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

yastoiaki!!!!

Ahoj everybody!

It's been a long time. I've been out of the bloggin thing for some time now. I don't know, sometimes this can get so overwhelming. So many talented people out there, so many blogs, so many updates. It's hard keeping up. Somehow I felt I had to take a rest from all this, allthough I've been checking some blogs from time to time. This, added to other things, kept me away from updating.

Thanks to all the people who kept coming. And thank you so much for the nice comments Luis, Banana, Teemu, Pekka, Alberto, Earl, Carre, Gabriele, Julai and James. Thank you.

But here I am again. Many things have changed since last post. The most important one: I have a job. And I'm not teaching spanish or working as a tourist guide, I'm working in a small animation studio as an ANIMATOR. Today I got my first scene approved by the director.I still can't believe it myself... Looks like what I say in my profile might become true some day

I'd been looking for a job for allready one month and nothing. Almost no hope. Then, thanks to my former animation proffesor in school, Mr. Tyller ( thank you, thank you, thank you) I got an interview. After reading for so many years how important who you knew was, I got to realize it's true in the best possible way.

I'm learning so much everyday. The characters I'm animating are very simple, which forces me to pay atention to the basics. I think I'll really improve here.

Now. I got my wacom to work again yesterday and it happened again. Photoshop frenzy. Hope you like them.

I don't know what this is supposed to mean, but here it is.

Hans Bacher and Limbolo posted their Prague pictures, now its my turn. Of course I didn't capture THAT thing, but this was rather and excercise of using texture. Compostion sucks, should pay more atention to those things next time. bigger HERE

Sketching day

I know I said next post was going to be animation related, but after reading Teemu´s and Pekka´s posts (check them out here and here) about that afternoon, I couldn´t resist.

It was Pekka, Teemu and me in Velryba, eating, talking and sketching. Without even noticing, eight (!) hours went past. They did great drawings, but I was kind of uninspired. I see other artists blogs and I can´t help but think about how static and life-less my work is.


Solution: life-drawing.

Oferta Oferta!

So I´m working on that walkcycle.
Soooo many things to learn still. But it´s amazing, now a see a dog walking on the street and what before seemed impossible to figure out is now so clear. I can see how muscles flex, shapes change, weight is transfered, I see the contact positions , the extremes, timing and spacing. Its amazing, and it´s happening a loo. Like I see this guy running and I can almost fisically see the arcs he´s drawing with his feet in the air.


Well.



AND!!!


Everything you see on this page is for sale!!! If your interested, just mail me and we can arrange a price. And I´m not famous nor a great draftsman, so expect low prices.

That was it. no drawings this time.

Guys with hats

I´m working on a fourlegd walkcycle but before that this:

I was in the school the other day and I went draw arround Prague and I ended up drawing the guys that look like they´ve been taken from a "Jack the Ripper" movie and work riding the chariots that take the tourists arround the old town .


At least they didn´t move much.

Slooow

Things are going slowly here.

Searching for a part-time job and trying to get the "I´m learnig animation thing" rolling.


Some night-bus life drawings from a few days ago and random stuff

Hope next post is about animation....

BlogBlOgBlOgBloGbloGblog

Two friends have recently started their own blogs.


Luis, whose drawing style I really like, can be checked out here. He´s got some really great stuff. Like these: O O O O O O

Pekka has also started a blog. Check it out and get ready for some impressive stuff. Goooood .

Brush pen, T-shirt ideas, masks & monkeys

I finally bought ink today. I´d forgotten how much fun drawing with a brushpen is.

One more time

So here I am enjoying my second "inspiration" night. I have to finish some drawings for a present. I think I´ll leave it until tomorrow, and then I´ll have a fresh look at what I´ve done tonight.

I tried a new style ( cheers, antti). I wanted to use black ink, but I didn´t have any. But in the end, the grey one was better: I could lay down more values.

This is the kind of thing I´m doing. Hope you like it. I think I more or less do. There are some things bothering me, but I think I will go for this style for the present.

