I'm having issues on how I want to make my submissions package look. I like Charlie's template, but I would like something a little more magical, but I don't know if I can come up with something like that by Friday so I'll probably be going with the same package others are going with. I also gotta get the Illustration Markets guide out of one of the boxes that got packed away so my landlord could show off the apartment which he hasn't done.

Yesterday I was thinking that I need to make a thank you card and I'm now getting done with my thesis. I have a few frames that still need to be cleaned up, but it's tedious and I needed an illustration break. I made this thank you card 'cause I need to start thanking people for helping me in my commercial art quest. I also did an illustration of Oliver's parents dog as a hot dog since they have one of those dogs, which I'm not really fond of being a cat person. So I joke about eating him and I've made him look a bit more tasty.

Doodle for MLT Poster

So all my ideas that I had while I was laying in bed with strep sucked when I went to show Joe. He fortunately had an idea of what he wanted to see on a Multifunctional Laser Tiger poster. I had one idea originally last week from what he said the composition was too static, but I was all sorts of herping of the derp and did quite understand what he exactly wanted from email correspondence. So I just played with MLT poses. Yesterday in class he doodled up a composition that he had in mind. Yesterday after class I doodled up a new idea and with the exception of perspective issues that are on MLT near he head.

This was the first idea for the poster.

Second idea for the poser not really too much different that the first if anything it's even more static.

This doodle is a bit closer to what I'll be going with.

So like I said prospective issues with the top bit of MLT which right after posting this I'm going to fix it up.

Well I don't have too much to show right now. I do have a few pencil tests that I've been working on and am now tightening today. I had problems with this one kinda short falling shot more problems than I thought I was going to have.

I have also been a bit pumped over the new Pokemon Back and White games even though i won't have time to play I'm still excited for a new pokemon adventure.

That's what I am now going to be uploading.

Inconsistencies in his face but I'm going to be working them out right after I upload this.

Stop him now with your special troop!

So, worried about my thesis, even though my professor man has confidence that I'll get my work done. This week I finally started working on shots with more than one character. I've never really hard level hand drawn more than one character in a shot before. I usually just do it digitally, so this has been a learning experience. From the 3 heroes running over the canopy I learn a lot like if you think you found a short cut it's probably going to be a giant pain in the but when you get to the coloring and comping stages. I leaned and I don't think I'll ever make the mistakes I made with Summon Squid again.

Also have been working on character concepts for the crapy book "The Prophecy Machine". I'm having fun with it and once the three are complete I'll have them up here, because they're fun and I was messing with shapes which made it more fun.


Vlnt9's day is coming up. I love this holiday because it require the person I love to remind me with either candies which are DELICIOUS! Or shiny jewelry which is awesome 'cause shiny. So Go VLNT9's DAY!

Everyone is excited!

So got 3 finished cleaned up shots done this week. It's not much for most animation students but I'm technically an illustration student... This is an accomplishment for me personal best if you will.

Not really too much to say the last time I updated was only a couple of days ago. I'm really excited for the senior show extravaganza. The Killustrators are going to be in room 202 and our animations are going to be shown on loop. We're all also showing at least 1 maquette as well as story boards and other concept and preproduction pieces. I also told Bob I want two postcard holders so that I can have a 'one sheet' in it. Now I didn't call it a one sheet when I told him I wanted one but I think my words were descriptive enough that he should have known what it was. I think there is also going to be popcorn for our specific films. So ya know come for that.

Joe also took us to his studio and showed us how he composited certain shots and a bit of particle stuff as well as labeling and organizing our work load. Quite informative and another thing that got us really pumped on getting our thesis done.

Now the shot that I started and completed today. It's just the pencil test 'cause I don't have the clean one in After Effects yet, but I will.

It's Febuary? Spining croc.

Ok so no update for awhile but that's because of this shot. I was trying to make the tiger spin around with the croc and well that was not working. At all. So I decided to go a new direction with the spinning and made it more like MLT has a mechanical pencil sharpener rear. I have one croc to fix but I'll do that tighten the shot and move on. 'Cause I have spent far too long on this shot and I have a lot more shots to work on and then have to figure out magic with figure ground.

Pencil Test GO!

I think the semester is pretty intense despite not having too much to work on other than thesis, but that in it's self is keeping me up late. I think I have a better ideas of a couple of shots and they're getting more dynamic, and since this has an opening theme feel to it dynamic is good. I've been have some persepctive issues and have had to watch Lion King (1&2) I have also remember how good Lion King 2 was like why wasn't it in theaters good. Also have been watching jungle book which is sweet simply because I can't get good video clips of big cats doing super cool dynamic stuff. Maybe because their souls are crushed in zoos and animal parks which is where most of those videos I've looked at have been taken.

I also gotta finish this post card thing for self promotion as well as the intro to my reel which is a shot and a half away from being done. I also need good classical music for it, but I'm not sure what to use.

So here are two pencil tests that have taken me a while to get right and these pencil test aren't necessarily correct. I had one more that I was going upload, but it won't upload to blogger or to youtube which is strange, but here we go!

I guess this is my fist finished shot.

So last week I uploaded the pencil test of Multifunctional Laser Tiger fist using his laser powers. Today I think it's pretty close to finished I'm saving all of my color correction to the end of this project just to consolidate time.

I had another shot that is pretty close to finished and will be finished by next Thursday. It was the shot I was working on during break and it was the first shot of the tiger running through the jungle. I didn't really do much tweening of the head at all so he looks kinda special waggling his head about. I think I can have that done by tomorrow night. That said I haven't really touched that crappy Maya model for my Tuesday class and I'd like to not have a bad grade. I also have the acting yet on the bakers dozen part of my Tuesday animation which I need to make look less chunky.

