Technical Difficulties

I was supposed to do this yesterday, but a combination of laziness and technical difficulties got in the way. It's a day late, but here it is: Bitter Bunny running.

Merry Christmas!!

For Christmas this year, I got myself an iPad. I love it very much. I got a stylus as well, so I could draw in the Autodesk SketchBook app.

I also found this nifty little program called Animation Desk. It's a clean and simple program, but it has all you need to make a nice little animation.

Here's my first try at a walk cycle:

Anyway-- that's all. I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas. Enjoy it.

CA24 Flashback!

I was perusing an old sketchbook of mine and came across something you may remember. Good ol' Lars the Lumberjack, who later became the basis for the comic shop character of Ethan in my demo reel.

*filler*

If I manage to trade shifts at work tonight, I'll do a proper post, but for now I'll leave you with this:

I am a slacker

As an apology for my slacking, and neglecting last week's post, I present to you a work in progress! I quite like Todd's character designs, so I threw together a quick character comp and started to make him run. As you can see, I have a ways to go on it. The movements are still very stiff, and there is almost no personality to it. But hey, not bad for only 2 hours of work put into it so far.

Avatar the Last Airbender

On our way back from the wedding we attended in Las Vegas the in-flight movie was The Last Airbender.

It was pretty awful.

On the upside: I got curious to start watching the animated series.

On the downside: I obsessed for about 3 weeks and finished the entire 3 seasons.

Thank you Netflix!

It was pretty good. Funnier than the movie. I'm not sure if Mr. M.Night was the right director for it. Unless they wanted the movie to be completely different from the series. For me, part of the best part of the series was seeing the characters grow, especially the goofy Avatar. The movie portrayed him as a much more serious character and completely ignored that he was a young kid when he got frozen. On the other side, I don't know how that would translate into a good live-action movie without being cheesy.

Anyway, the series had some pretty decent animation. I definitely noticed multiple styles to each character. I tried to look (briefly) for model sheets for the series but I couldn't find any. I enjoyed the series so much that a part of me wants to move to Korea so I would get the chance to animate on the spin-off, even though I'm sure they've already started work on it…LOL

Instead here's my attempt at some Avatar animation. It's really rough because I was worried that I wouldn't be able to post it on time. It's already pretty late as it is. There was also supposed to be some leaves blowing to go with the Autumn theme but alas I didn't think of this early enough to make it complete. I had fun doing this so I might make finishing that my goal for the end of the month. We'll see.

Demo Reel - Work in Progress

Here's my demo reel in the making. I felt bad that I still haven't uploaded anything onto You Tube so that my name doesn't just say "<-Link" next to it.

I'm still trying to find the music that I want to go with it and I'm not sure if I'm entirely happy with the order of the clips on there but like I said it's a work in progress.

Shameless Self Promotion!

This video is pretty self explanatory.

Just in time...

I have been working on my flash build a bit. I finished the front and the profile views.

Unfortunately, it doesn't LOOK like I did anything because you've seen this all before. Well then I have something for you doubters! I did this little walkcycle test to prove that I actually did something for this week.

It isn't completely done but it is a start (she only has one arm at the moment and there are some problems overall.) It pretty much lets me see the things that are wrong with the build which is what I need. Let me know any notes you might have, please.

Just because...

I recently attended an animation screening and this is sort of how it went.





We were told that seats were limited and to bring a blanket because there was lawn space. We did not expect the slight incline and did not want to stand up and block the people behind us.

In the end the weather was great and it was nice just to hang out with people who love and appreciate animation just as much as I do.

Don't You Hate It When This Happens

So I sketched this a while back and I've been meaning to do something more with it. I like her and how she's so square and kinda tubby.



I've also been dying to get some animation done for the blog and I thought she should be simple enough to do something with in such a short amount of time. Well we all know how our perception of how much time we think we have differs from how much time we actually have but I managed to come up with something rough. I started out trying to animate her directly on the computer but I wasn't too happy with the brush strokes. The one thing that I love about the initial sketch were the blatant pencil lines so I did some keys on paper!

I animated the other character on the computer because when I compared the hand-drawn to the roughs on the computer I ended up liking the pose on the computer better. I should have had that image open while drawing on paper but I'll do that next time.

Stepping up a few knotches...

So I think we need a little more going on than what we've seen thus far on the blog. First off, I finished the turnaround of the character that I have at least temporarily named Kayla. I am currently working on builds in flash and a test walkcycle in the profile.


Then after I did that I made an expressions page for her. Just a rough one but with I hope enough variety to show some personality. I am really starting to get the hang of the character and I am considering, when my animation desk gets built doing some hand drawn animation tests.
Lastly, I have been wanting to do a statuette in sculpey for a while now but haven't had a reason or all the stuff before. I started this one and I will finish it but because of the way I was making it (baking it in pieces) it isn't terribly strong and needs some glue attention. The pose is a little wack and I am not sure if it will turn out well but it is my first attempt and I will try again later.

I challenge all the other contributors to step up their games like I have so we get a really rockin' blog `o art going.

WE CANNOT FAIL!

This drawing is by Zeph...he's been having some issues with scanning and such. Says he:

"Its about a ball with legs doing a jump (planning an animation for this right now)"

Character Design Model Sheet

I have been drawing this character for a while and I decided to make a character build of her. I plan to do a complete turnaround when I get the front three-quarter view completed.

I would like to do an animation test of the build but I am having a hard time finding a recorded line that will work. I request that one of my lady-readers record and send me a short one-liner or something so I can accomplish this. I will buy you a coke.

Do I have a plan for the build beyond that? No. What I am thinking is that maybe I will make several characters and use the builds in a webcomic. I am however a terrible writer so this might not happen.

Build in Adobe Flash, model sheet in Adobe Illustrator.