My Cartoon Demoreel!

Finally updated my demoreel -click on the link for cartoon shenanigans!

Ace Pilot on Newgrounds

After several months of working on the cutscenes, the game Ace Pilot is now out on newgrounds.com. Check it out!

TURBO CHICKEN

A short cartoon I made about a brutal hovering chicken harassing a humble family.

The Illustration Spotlight

Some of the works I created for my lovely clients

I have a Tumblr!

For more animations, doodles, inspiration and other whimsies.

Friday, February 15, 2013

Random stuff I made



Stumbling upon previous work I've done puts a smile in my face. I never would've thought of it myself but I actually improved a lot. Only 3 years ago I was working on a Flash animation studio, with very little drawing skills and creatively stagnant. Now I'm working on several cool projects, and going through my own art curriculum! Competing with only yourself really works!

*Note: the second image was made by Arvalis at Newgrounds.com. We used it as a poster for the game we made - Ace Pilot.*

Force animation class progress - The first three weeks



Working by day, studying by night - the first four weeks of 2013 is just plain tough. I find myself doubting my decisions and getting sidetracked by a lot of things throughout this period. Luckily, one of the things that remained constant is my force animation class(drawingforce.com). This is a 10-week online class that I'm attending, it started last Jan. 21.

 The class is pretty good so far, it allowed me to polish my basic animation skills as well as to have rhythm and force in my drawings. But most important is the fact that it gave my curriculum a direction. For most artists, the hard part is not learning new things but sticking to it once you decided to learn it. The internet can be a blessing and a curse at the same time in this situation. If you're self studying, you're most probably going to search the internet for good resource material. Being able to do this is just amazing, but a danger also lies within being able to have any information at your whim. You will get sidetracked, you'll see holes in your game that you've never realized before and if you're like me, you'll want to fill those gaps too. The more I did my research, the more my to-study list grew longer. This started to create an anxiety in me that says "Oh my god, I'm never gonna reach all of my goals at this rate. I need to do more." So I started doing more, and more, and more, until I was just a confused guy jumping from one area of study to the next but never having the time or focus to really understand things in depth.

This is where the force animation class saved me. Last week I was studying so much things that I neglected doing my homework for class until the day of deadline. Naturally, I panicked and immediately worked on the assignment. I did finish it in time but it was a horrible experience. I was so tensed that I didn't enjoy working on it, nor did the quality of the work came out to what I wanted. That bad experience forced me to step back and look at the situation in a different perspective. My aim for this class was to learn new things and apply it in my work, but because I was so busy studying other stuff, I lost focus and didn't really learn anything from this week's class. Worse is that in the assignment I made, I only applied things that I already know, not the things I have picked up from the class.

To think that I paid for this class and come out with the same skill level as before was a huge wake up call for me. I needed to set aside other lessons for now, and put all of my focus in the animation class. That's the moment I had an idea to make this whole learning thing into a curriculum. That way I would be able to put all of my focus in the current lesson, and not worry about the things that I still have to learn since they have their own schedule now.

"Most things worth having take time to obtain" - I've come across this quote yesterday and it struck a chord in me. I was so anxious to reach my goals that I was pressuring myself to learn everything NOW. I wanted it now. This quote put my mind in the proper perspective, that things take time to learn and mastering them takes even more time. My unrealistic expectations fell off. So now I'm taking my time, setting one foot in front of the other and if you're interested in seeing my baby steps,  I posted them below in the form of my class homeworks.

Week 1: Drawing circles and force lines with "controlled looseness". I was pretty much drawing circles the whole week. A technique I used is to just "air draw" the circle with a stiff wrist and once I've gotten the motion down, I lower my pen in the paper and imagine my hand motion as something like "drilling through the paper". I even imagine the sound of a drill making contact with the metal. Another big thing I learned here is the importance of drawing in steps. I'll explain my method in a future blog post but for now, please enjoy these circles and rhythms.








Week 2: Bouncing ball - different weights and the use of leading edge. Things are starting to get more challenging in this week. Mr. Mattesi (my animation professor) put a lot of emphasis on planning the animation - drawing the arcs first then planning the contact, squash and recoil poses on the ball. He says that animation is really hierarchical, meaning you start on the planning the big things first and getting them down right before jumping into animation or adding any fancy details. This has made a big impact on me since I'm really a fan of putting things into steps in an orderly way. 

The ball plans:


The first plan is for the rubbery squashy-stretchy ball and the second one is for the ping pong ball. There's a third one, a bowling ball but I forgot to make a copy of it's plans lol. Mr. Mattesi said that what I did differently and what he liked is that I moved the ball in an x-axis. Meaning that I allowed the ball to really move towards screen right instead of it just following a perfect arc that moved more on the vertical plane. I haven't actually really thought about it, what I did think of though is how the ball's bounce decrease gradually in different types of materials. 

In the rubber ball for example, I just halved the bounce in relation to the previous one. So the ball is constantly reducing 50% of it's bounce. 


