Lots of lemons

This week has been a bit frustrating. A walk I wanted a character to do made me crawl on my hand and knees. Just a walk! I couldn't move forward in days. Eventually I had to give up and move on. That and the fact that the rig went crazy sometimes and made me start over from scratch has made for a lot of lemons. I could do lots of lemonade this week. (If you don't get the whole lemon thing go to the great site Seward Street and check out Dave Pimentel´s great article. Or click here )

So looks like I should forget about acting which is what I really really want to get into and start working on walks. Ken Harris said that was the way to go. Guess I should first get that right.

And from now on I´ll post here every little thing that I learn and makes me go "ah HA!!".I didn´t have a solid animation education so I had to learn almost everything myself. Books, tutorials, internet. So I´ll just share the things I find out on the way, maybe someone actually learns something!

So: I found out today that you can get rid of the strobo effect of a character walking on twos over a background moving on ones if you move the character every frame. Just move the pose/drawing, displace it. Even if the pose is the same, as long as it is moves on ones, it will work. Maybe someone didn´t know.

And some doodles. Mouse colored! Hope I can post something more juicy next time.

New links!

check them out. sooo good (cant help remembering Syndrome saying it when he finds the whole family)

Walt, Mayaa nd no sleep

Every week is like a new adventure. I've learned more in a few days than what I've learned in a lot of time. So many times I said “ I'm sure you learn so much faster if you have a job, it'll not be like making a few sketches here and there, or doing some animation test every now and then, you really have to get things done ”. Well, it's so true.


Only this week I came to realize how true the book is to it's title. It really was my “survival kit”. Man, that book is good. I ordered “The Illusion of Life” a few days ago. I'm so looking forward to getting it.


I've been trying to sketch quite a lot lately. I downloaded Walt Stanchfield's notes. I've been going through them. I knew they were around, but I really didn't know how good they were. James Robertson pointed me to them. I really admire his drawings, so straight away I went check them out. It has been a real eye opener for me. Really changed the way in which I approach a drawing. I'm still working on it. I'm trying to develop that cartooning sense that I admire so much from the artists that I like. I also want to tell something with what I draw, have a story in them. But, boy, is that hard. It's going to be a long way, but it just feels good knowing where I want to go. I dont really think you can feel any difference in my drawings. yet.

Rigs, sketches and frustration.

Hello everybody!

This week has been quite strange. I had to do 40 seconds of animation in 5 days. To me thats a lot. I was working for the whole night yesterday, didnt sleep and went to work. The thing is, the rig was doing strange things, I didnt really know at the time it started to happen, but it seems it goes a bit crazy if you switch from FK to IK and viceversa. So after keying all my keyposes, Maya would go completely crazy and my poses looked liked shit.

After too many hours without sleeping, I had nothing. But I have a super cool boss, he fixed the problem and gave me some more time.

While I was waiting for the program to render or when I got completely frustrated, I tryed to relaxe, looked at some pics/drawings/paintings from the artists that I like and sketched. This are the ones that I like most. As u can see, I really need to start drawing poses, not only heads. And yeah, I tend to draw them always the same. Have to keep on practicing!

It also looks like Ill be giving an After Effects workshop in the animation studio. Im really looking forward to it, and its also pushing me to do some little animations. Hope I can show something soon.

And I still cant believe Im feeling so bad, Its hardly been 30 hours with no sleep. The days where I could spend days without sleeping are gone...Am I getting old?...

ais....

oh!

I forgot! and this guy I drew while the AE thing was rendering. Now I have a bunch of blank papers on my desk, so I can draw while the computer is "thinking". For some reason I like this one.

Playing arround with the soldier

The other day I did this sketch in PS.



I couldnt post it because I could resize the image in the computer I was writing on. The thing is I installed After Effects on my computer yesterday night. I really love that program. Hadnt used it in ages. I started fooling arround. So I imported this sketch and started doing something. It was a bit too complicated because I already had a flat image. If I had though about it before, I would have saved it in layers. So there was lots of cloning around. Then I started addin little bits in. Some background animation I did quickly in flash, some shitty vehicles. All too fast and with not much thinking into it, just for the sake of tryin out new things and having fun.

Of course the thing is nothing special, theres no character animation and composition sucks as usual.But it gave me some ideas of some tests that I could do in the future. Next time with some real animation.I guess if I think of it in advance, I could do something nice. Enough blablabla.

here

happy new year everyone

Ahoj, ahoj!!!

Ispiriration comes in the least expected moments. I went to bed at 6 in the morning.

Really have to organize myself, days just fly by.

For those of you who show up regularly, thank you, heres a sketch.

click me , baby