The Animation Diner

Some sketches

2010-08-16T11:41:00.000-04:00

There are some fish with really great faces at the Bronx Zoo.

Two fish kind of struck a pose for an instant, and all I could do was throw down a quick sketch in watercolor. I tried to elaborate on it a little later, but part of me likes the initial one better.

These are all taken from my sketchbook.

Snuffy's body is much shorter proportioned than you'd think.

Some diner stuff...

The late, great Empire Diner.

There is an old sign that I really like that can be seen from the window of a train I ride. Maybe I see it for a total of 10 seconds each day as we speed by. My goal was to memorize a different part of the sign each day and try to record it. Eventually, I'd get the whole sign. Here are some of the early drawings:

Here is a link to a photo of the sign: http://www.agilitynut.com/07/5/starrs.jpg

Still working on my final drawing.

Banjo gator, just for fun.

More of an inside joke--my friends either love or hate Gustav.

Where's the time go?

2010-08-09T20:14:00.002-04:00

Hoo-boy. You step out of the Diner for a little bit and a ton of things happen at once. Where to start?

The Diner’s going to be serving up some vintage yearbook scans, photographs of the forgotten roadside, drawings of mid-century architecture, zoo sketches from a few months back, and some work updates! There’s probably even more that I wanted to mention, but I just can’t think of it right now.

So stay tuned—the longer I’m on hiatus, the more updates there will be!

Valentine's Day and the Year of the Tiger

2010-02-13T17:37:00.000-05:00

To celebrate both occasions, here's a heart-shaped tiger:

Look out world, it’s my year!

Old Things

2010-02-02T19:45:00.003-05:00

So I’m a little late, but happy 2010!

Maybe it’s obvious from reading this blog that I am fascinated by roadside architecture, but what’s less obvious is that I’ve actually had an eye for these things since I was little.

Chalk it up to environment, I ate in some pretty cool diners as a kid. The old Menlo Park Diner on Route 1 (it’s since been completely ~~destroyed~~ renovated) was formerly known as “my favorite diner,” and meals eaten there make up some of the earliest memories I have. I distinctly remember there being two rooms to eat in—the original diner with its counter, booths, and tabletop jukeboxes, and the add-on room with fake plants, stone walls, and Greek statues. I hated the statue room, and we usually got sat there.

Then there was the annual trip down the shore. We spent time in the Wildwoods, home to the largest collection of mid-century architecture anywhere (crazy cheesy motels). At night, we would drive around just to see all the neon lit up. As a kid, I remember thinking that the beach was my favorite place in the world, but as I got older I realized what I really liked were all the neon and motels. Check out some vacation photos I dug up from that time! We were staying in the Cavalier Motel that year, probably 1991.

Yes, that’s me with my boardwalk loot, but check out that sweet 70’s stove behind me!

I probably took this photo myself. Would my mom really have wanted to take a picture of those awesome curtains?

This photo is from 2001 (maybe 2002?). Never mind the dolphins in the photo, look at the beachfront motels at the top (that's the Singapore Motel on the extreme right). The shoreline’s changed dramatically since this photo was taken. That following winter, the condo boom hit the island and motels fell to the wrecking ball left and right. Though at the present time there are many, many motels left, so much of the character has been lost. Large stretches of cookie-cutter condos and McMansions separate the motels.

When I was in 4th grade, I began making up my own motels. Here’s a surviving drawing, the Cactus Hotel:

I even had a master plan checklist of silly motels. (And some of them are really really stupid.)

Going back a few more years, right before my 4th birthday, my family visited Disney World. There was a ride at Epcot called Horizons. It had a whole bunch of parts to it, but one part stood out to me, a whole metropolis, freeways, and futuristic cars outlined in neon in nothing more than a dark room—with cool music. It stuck in my mind so well because it was neon, but also we have a clip of it in our home movies. I tried to draw that scene from my head so many times as a kid. You can watch the ride yourself through the magic of the internet! 1:26-1:50 is the part I’m referring to.

It’s funny because I just watched that clip, and I remember that neon city much more vividly than that video shows it as.

The ultimate kicker is this drawing I dug up. Honest to God, I drew this in 1st grade, so I was either 6 or 7. This was my attempt at an architectural plan, and I called it Duck Pond Park. I imagined the whole thing, right down to the streetlamps. Those numbers are measurements I was trying to estimate, which is why I wrote "Ax." before them--I was trying to abbreviate "approximately". Unfortunately I had no concept of size and space...

