Various Walk Cycles

Tyrannosaurus Rex Walk Cycle from Toniko Pantoja on Vimeo.



Miette Walk Cycle from Toniko Pantoja on Vimeo.

Coming soon:A red cat with a green bag

The concept art to my part in this collaboration.

Basically here at Calarts, the 1st year seems to developing a collaborated animation, where each student animates their part with the character, and tries to match it with the next animation.

I was given the number 2 in class.

Cats n Horses

For Rik Maki's class, we submitted cats and horses for our second to last assignment.

So in summary, I guess the best parts he liked were the expression of the horses, and the female cats - and he said that the anatomy for the horses need to be defined more, and some parts shortened. It's all good

Cat thumbnails

It seems that my teacher wants cats and horses for our next assignments. Did thumbnails in class for the cats...

Cats can hiccup and fart at the same time.

Observational + Cafe Sketches

Cafe and observational sketching is a lot of fun, and is very useful in understanding drawing both interpretively and technical - even in gestural form. It's something I do from time to time, but my sketchbook is mostly filled with rough sketches for bigger assignments. So, here are some of the ones I am proud of.

Some of my classmates:

 Takehiro Nishikawa (http://tn-portfolio.blogspot.com/)

Jason K

Michael Piazza (http://michaeldraws.blogspot.com/)

Jason Reicher (http://jasonreicher.blogspot.com/)

Hallie Willson (http://halliewilson.blogspot.com/)

Leon Alexander

Check these guys out.

On the upper right, you can see a huge tally. That represents the number of time my Contemporary Literature teacher says "RIGHT". In this count with a 1 hour lecture by him, it was 160 times. I shit you not.

So here you see again my literature teacher and my classmates:

Zach Nock

Taylor Price (http://taylor-price.blogspot.com/)

Jacob Streilein (http://jcstryline.blogspot.com/)

And so yeah... went down to the little area down the street and sat in Starbucks. Drew with Taylor. Ate Subway. Watch south park. What a way to spend a few days of thanks giving weekends.

Nicholas Marlet inspired monster's inc. design

So, one of our in class assignments was to draw our own monsters studying from Nicholas Marlet's model sheet. These are some of my studies.

Imaginary Friend (calvin and hobbes influenced) part 1

a

So, another assignment was to come up with a new version of Calvin and Hobbes... That's a harsh and impossible assignment since something already made so great can be so hard to turn into our own versions. Two of the drawings are missing, but I am waiting for them to return from the class.

Corpse Bride/Tim Burton inspired character designs

Assignment from Rik Maki's class. Draw ghouls in the corpse bride style; adults, children, and animals in a creepy ghoul way. I think I did okay... I guess.

Main character designs for first year film

In the original script, their names are "Jack" and "Christine" but I re looked at their origins in the character bones I wrote, where Jack came from an Italian Family and Christine came from a french family.

I changed their names later on to Milo and Miette.

More art will come of this concept.

November 2010 Life Drawings

Tried to mix in technical aspects and interpretive aspects of life drawing once again... I prefer to keep my short gestures loose and fluid - since I'm not trying to construct something solid in under a minute, and more about capturing the energy of things.


...Life drawing is so jokes.

My 48 Hour Film for Calarts 2010 + Hints of future projects

The theme was coat hanger... At first, I was like "Hell no - this thing is stupid and super time consuming where I'm at now."

Here is my 48 hour film for calarts 2010
Bullies and Coat Hangers



I don't know how it evolved, but I soon spent most of the weekend finishing it. Crunch time... lovely.
I'm pretty happy that I did it because I got to see the technical issues I faced during its creation before I start production on my first year short film - which is currently under the project name:

"The Irreplaceable Milo" (aka Tale of the Illusionist)

 I honestly cannot tell you what it will be about right now, since I am currently following a rule I made for myself, which is never give away a project unless I am sure of it's completion. All I can say is that this one is simply about Illusionists. The one I stated is what I am spending most of my attention to.

"Faisal" (aka Until the end, I stand resolute for you)
is a film idea I have that I would like to work on for my fourth year (this will propably change sometime), which is about a loyal dachshund, it's master and a wolf that walks beyond mirrors in a library.

There's of course the completion longing for "Jimmy" which I will color someday... and then there's an idea I recently conceived called "Behind Turquoise Eyes" which is about a bird that teaches a bird woman to fly. So many ideas, but so hard to choose the right one. It's just some ideas I like to express out

A visit to the zoo...

Here are some sketches I did in the zoo with just a ballpoint pen and a pencil.
I need to literally re-understand structure.

Short drawings for each, since we had to move fast

I should have utilized with different mediums I brought with me...

Life Drawing so far....

Well guys, It's been half the first term already. Being someone who's been through Sheridan and Calarts, its interesting to get both sides of life drawing expectations from both schools.

I'm possibly too interpretive for Sheridan, and maybe too focused on structure in Calarts. Sheridan really stresses on line quality, proportion, and construction while Calarts is more explorative and experimental. I think this also has something to do with the two degrees being different. Sheridan's animation couse is BAA (Bachelor of Applied Arts) while Calarts is BFA (Bachelor of Fine Arts). Most of the life drawing teachers here, are complete fine artists. Although they do teach anatomy and structure, I can tell they hate it.


There are weaknesses and advantages to both teachings. In Sheridan's animation course, you really understand form, proportion and line quality, a huge HUGE biggie in animation. However, this can limit you in the way you draw and design characters, environments, etc. It still happens to me, I start drawing things as a stock symbol. In Calarts, you really get a sense of observation, design and interpretation. This is exceptional and super important for design, composition and exploration - giving new takes on characters. This gives you new ways to solve problems. The down fall to this: they don't want you to focus on structure. Your drawings will suffer having solidity in them without them. Thats a huge problem when it comes to animation. The program still sees itself as experimental.

There's always this debate of sheridan kids seeing calarts as "too artsy farsty" (which i can agree) and calarts kids seeing sheridan as "too constricted, playing by the rules" (which i can too agree)

It's like saying Sheridan prepares you to work in studios, while Calarts prepares you for innovation and invention. Both have their own ways of problem solving. That's what I learned.

I'm sure the schools can learn well from each other.

So in other words, both schools have their ups and downs, so its always best to remain in the middle ground with this situation. As far as where I'm at, I suck at life drawing. My drawings at calarts are too "boring", and if I were in Sheridan it'd be too "artsy fartsy". Anyways, I shall upluurrrd.

My attemps to academic drawing. (AKA My attempt to the Sheridan way)

  Structure, structure, structure... Line quality, line quality, line quality...

For me, the sheridan way is my time of purely studying the model. Looking at proportion, shapes, form, construction, etc. My life drawing classes is 6 hours long, I use the first three to do complete studies. Most of it is just lines and a lot of gesture work. I also study arrangements of the face, and specific body parts.

Most of these were done between 30 seconds to 5 mins for each pose/face/figure. The last 2, I think they were 10 mins? I can't remember.. For this section, I mostly use a conte stick (a sheridan favorite) and charcoal.

The interpretive way (The Calarts Tradition):
In other words, f*ck the rules and f*ck around. Explore and make design choices...

So yeah, there's me with barely any structure. Now this is interesting because I am getting some really exciting design choices and approaches. I'm using any medium I can find, like a twig and some ink, or drawing with my none dominant hand. The rules that I learned in Sheridan does not apply, and I am making some crazy choices.

The interesting ting about Calarts' life drawing course is that they want your models to have story. Story, character, narration etc. If they are wearing a witch costume, dont draw the witch in the costume, draw an entirely different character or something. Even up to now, I find this insanely hard.

Well, there's that to this entry.