Before Spring Break

It's the last week before spring break and I'm drowning in school work and portfolio preparation. I haven't posted in almost a month, which is just sad. But I'll try to make up for it during the spring break by posting daily sketches and hopefully finished portfolio pieces. For now, I'm just going to leave some sketchbook doodles and drawings here. Most of them are from my figure drawing classes, some of them are character designs for the stories I'm currently boarding.

Also, did I mention I'm applying to Disney for the story internship? The deadline is on March 31st for international students, so I really need to get my portfolio done next week. Wish me luck!

Figure drawing: the first is a 2-minute gesture and the rest are 15-minute poses

Here's a one-minute sketch of my mom as she was waiting for her order the other night. Haha.

Then some character designs or storyboards.

I'll end this post with my favorite doodle of the week. I did this during my 1-am doodle break the other night. Haha. 

Challenges...Lots of Them

I'm three weeks into the semester and it's been a lot crazier than I expected. I feel like I've been running on a never-ending treadmill since last week; I'm extremely exhausted but I know I can't stop running because when I do, I'll fall flat on my face and everything I've worked for will fall apart in an instant. I'm pretty proud of myself for taking on a big challenge (taking six art classes, tutoring math, helping seniors with their thesis films, working out every day) and managing to be on top of it all. But tonight, after I got out of a very dense three-hour design theory class, I realized I haven't had time to work on my personal art. For instance, I just learned a lot about "balance" in composition and realized there's so much more I could do to improve my art. But I don't have the time to do so. It's frustrating, but I know I brought it on myself, so I can't really blame anyone or anything. I guess I'm just gonna have to push even harder and start prioritizing my art over other things.

Anyway, to cheer myself up, I've decided to dump a bunch of assignments and projects I've done the past two and a half weeks here, as proof that I've been working pretty damn hard.

This is probably my favorite work from last week. It's a self portrait for my design theory class. We were only allowed to use basic shapes and black and white.

These are quick studies of a peach tree that I did after reading "The Selfish Giant", a short fairy tale by Oscar Wilde. I'm hoping to paint some backgrounds and concept art based on the story and hopefully use them as portfolio pieces.

The next ones are little animation bits I did for my mechanics of motion class and also at the El Grupo workshop. I think I always have the most fun when I'm animating, because I love turning something still into something that could move and live!

Cannonball!

I had so much fun animating this little fly at the El Grupo workshop last Sunday. Turns out this background was taken from Calvin and Hobbes! I'm so excited to add more--a flag and a leaping frog--to this scene!

And now for my worst work of the week! This is another assignment for my design theory class. We were given two statements starting with "I love" and "I hate"--all of them were written by a different person in class--and we had to take or compose a picture conveying either of the statements. I got: "I love each step closer I take towards the person waiting for me at the airport". If you can't tell, it's very specific and it gave me such a hard time.

I got the idea of a finish line at some point when I was looking for airport pictures, so I just ran with it. And I thought I did a pretty good job. Until literally five hours ago when my professor and classmates pointed out everything that was wrong with it. And now I see it all; I see how there's too much going on that you can't even tell it's an airport or that there's a luggage on the far left corner, or that the feet are almost horizontally in the middle, or that there's no real focus, or that it's unbalanced. Whew. That was a mouthful. I got a little upset that it wasn't nearly as good as I thought it was, but then I realized I should feel proud that now I know what's wrong with it. Now I can make better art.

An Animated Valentine's

Last night, I had a romantic Valentine's dinner with a lightbox and a couple of erasable colored pencils. Let me tell you, it wasn't nearly as sad as you think it was. Hah.

I went with a friend to the El Grupo Animation and Story Workshop in Burbank for the first time. Traffic was incredibly painful on the way there, but it was well worth the trip. When we got there, we were welcomed by the ever-smiling Alex Topete and a handful of students from other schools. Unlike all of them who are already working on an actual film, I'm not trained animator yet, so I had to start from the beginning and animate a bouncing ball. I was so excited to finally do some squashing and stretching!

The next step was to add a tail to this little bouncing ball. I wasn't really sure I was doing it right and sure enough, I had to do at least four revisions to get it to work.

