Hotel Transylvania

I just finished up animating on one of the coolest projects I've had the pleasure to work on.  'Hotel Transylvania' has some fantastic animation and should look great in theaters.  Here is a doodle while waiting for notes from Genndy. Things should be slowing down a bit for me so I'll try to post a little more regularly on here.

Frederick de la von Fire

Frederick de la von Fire:
It's been quiet around the blog lately, but Fred's here to play you a tune.

Earl

The blog has gone quiet, but the quest is still going strong.  I've been busy moving to Vancouver, starting a new job at Sony Imageworks and blaa blaa.  I made this in Illustrator over the weekend, based on my favorite coconut monkey carving that I got from an old neighbor that passed away.

Claritar

More Pasadena Poeple

Landfill

Documentia

Some of you that know me may know that I have a rare condition called 'Documentia'.  My documentia was acting up over this holiday weekend and so I drew this. 

Before you go feeling sorry for me or feel the urge to start a fund-raising foundation, you should understand that this condition isn't a bad thing....it's actually not even a real condition, I just like watching documentaries, and while I was watching, I was doodling, it's a side effect of my Documentia medication.

This drawing was inspired by the "Radiant Child" documentary.  Any good documentaries you would recommend?

Rainy Day People of Pasadena

I had a few minutes at the studio yesterday to draw some people outside the window. The guy at the top left kept ringing the door bell at this building and nobody answered, he'd get frustrated, then he'd ring it again with a smile on his face, he'd wait 30 seconds, get angry face, then do it again.

Old Nintendo DS paintings

I found some old color sketches on my Nintendo DS memory card.  The first one is from our the kitchen in our old apartment. I think it was somewhat overcast that day, but everything had a bluish tint.  The second was from the amtrak train somewhere between LA and San Francisco.  Hills with endless Chaparral.  I'm no painter, but I like the simplicity of these.

Barthalomew the brilliant

Dateline NBC

Slow Friday night at the Gormans'.  I ended up watching this Dateline NBC episode about.........yes.........you guessed it......a mysterious death that wasn't quite what it seemed.  I was on the edge of my seat the whole hour.  "They seemed like the Ideal American Family.......until one day"

Seabiscuits

Sorry for the lack of posts recently. I can't use the excuse that I've been super busy with work. More like, moderately busy with work and visiting family and friends. I'm excited to be starting a couple new projects soon. One project will be a 'traditionally animated' short film for Duncan Studio.  A pencil, giant stacks of paper, and some very talented animators and artists...... I can't wait.  Here is a random drawing I did on my recent flight to Indiana.  I have no idea why I drew these 3, but there's got to be a story there.

Figure drawing class - July 18

Well, it was good to be back, drawing in a classroom setting. The charcoal drawings were quick 30 second poses, and the pencils were 5-10 min poses.  If you want to draw better and there is a figure drawing class open in your area, I highly recommend going.  I knew I should be going pretty regularly, but I always found some excuse not to. By the way, this is a just a portion of the drawings, there are plenty of crappy ones, too.

I forget the exact quote, but Glen Keane or Art Babbit, someone said,
 "Every animator has at least a hundred bad drawings in them. Once you get them out, you can start making the good ones."

*Perhaps someone can help me out with the exact quote?

Figure drawing class tonight

I signed up for a figure drawing class tonight... it's been awhile.  I was looking in the closet for an old pad of newsprint, and I found some drawings that I don't even remember doing.  Hopefully I'll have something to post from this class tonight.

Optimistic Beard

Random drawing from a while ago.  I remember sitting down at the computer and googling random words until I found an interesting face.

Dance Thumbnails

I've been studying a lot of dances recently for additional game animations. Here are some thumbnails I drew while trying to figure one of the dances out.

Tigers' Dance Animations

There are many 'emotes' in the game. If you feel like screaming there is a scream animation. If you feel like practicing Kung-Fu, there is a kung fu animation. If you feel happy, there is a happy animation. And if you feel like dancing....

Gorilla boss

More Loadbar Animations

A couple more loadbar animations from the kfpw. Viper was the most challenging to break apart into pieces to re-use. She changes shape so often and her body is always tapering in or out. But I will say, Viper was the most fun to animate.

