Sketchy Observations...

I decided to start up a new post-CalArts blog. From here on out, all updates will happen over there:

http://sketchyobservations.blogspot.com/

Mainly centered on keeping my sketchbook busy and working to improve how I draw. So zoo trips, my usual people-watching, and the occasional landscape study type posts. Basically anything that takes place after/in-between work-hours. :)

Onto the next frontier....

The Big Wrap Up!

As of Friday, December 17, 2011 at 12pm(after a nice 3 hour session of lifedrawing) I’m a CalArts’ Character Animation graduate! I can hardly believe that the date actually came. This past semester rocketed by and suddenly I’m dazed, but done. Talking with friends we got onto the topic of “No more…”---like “No more attendance rules.” “No more required classes.” “No more grades!?!?”, “No more night classes. My nights are suddenly going to be fairly open--which means I need a hobby outside animating, stat! haha” and it was bizarre waking up this morning and realizing what’s no longer going to be apart of my usual routine. Which is fairly scary to think about, however that's overpowered by how thrilled I am about what’s awaiting me in 2011---I’m looking forward to a nice chunk of downtime, but in January I get to jump back to animating full-time and I’m beyond jazzed about the upcoming workload.

CalArts has definitely become a second home to me, and I couldn’t have asked for a better 3.5 years here. From crazy scavenger hunts that ran until 1 in the morning, the inside jokes("TIMING!", "Tiny hands!"), to the super stressful final weekend before that year’s film was due, to the absolutely amazing summer at Pixar, to all the extremely exciting recent events over the past couple of weeks. Memorable is a very small word to say the least. The people I’ve met are quite the spectrum of characters, and on the whole, they’re all outstanding guys/gals. Wouldn’t have learned so much without my classmates or faculty being there by my side through both the good and rough times. I wouldn’t trade my experience for anything and feel very fortunate to be apart of the department. It’s crazy to think about how much I’ve come, not just within my time at the school, but really in the past 6 years (7 in March.)--- since deciding that being a veterinarian was no longer my dream job, but animation was(though drawing was always my favorite pastime since about preschool). Touring CalArts for the very first time 6 years ago during my high school’s spring break sealed the deal, and now here I am with a BFA and hopefully a very long career in the animation industry!

(This is from my first year camp-out for cubes(2007!)! Aww! Such a long time ago. Lookit our wittle freshmen faces! Back in my day, no tents. haha)

I’m really going to miss all my classmates (under and upperclassmen!), I know I’m going to feel the distance the second I start hearing about class sign-ups, and that first week of classes. Always fun times. I wish everyone the very best of luck on their films and this upcoming second semester! I’m looking forward to Open Show already. And yes, I’ll be visiting as often as possible. Also, I will be attending my actual graduation ceremony in May so I do get to walk with my fellow fourth years who are about to head out into the world and kick some butt. :)

As for what awaits me now that school has ended--I have some very exciting news. In January, I’ll be joining the animation department at DreamWorks in Glendale! Starting to pack up my cube/apartment and will be making the big move after spending Christmas with my family. Excited doesn’t really begin to sum up how I feel!

So a tremendous thank you to everyone who has helped me over the years---all my family, and friends(new and old). And a thank you to everyone who follows this blog and has supported me since I started this shortly after my acceptance to CalArts. I think I might be ending this particular blog since its focus is on CalArts, but I’ll switch over to a new one that I’ll update with all kinds of daily life tidbits---like my misadventures when I try to use my Garmin to find a nearby u-haul store, or how I almost ran into a sliding glass door tonight while checking on laundry! The sort of stuff not covered in a classroom. haha. Entertaining drawings will be involved though, otherwise I'd just have to join Twitter....okay, well, over and out!

(How the department looked yesterday, post-Holiday department party.Woo! Fourth floor!)

P.S. Here's my final assignment for Fourth Year Animation Class(not sure why the audio's all weird, might try uploading it again later. Playback seems to be acting up). Had almost too much fun working on this--especially on the tied-up guy.

P.S.S. Doodled this while waiting for files to transfer. My own lil "Monstrous Nightmare" getting into the spirit of things.

