Life Drawing...

So finally, I went to do some life drawing. Theres no teacher or anything, just a bunch of people who like to draw.

Man am I rusty. In fact, its just that I have to get better, not that I ever was really good at it. They started with some 1 min poses, but sadly they only did a few of them. Didnt feel like asking for more since it was my first day and I dont really know the people. Hope I can get to draw more of those poses in the future. I think its what I need.

So, theres nothing from that session that I dont feel really embarassed about, but since I said Id post some pics next time, here are some really old sketches.




And check this website out. Its when I see these kind of things when I get amazed and frustrated at the same time. How am I ever gonna be able to do hand drawn animation if I cant get to draw a single pose?

I´d ordered some books last month and a bunch of them arrived today, all at the same time. Great

I got the Jack Jack Attack children book, with drawings from Tony Fucile. It´s only a few pages, but the drawings are 100% Mr. Fucile with great poses and effortless looking drawings.

I also got Unlikely by Jeffrey Brown. First time I saw any of his books was in a comic store in Germany. "Clumsy" was the one I saw. I flipped through a few pages and I had to buy it. His stuff is so sincere and gets you so hooked that you just can´t the book down. I really liked Unlikely.

There was another package, this one not from Amazon but from Sam Hiti. I got the books through his web. He was really cool and send in an extra comic and did sketches on the first pages on the comics. The comic I liked the most was "El Largo Tren Oscuro", really inspiriong stuff.

There´s something special in buying the stuff from the artist itself that I really like. We even exchanged a few e-mails and he was kind enough to add me to the links in his blog. Thanks again from here.

I really like Sam Hiti´s style. I was inspired after reading the comics and did a couple of ink and brush doodles, I hadnt picked up the brush in a long time.


So that´s it for today. Animation/drawings next time.

Doodles

Hello hello everybody!! Im about to finish my scene and theres a party in school later! Good things are happening. Now that I have a host, Ill start building up my portfolio. Its going to be tough to decide what things to leave out, I have so many sketches and doodles. Its been some days without any updates, so i thought it would be nice to post.

When I dont know what to draw I tend to do the same kind of face and I ALWAYS start it the same way: eyebrow first, then the eye, etc. Its quite easy to fall in the trap of drawing the same thing everytime, and I think its happening to me lately. When I draw this faces I always draw them in the same way, I dont think in terms of mass or volume. But I kinda like the end result, so its pleasing, but theres no "learning" in the process. Well, dont know if Im making sense.

I think most of us have this kind of doodle we are obssesed with, this head, animal or whatever that we keep on doing. Here's a video of me drawing some of those faces I was talking about. You can see theres not much thinking, just the same thing over and over with some slight changes. I noticed how much I doubt when I start drawing the neck are on the third guy. I knew I had to do my homework on head connecting neck and torso, but seeing the video again, just makes it more evident. Oh, and of course I don't draw that fast. :)

I dont know how many people actually read this, I mean, I know how many times this page is loaded but not how many people actually follow the blog. I know theres some really talented people coming here. Id love to see/know what it is that you constantly draw, and it would be amazing to see a video of you in action!

Yuhuuuuuuuu!!

I now have a host! Im so happy about that.

So the after effects sketch is here and if you feel like it you can check out how things looked like before putting them together, here, and a view of the after effects workspace, here.

First time that I do this, so hope there´s nothing wrong.

I have a host!

After Effects doodling

I could finally take some reference with my camera and download the pics and videos that were on the card. There was this house or cottage I saw one night after getting out of a pub that really striked me. It was so...I dont know, it was begging to be turned into something, an animation, an illustration. So I started playing around with it in PS, one thing led to the other and there I was again fooling around with After Effects until pretty late. Id calle this an "aftereffects sketch". It gives me some design ideas to try out in the future. And of course next time things will be much faster, I just need to plan things beforehand.

So here are some frames from the short thing. I wont post the video until I have a host, it really bugs me to put up lowres versions of the videos.

technorati tags: after effects animation

in the meantime...

Tryed to buy the cable for my camera today. They don´t have it. I really want to start working on the AE Workshop thing. I have some ideas, but I certainly need reference . I´d go sketching but it´s cold.

I´ll try to post some animation soon. Here are some recent doodles. I still struggle with giving life to my characters, they´re so...well, yeah, lifeless. I´m a bit afraid of doing full figures, I´m so bad at it. But I think I should start to do more story oriented drawings, not just faces. Oh, by the way, this month I should get my "In Your Face" and "Flight 2" books! Really want to have them.

And check the new links, the last ones, some amazing stuff there to see.

Pojd´te Pane Budeme Si Hrát

This is one of my favourite animations. Directed by B. Pojar and created in the "golden ages" of Czech animation, it has excellent character design, amazing animation, charming characters and well, I could go on for ages. I simply love these cartoons. They combine puppets, paper and cell cutout animation, sand animation, everything. Many of the things in these films,if not all , hold up today. Here are some screen grabs. I think these cartoon should be more known. For all of you who like 50´s animation, I think theres some really inspiring stuff here. You just cannot appreciate the thing in its full glory if you dont see the thing moving, but here are the screengrabs.

Speed paint

Quick update.

I started doodling around while taking a break from animating and this came out. I wanted to have a guy on a horse waving at the camera, like he was telling his friends " hey, we finally found the lost city" or something. Well, I ended up doing a cow/some animal. Should have worked on the silhouette to make it readable. No reference. Oh, and check the Monkey Island/Fate of Atlantis/Beneath a Steel Sky version here. I´ve been doing this to my stuff lately, it gives it such a old school games feeling.

higher res

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....