In the ping pong ball you can see the reduction of bounce is slightly lesser since ping pongs are bouncy stuff and their shell is pretty rigid too. Mr. Mattesi's comments on this one are hilarious, he noticed that I used the same circle cause I was running out of time before the deadline(haha) and that it looks sliding once it starts to settle, to which I totally agree. 


Finally, making the bowling ball bounce is a whole nuther..erm..ball game. As you can see in the video below, the ball's first bounce is really high and has quite some hang time, but it dramatically decreases in the 2 bounces after that. You can also see that I added some dimensionality to it, cause I was studying Preston Blair's book the same time I did this. Those crosses really helped in establishing reference points in a rounded object like the bowling ball, which in turn made it easier for me to add those ellipses in their proper places. Once again, a simple fix solves a seemingly complicated problem!


Week 3: Using force paths to understand speed, playing with scale, adding follow-through and settling. Things I kept in mind this exercise is that straight paths are fast, and curves are slow. It's like the driving analogy Mr. Mattesi instructs in his Force videos: if you're driving a car, you'll drive faster in a straightaway than in a curve cause you'll be fighting momentum still trying to make you go straight as you're making that curve. For this exercise we have to use a ball-shape and a fabric/handkerchief/soft material to denote follow-through. Of course I wanted to think of something with more character than that, the most coolest I idea I had though is the Beholder from Dungeons and Dragons:


I didn't use it though since it's eyestalks move at their own volition so settling would be very subjective, they wouldn't flap around like fabrics and wouldn't show proper follow through which is the whole point to the lesson. I didn't want to give my professor headaches so I went for the Matrix sentinel instead:


Due to this change though, I've paid the high price of animating those friggin' tentacles. I didn't mind though as I know this will just help me expand my comfort zone and be a better artist. And I'll stop talking now and just show you the plans and the result:





 I'm pretty much satisfied with it, or maybe that's just me justifying to myself not to animate a sentinel again, ever. At any rate, time sure is flying fast and we are in the 4th week of the animation class. Like I said earlier, this class gave me much more than the lessons learned, it gave my studies some form of structure and it's nice to have some new lessons to look forward come Tuesdays. These are really exciting times for me.

Finally, this may sound like I'm working for the site but nope, am not - If you're interested in learning more about Force, you can visit http://drawingforce.com/
I like to think of force as the "secret sauce" in making your drawings/animations look a hundred times better, atleast for me it did so I just wanted to share this info to you. It would've been nice if I had this class earlier in my career, and I'm only 25! 

-Kev

Introduction - Why am I doing this?

Hey guys! Thanks for dropping by on my humble blog. I haven't posted here in a while so I guess a re-introduction is in order. My name's Kev, an animator for around 6 years now. I've worked both for studios and as freelance, which I still am right now. In all of my years working on the animation industry, I can safely say that I learned and improved a lot both in the professional side and the creative artsy side.

One thing that is constantly bothering me though is the quality of my work. Like I said, my art had already improved a lot since I started out but despite that fact, it's still quite "not there" yet, if you know what I mean. It's enough to get me jobs, but not the high profile, really exciting ones. It's enough to get noticed, but it won't get anyone excited. It's like I'm in a limbo right now and I feel that if I don't do anything about it, my art and my career will stay average for my whole life. The last thing I want to be is average. Average is dangerous.  So I decided to do something about it - I made a list of the things that I absolutely needed to learn, the things that I know will come back and bite me in the later years of my career if I don't learn to do them properly now.

In short, I created an "art curriculum"* for myself.

I searched for online classes, the best books, and other ways I can improve my craft and organized them into separate school years. Each year will focus on just 1 or 2 major topics that will improve my art or animation greatly. The key word here is "focus".

"If you rub two sticks together without intensity, a million years would go by and it wouldn't even smoke. If you go at it with intensity though, sooner or later there will be combustion."

 And combustion, in the figurative sense, is what I aim for. I envision that after this course, my art will improve at such an amazing level that I will get the high profile jobs I want, I will be able to create my own animated shorts in the quality that I want, and maybe even inspire other artists to take their love for art to the highest level. I have the belief and passion, I know this will come true. 

So let's get started!!

-Kev

*See the full list here: http://boybogart.blogspot.com/2013/02/boybogarts-pro-level-art-curriculum.html

Boybogart's Pro Level Art Cartoon Curriculum





I used to believe that I should have a final image of what I want to achieve, but my perspective has changed. So many years I've tried but planning doesn't work for me at all. I now lean towards the fun of exploration as opposed to the limiting qualities of setting goals. This is still a curriculum, albeit a loose one. Feel free to think of the list below as the things I want to explore more. I believe this approach will feel more exciting than the rigid finality of the previous version.

Also, this curriculum emphasizes principles, not trends. Once you got the principles down, you will now have a solid foundation to rest wherever your tastes, instincts and individuality take you.