Thanksgiving 2010

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! Very happy the break is here and I'm currently back home for a few days! I've been in crunch-time for the past 2 weeks animating away--and up until yesterday, my apartment definitely reflected the craziness that took place. But with CTN 2010 over with, and this past weeks' incredibly exciting events slowly wrapping up, I'm definitely resuming "normal" life. Being back home, eating a very delicious Thanksgiving meal, and spending time with family and friends has already restored some of my sanity. At this point, I'm going to finally post some work:




The above is a collection of work, both done at school and a couple assignments I did during my animation internship at Pixar.

And this test I wasn't able to finish in time to add to my reel that I showed at CTN, but since it's now in the can, I'm sharing it now.

Stay tuned, graduating in 21 days and I've got some major decisions to make in the next few days regarding the quickly approaching future.

Thumbnail sized update

47 days left for this semester....crazy! Not too much to add from my previous post. I'm holding back on posting any animation assignments until the end of Nov. or so for a couple personal reasons, but they'll pop up eventually. Anyways, just to keep things slightly alive 'round here, have some thumbnails since that's about all I have time for nowadays when it comes to drawing (I still have lifedrawing of course, but outside of that....):
A doodle for my new assignment I'm working on. Sadly, the cheese head is no more and has been replaced with some stuff more along the lines of hockey. Tomorrow I'm going to try redirecting the shot back into this type of direction because it veered terribly off course over the past week that I've been working on it. My mood basically matches this drawing when I watch the playback.
This isn't recent, it's from a couple months ago, but while I was looking back in my sketchbook this popped out and I thought I'd share. Still amuses me. Mwhahaha.....
And then a full page of silly doodles of my lil trooper, Kiwi. Just for fun, though I certainly hope to animate the buzzard at some point.

An update of the traditional kind...

Wow, been a little while since I updated. The semester is well under way and I'm juggling the usual work load. I've been too busy to even venture over to the zoo since classes started. It's hard to believe it's already October and the big deadline coming up fast is December---since after that, I'm done with school. So I have a lot to wrap up before then! For now, enjoy my first assignment from 4th year animation class(we finished this a couple weeks ago and we're onto bigger and better looking things):

It was actually a real treat to animate this lil flour sack in 2D. The last time I did that was last January...then it was onto my film, and aside from a couple days of animating in Flash, the rest of the time I was working in Maya. Obviously the summer was spent in the realm o' CG, so I was eager to try the traditional way again. It was pretty nice being able to just draw out a pose rather than having to pose out a sometimes stubborn rig. Just a fun test to get things rolling again...and now back to my current project(coming to a blog near you, by next weekend!):

First Week!

(My final class sign-up! At the time of this photo, I was standing by the character animation table. Photo also taken about 15 minutes before this place was packed! Very happy I got to "beat the rush.")

My class schedule for my last semester, a couple things are changing on here(lifedrawing will be all day now, instead of just morning), but this is basically it:

Acting for Animators	Duncan, Robert	Th 4pm to 6pm
Advanced Life Drawing: The Figure	Lebow, David	T 9am to 12 Noon
2D Character Animation IV	Ty, Ted	T Th 7pm to 10pm
Film Workshop III/IV	Kurtz, Bob	W 7pm to 10pm
Storyboard IV	Lence, Robert	M 1pm to 4pm

Being Wednesday, I've now had most of these classes. The only one that's relatively "unknown" is Acting for Animators, which I've been trying to take for the past two years, but it's usually at the same time as another class, so I'm thrilled my schedule is open enough that I can take it. Overall, going to be a sweet final semester! Feeling pretty stoked about the classes/teachers and am ready to start breaking in my new cube:

Cube 65, top floor North Side! It was really tempting to stay with the same cube from last year, but in the end I decided to stick with my fellow fourth years. Not much else to report, I'll be trying to keep up zoo drawing as well, but that's taking a bit of a backseat this year, in order to give myself as much time as possible to really animate my heart out before December's graduation date. Anyways, first week is off and running!

