"My Dad the Giant" ReEdited Animatic

Concept: "A commentary on master apprentice relationships in the family."

Brianelli, a world famous renaissance painter, is trying to finish his latest painting but his son Emilio keeps getting in the way. Emilio's struggle for acknowledgment from his giant father conflicts with his fathers alone time. Only too late does Brianelli realize his son looks up to him.

Re-edited down to 4:30 min.

(Left-White Numbers)
Timer Minutes:Seconds:Frames(24 Fps)

(Right-Red Numbers)
Shot breakdown

Just gotta doodle!

It's been so long since I have done a "non-animation" related drawing. While at the cintiq, preparing for another long night of story boards and animation doodles, I decided to whip this little one out. It's based off of an artists style who I greatly admire, you can find her blog in my blog list on the side.

It's not much, but it didn't take long, and it gave me my illustration fix. Till next time!

Portoflio

The portfolio that helped get me the internship at Disney, soon to be updated.

Please click images for a larger view

My Dad the Giant work

Greetings everyone! Here are some quick images from my senior thesis film. I'll just show the father for now and run through some of the processes I did to get him where he is now.

This is a more refined face for the father. After working through some of the construction and trying some different styles in cheek and jaw design I arrived at this. For the father to soften in his demeanor I had to make his face more expressive.
A quick bone study. Taking what I know about skulls I then applied it with the necessary adjustments to fit the father's head structure. I left the jaw unhinged so that he can really open that mouth.
This is my favorite of his smiles. A mirror really helps when doing expressions.

Various facial expressions I made using a mirror as reference.

Exaggerating some of the facial features, perhaps too much.

Can you see the Disney influence? Here I tried out some simple construction, an egg for the body, circles and tubes for most everything else. He's a bit toned down in the proportions here so that he is easier to animate.
I did some tight construction on his face to feel out the forms and shapes that make up his brows, nose, and jowls. It's not a very appealing design, but this got the job done as far as breaking down the complex construction into more digestible pieces. Later I softened some of his features to make him more pliable.

More construction at work, you can see that when I work really tight it tends to get plastic and stiff.

More of the same. It works, but it's not as far as I can go.


A silhouette I worked up to try and make his hands more manageable. I'm not too happy with how thin he came out looking, and I think I'll stick with the thicker arm designs.
The first drawing of him as the artist type. A mix of Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Beethoven and even some Edgar Allen Po went into the design, as well as the mouth from my father.

Here the final design is with more meaty hands. I think I'll stick to the jowls in the surprised expression page, overall though, this is the design I am working with. Maybe smaller hands, we'll see.

Till next time, best a luck!

Kilted Animator: First Video!

Greetings everyone! Long time no see. I'll try and keep this short and sweet. I've finally gotten around to uploading one of my instructional videos. This one is about character construction. I hope you all enjoy!

Epiphany

I think I have finally found out why I do what I do, or at least where to take it from here. With the website almost done, and plenty of illustrations left to finish before I head back to school, I've been pretty busy this break. I finally decided to take a break and sit down with my new Pixar DVD. In the 2nd disc of Wall-e, special features, I found a wonderful film called "The Pixar Story." About halfway into it, something hit me, like running into a brick wall. I paused the film and sat up straight, uttering to myself. "What am I doing!?"

All this time I have been so concerned about learning new tricks and processes. I've been focused on the physics and the technical aspect of animation, and all this while I had forgotten why I was at art school, why I draw. It's because I love it! Animation isn't just about making things move, about how they move, it's about telling stories and getting emotion and empathy from your art. I feel great now. I know what I have to do, what I want to do, and what will make me happy.

I don't need to move the character perfectly if I can still get an emotion from it, to make the audience feel for the character. Learning tricks is for when I get into the industry, now is the time for me to focus on telling stories, on acting and getting emotion out of my artwork. This is why I have felt my art lacked that extra punch all this time, now I finally know!

Just wanted to share that with you. The website is going well. Tomorrow I will head out to my old elementary play ground and film myself climbing and acting out scenes for my film. Wish me luck.

The new Title for my film scheduled to release around April 2009. I'll probably finish production by May, but it's always nice to have some elbow room, just in case. The story will follow 4 year old Aiden as he scales a huge mountain into the stratosphere!

In other news, I have a website in production. Hurrah! I am honored to say that I have with me two very talented artists who I will be sharing the site, and the costs, with. Mel Miller, a friend of mine as well as an amazing Illustrator and Animator. Even with work as good as hers, her happy and professional attitude leave most surprised when they find out her age. Niles Bontrager (hope I spelled that right) is the other artist on board, who's art always holds some sort of back story to it. Sometimes his work really engages me, even in just doodles, that and he has an amazing ability to work out interesting timing. It takes all my effort to keep up with these two, and I am really eager to start a site with them both.

Previews and links to the website will be available in future posts once I nail everything down.

With finals out of the way, and my Animatic finished for 'Because it's There' I can now focus on prip and preening much of my artwork for presentation, as well as flesh out a few character scenes from my film.

Sorry for the slow posts everyone, I'll try and be more regular from now on.