We animators need a place to work out the kinks, expand, share, and grow. This blog is dedicated to that process. Here you'll see my progress as I update with personal work, epiphanies, tricks, references, and anything else I happen to deem entertaining, useful, or worth your time. Enjoy! :)
One of the pluses of being an artist of many mediums is that when you get bored, stuck, burnt out, or are just looking for a different outlet to express yourself you have options. One of the things I have really been into for the last few years is digital ink & paint, matte painting, illustration, etc.
Photoshop is great for this, and using the ol' Wacom tablet from my Art Institute days makes for almost instant gratification.
A new project I have been wanting to tackle originates from my ultra-talented girlfriend. She creates these fantastic pencil sketches that just routinely blow me away! A lot of the time she will paint these things and she's amazingly talented in that area as well, but I wanted to take a crack at using her pencils as a base and bringing the whole thing into Photoshop to see what I could do. I'll just shut up here and show the progression so far.
The original pencil sketch.
After the first pass of color, some highlights, basic form.
More texture added to the hair, refining of the skin and features, more texture in background, and painted ears.
The process isn't something I'm going to go into right now, but I think it's worth checking out Amy's artwork. As you can tell from the sketch, she offers a LOT to work with and provides a great foundation to build on. Do check out her blog as well! http://amykart.blogspot.com/
Try as had, I was unable to make it to SIGGRAPH 2011 in Vancouver, BC. Curse you, expired passport! *cue the violins*
So, instead of sitting around sulking and drowning my tears in a bowl of Honey Smacks, I took the energy and momentum carried up from the Animation Mentor graduation and BBQ weekend in San Francisco and started straight away at a new dialogue shot.
Now, I am an advocate of subtle acting and even more enthusiastic about subtle humor. So, I knew when I heard this line from arguably one of the best buddy comedies ever made, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, my engines started running (no pun intended) and I wanted to get right to work.
*courtesy of MovieWaves.com
Del: "I had no idea those beer cans were gonna blow like that." Neal: "You left them on a vibrating bed. What did you think was going to happen?"
The first step I took was to offload this great bit of audio into my iPod, and ingrain it into memory. I let the ideas flow like salmon of Capistrano. What sort of predicament could these guys be in that might warrant an exploding beer and a vibrating bed? The dialogue didn't suggest a ton of wiggle room as far as setting was concerned, so though my initial idea was the pair having it out in a kitchen of a hotel, (the Steve Martin character was even going to be icing his eye with a cold t-bone slab of beef) I wanted to push less on the idea of the bed and more on the idea of where they might be sharing a cold one. Fishing made sense to me.
Next, I had to establish a backstory for both of these guys.
The first, voiced by the late, great John Candy, was to be named "Jimmy" and he was simply a bread delivery man, motivated by the need to be liked by just about everyone he comes in contact with. So when his high-strung, newspaper columnist buddy, voiced by Martin and affectionately named "Marty," has been instructed by his doctor to take in some R&R at the risk of suffering some pretty nasty fallout as the result of hypertension, Jimmy does his best to entertain Marty on a lake fishing trip. Having spent one night in a cramped honeymoon cabin (it was all they had left, much to Marty's dismay) Jimmy tries to make it up to his pal by bringing along a few brewkies... that he accidentally left on a vibrating bed for most of the morning. Marty soon makes this discovery once the pair hit the water.
So, I had my backstory. Next came the fun part.
I knew the scene was going to be played pretty minimally, but i still needed some reference to get me started. This is how it came out:
As you can see, I wasn't going for anything Oscar-worthy, but I needed to get my barrings on how to stage the shots, how the characters might play off one another and how they might be motivated internally. Jimmy was going to be vary worrisome and apologetic, while Marty was going to be played much more subdued, and rather annoyed at his friend's constant bumbling.
Next I thumb-nailed each character out, again speed and clarity of the idea I was trying to convey was my prime concern here. I didn't spend a lot of time trying to make things pretty, but I did want a pretty clear idea of how these guys were going to move and I made note of anything special in the performance that I watched of my reference footage which I may have wanted to include in my scene.
Once, I had my sketches in place and I had a nice clear idea of the beats I wanted these guys to make, I set up my characters' look, the look of the scene, and planned for any props. For my own sense of entertainment and forward momentum, I rendered a quick still of just how I wanted this scene to "feel" in terms of tone.
At this point, I was pretty pumped and ready to go. I had my reference footage, I had my character background, I had my feeling and tone and all of my scene plans jotted down to keep me on track. The next step was about finally putting my little scheme into motion... literally!
So, having already set my key-poses, or my rough story-telling poses, in place, I fleshed things out by adjusting for timing, spacing, and began cleaning up arcs and even adding some animation to the face and fingers.
When it comes to animation, the idea, for me anyway, is sort of like a sculptor chipping away at piece of stone that kind of already looks like his subject. This early on, I don't dare go too far with details like facial animation and I certainly don't attempt to polish fingers at this stage, but I do my best to keep the feeling of the scene alive as early as I can in the scene and attempt to maintain that throughout the process and evolution of the shot or series of shots I might be working on, all while trying to keep my ideas as clear and simple as possible.
Even though there are some obvious bumps and hitches (not to mention some nice little graphical glitches thanks to an old computer and its failing graphics card) you can still get a sense of the direction I have been planning from the beginning.
Well, that's about where I am at so far! The next step will feature some refining of each character, but first I will seek out some feedback from some friends just to make sure my emotional beats are reading clearly.