Year 4 is GO

(Just leaving the Bay Area headed for SoCal as the sun came up.)

I'm almost done unpacking everything and getting settled into Valencia again. Last week was my very last round of class and cube sign-ups(cube 65! North Side, fourth floor, baby!). Crazy as always! Anyways, tomorrow year four kicks off and in honor of that, I decided to finally change my blog banner since the other one has been up since the end of my first year--not quite sure if this one is less of an eyesore...A little shout-out of my film characters from CalArts---Pilot the cat, Otis the croc, and Bot the alien crab-like robot.

I'll update tomorrow night with class schedule details, and some pics from the past week--just need to add a few more home-like touches to le cube, like my animation disc. Okay, over and out!

The Mullet Rockin' Summer of Pixar!

The summer is coming to a close and before school kicks off in a few weeks, I thought I’d make a little post about the opportunity I had of being one of the summer ‘10 animation interns at Pixar, which is sadly wrapping up on Friday---though the interns are definitely going out with a bang(more like a lip-synced high note? ha).

It was definitely an all-around amazing experience, and also some of the most challenging weeks I’ve faced and tried my best to fight through. Film crunch-time was a pretty good warm-up for this summer. My expectations were pretty high prior to the internship and now at the end, they’ve definitely been surpassed in the best ways imaginable. It’s impossible to describe exactly what it’s like working under the Pixar crew. Every time I’d walk down the pathway and open the front door, I was always pretty dazed that I was even there. A lot of “pinch me” moments that’s for sure. We’d have regular intern dailies where we’d show our latest pass at an assignment and get thoroughly critiqued, which was always one of my favorite activities even if I got a little uneasy about watching an assignment of mine play on the big screen(the problems are always magnetized times 100 when being viewed on anything other than a computer monitor. Can’t. Hide. Anything. But at the same time, saw things from a completely new angle. ). Everyone has a very precise and critical eye—usually 1-2 viewings and they’d zero in on what was/wasn’t working and what could be done to make the shot better---whether technically or if a problem was coming from an acting standpoint. It was always an inspiring reminder of how much I’ve got to work on—I will say that my eye is that much sharper than it was in June. I learned truckloads from being fully immersed in the animation department environment; the wide-range of studio lectures were also a great daily-dose of knowledge. It was pretty incredible being in a studio environment for the first time and meeting the animators who have animated so many of my favorite/inspiring scenes(this certainly happens at CalArts, but it still made this internship very special getting to constantly visit with people on such a personal basis). Andrew, Adam, my mentor Don, and the entire team of mentors were always a motivating, hilarious tour de force that helped make this experience so memorable. My daily schedule certainly included many hours behind my ol’ computer screen working on a really nice range of assignments. However, the Bosses of the animation interns definitely found ways to schedule in the fun and I definitely have some hilarious memories—of the 80’s hard rock variety. :) The epic dodgeball game that took place last week which basically turned the atrium into an all out battlefield, is something I won't forget. It’s really hard to believe that it’s ending on Friday, just feels like last week was Day One. I’m sure I’ll be a little studio-sick(the industry equivalent of home-sick? I don’t know. Just made it up.) for a good while afterwards. The other interns as well have been a great bunch(“What is it!?!?!”) and I'll miss hanging out with them(story, TD, etc. Not just the anim crew) I’m certainly excited to be returning to CalArts though and couldn’t be happier that I got to spend my summer in the trenches of Pixar animating away! Certainly can’t say I’m rusty like in the past. Haha. So it looks like I’m now an official fourth year and I have just one semester left---graduating in December! Woo hoo, coming up pretty fast! Anyways, farewell NorCal, and hello again, SoCal….

Shark Week Wrap Up

The last round up of sharks:
Day 5 was the porbeagle shark. Such a cutie.

Day 6 was the ever popular Great White Shark. The bottom two are enjoying the Jaws' theme--whether humming it to himself or cranking up the tune on the headphones. Dun, dun! Dun. Dun....



Day 7 is the basking shark. Certainly gives the OMG cat on YouTube a run for its money.