I think it was Alberto´s last posts that made me try using really saturated colors. I just thought about it.

Night time inspiration

So here I am at 4:47 in the morning typing this.

This all started when I was rereading a Hellboy comic. I though: "Hey I should copy some Mignola-faces see if something stays". So I took my sketchbook and started referencing the drawings to draw faces. Everythig was crap. Then I took some magazines and started drawing faces.

After a few minutes of warming up I actually did some drawings that I like!

Here they are. Of course not all where done on the same page, I only pasted the good ones.

Hope you like them!

don´t you love gorillas. they have such a powerful design!

Blog discoveries!

It happens from time to time, you find some blogs/pages that completely blow you away. To me it has happened several times, always the same way. Good blogs link to good blogs, so once you find one , it´s easy to be overwhelmed with what you find. It happened to me when I found Hans Bacher´s, Harald Siepermann´s and John Nevarez´s blogs. Then it happended again: Limbolo, Alberto Mielgo.

Now it happened one more time. Make sure you check out this blogs/sites, the work is amazing.

Antoine Birot. Beautiful artwork. But the thing I liked most was the animations he had online. Check out the one called "Hector". Amazing, sweet design, nice colour palette, fluid animation. Really enjoyable.

Evka´s drawings. Really liked the drawing style. Go & see.

Xav Animation Illustration. Envolved in the production of "Le Building", need to know more?


I DID NOT DRAW THESE : ARTISTS LINKED UP HERE


copyright owned by respective authors

One of those days in which you feel you can´t draw

This was it?

I just remembered I had e-mailed a w.i.p. low-res version of my showreel to a friend (hi, Teemu!). After losing the info in the DVD on which I had the showreel, I thought it was going to be almost impossible to get anything back. And I remember this e-mail. I just had log into my account and download it!

I though the reel was good. Now I look at it and, well, I don´t feel that proud at all. Guess that´s something good...

These are the parts of the reel that I like the most. Sorry for the big files and the really bad quality...


This was a short little test I did playing arround with Flash and AE. I used a simple cycle for the character and spent most of the time on the transition and on the shadow of the car. I was going for a very atmospheric style. If you pay attention, you can see a sun reflection on the window right before the car exits the garage. I though it looked great, but its on screen for so little time that no one notices!

I quickly added some sounds now.

This one is the very first time I tryed cut out paper animation out. I loved it! So direct. The character was a 2cm drawing I had in my sketchbook. I liked his pose and looks, so I scanned and retouched it in photoshop added the joints and started animating.

I was going to add a background, but in the end it ended up looking better as it is, with no background! It actually transmits some sort of atelier feeling. In one of the tests you could see my feet popping in and out under the glass table! After I shot it, I added a hand-drawn mustache in Flash. The clip here is part of a small film that I did, all improvised.

No sound here, which is a pitty , because I think the sound really made it better.

And these are the jazz players. I wanted to keep on experimenting with cutout animation. This time I did it in flash. It took me a looong time to retouch the painting so that the arms could move without leaving a blank space behind them. The same with the instrument and the head. If you pay attention , you can also see that in some parts, the linework "floats" over the watercolour. Unluckily, this video is very low quality... This time I also drew on top with flash.

I tryed to sync with the music. I was on a rush, so the finger animation is horrible. But I still want to do a jazz players animation, with lots of reference this time!

I would realy appreciate any comments.

thanks in advance!

Sketch Dump

All these drawings are part of a sketchbook that I intended to self-publish last year. Things dind´t work out as expected and it never happened. I liked the idea of sharing my drawings with others, although I didn´t know if someone that wasn´t my friend would buy such a thing.

Anyway, at least I can share them here. These are some of my favourites. All drawings are from life except for the ones of the old men which are from tv. I drew them in front of a TV that had a remote control with a "freeze" button. Great thing if you see an interesting face!

Last summer I took my sketchbook with me all the time. Somehow I didn´t have the energy this summer.

I hope you enjoy them.