1st year (2013): Most bang for the buck - HEAD, HANDS, FEET, AND DRAPERY (these parts are the most expressive parts of the body, the hardest to draw properly, and the ones that are always seen. )

Force - Force class - DONE!(Jan-Mar)
Hands - 400 studies and a tutorial - DONE!(Apr)
May - Life got busy, Focused on stabilizing income
Drapery - Vilppu,  7 types of folds, master studies, learning more about clothes from street photography
Feet - how it works, construction, different angles, different footwear, appeal, simplification
Head - how it works, construction, different angles, then study each parts and variations, appeal and simplification

Supplemental reading - The mime book, Acting for animators,


ANNUAL PROJECT: Create atleast 1 animation short that utilizes all the cartoon fundamentals, and uses force, construction, extreme poses and proper gesture of hands and feet.


2nd year: CARICATUREEXPRESSIONS, PERSPECTIVE and PROPS  - In continuation of your head studies last year, we move on to caricature and expressions. Props and BG's give your drawings solid believability even if your characters are cartoony. Studying them will give you the most improvement out of your drawings

Perspective - (no colors yet!) Environment sketching CGMA, David Chelsea - Perspective For Comic Book Artists, World building chapter of Making Comics-Scott Mccloud, Perspective chapter of Successful drawing - Andrew Loomis
                         a. Perspective basics (basic shapes on ground plane)
                         b. 1,2,3 point perspective
                         c. Copy environments from real life and pics, make it as realistic as you can (anime bg like)
Caricature of everything(not just faces) - Mad art of Caricature
                        1. Caricature the face
                        2. Caricature the body
                        3. Caricature animals/creatures
                        4. Caricature things/environments
Expressions - Gary Faigin, Scott Mccloud, Tom bancroft
                         a. eyes/eyebrows
                         b. mouth
                         c. neck
                         d. nose
Review of everything learned so far - Character Mentor

Props, vehicles, architecture - dynamic sketching by peter han - use curriculum of course on cgma


ANNUAL PROJECT: Create atleast 1 animation short using the techniques learned in the school year. Feel free to use the materials you created for the subjects in your animation short.


3rd year: ANIMALS, STORYBOARDING AND DRAMA

Animals - ImagineFX anatomy, Ken Hultgren, Weatherly Guide, Force animal locomotion
Storytelling/boarding - Ideas for the animated short, Prepare to board, Cgma
Drama and storytelling - Framed ink
Values and Planes - Andrew Loomis

ANNUAL PROJECT: Create atleast 1 fantasy epic themed animation short with animal/anthropomorph characters and dramatic scenery.


4th year:  PAINTING, COLOR AND ENVIRONMENTS

Digital painting - Color and light
Color theory - Confident color, cgma
Environments -  Fundamentals of Creative environment design - Cgma - create fantastical but realistic looking environment paintings using everything you've learned

ANNUAL PROJECT: Paint 20 scenes of your ideal movie: could be realistic, cartoony or fantasy, just as long as you can apply what you've learned this school year to the material.


THESIS : Simple animation short utilizing force and construction in the animations, forceful fun backgrounds and a warm fun compelling fantasy story. Or any animation short you want to make, as long as it shows everything you have learned from the curriculum.



Great list of why a story should be told in cartoon form:
http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2007/07/popeye-rules.html
http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2011/12/popeye-reasons-to-be-animated.html



Anatomy - Exploration Ideas *study parts on a as needed basis*




Ideas for learning:

1. Learn construction and how it works
2. Draw lots of realistic copies using construction and knowledge of it's function on male
3. Make lots of caricatures of said body part! Widen study by doing same part but of woman, teens, children and old people. If not applicable, do certain body types instead - fat, skinny, muscular etc
5. Study general body language books for notes on the specific body part
6. Make lots of caricatures of said body part!
7. Once general idea is thoroughly understood, learn more by copying cartoon counterparts



Some guidelines for practice and learning* 


1. Identify the core skills that you need to practice

2. Decide on a way to practise those skills in isolation from everything else - focus on each skill separately, one at a time

3. Make an appointment with yourself and allocate some time for regular practice



*TENTATIVE* 

Male/Female life drawing -  Life drawing, ImagineFX anatomy, dynamic sketching (optional -Cgma, facc07)
- emphasis on slow careful drawings, construction, perspective and specific body types. Learning anatomy should be kept to a minimum, just enough to be able to break it down to the 5 organic shapes and turn it around in space. 
1. Construction - solid figures using the 5 shapes - sphere, cube, cylinder, cone and pyramid
2. Perspective - put the figure in any place in space convincingly
3. Specific body types - concentrate on observing in real life, or pictures of ordinary people

CARTOON fundamentals - John K curriculum (take note of the word "cartoon"-doesn't have to be realistic. Apply on a wide list of characters: humans, animals, creatures. Compare your work to pros and reach to their level)
1. construction - 15 pages
2. line of action - 4 pages 3. hierarchy - 12 pages   4. silhouettes - 2 pages
  5. appeal - 14 pages
6. character design - 10 pages
*The following doesn't have lessons on John K curriculum*
7. shape/design - study chuck jones, disney 40's design and explore what makes them good
  8. exaggeration - study cartoons that do the physically impossible
  9. drawing funny - study poses/drawings from classic cartoons that make you laugh
  10. caricature of life - in the span of this course, caricature real people regularly to prevent
rustiness and increase your character types to play with
*END OF TENTATIVE*