And then, not sure, but I think tomorrow is a free-for-all, but I'm going to be swamped with work so I'm posting my contribution now:

SHARKTOPUS! I mean, the great white is great and all, but come-on.....

I personally prefer my sharktopi(?) a little on the wimpy side.

So that wraps up Shark Week....sad to see it go, but it was a blast to participate it. :)

No frills about it...

It be Frill Shark day...

"Stella!!!"or "Bacon!!!"

Honestly, the only purpose for this creature of the deep to exists is to be the fuel of nightmares. guuhhh.

Zebra Shark

Day 3 brings us to the Zebra Shark. They have such little mouths---bet they'd make excellent whistlers.

Apologies for the blurriness. My scanner is somewhere beyond the sea--aka. in an LA storage unit til Sept.... So handheld camera it is!

Shark Week Bites Back!

It's that time of year again! Shark Week is back on Discovery and that means drawin' time! Kristen has started up the awe-some daily shark theme, so I'm setting down the mouse and dusting off the pencils to doodle up some sharklings:
The ever interesting Sand Tiger Shark was Day One. Teeth only a dentist could love.
And then Day Two is the Port Jackson Shark. Apparently you can buy one of these guys for yourself---if you have $800 laying around.

I'll be back later in the week with more.

Updates from inside the walls....

Not sure where this leads??? There's a clue somewhere....(it's brightly colored)


Giant Luxo!

Right now the main lobby at Pixar is currently featuring a life size version of Ken's Dreamhouse for various Toy Story 3 events. I didn't get a shot of the back of this, but it's pretty awesome. Always get a little thrill just from walking in the front entrace. So cool!

Week 2 just wrapped up and I've already had an incredible time. Time is flying by, but it feels like I've been here a lot longer than 2 measly weeks. I'm learning so much, literally at Pixar 10-11 hours a day--actually going in tomorrow to finish up my assignment before Monday's big critique. But I'm lovin' it, my fellow interns and mentors make for excellent company in the trenches of animating. Going to be a fun next couple of months! Alright, over and out!

P.S. Saw Toy Story 3 last night and I really enjoyed it. Lots of laughs and some very sweet moments with the characters. Definitely sad to see it end, but I thought Pixar couldn't have done a better job of wrapping everything up. Congrats to everyone who worked on it!

Barker beauties???

I spent some quality time at the mall foodcourt today and did some drawing. Finished a sketchbook and I got to witness some lovely locals--it's a win-win situation!

Getting back on the drawing wagon...

Some quick thumbnails involving a tipsy elephant. Trying to figure him out a little more since I'd love to animate him in Sept.

(Sorry about the blurry drawings..I'm scanner-less and my camera's focus was being really finicky. )

3rd Year Wrap-up--To Infinity and Beyond

Tomorrow summer officially begins--just moved everything into storage today and in the morning, I off for the summer!

A quick snap-shot of how chaotic my cube looked while I boxed everything up. Always a sad time when everyone is packing up, the cubes very quickly become a ghost town and it's hard to think that just a month ago everyone had just finished their films! My 3rd year at CalArts has been, quite frankly, a pretty kick-ass awesome year. I've learned an incredible amount since September and can hardly believe how fast the time has rocketed by! It feels like I was unpacking just last week! Anyways, it has been a wild ride, but every minute has definitely been worth it. I hope everyone has a great/relaxing summer and see ya in September!

A little under 2 weeks remain until I take-off for my internship at:


I'm so excited to start! (though definitely getting a little nervous about it. The first day jitters are quickly setting in.)

2010 Producer's Show!

2010 CalArts Character Animation Producers' Show opening from CalArts Character Animation on Vimeo.

The above is the opening for this year's Producer's Show! A very loving little shout-out to the staff who represent the Character Animation department. :)

This year's showcase of films.

This past Thursday night was the annual Producer's Show. It was an amazing night and I'm still floored every time I watch everyone's films. This year my parents were able to fly down and attend the show as well! They loved the showcase and it was really special having them there--my Mom has been my "fan" from the beginning, which involved me discovering the joy of drawing while using a red crayon on a very white carpet in the living room--so, thanks for all the support guys and again, very sorry about that, Mom.

