchbook drawings, I drew some animals from videos, as I didn't have enough time left. Fortunately, there's a good resource for artists like me, who sometimes can't go to the zoo. That is Rhino House. 

     I was really tired after that week's assignment.  And  in spite of my right hand becoming sore after, I totally enjoyed doing them,  (click to enlarge)

Leader, proactive, aggressive -but also selfless and warm.

Routine, orderly, rule follower--but also timid and shy.

Peace keeper, kind hearted --but also slightly sadistic and cynical.

Kung Fu Panda -Legends Of Awesomeness

Here's some of the shots I did for Nickelodeon's Kung Fu Panda - Legends Of Awesomeness TV series.

 Enjoy!  (Password: KFPDemo)

  

Week 2 - Fundamentals of Character Design

     For week two, the topic was about Designing from Life.  Curve lines convey rhythm or softness  while straight lines convey structure or strength.  A balance of both  results in good design.

     So for the assignment, first, we're to do figure drawings from the photos provided, starting with loose gesture, then design them using curves and straight lines.  Secondly,  do more coffee shop sketches, focusing on designing the people we see, than just simply drawing them. Then thirdly, we were to design the adjective "Depressed". 
   
     I'm not used to sketching in public, but since week 1, I think I'm getting the hang of it.  It was raining that weekend, so no zoo this time. Just went to the indoor foodcourt nearby.

     Here's what I've done for week 2.... (click to enlarge)

Week 1 - Fundamentals Of Character Design

       I have been wanting to get back to drawing regularly, to improve my drawing skills.  So I decided to take another class again at CGMA.  I'm  presently doing David Colman's Fundamentals of Character Design. I have been an admirer of David's artwork for years.  So I'm really excited to be one of his students this term.

     So far, I'm really enjoying it, I just have to balance my schedule between my work and this course. I only  have weekends to really get into this.

     Here's what I've done, Week 1 assignment.  We're asked to do some outdoor/cafe sketching and copy Milt Kahl's Shere Khan. Copying drawings of Master artists like Milt Kahl is a great learning method.  I enjoyed doing them. Ooh... how I miss those Disney days....

   As for the sketches, I went to Auckland Zoo and different  foodcourts during the weekends. (click to enlarge)

Robot And Monster!

      Last year had been a busy year for me . One of the projects I worked on at Oktobor, was for Nickelodeon's ROBOT AND MONSTER new TV series.  Here's some of the scenes I've animated  from the episode "Cheer Up, Mr. Wheelie".  Enjoy...

(Password:  RBDemo)

  

Drawing On The Left And Right Side Of The Brain

Michelangelo's anatomical sketches

    As an artist, I've always wanted to develop and improve my drawing skills further. One of the skills I wanted to develop is how to draw and paint from imagination, just like how some of artists like Michelangelo and some comic book artists and illustrators of old did.

     As a former traditional animator, I have been doing this kind of drawing already.  But because drawing for animation is a collective effort, where my drawings need to have the same look as that of the rest of the team's, to create a unified and harmonious whole, I now find my drawings and design skills have a very limited style.  This was my fault, because I didn't do anything to further my growth in terms of drawing.

    Some of the things I've always wanted to be good at is in drawing artistic human and animal anatomy.  Developing my skills in these areas would greatly help me later on to invent and design any imaginative creatures and characters if I so desire.  And so came this idea of enrolling to this online drawing course.

My copied drawing of Bambi and Thumper

    I'm now on my fifth week out of eight. The course is structured in a progressive manner, by first learning how to see and analyze the gestures of the pose. Then from that build the structure, form, & muscles, layer by layer, while maintaining good design principles.  Very basic but good stuff,  It's an analytical approach to drawing than natural. I think it's a good way of learning and remembering the surface anatomy of the figure. This course is more practical than medical. It's objective is more design-oriented, which is very much compatible to how I have been drawing in animation. In animation drawing, I was limited to just pencil line drawings, while in the second part of Analytical Figure Drawing Course, one could learn how to actually complete the drawing up to it's shaded form and learn basic composition as well.  That is how I actually wanted my drawings to be like - a complete artwork that can stand on it's own. This would also help me later on if I wanted to pursue painting as well.  However, doing the assignments at night have been very difficult and almost a physical impossibility for me, after a demanding day at work as a 3D animator. Having RSI doesn't help either. 

           Below are the assignments I've submitted for critiques.  These aren't the best drawings, but it's only a start. And I'm hopeful, that my drawings will eventually improve later on.   (click to enlarge)

Week 2 - Skeletal Landmarks

Week 3 - Head

Week 4 - Muscles of the Upper Torso

2D, Or Not 2D, That Is The Question....

Young Nicholas

      In the early part of 2010, when I was again out of work as a 3D animator, I had a chance to work in a 2D feature film  Santa's Apprentice.  I was desperately looking for a job at the time and heard from a former Disney colleague, that a team of my former Disney friends in Sydney Australia, were involved in this project and that it's possible for me to get some freelance work, because the Animation Director had a few software licenses available to enable someone to work off-site.  The production had been ongoing for 6 months or more already, and only have a few months left before the animation period finishes, so I didn't know if there was still a chance for me to do some off-site freelance work for them. I took my chances and sent a message to the Director anyway, whom I've worked closely before at Disney Australia, of my desire to do some freelance work for him and if he would allow me to do it from home here in NZ. Once he knew that I'm equipped to do the job off-site, he accepted me to join them on the condition that I fly over there in Sydney for a couple of weeks to get some in-house training on how to use Toon Boom Harmony, which was what they were using for this project.  I agreed and thought that the best way to learn any program was to be there in person and see how they do things, learn from my mistakes while immediate technical assistance was available. During that period, I tried my best to learn as much as I can about this 2D animation software, so that once I work from home, I won't be bogged down with solving technical issues about the program because there won't be any immediate assistance.  And for this reason, I decided to extend my stay for another week just to make sure that I learned what I needed to learn.   A friend animator was kind enough to let me stay at her house during those period, as I can't afford to live in a hotel for 3 weeks. This wasn't a big-budgeted movie, so there's no free flight nor accommodation for me to do this. But hey... I rather work than do nothing, so....