Loadbar Animations

To keep players entertained while waiting for kfpw to load, we created a series of loadbar animations with the 'furious five' characters. We had a unique challenge of making these animations fairly long, but keeping the file size very, very small. So, we roughed these out to get the performance right with the brush tool. Then made 5 or 6 shapes to describe the monkey's main body parts (head, tail, chest, leg/arm, foot) and then re-used, overlapped and skewed the same body parts over and over again until the whole body was filled in. Since Flash allows you to instance the same symbol (movie clip or graphic)as many times as you want without adding to the file size, we were able to keep the files small, allowing them to load quickly.

Here is monkey

Croc Boss

One of the many cool villains in kfpw is the Croc.  Here is one of the croc boss entrances I animated in one of the mini-games, followed by the rough animations I did before filling in the the character shapes. The red lines are tracking my arcs on the sword and a few other parts of the character. 

More to come...

Kung Fu Panda World is Alive!

I've been animating for the past 9 months on this game.
www.kungfupandaworld.com
It's a massive multiplayer online (MMO) game for kids based on the Kung Fu Panda movie from Dreamworks.  It has been a lot of fun and I'm excited to see it up and running.  Our in-house animation team got to animate a huge variety of characters on this game(mostly in-world): Characters with 2 legs, 4 legs, no legs, wings, huge gorillas and tiny chopsticks fighting over a dumpling. Great experience and great game. If you have some free time, go there and check it out. Wander around, practice some kung fu, fight some croc minions or play some mini games.

One of the animators that I work with developed some really useful tools for the 'flash character animation pipeline'.  He's now allowing anyone to download and try them out for free. I can't say enough about how helpful his tools were while working on the game. 
Autotweener
Art Brushes in Flash (new)

I'll try to put together some of my work from the game so I can post it here on the blog.   You can, of course, see the finished animations in the game, but I also have lots of thumbnail sketches and roughed out animations that I'd like to post.

By the way, I snapped this photo a couple of weekends ago at Dreamworks while checking out a special screening for "How To Train Your Dragon". I wasn't sure what to think from the watching trailer, but I must say it was really well done with top-notch animation.  I recommend.

A House

I found this drawing in an old sketchbook and really liked it, specially since I don't do a lot building/structural drawings.  I remember wanting to develop it further, maybe recreate it in 3D, or something.  Anyway, it's just a quick doodle, so I decided to add some color for now. 

It's funny how you can look back on something with fresh eyes and have a completely different appreciation for it.  It's like I don't remember drawing it, so I'm looking at it completely objectively.

Life

"Life" just started on the Discovery Channel.  The most bizarre and interesting animals out there, all in HD slow-mo footage.  Amazing.  Here are some quick sketches I did while watching the other night.  The bird on the left does this strange courtship ritual with their significant other where they run across the surface of the water together in perfect synchronization. Watch it!

Sidenote: Next Monday, I finally get to show what I've been animating on for the past 9 months...

Busy

Thank you for the great comments everyone has been leaving lately.  There have been some questions about my materials I use to draw or software to animate.  So, I'd like to answer some of them.  I animate in Flash for 2D and Maya for 3D, with the exception of the occasional animation in After Effects or Nuke.  I almost always draw quick, people, observational sketches with a pen. I have a nice Faber Castell 'S' PITT pen.  If I'm drawing from my imagination, then I almost always use a medium-hard pencil  H's or F's.  If I like the drawing, I will sometimes refine it with a soft 4-6B pencil.  If I add color, I usually scan in my drawing, set the drawing layer (in Photoshop or Illustrator) to 'multiply' blend mode and add color on layers below that.

This is an illustration I made for an insurance company a few years ago.  I was going through some old files and stumbled on it. It seems to give the sense of busy, which is what I am right now.  It's an animated gif that I created in photoshop.  Basically you feed 5 or 6 versions of a drawing into photoshop and it loops them.

Frog Princess....I mean Frog Girl

Last year while on vacation at one of the lakes in northern Indiana, there was this young girl who would catch frogs every night with a flashlight and a bucket. Not only could she catch them, but she could also stun them by rubbing their bellies.

Venice Beach Art Wall

A couple of weekends ago, I rode down to Venice Beach to draw.  I found a nice spot to sit and watch the graffiti guys working on the Art Wall.

History Channel!

The History Channel has some new programs we've been enjoying at home.  Here are a couple of characters from 'Pawn Stars' and 'Pickers'

Ludwig and his elephant

Getty People

After a long Christmas break, the quest continues, as I try to dust the cobwebs off. Here are some people that held still long enough for me to draw them. The highlight of the day was the guy wearing heels and carrying his wife's purse.