Yo! Sorry for the lack of updates: now that I am back from Korea (and recovered from Jet Lag), hopefully my updates will become more regular from now on!
Hmm, also, I've been contemplating just how much I want to post and display here on this blog... I mean, before I got into animation and drawing, I was really into writing, and it was a personal goal of mine to fill up the two large white bookshelves in my room with novels and series I'd written with MY OWN BARE HANDS!!!1 So, many of my animation ideas are actually ideas for series with overarching plotlines and all that jazz. I've always thought series were so cool... how the reader can see the character change (or not change, blah, boring), how themes connect or separate the different books, how there are different arcs, and cliffhangers, and recurring gags or characters. And one of the things I really enjoyed about following a series was the anticipation for the next book, wondering how all the questions will be resolved, how everything will end, yet hoping the end is still a good distance away.
Incidentally, I really do not appreciate spoilers, since they definitely lessen the impact of whatever surprise the author/writer/artist had planned for the audience. And I imagine the author/writer/artist don't particularly appreciate spoilers either: spoilers spoil (har har) whatever surprise the creator has been carefully setting up, in anticipation of the thrill and joy the audience will experience upon its release. Anyways, it occurred to me that my original plan of posting up the storyboards and progress videos of whatever animation I am working on is equivalent to me spoiling my own stories, which is... not very smart of me. So with regards to this realization, I've decided that, at most, the animation I post will be limited to any shots I am having difficulties with that are not spoiler-ish. I wish there was an option to limit who could see which posts, so the people I regard as mentors and sound critics could see posts containing more sensitive material... but oh well! Everybody can play mentor when they see the finished animation!
In the meanwhile, while I post on whatever animation I am working on, I'll cover why I made the style decisions I made, why the current project excites me and what sources of inspiration I am feeding off of. I'd also like to share any thoughts on the current animation industry, animated shorts and series I like, etc., here. Hopefully it won't be as dry and boring as it sounds here... Also, there will be images, and pictures, since a blog dedicated to a very visual medium shouldn't be a wall of text, as well as video whenever possible!
Speaking of videos, there is this one really amazing video created by students at the current-best animation school in the world, Gobelins. Located in France, Gobelins puts its applicants through a rigorous audition process, where the young and hopeful must prove to the committee that they have the knowledge, skills, and fluency in French needed to make it in their school! I believe each applicant must take a written test in animation and cinema history, a French fluency exam, storyboard a given premise, and then animate a walk cycle based on a given character sheet. The excellence of the students definitely show in their student videos. In the featured short below, the stark graphical style, coloring, acting choices, pacing and narrative bring a mature story together into something I think transcends into the domain of literature. Watching this still sucks me in and gives me chills.
Watching something as amazing as this just makes me all excited and enthralled at all the possibilities of animation again! And... it makes me look back at all my short ideas and laugh at how childish they look in comparison, lol.
During my stay in Korea I basically worked on visual development on five animation ideas simultaneously, in addition to some intensive leveling up in draftsmanship and general drawing ability! One of the ideas is that earless tailless cat idea that's been stuck at 5% Progress during my past two months of blog-neglect. I won't be sharing whatever I've worked on on my other four ideas, but in the next few weeks I'll slip in some of the stuff I've made for the ET Cat. Haha... the initials make the name E.T. ... and the cat is like extraterrestrial because it is mutant or something! ...Yeah. I think I've made a lot of headway with this project, and I'm pretty excited about it now. I'm planning on making a stuffy version of the main character because, um, I think that would be awesome! My personal goal is to finish everything for this project by the end of this month, but we'll see.
Looking forward to this! The style is really light and flexible but also striking. Love how removing the three appendages makes the cat look like a ferocious but dopey (and thumb-less) child.
ReplyDeletep.s. please don't tear up your work any more! ;)