Felix

      That was also a good chance for me to travel back to Sydney where I've lived for 7 years. And an opportunity to work with some of my former Disney animator friends again. For a short while, it felt just like how it was when I worked at Disney. I was very comfortable with them and realized that we worked really well together as an animation team.  The animating experience were both familiar, yet new to most of us.  We all knew how to animate but now we have to do it digitally. There were a few young, new animators, who we bothered a lot with our technical Toon Boom questions and other basic computer questions, that have not had that similar animating experience as most of us did using traditional medium of pencil and paper.  So they probably have no understanding of how difficult it was for some of us animators to learn how to use this digital program or even the computer and probably thought how were we ever going to get anything done.  And yet once we all learned how to use it, we were very efficient and were managing very well. I found myself very appreciative of the program for it's digital tools that made the animation process much faster, compared to if we were using the traditional medium. The program eliminated the process of pencil test shooting, which is a crucial and an important part of the process to check the timing of the animation.  When we were at Disney, line-testing means waiting in a long cue of animators wanting to do the same with the limited available line testers.  Having the instant playback ability built-in into the program, enables us to check our work instantly, thus making changes immediate as well.  Also, we can now animate to the dialogue audio track more because sound files can be imported into the program. It was just like animating in Maya for 3D animation. It used to be that we'd listen to the dialogue track from a cassette player and looked at the exposure sheet for the correct framing of where the actual sound of the dialogue would be. But now, it's very convenient and faster.  It has many digital tools like camera moves, cut and paste, enlarge and reduce abilities, skew, perspective, color and more, that made the process faster.  No more wasting a lot of paper and lining-up to use the photocopier machines either. It really is a complete 2D animation program.

Grincroch

     There were a few of us animators allowed to work from home. Actually, the producer, whom I've never worked with before, was naturally a bit worried if  I would be able to deliver on time, and  preferred that I work in-house over there. But it was impractical for me to move there, so I promised I wouldn't let them down. They had a really tight schedule and I was reminded by the Director that this production was unlike Disney and missing the dateline would have serious consequences for them.  And my oh my...  I sure worked hard and unbelievably long hours at home just to fulfill that promise.

      It was a 3-month gig for me. I knew that in spite of the benefits of using digital program like Toon Boom, animating in 2D was and still a tedious process of drawing the character and action one frame at a time, which made this style of animating really very unique, charming and special, but at the same time more difficult.  During this period, I worried and doubted myself a lot, if I could really reach and get through the weekly quota, knowing that I'm not known to be a fast animator and using a digital program for the first time without much immediate assistance if ever I encounter any problem along the way.  But I know that I won't get paid for the week if my scenes were not approved by the director, so it was crucial that I get through the scenes quickly daily for the director to review.  I was communicating with my Animation Team Leader over Skype everyday to make sure that I get my feedback notes immediately as well.  Not having drawn for a long time since I developed RSI and quitting Disney, it became really painful physically to draw again. I was risking getting that injury flair up again by doing this gig but had to do it for I assured them of my commitment to finish the work on time.  I just prayed that the pain won't last and was really wanting this project to be over soon.  My feet swelled up due to poor circulation I think, having to sit for long periods of time working.  

Little boy kisses Nicholas

      In the end, the director and producer were really happy with my work and I managed to keep my promise. After that project, I'm not sure if I ever wanted to do anymore 2D animation and go through working like that again.  I realized how more difficult, painful and still slower it was to do any traditional or 2D animation, compared now that I'm animating in 3D.  However, the irony is..... my life now as a 3D animator have not been much different either.  Animating in 3D is also hard and tedious for different reasons, but that's another story. Such is my life as an animator, whether it's 2D or 3D. (sigh.....)

      So here's some of the scenes I've done, using Toon Boom Animate Pro, in rough line test, without the in-betweens.  Enjoy...


   
 

Drawing - Back To Basics

              Since I started doing 3d animation, I have not been drawing much.  The most obvious reasons are lack of time and energy, if not interest.  This year, I decided to change that.  So I enrolled in a figure drawing course, to get me to drawing again.  I'm taking Analytical Figure Drawing with Michael Hampton over the CGMA Online Masterclass. It's back to basics for me.

              For our first week, we were asked to do a hundred gesture drawings, and out of that we were to submit only 5 for critiques.  I did more than that, because I got carried away.   I did mine from photographs. In the beginning, I tried timing it from 60, 90 seconds to 2 minutes. But later I stopped timing it altogether, because analyzing the pose and figuring out how to best approach it took me longer.  The idea is to capture the story of the pose and do it with economy of lines.  Sounds easy but not really.  But I had fun doing it though.

               Here's some of them... (click to enlarge)

              
                   
                           Below are the ones I like...

Penguins Of Madagascar....

           In May of 2010, I started working for Oktobor Animation Studio in New Zealand. It's been a busy year, and one of the things I did was animating these characters, from Nickelodeon's PENGUINS OF MADAGASCAR  Season 2 TV series.    Here's a few scenes I did, from the following episodes: " King Julien For A Day";  "Love Hurts";  "Operation: Breakspeare";  "All Tied Up With A Boa".

           It's been fun animating and getting to know these characters.  Enjoy...

(Password: PNDemo)

Penguins of Madagascar Animation by Jocelyn Sy from Jocelyn Sy on Vimeo.