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.

Birds

Here are my bird designs for Rik Maki's class.

I should have been more explorative - and pushed shapes further.
Here is what I have so far (and in all honesty, I've had it with all these birds.)

The bird and the... underwater thing

 Here are some more character design assignments! The assignment was a beautiful girl (in other words, hot dayumn babe) and another character that was.. ugly.

Was watching a few musicals while drawing this.

and the owl is so influenced by my classmate Jason Reicher.

Decided to design a hero for this concept

Character sketches for first year film

Some concepts for my first year film's main lead. He is a rookie street illusionist.

Sushi Set Character Design

Characters out of sushi set, such as the dragon roll, the rice ball and... shrimp ball on a stick? cheerios.

Character Design - Mice (Pot and Pan)

For Rik Maki's character design class, we had to design two characters that are mice.

Both have to somehow contrast, or foil each other, and our designs have to show it.
I finished this a few weeks ago, and some of my character designs are still either on the wall, and being held by the teacher. These include some more mice drawings, and the old man + baby character design.

Art direction for Jimmy

Currently, the first one is pretty much the decided style for Jimmy's adventure.



The short will retain a paper n' pastel feel with the use of textures and drawing styles of the background.

Most of the environments include locations set in South East Asia, but there will be places set in Eurasia, the middle east, etc.

If I feel like it, I will add the cut out 1 minute of the full song by Utada Hikaru, adding places from Europe. (I have images in my head of a chocolate castle in Switzerland, the canals of Venice, and a French mansion covered with roses and mirrors)

I came up with the descriptions for the characters
Jimmy (the tiger cubscout) is referred to the 'little Asian tiger that explores the world'. He's supposed to be Singaporean Chinese. Jimmy is raised by a Bear Master Scout, who's Canadian. Jimmy likes to think he's a bear at times. His real parents are a mystery, but I added pictures of them in the animatic. He is a big fan of his foster dad (the bear master scout), Steve Irwin, and Indiana Jones. His dream is to become a master adventurer.

Miki (the siamese/birmese cat) is descent of Cambodian, Thai, and Burmese blood (though she was born in Burma). The flower on her head is sometimes made fun of because she's a girl, and stereotypically she wears a flower clip by her ear. It's supposed to represent a symbol of her royal heritage in Cambodia, but decides her dream is to climb the highest mountains on foot.

And so I drew a sketch of them when they reach their dreams

Filipino Animation

I have been asked an uncountable number of times for my opinion based on Filipino animation.

Now before we jump into this topic, I have to say my pride for The Philippines has died down slightly quite recently. Oh, and its not about Filipino animation at all.

By the final days of August in 2010, there was a hostile hostage situation which was lead by a former police officer named Rolando Mendoza, who seized a bus with chinese tourists. I don't know too much on what happened, but what I hear is that the shootout lasted for many long hours, some hostages were killed, and Rolando Mendoza himself was shot down by a sniper rifle.

From the internet sources I've been looking at, everything seems a bit too one-sided. The media pinned Mendoza as the only villain in these articles - causing a lot of hateful and stir reactions by the public, both nationally and internationally. The stories I've seen depict Mendoza as a dude who took over a bus, killed some hostages wanting to get his retirement benefits since he was expelled from the police force for extortion and stuff. Don't get me wrong, I think there's still no excuse for Mendoza to involve innocent lives just to get heard, it's totally unacceptable. The Philippine police didn't do a good job either. They were indirectly taunting him by sledge hammering the windows of the buses (so fail by the way..) causing Mendoza to go in a psychological epidemic. From what I have seen, its as if they showing him he has no chance of survival at all, and therefore he could have fought out of survival's sake, but snapped.

Funny thing is, they sniped him after he shot a cop... after a bunch of hostages died.

Now back into topic.

I can't say much about Filipino animation, but I'll put in my comments about it as well as some footage of it.



Ibong Adarna is The Philippine's first animated film made around the 90s, and from what I know, its based off the legend of the Adarna Bird, who's crap can turn people into stone. Aside from that, this video is totally Filipino. When I think of Filipino, I think of cheesy elements that Philippine movies will have, such as music that sound like Christian songs. But hey, we are a Catholic deprived country. To me, its nothing at all spectacular to be the country's first major film project. Don't misunderstand me, I think this is an accomplishment in the country and that it only recently started growing from here.

So from the footage, the visuals are really weird, but some shots I really like because they feel like paper cutouts, giving a story book impression. I think if you look at the 2d animation alone, it looks okay - but because its blending with weird 3D background animation that doesn't match to well with the character animation, it gives a very uncomfortable sight of unsteadiness. The whole thing feels like a CCD thing. You know what, I'm pretty happy they came out with his because their later films seems to have vastly improved...



This is Urduja, another film based off a Filipino legend about a warrior princess of some village. Almost 10 years after the release of the Adarna bird, this is a huge step of improvement in the animation industries of the Philippines. The film itself, as well as the trailer here, its still very Filipino with the story structure and the humor given. Filipino humor mostly involves the exaggeration of the acting and the dialect, mixed with some Pinoy expressions but that isn't a bad thing at all. The visuals look pleasing, albeit looking like Mulan and a lot of Disney flicks, its got a pleasant color palette and some really beautiful background illustrations. So all I can say is that its far better than what they had 10 years ago.

A back story to this project, it didn't do well in the box office. I'm not sure what kind of reviews this film has gotten, but judging from the trailers, I can kind of see why. The trailer here doesn't show any new invention or take in the film, or doesn't exaggerate a certain interest. The trailer (and another one I didn't post online) mostly focused on the love life, the two goof balls, it made the movie seem bland. A bland, a replica of another concept that has been done several times. I'm pretty sure this film was decent. A lot of filipino films are decent. It's just the way they market things in the philippines, that needs to change big time.



Now this one is called Dayo, released a year after Urduja. Out of the three films the Philippines has released, this one takes the winning cake in my opinion. It's about a kid who meets a friend who's literally in half, and enters a magical world called Elementalia. Obviously, the trailer makes it for kids. The reason about my opinion is because the film overall, has a charm that the two other films didn't have. What I liked about the concept of Dayo is that it isn't being pretentious, but rather vibrant about their designs. It definitely does not look as technically advanced as Urduja, but there's a lot more fun in it. From this, I feel the makers really loved what they were making, their behind the scenes footage proves it too. (looks really fun to be there too). The concept, the work and the idea has a lot of entertaining value, and some interesting character designs they pull off in the Elementalia world. This would actually work well as its own tv show alone.

So my overall opinion about Filipino animated films, I can't really say much since there's only three they have ever made. However from the ten year gap, I can see some pretty good signs on where the industry is turning - and I wonder what there next film will be on.

My finished animatic

Jimmy the tiger cubscout animatic

Watch it here!!