Bolt

This movie is definitely worth seeing, especially in 3D. It was the first animated film I've seen in 3D, and it was a pretty neat experience. I can only imagine what it must be like for the animator's to see there ugly render tests polished up and bulging out of the screen at them. They must be proud.

Overall I thought that it was the best Disney CG film I've seen so far, and they've made strides towards catching up with Pixar in that department.

Check it out if you can. It's worth a look.

Thursday Morning Spreads

I fed off Wednesday night's gesture session, and stayed loose for my first 1 minute warm-up. Unfortunately, it all went down hill from here.



I also finally produced a full set of color pieces worth posting. Who knows, maybe one or two might make it into the portfolio.

Work From Tuesday and Wednesday

Here's a couple gestures from last night. I decided to work in charcoal. It's the first time I've been able to get this loose with the medium. It's pretty exciting.

I never really achieved that sense of flow for the rest of the night, but here's two more that show a little emotion. It felt like the model always had his back to me, no matter where I sat. When I finally got to draw his face, I got so excited at the rare opportunities, that I bombed them completely.

Here's a festive color spread from Tuesday morning.


Off to my Thursday morning session!

Old Work That's Growing On Me

Richard Williams @ Pixar

There's a great mini-interview with Richard Williams at Spline Doctors:

http://splinedoctors.com/2008/11/richard-williams-spline-cast/

This is almost identical to the stuff Richard talked about when he came to Vancouver recently. It's great that it's all online now. I knew it would end up online eventually, as he mentioned he was on his way south to California, where animator's are smarter, and carry recorders with them everywhere :P

Some Recent Work

I got off to a good start this month with posting, but it's been a while. Here's some of the work I've done since last post. This first one's my favorite.


I like the composition of this one:

The expression in this one:

The looseness of this one:

The expression of this one:

And the color of this one:

Old Gestures I Forgot To Post

I'm putting together a gestures spread for my portfolio. This is not an easy task. I've been narrowing down nine months of gestures to a two-page spread. In the process I discovered some gestures I haven't posted before. Here they are:

Inspiration: Patricia A. Hannaway

As I venture into pastels, this is great stuff to look at. The simplicity of it is what strikes me the most; So much with so little. I find it easy to get mucky, and confused with this medium. But these drawings teach me to take the time to analyze the pose so I can reduce my line count and express raw feeling.

It's all there, what's missing isn't necesarry:

Here's her website:

http://www.patriciaahannaway.com/

Gestures from Today

A couple of 2-3 minute gestures from this afternoon:


This was one of those times where I got looser and looser with every drawing. That might sound like a logical progression, but it doesn't always happen like that for me. I'm usually either on or off; I'm able to connect or I'm not. I thought I would have a ton of gestures for this post, but when I got home to check them over I was only happy (barely) with these two. At least I was having fun! :)

Inspiration: Traditional Animation Reels

A Break From Color, Rusty

Here's a couple from last night's horendous gesture session. I didn't connect with the figure at all despite some interesting and lively poses. Back to color for this morning's regular session.

Tuesday Morning Spreads

I'm getting better at spreads, though I still have a loooong way to go. Here's three from yesterday morning. I have a gesture session today with (hopefully) something worth posting tomorrow. These are all incomplete. As in, I might spruce them up if I decide to put them in my portfolio.

This one's my favorite:

All NuPastel on Fabriano.

Inspiration: Mac Stevenson

One of my new favorite landscape artists is Mac Stevenson. His work appeals to me as an animation artist because of it's soft look and simplicity. I also love paintings that strike you with their color, and Mac's work does that for me.

He's obviously mastered color theory because his landscapes pop out at you no matter what color scheme he's using.

This one is predominately warm, with a skilled use of cool purple to attract the eye. More than half the composition is almost the same red, but it works beautifully. I love it!

In this one he contrasts warm and light against dark, muted, and cool. Giving most of the painting to the sky makes for a beautiful composition.

This one is basically the same except he favors the land more. He also uses an analgous color scheme that's mostly warm. It still has the same appeal as the image above as Mac's skillfully placed purple and green (cool colors) at the horizon line.

Don't you just want to be here?

Here's my favorite. I love the swirling clouds, and the morning light. The oranges and purples, mixed with the muteds yellows and greens of the landscape really give it some punch. I'm also a sucker of wide format landscapes like this. I can see myself working like this if I ever get into landscapes.

I came across Mac's work at a frame store in the mall of all places. I saw one of his pieces (not shown here) called, "Morning Light II", and I had to find out more about the artist. I asked the store owner, and she gave me an artist bio. Mac's been at it for about 20 years. Which just proves to me once again that I have a lot of work do. And seeing this kind of stuff just inspires me to get working.

Check out Mac's website: http://macstevenson.com/

Wednesday Fat Man Gestures

Fat guys have their ups and downs in life drawing. The one big down is that they're usually too out of shape to do anything really interesting pose-wise. Another downer is they can't hold 30 second poses for more than 20 seconds, at least this one couldn't.

20-30 Seconds:

But those limitations are fine, because there's a principle that can be practiced on fat people that everyone could use a little practice on now and again: WEIGHT. Here's some NuPastels on Newsprint. All are 2 minute gestures except the last.

I think I did an okay job of showing weight in these two without having to waste time on the stool.

In this one he's holding a pole, but I didn't want to waste time on it. I think I rushed in this one, and it shows in the nubby arm.

I like this one. I think I got personality in the posture.

One of the few that I actually indicated the floor. I have to get better disciplined at this. Time is no excuse, nobody likes a floating figure.

This one was either 3 or 5 minutes. I like how loose I was here