Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Awesome inspiration for the morning!

This is an amazing short! So much awesomeness, it is difficult to even find a starting point. Just pure greatness! Enjoy "Key Lime Pie" by Trevor Jimenez:

Monday, August 30, 2010

Morning update...

I already managed to create a sort-of routine for myself in the morning where I go through all of the most recent updates on the blogs that I follow and maybe try to catch a glimpse of a few great pictures and/or animations to get my own self a bit more cheered up for the day to come. Today I came across a very interesting post from "On Animation" blog by Daniel Caylor, where he posted a link to a great spreadsheet that has information from anonymous sources about the salaries in different companies for different positions in the Games/Feature Film industry. You can have a look at it here: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Aou3k7ExaTQjdHZ0S2dKMjhfY0lmN2tmTDRESEhjbHc&hl=en&authkey=CNDxyJwF#gid=0

I guess noone can be 100% sure of the validity of those numbers considering you can put whatever you want there, being anonymous and all, but I think that generally people are interested in contributing and seeing information from others as well, so I gather it shouldn't be too far off. Either way, it is quite interesting to see, and was rather a surprise for me as I imagined many of the studios that are there to be paying a lot more then they seem to (according to the data), and vice versa for others.

Also, here is a trailer for what seems to be a wonderful animated film - "My Dog Tulip". I think I would really like to watch it. Will need to find a way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLqkJJEEGlU

And finally, here are a two sketches I did in the morning. First one with the head is just a page of doodles which I end up making everyday while waiting for different functions that my computer tends to execute (usually within the engine, or Max) and freeze. The whole thing is entirely out of my imagination. The long dude with what should be a saxaphone (but isn't one) was something that sprang into my mind while listening to some jazz.
The second sketch was done over lunchtime. I decided to get out of the office and have a look at what should be within my limitations of sketching the outside world. I think it came out better then my attempts prior to this one, but of course, there will always be millions of areas to improve. If you feel like commenting, I'd greatly appreaciate it!

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Life Drawing from Monday and Wednesday

Slowly getting back into the pace of things now. Had an ok session on Monday, kind of free drawing, without much time limit, but focusing on getting good lines and generally satisfactory results. Can't say I was too succesful on Monday, although I do think some stuff on Wednesday came out somewhat decent. Still so much to learn!


Ah, and I have also played around with some animating on my brand new DSi XL! It is an awesome thing to do little 2D animations on. I have to say, even with all the limitations, Flipnote is an awesome program - tons of fun! Here you go, some results!

And here is a WIP of something...

Monday, August 23, 2010

Hectic Month!

Well, this really has been a Hectic month... I have been to Paris, then I got sicker then I have been in many years, recovered, then had a birthday, and along the way got to also see Mike Mattesi's Webinar. Sadly, due to being a bit overloaded with things, I didn't end up doing all that much drawing, which is a very bad thing, but I plan on changing that. I did, however, do some doodles here and there. Plus I attempted, yet failed, to do some drawings of things around me while in Paris. I think I REALLY failed there. But hell, nothing else to do but to keep practicing! Here are those updates:

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Wednesday - Life drawing and... a cat?

As I almost never have regular days, today was equally weird, all in it's own peculiar way, but regardless, pushed myself to do things. I started a day with drawing... a cat. The reason is that I want to familiarize myself with drawing them, as maybe, in some near future, I will need to do a massive amount of drawings of a specific cat. And hopefully when that moment comes, I will be up to the task. I made this one from a still from a video of a walking cat. I think I will do more of those sketches, and also watch my lil kitty, and will attempt making an actual cat walk at some point on my table. Should be fun! Other then that, has a not such good life-drawing session... The model kept talking and complaining, then shifting all the time... Baaaaah!!!!!! So annoying!

Finally some progress! Makes things a little worth the while...

Oooofff, finally some visible progress... I have gotten a pretty interesting advice recently, suggesting to study both gesture and anatomy together, as anatomy will significantly improve the results of a gesture, which seems logical enough for me, so, as I am moving on to chapter 2 of Mattesi's book, I also have gotten myself an interesting set of lectures by Robert Beverly Hale, thanks to the exact same person.

And here is stuff from Monday's lifedrawing. Didn't do too much on the weekend, was a weird one this one... But better off now:)

A very quick and rough sketch of my friend and colleague Carlo Rotolo