My Mom and I outside the theater, my Step-Dad was taking the photo. Later, we took a picture together once we had settled into our seats.

Anyways, it was a very memorable night and I met a lot of great artists throughout the show. While I was really nervous about the crowd's reaction, my film seemed to screen very well in front of the crowd and I really appreciate all of the positive feedback I've received over the past few days. :)

To conclude, here's a link to all the student films made this year that have been posted online:
http://vimeo.com/channels/calartscharanimfilms2010
Definitely make sure to check it out if you haven't already. It has been a really phenomenal film-year!

Film Talk

Going to do a couple blog posts instead of trying to cram everything into one. So first up, just a quick write-up of my experience making my third year film, "Bothered Bot."

I started out the school year with several ideas, I even had developed a film idea over the summer, but something always came up that made me shelve one idea and start anew---usually being, "This is way too epic. No." By November I had narrowed it down to two film ideas.
One simple 2D film idea involving this little elephant:


And then an entirely different 3D film idea based on this odd-ball robot/alien guy that I had doodled one day in an afternoon class:

I was boarding/pitching both for a couple weeks. I wasn't too concerned about the medium, I love animating whether it's Maya or pencil/paper, and I was jazzed for both film ideas. It really wasn't until I got some very sound advice from my 3rd year animation teacher, Scott Wright, that I made the official jump to only focus on the 3D Bot film. Another factor involved attending CTN-X and realizing that if I wanted a full-time job animating somewhere in the industry, I really needed more 3D work. At that time my reel consisted of traditional work. So what better way to bulk up my reel then making a 3D film where I'd only be animating in the computer.

Winter break was the final test for this film. If I couldn't get all the Maya-prep work, like modeling/texturing/rigging done before Dec. 31st, then I'd go back to the elephant idea. So on the day after Christmas, I battled my way through modeling the character, ship, and environment. Then followed that immediately up with a couple days of intense rigging madness. By the time I came back to school at the beginning of January I was already doing a couple animation tests to make sure the robot rig would operate properly once I started actual film animation. The above images show a little progression in his design, the Bot on the left is the "old" look before I showed him to a couple friends for feedback. Pretty cold looking and not quite there yet. The Bot on the right is the final design, not a huge re-do, but just tweaking a few aspects of him and he suddenly became a lot more likeable.

From the couple of quick animation tests, I fixed several issues with Bot rig version 1.0---a lot of bugs with those legs of his, but within another week I had version 2.0 up and literally running. Onto animating the film! Woo!

Out of 3 films I've made at CalArts, this was definitely my favorite one to animate. Despite the occasional rough-patch, like the PC labs being down an entire day for maintence(happened a couple times), or just having a really bad animation day(also happened a handful of times), I had an incredible time working on it(which was the majority of the time). That Bot was a blast to animate and a lot of scenes just fell into place so easily. I also had a close group of classmates/teachers right by my side to give me constant, very honest feedback(even on a frame-by-frame basis, which was amazingly awesome!) That group helped me really push my animation.

A quick screenshot of the graph editor from a scene in my film. This was taken before I started tidying up some of the animation---actually a small chunk was removed to keep the scene from "dying" in the middle. This scene had a build-up of tension/action and mid-way through it kind of stopped, but not anymore. Also, this doesn't include the facial animation(aka. the eye).

Anyways, that pretty much covers it. Like I said before, I really enjoyed working on it and after awhile, I almost didn't like the idea of "finishing" it--or at least no longer animating. Spending several hours a day just moving the lil Bot around was quite fun. No all-nighters, though things got a little nutty towards the end and I was pulling some really nasty hours trying to composite everything together in After Effects:

That's an example of what a scene looked like when I initially brought it into After Effects. Elements like the bg, shadows, reflections on the environment, additional camera moves, sky, special effects like snow, etc were all added in once I had the robot/battery animation working. This one scene(when the icicles are falling around the robot while he's desperately trying to pick-up the battery) took about 5 hours to put together. Most of the time, scenes took maybe 15-30 minutes to put together, just a handful almost did me in.