Finally I got told my a professor Christina Hess that taking concept art would be a good thing for me over the game design class. Where as many of my other professors were trying to pressure me into taking game design. Christiana is a fellow patterning lover and she's been helping me out with the textures and colors I've been using for my background concepts. I really appreciate some encouraging words especially late in the semester when I feel greatly discouraged about several nouns.

So I'm going to leave you off with the finished for now shot of MLT firing his lasers. (The song has a sorta 8bit electric feel so that buzzing you hear is part of the song in this part.)

So this is the the end of my fist semester of my senior year?

Well, wow. There is only two more weeks left in this my first semester of my senior year at PCA&D. It kind feels pretty weird. One more work week as for a chance I feel like I have a handle on my work load. I feel that I'm pretty far behind as far as thesis work goes, but we'll see.

So I don't have too much finished right now to show ya'll 'cause everything is due in two weeks but I have this pencil test where laser happen.

This was oddly the most relaxing break I've had during my college career.

Between work and my body begging for sleep that it didn't get over the summer or during this school year it's surprising that I got done what I've gotten done.

I got a bit in my thesis done, export isn't being consistant even when I spent 13 mintues of my life watching this 3 second scene render, the mov file still was like "herp a derp". I think rendering on the schools computers will work better. I also realized that the backgrounds will look better line less, so as I go on I'll have to make that happen, also some of the ground textures were a bit eye hurty so I made a faux wood inspired texture that's a lot better on the eyes. I've started on the "laser growl" bits of animation for the thesis 'cause I really like his head, and there is a couple of ways to color the lasers that I've been thinking about so I want to play with them.

I also have been fixing some of my 3D animated tutorial and stuff to have in my reel, 'cause I really like animating in maya and there were only a few simple tweaks needed to make these pieces look pretty slick. I've also finally gotten a handle on lighting (after like 4 classes on the program), and I've always like texturing. I just have a hard time modeling that and I don't like it when I open a model and there are holes where several faces are missing. It's frustrating and I don't need anything to add frustration in my life.

As far as the muffin pice I'm about 3/4 of the way done with it, it's also a lot simpler than my thesis. I unfortunately have to re-render three of the numbers 'cause they cut off weird.

Finally I'm working on a intro to my demo reel that I would like to have as my gallery piece when the senior show comes around.

It's all in aftereffects so it's simple and there is only 5 sections to it and I'm going to be about 20% (6 seconds) done by the time Tuesday comes around.

Well that's what's been going on this week.

Final Year of College

So this is my last year of my undergrad at PCA&D and it's been quite the adventure thus far.



So for like a week or two we had a ton of rain and at the end of this Lancaster had this magical rainbow actually double rainbow but the second rainbow is really really faint. This was an amazing day. So amazing in fact that the four of us who saw it when i saw it had the need to update their facebooks about the fact we had seen a double rainbow.

This amazing image is the original Multifunctional Laser Tiger. He is currently pooping out pencil shavings from sharping pencils for the animation based on his life.

Background that doesn't look like total crap.

Lighter non moving (except water) patterns in the backgrounds, Why because the different paintings were looking like poop regardless of which direction I went whether watercolor, digital painting, and a minimalist thing isn't my style so here we have the opening background for multifunctional laser tiger.

Tecnique influence for Thesis

These are images from Gankutsuou which is one of the first animated series to use the moving pattern luma key thing. I haven't watched too much but it's an adaption of The Count of Monte Cristo which is pretty awesome. This show is why I'm not going to be using patterning in my backgrounds because it does and I while the hair and the cloths look pretty sweet with the patterning the backgrounds really make it so you're eye has nowhere to rest and it's a bit straining.




Honestly less patterning than I plan to use. but he backgrounds are a lot more calm, a bit more loosely colored as far as the background goes what with the bleeds and such. I still between Chowder and Gankutsuou I think I have a good bit of infulence as far as how the style is going to be treated.

I'm still contemplating on how exactly I'm going to exactly work the backgrounds. I was thinking either layered drawn backgrounds with hard pencil or with a shitty pen 'cause good inking pens when I use them tend to look like poop. Or just digitally color them and since I think it'll need some sort of outline otherwise it'll seem like that episode of Ed, Edd, and Eddy where their outlines went away, and they melted.

I've just been having some problems with how to execute the background of this animation so I went looking for influence if there is anything that might be suggested please I'm a bit confused and stuck on this subject.

Multifunctional Laser Tiger Character Sheets: First Past

First we have these character sheets these are the first passes of them colored except the swan and it's the second pass at him colored, though I still think he needs some work I'm still too tense at drawing the swan...



Multifunctional Laser Tiger- Main hero
Squid Buddy- Good guy MLT summons
Croc- First villain that terrorizes the other jungle critters
Swan- Big villain who dumps toxic waste

The solid bits are going to be painted in photoshop and the textured bits are going to be part of a luma key in aftereffects sort of like Chower's cloths and that one pretty thing that Nelson told me about today and the name escapes me. I still need to rework the animatic since I lost 3 of my boards at some point in the process of scanning and saving and stuff. That and the whole animatic turned out kinda dark even for the projectors standards so I'm going to either adjust them in premiere or in photoshop where ever the problem lies.

I really wanna rework the squid a bit since I did him while working on a characture and it doesn't fit in as well as I'd like with the rest of the characters that and they're all inked ugly but he's inked super ugly. And I have a couple other textures I've worked for him I didn't think they looked as good on their own but I don't know if this texture works well enough for his character.

So here's the happy fun characters in Multifunctional Laser Tiger.