Of Monteray Bay and things....

Thought I'd do something other than film work...oh, like I don't know---updating the blog!

Last week consisted of hitting another "motivation" wall concerning film progress. It wasn't so much as I wasn't motivated to work. I got up early, sat down in my cube, grabbed a sheet of paper, and then my mind would go 'blank.' Couldn't get an idea of how a scene should go, or every drawing was atrocious and went directly in the trash. This happened from Saturday until Thursday and it was pretty frustrating and I got a little stressed out that I didn't get my amount of footage done. However, the wall cleared on Friday and I busted out the first 5 scenes of my film---so at least that helped get me back on track. Good times. With 26 days remaining, here's hoping that weird block stays away. I've got 14 scenes left to completely animate, then I'm going back and polishing a few before I move into compositing all my work together, and editing the music/sound effects too. Going to be a pretty intense time-frame...thankfully it's Spring Break so I'm taking advantage of a week of no classes and animating as many scenes as I can.

Anyways, on Saturday I went on my mini-break and drove up to the Bay Area to visit family and then on Sunday my parents and I drove over to the Monterey Bay Aquarium for the day. Those two days were fantastic and I really enjoyed seeing everyone and getting a heaping amount of down-time. So here's a quick recap of the visit to the Aquarium:

Naturally, I brought my sketchbook along and spent some time sketching:




Sea-dragons are one of my favorite sea-creatures. They're not too well-known, but I'm always fascinated with them. Also Lionfish are another odd-favorite(though Monterey didn't have any of these guys).


The otters were by-far, my favorite guys to sketch, so much energy! They were bouncing off the walls, tackling each other, hammering food/toys around the exhibit, etc.

And then here are just a couple photos---I sadly don't have time to edit the rest:








And here's one quick video, that may or may not have had its audio edited. ;)


On Monday I hopped in the car and started making my way back to Valencia. Well leave it to me to get a little off course. I ended up driving down highway 1 because I missed my turn earlier on(I was only supposed to be on this highway for like 5 minutes...this turned into 3 hours. whoops). However, the drive was gorgeous AND I met quite the character. After realizing my navigational error and discovering my phone service was MIA, I decided to stop at the next gas station and get directions. Well this particular gas station was apparently a pit stop in the twilight zone because I met a guy that could have been Quint's(a character from Jaws) close relative...I walk up to the counter to witness a guy turning around from picking at the drapery behind him. He's got a bent paper-clip in his hand and to really peek my interest, part of a cactus. I mutter my question relating to getting back on the 5. And while poking around at the cactus with his paper-clip, answered very slowly, "AHAHAHA, you're a long way from there! You're 'bout as far West as 'yew' can get. Yup far West. You're on the spine, 'yew' are. 'Yew' want ter be in the heart...not on 'der' spine." And then went back to his cactus...

I kind of just stared at him, uttered, "Thanks" and headed for my car. Not exactly the help I was looking for and made the resolution to just keep driving until I got phone service again---I wasn't in a hurry to find out if any more locals could top this character. So if you're ever in the Big Sur area along highway 1...keep an eye for this guy, he's quite the conversationist.

Well that was my weekend trip, now back to the film and get this wrapped up in the next few weeks.

Gestural Update

Wow, a whole week has shot by since I last updated this blog....yikes. Things are getting so intense around here that it honestly feels like maybe two days have passed since the last post. Probably going to get really quiet on here cause it's coming into the home-stretch.

Progress so far:
1:45 animated at this moment and I've got about 4 weeks left. Still aiming for April 4th as my "all animation DONE. Move onto post-production" deadline.

Last week my story teacher invited his friend, Dave Pimentel to come give a gesture drawing workshop. One word summary: awesome. Learned a ton and made me realize I need to gesture draw more. Tools used: mostly permanent marker and then the occasional blue-pencil mixed with brush-pen. Anyways, here's a snippet of what I did:




We didn't have an actual model, so everyone took turns posing in the middle of the room. 2-5 minute gestures. I'd give names as to who I included here, but I'll let them figure it out. Definitely a great workshop.

March Madness Underway

Yesterday afternoon I looked out of my cube and saw this full-on rainbow! See if you can also spot the very faint second rainbow. A sign that there's still hope in-between the madness of crunch-time! haha. Though right now, it's certainly easy to wish I was somewhere over that rainbow(and I'm definitely not the only one.)

Film update: I broke the 1 minute mark on Monday! Though, with 46 days remaining this isn't the greatest---wish I was over 2 minutes by now(my animatic is verging on 3 minutes). Oh well, hoping to conquer another 30 seconds or so over the weekend. Still balancing the animation homework(3D mostly, just need to clean-up Gideon at this point). So here's what the film looks like so far:

Each clip represents a scene. I have several 8-12 second scenes. Pretty crazy. Still need to clean-up some of these scenes and scan all of it. Backgrounds have been drawn in, just need to shade them.


Used an average 01 micron for size comparison. Still have a ways to grow, so this stack will soon overwhelm that little pen in the next couple of weeks. Aiming to wrap up animation by April 4th so I can do all post-production(sound, compositing, music, etc.) until the deadline(April 20th).

Alright, time to go back to work!