Zaana in Spaaaacceeee!

academy of art, Academy of Art University, Figure Drawing, Life Drawing

Character Design today was fantastic. The best way to create a dynamic drawing is to create a story about your character. I created Zaana in Space – intrepid space explorer battling aliens, waiting to go on missions and finally standing triumphantly in the face of danger. Improv classes have greatly improved my drawing skills. In improv you create an idea for a character and your character then interacts with other characters in the same way. When I approached my drawings today, I thought – “What is Zaana doing? Is she fighting for her life? Upset that she wasn’t selected to go on a mission? About to blast off into hyperspace?” Giving her motivation plus “pushing” the drawing (exaggerating what the model is actually doing) makes for interesting drawings.

Tea Time Animatic Version 2

academy of art, Academy of Art University, Animatic, Animation, Animation Club, Storyboards

Hey everybody here is version 2 of my pitch for the Animation Club’s fall interstitial. Now with better, crisper artwork. Enjoy.

Figurative Concepts Friday

academy of art, Animator's Journal, Figurative Concepts, Figure Drawing, Life Drawing

Getting better at drawing the head and using the proper cast and form shadows. Not bad considering I had 30 minutes of sleep the night before. Here is the full head drawing:

Here is the close up:

And here is Serafina, the model. She’s one of my favorite models and a very cool person:

Storyboard Animatics I & II: The Legend of Magdalene

academy of art, Animatic, Animator's Journal, Storyboards

And here is the final result of the previous posts storyboards – the animatics for “The Legend of Magdalene.” I used a combination of one and two shots and rearranged the order to get a different feel for the story.

The Legend of Magdalene Animatic I

The Legend of Magdalene Animatic II

The Legend of Magdalene Storyboards

academy of art, Animator's Journal, Storyboards

Here is the storyboard project redux – this time Bob had us create two sets, one shots and two shots.
I enjoyed the project but I see now exactly why there is a mix of ones and twos in a film. Makes it a lot easier to come up with a wide variety of camera angles.

One Shot Thumbnails

One Shot Storyboards

Two Shot Thumbnails

Two Short Storyboards

Heads and Hands Day 7

academy of art, Animator's Journal, Figurative Concepts, Heads and Hands

For our Figurative Concepts homework I drew 24 heads based on famous paintings and Greek and Roman Sculptures. I seriously enjoyed this assignment. All of the heads were drawn in 15 – 20 minutes. More hands in the next few days.

Blade Runner Storyboards

academy of art, Storyboards

Today we presented our storyboards for this week’s assignment. Each group was given a clip from a movie and each person in the group had to board out a scene. Our teacher gave our group “Blade Runner” and I storyboarded the scene where Rick (Harrison Ford) is trying to escape from Roy (Rutger Hauer). I thoroughly enjoyed this assignment. Unlike my last assignment, this one conveys a great deal of depth and perspective. The cinematography for this film is fantastic, and showed me how a film can be composed to create a sense of mood. I am looking forward to using the techniques I learned on this project for my thesis. Here are my thumbnails:

And here are the final boards:

Heads and Hands Day 2

academy of art, Animator's Journal, Heads and Hands, Life Drawing

Went to the Heads and Hands workshop at the Federal Building today. When I become a filmmaker I am hiring the person who found the buildings for our school as my location scout. Our campus is super spread out in the craziest of places and the buildings they find are rather nice.

Hands are 5 minutes, complete faces are 20 minutes, incomplete faces are 10 minutes.

The Human Muscular System

academy of art, Animator's Journal, Figurative Concepts

Here is the type of homework you get in a figurative concepts class. I will work on my line quality so that the viewer can tell which muscles are in the front and which muscles are in the back.

Figurative Concepts Friday

academy of art, Animator's Journal, Figurative Concepts, Figure Drawing, Life Drawing

Today we studied hands and feet. Our teacher, Nicholas, was quite ill and had to leave, so George the substitute filled in for the last half of class. He did a great job, and gave us a twenty page hand out on how to better draw hands and feet. Now I am inspired to practice more to get better. If you can draw hands and feet, you can definitely draw.