background making

Right.... making background is super hard. But with practice and perseverance you'll prevail they said. I hope that's the case, I'm tired of drawing all those failed backgrounds. I made friends with some hand cramps too.

Anyway, it's tiring sure, but it's also quite fun. matching all those lines, colors, and characters together in a scene. One of my favourite concept artist is Evgeni Tomov, who created Les Triplettes de Belleville with Sylvain Chomet. If you haven't watch it, I strongly recommend you to. The animation has no dialogue aside from the grunts, laughs, and other miscellaneous sound. The style is very interesting too.

Again background really intrigues me, Evgeni Tomov really has a way with lines. Here are some examples:

And the finished colored piece:

Pictures taken from http://livlily.blogspot.com/2011/02/les-triplettes-de-belleville-triplets_01.html
If you want to see more go to Evgeni Tomov website or the link above.

2D rants

2d animations are really a pain to make, but they're worth it. This site here gives really good lessons on how to draw and animate your character by Doug Compton

http://www.karmatoons.com/drawing/drawing.htm

As far as the character making goes I feel like I'm somewhat capable of doing. But when it comes to making background that's a big problem. How do I draw the details yet make it looks cartoony? Whenever I tried to draw by reference it ends up being static and realistic, completely incompatible with animations. Shadings are another mystery, I mostly work digitally but would love to achieve a somewhat sketchy and color pencil shadings. If I can just find techniques and brush settings that doesn't look too digital....

This background is from the animation, Sebastien. Notice the subtle brush textures on the items? I wonder if it's digitally or traditionally drawn. Would love to get that kind of look.
Here's another example from Disney's Aristocats.

style and tone

really nice and cute animation. Gobelins school animation has never cease to amaze me. The feel and the color is exactly what I want for my next project. Looks like I have to hone my drawing skills further to match this animation. It's official now, I love 2D animations. Go to hell with 3D, the technical sides of 3D softwares are frustrating. Although it'll probably be nice if I'm more expert at it.

The adventure of Damien

Lately I've been inspired by the movie Amelie. It's a very sweet and positive movie about enjoying the little magic in life. The colors and the soundtrack sets the mood perfectly, whimsical and magical yet also realistic.

For the self directed project, I want to make an animation about an adventure to discover happiness in life.
My main character will be Damien. He is a gloomy young man with many problems. All the citizen in the town is happy except him. Damien can't help but feeling depressed in his life.

Until one day, he found a strange item/ a strange event/ a strange person (I still haven't thought about it yet). And that starts to slowly change his views. He started seeing things that shouldn't happen (all the citizens become anthropomorphic, fishes start swimming in the air, statues become alive). He becomes bewildered and decided to throw/beat/leave the strangeness that he found that day.

After that he relaxes because everything went back to normal. But after sometime he regrets it because he starts to miss all the weird happenings, it makes his life brighter. So he decided to search for the item/person, with no avail. Disappointed Damien then pretend that he still has the item/person and try to be happy about it. Eventually he discovers that the world is still a great place even without the help of that item/person. The end

For the style probably 3D cartoonish or classic 2D animation.
styles i'm aiming for:
if 3D:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_0ENUIVzCg&feature=related

if 2D:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj4RBmU-PIo

11 Punks

According to an article from http://blastr.com/2009/09/guide-to-sci-fi-punks.php there are 11 most popular punk cultures

The ones interest me the most are:
-Steampunk
-Cyberpunk
-Dieselpunk
-Mythpunk

Particularly because I've seen movies that uses those frequently.
For example like:
Steampunk = Golden Compass, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Howl's Moving Castle
Cyberpunk = Matrix, Blade Runner, Neuromancer
Dieselpunk = Watchmen, Dark City, Hellboy
Mythpunk = Pan's Labyrinth, Narnia, Skeleton Key

It's easy to visualise the scenes because they have their own style of settings. Steampunk would be art nouveau like design and architecture, Cyberpunk will have many modern technologies, Dieselpunk would have art deco buildings and noir feel, and Mythpunk is very dreamlike. I found each one of them very fascinating.

Vincent teh creepy

I love Tim Burton animations. Particularly because they're very gothic and dark. No doubt about it, stop motion is creepy, although it's more of a subtle scare than in-your-face scare which appears in almost every horror movies (and I hate that).

Self directed project is coming, maybe I should consider making a gothic thriller stop motions, that'd be neat.

black or brown?

On one side black looks pretty depressing (which is appropriate to the theme) but I really like the brown texture on the background. Which one should I choose....hmm... decisions..decisions....

Posthuman stuff

A character I created for the posthuman project. Originally planned for 3d, but considering I only have 5 weeks time, I decided to make it 2d instead. I tried to make it look like Angst style animation but it's easier said than done. For convenience purpose I'll just use my wacom and whipped up some sketchy line and shade animation. It turns out to be good. But I'm just hoping the constant movement of the character doesn't make people nauseous.

Final storyboard for my short. It's basically just a worker pushing a wheelbarrow. I wanted it to look and feel depressive and dramatic. Maybe the whole short will just be in black and white. Plus some music and wheelbarrow sound will really enhance the atmosphere.

Fallout 3 has a really great feel with the depressive atmosphere and the unconventional oldies music on. I'm going to do the same on my last scene. The closing music will be Bob Crosby - Dear Hearts and Gentle People. Yay

Sketchy animation

I'm a sucker for emo-ish animations. It just gives me a certain kind of feeling. An excitement? Maybe, but more of an obsession type of intrigue. Angst is perfect, especially with its sketchy style.

I noticed in this that ambience sfx + voice = good, although the voices are just grunts and screams.
I wonder if a depressing music is added in, would it be better?
It's definitely an inspiration for my next creation

Rango animation movie

I didn't expect Gore Verbinski to actually make an animated movie after his most successful trilogy, Pirates of the Carribean. Looks like he managed to get Johnny Depp to play the main character again, only the voices that is. Sadly the trailer looks cheesy (except the Mexican owls mariachi which are awesome :D), but I'm still going to watch anyway seeing that this isn't another piece by Pixar or Dreamworks. The art style is refreshing with all the details and grittiness, I've rarely seen animations with photorealistic feel to it.