Okay, the next post will be a Producer's Show/Job fair wrap-up....

Open Show 2010/Bothered Bot/Producer's Show!

After many months of constant work and putting in some crazy hours, my third year film, "Bothered Bot" screened last night at CalArts' annual Open Show!This was taken roughly 2 hours before the start of the show. Huge screen, and by 2 pm, just about every seat was filled(by 4 pm people were sitting on the floor in the back/on the sides). This year was a little shorter than in the past, the first half ran from 2-7 and then there was a break before we started watching again from 10-12am. My film seemed to go well, got a couple chuckles when I hoped I would--sadly somehow when projecting the film, the colors were a little too saturated and my poor robot went from red to a sickly magenta/neon pink combo, so I spent most of my time agonizing over that. But it was still surreal seeing it on the big screen. Anyways, the Open Show this year was amazing, the films from the department were extremely strong! I'm very proud of all my classmates. So many favorite films, once I track some of them down I'm going to post them on here. So congrats everyone, we certainly put on one heck of a show! :)

I didn't get to bed until 1:30 a.m. so I slept in this morning, and eventually made my way to CalArts around 10:30ish.... and was greeted with a huge surprise. I made it into the Producer's Show! This year's posting was really fast(usually have to wait until Tuesday!), so it's still sinking in. I didn't have my camera with me so I'll try being cheesy and take a picture of the list a little later. Seeing that "Bothered Bot" is my last film at CalArts(graduating in Dec, so I need to focus on job-hunting), this latest news is something that's very special to me. Anyways, since it has finally made its Open Show debut...I've put it online, enjoy:

Bothered Bot from Jennifer Harlow on Vimeo.

Bothered Bot! It's in the can!

After an absolutely insane weekend--yesterday at about 3:15pm(45 min. before the deadline) I turned in my film! And now that I suddenly have actual free-time, this blog is definitely in need of an update! It was pretty intense over the past few days, no all-nighters, but I was feeling pretty fatigued yesterday after 4 days of 3-4 hours of sleep a night. However, it was absolutely worth it and now my third year film is done! Since yesterday, I've been nit-picking it to death, and have gone through a roller coaster of emotions, but after a full-night's sleep and some serious time away from the computer screen, I watched it a couple of times and can actually say that overall, I'm pretty happy with it. I achieved the one thing I set out to do---give myself as much time as possible to just animate. I definitely feel like I was able to give many scenes a lot of attention which I really haven't been able to do before. It has always been painful to be so short on time that I can't revisit a scene and fix the animation. And because I've been able to animate/re-animate a number of scenes, I actually had a ton of fun on this film. Never really felt like "work" until the absolute end...when I was suddenly on a schedule of working from 8 in the morning until 3 or even 4 am the next day to get everything done in time(no animating obviously. Just post-production and duking it out in the battlefield that was After Effects). Oddly enough, this morning, after sleeping a glorious 9 hours, the last few days really only feel like one, big, looooong, day--all the chaotic events, are just a blur to me. I'm still trying to get my days straight. haha. Anyways, I'll be posting my film online sometime over the weekend(probably Sunday because Saturday is going to be jam-packed with Open Show style fun) and until then, here's quick cellphone snapped, photo of my computer screen as I wrapped up my film yesterday afternoon:

The top blue line is the video while all that bottom craziness indicates where all the sound is. Not on screen is the soundtrack which was just one line below all that stuff.

At this time though, I really wanted to acknowledge everyone that was right there by my side helping me throughout this year. I can't thank everyone enough for all their input and invaluable contributions. This film wouldn't have come together without them. Having my friends, teachers, and even my family swoop in and save the day was amazing. Another good thing were the people who'd give me a good kick in the butt to make sure every scene lived up to its own potential. Always felt very motivated/inspired after a critique. I'm not too sure how many of these guys read this blog, but regardless, here's the list of everyone who made sure this film could, "be all it can be":

Thank you everyone!

Alright, I'm off to go catch-up on life for a little bit before I start focusing on a portfolio/demo reel for the upcoming Job Fair.