The hardest part was figuring out what the tail should do when the ball hits the ground and squashes. Turns out it curves down and points to the right. It was astonishing how changing the curve in a single frame made the animation a lot smoother.

My friend and I definitely enjoyed our night (and forgot about being single just for a second. haha). I think we're coming back on Sunday to do more animation! Hooray!

LA Zoo

Today I finally got to visit the Los Angeles Zoo! I've been meaning to go since after winter break, because I really wanted to practice drawing animals (and also see cute giraffes), but I just didn't have the time and a ride at the same time. Luckily my university hosted a free trip to the zoo, so a friend of mine and I got to go and sketch our day away!

When we got to the zoo around noon, I made sure I saw my favorite animals first. That meant eating at a little cafe with the best view of the giraffes. I've never really sketched moving giraffes before, so my sketches are pretty sloppy (actually all of my sketches are, so whatever).

There were three giraffes--I think one of them was a baby--and they all walked in the same circle and looked in the same direction the whole time. It was really interesting; I never noticed that before! I got to study the pattern on their skin too. Seeing the giraffes at zoo reminded me of how much I've been wanting to animate a short about a clumsy little giraffe and his adventures with a grumpy cat. Hah.

My friend loves elephants the way I love giraffes, so we knew we had to see the elephants next. And we did, except they were so far away we couldn't sketch them properly. We decided to come back later so we can see the other animals first. And we did, too, except they were all taking their little afternoon naps! We saw a sleeping tiger, jaguar, bear, and oh, an adorable sleeping hippo! It had its little butt facing us and we couldn't help but sketch it. Haha.

Our best model of the day, no doubt, was a wise old tortoise. It was so still that I got carried away and drew more details than I usually do. Haha.

Then I got to see gorillas! They were mesmerizing! One of them was really close to the window so I got to sketch it up close. I don't know if I was just seeing things, but I swear I saw it hugging itself and its eyes had this somber look. It looked sad. The other gorilla looked a little less serious; it was just chilling on top of a boulder and munching on some snacks. 

Aaaaaand the ridiculously cute award of the day goes to the koalas! They were so cute I swear I could have died from squealing. There was one sleeping so peacefully up in a eucalyptus tree and there was another one with a baby koala on its back! Squee!

About twenty minutes before we had to leave, we ran back to catch the elephants like we planned. We were almost out of hope because the elephants were still far away, but literally at the last minute, the elephants started walking towards the fences! We were so excited that we forgot to take pictures and just hurriedly sketched gestures. They kept walking around, so a lot of my sketches were done in 20 seconds or so. Haha.

I wish I had more time to sketch and observe all the animals, but sadly I only had three hours to spend. It was three hours definitely well spent though! 

Interterm!

Tomorrow is the last day of interterm, so I thought it'd be apt to talk about the work I've done in my four-week class. Unlike last interterm when I took Precalculus, a course that's obviously not for my major, this time I took a class on digital illustration techniques. It's essentially a crash course in the Photoshop techniques most commonly used by digital artists. As a beginner in Photoshop, I learned a lot of new things in the class and I'm happy I took it.

Here are some of my work that I think turned out pretty well:

This is an assignment on displacement mapping. I thought I'd combine two of my most favorite things in the world: art and cats. The painting is by impressionist Pierre Bonnard and it's actually a really interesting piece of art. It's a painting of Bonnard's cat whom he called "Nood", thus the painting was entitled Nood Bathing when he finished it in 1937.

This next one was probably the most fun to make. The assignment was to swap two different faces and put them in the same background. I chose two amazing yet very different characters, Michael Scott and Daenerys Targaryen, because don't you think it'd be insane if they were put it in the same world? I mean can you imagine how many seconds it'll take for Daenerys to set Michael's obnoxious mouth on fire? 

And here's my first stab at making a logo in Photoshop. I always appreciate a classic and well-designed logo when I see one, but I've never seriously studied graphic design. This was just a small assignment on using the intimidating pen tool to create clean shapes and typography. Most of the class made a personal logo, but I opted to make one for a fictional candy house.

This isn't actually how my logo looked like at first. I made this wonky looking chocolate bar as my initial design, but I realized it's kind of confusing, because people instinctively think the top is the chocolate and the bottom is the wrapper, because that's how chocolate bars are commonly portrayed. After spending some time tweaking it, I decided to just start a new one, just to refresh my mind. And voila, I came up with a candy house that looks cuter and better. 

