Slow

Ursa Major is chugging along extremely slowly. I want to put up more of the work I've been doing on it, but I don't want to spoil anything. Here are two new screenshots from shots I've been working on over the last couple weeks. In the time it took me to animate the bear alone at the table, I've read about 3/4 of Crime and Punishment, which is just to say that it took me a long time.

Terminally Chill

You may notice in this post that I have switched over to a new sketchbook. First, Moleskine seems to have changed their paper for some reason, where before it had a little bit of resistance to water color, but you could definitely work it in to interesting effect, now it is treated in a weirder way and water-based material looks like shit on it. I had also been interested in working looser and a little bigger since I started reading the Walt Stanchfield "Drawn to Life" books. While I disagree with a lot of his Disney influenced philosophy on what the content of animations should be, I think he does have insightful things to say about the sorts of observational drawings that actually help you with your animation, that is, looser, gestural drawings based more on volume than on line technique, anatomy, rendering, etc. I've tried to start incorporating those ideas into this new sketchbook, with its cheap paper, and not worry as much about composing aesthetically appealing spreads (getting out from under the influence of the Chris Ware/James Jean type sketchbooks). I sometimes find myself thinking while I'm drawing whether this sketch will be blog-worthy or not, which is pretty absurd. Oh, wait, shit.

Hella Tight

It's almost Halloween! These are on our front stairs.

No new drawings today, but I had Joanna take some photos with skype of my new studio room at my newish place in Oakland.

I also uploaded a short video to youtube with some pencil tests leading up to the finished version of a shot from Ursa Major (I've since gone back and done some alteration to some of the finished colors though, so it's not really the finished shot in the video).

Ghost of Michael Jackson

Corny Cole visited CSSSA for a day and I did these two drawings in the twenty minutes or so I was drawing. It was fun though, drawing standing up on crappy animation paper can be sort of liberating, maybe. Also, some new sketchbook drawings.

Color and Backgrounds

Color script, color studies and finished background paintings for the part of the movie I'm working on now. I am officially fully set up and have begun scanning right now, right this second! I am also now officially a resident of Oakland.

Cynthia

Kevin and I just made this, and another short, My Dinner With Andrax. We might be making another, hopefully with a little bit more thought put into it. I'm about to move and get my whole animation setup together very soon, which includes a scanner, so stay tuned.

two months of drawings

Life in Valencia is so exciting! Seriously though, CSSSA just started, and that is good. Here are some sketches from the last two months or so. I'll write more later!