Lastly, here's my favorite project all month. It's the one I got the best feedback on and also the one I feel most great about. The assignment was to create a 1930's travel poster. I spent a significant amount of time looking up actual posters to get the colors and the layout right.

That's about it for interterm. Spring semester starts next week and I'm really excited! I'm going to take a class on production design and also design theory, along with four other art classes (including another figure drawing class), and I'm just so excited and eager to make more art! 

Read, Sketch, Live

Since last summer ended, I haven't been reading many books that aren't for my classes or aren't about drawing and animation techniques. It's not only embarrassing (as an ex-English major), but also truly saddening. I used to pride myself on being that kid who gladly spends more time reading books than checking notifications on Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr and all the craziness that is the Internet. Well, those reading days are long gone. I enjoy the Internet very much and I should say I still read a lot when I'm online, from blog posts to news articles to never-ending rants about social justice on Tumblr, but I don't really get inspired by these things as much as I am by novels and poems. And I need inspiration now more than ever, because too often, I find myself not knowing what to draw or paint or do a storyboard of. So today I took a little time off my usual Netflix and Tumblr routine (which, by the way, I don't recommend to anyone who wants to feel alive)  and biked around town, got some new books to read, found a spot near one of the fountains on campus and sat there to read and sketch. It was wonderful being outside for a change and feeling the wind on my face. I really need to do this more often.

Here's a quick afternoon sketch I did from where I sat this afternoon. I was in front of my university's pretty library and was reading Little Women.

Adventures in Flash

Last semester was the busiest, craziest yet most exciting four months of my life. It was the time of many firsts: my first semester as a Digital Arts major (I switched from English after my freshman year), my first time getting a paid job (as a Precalculus tutor! Who knew I secretly enjoy math?), my first time drawing and completing an original storyboard, and my first time working on an animated short.

I volunteered to help a fellow student with his senior thesis film, because he's making his film using 2D animation--a medium that I've always adored and wanted to explore. The problem was he was making the film entirely in Flash and I've never used Flash before. Actually at that point I didn't really know how to use any software except for the very basic tools in Photoshop. I told him I was interested in creating background art, but I can only sketch traditionally or in Photoshop. Fortunately he said it wasn't a big deal. So then he asked me to sketch a basement for his protagonist, an inventor who accidentally gets teleported to prehistoric times and gets into trouble with some cavemen. Here's a wide shot I got from the director and used as a reference:

 He asked if I could improve the layout and also design more furniture and other props. So I sketched some and came up with these:

I have to admit, these suck (as you can so obviously tell from how small I made them on this page).






And that was pretty much all the work I did for the film last semester. It's not much, but I gave myself a pat on the back for going out of my comfort zone, talking to someone new and signing up for more than what was required of me. Anyway, I got in touch with the director last week and told him I'm still very interested in helping out. I've learned quite a lot from my Photoshop class and this gave me a little more confidence.





So he told me wanted this scene
to take place at dusk instead of in broad daylight. I was excited to get to work. I looked at multiple reference photos, including the ones he sent me, and studied the colors as much as I could. I came up with a pretty solid color study of a dusk sky.

I think it's incredibly fun to experiment with colors, especially when you can just pick and mix all the colors you want without worrying about actual paint drying up or running out.

I sent my color test to the director and he told me he liked the top right and the bottom left the most, so he sent me this--a combination of the two.

With my colors ready, I bravely opened Flash CC on my computer to edit the file the director gave me. I spent hours trying to figure out how to edit shapes, especially the clouds I painted. I can't lie, it was intimidating and frustrating working in Flash for the first time, because I wasted a lot of time figuring out how to select this or convert that, instead of just simply painting.


Hours later, I finally got the background to look like I wanted it to.

I'm sure for most of you artists out there won't think much about this because it looks simple, but I'm proud of how it came out. I think it's pretty good for a first try!

Here's what it looks like with the characters and the fire:

So this was my first adventure in Flash and I'm actually looking forward to having more. My goal is to design all the backgrounds in the film, so wish me luck!