Demo Reel

2009-08-09T18:15:00.002-04:00

Shot Breakdown

0:04-0:45- Trade Winds, senior thesis film. All character animation completed in Flash and composited with watercolor backgrounds in After Effects. 2009.

All Superjail! clips are used with permission © Augenblick Studios/Adult Swim 2008.
All animation for the series was completed in house with interns doing the bulk of the cleanup and inbetweening. All work was done using Flash. Made in 2008.

0:49-0:53- Completed extensive inbetweening and cleanup on the inmates and the frog
0:53-0:56- Inbetweened people on escalator before Jacknife hits them, keyed and inbetweened them between before Jailbot knocks them all off
0:56-0:58- Inbetweened and cleaned up Specimen 7 (the large, ugly character) as it lifts off the ground to when it lands again
0:58-1:00- Cleaned up, added tattoos, and colored the first character on screen, Jacknife
1:00-1:04- Inbetweened and colored the groom
1:05-1:11- Extensive inbetweening and cleanup on D.L. Diamond
1:11-1:17- Inbetweened, cleaned up, and colored the Warden
1:17-1:18- Inbetweened, cleaned up, and colored Jacknife dressed as Santa
1:18-1:21- Inbetweened, cleand up, and colored D.L. Diamond (center character). Cleaned up and colored the Warden and Alice (characters on the left and right).
1:21-1:24- Inbetweened, cleaned up, and colored the Warden
1:24-1:25- Inbetweened, cleaned up, and colored the person Jacknife throws

1:27-1:34- Green: A Chameleon’s Tale, second year film. Completed all backgrounds, animation, compositing, and coloring. Animated on paper, colored in Photoshop, composited in After Effects. 2007.
1:34-1:37- Eagle animated on paper, colored in Photoshop. Backgrounds are stock photography, composited in After Effects. 2007
1:37-1:42, 1:42-1:45- Green: A Chameleon’s Tale, second year film. Animated on paper, colored in Photoshop, composited in After Effects. 2007.
1:45-1:48- Horse walk. Animated on paper, colored in Photoshop. 2008.
1:48-1:55- Green: A Chameleon’s Tale, second year film. Animated on paper, colored in Photoshop, composited in After Effects. 2007.

Portfolio

2009-08-09T17:26:00.012-04:00

A fair sampling of life drawings, wildlife paintings, and layout work. Some goodies at the end!

Making Watercolor Paint Itself

2009-07-31T10:38:00.010-04:00

Before I went away with my family, I had picked up a book on watercolor technique. It's called How to Make a Watercolor Paint Itself by
Nita Engle .

Though I'm not anywhere near capable of painting what this woman can, I can't say I'm completely enamored with all her paintings, just some of them. The ones with striking contrast and beautiful gradations look nicest to me.

But it's her technique that made me buy the book. Rather than using brushes to make the paint go where she wants it to be, she uses water. Through spraying or using a fine-tipped squirt bottle, she somehow gets these amazing results. And it looked like a lot of fun to try, so try it I did.

What I learned really fast is you go through a lot of paint, and you need to have thought ahead and designated a container for all the runoff from your paintings.

Here are my first attempts at it. It's easy to overspray and end up with really washed out (yet salvageable) paintings, like this:

But if you luck out, sometimes you get nicer things like this:

There was this one, which wasn’t too bad until I ruined it:

I started with wave exercises because they seemed like the easiest to do, but threw in a foliage and pouring experiment later.

If I can better understand the way the water reacts when all these different variables come into play, it’ll make this less trial-and-error and slightly more predictable. But that’s easier said than done. I think a lot would be demystified if I could see a video of Ms. Engle painting, but to do that I'd have to buy her DVD.

Still, I like trying to paint this. The next good rainy day I get I’m pulling the paints out again.

Along the Way

2009-07-31T10:12:00.008-04:00

I notice a lot of interesting things in my travels. Typically speaking, my travels don’t take me far at all, but I’m always on the lookout for unique roadside things wherever I go. It’s true my heart belongs to diners first, but there are all sorts of other oddities to appreciate out there.

Like this for instance.

It looks like any small car dealership on Rt. 21 in Newark, but the layout of the place and the small size of the building makes me want to believe that this was formerly a drive in eatery. There’s another one further west on this road that I have the same suspicion about, though I’ve been unable to photograph it so far.

Then there are scenes like this. I call it “Sprawl: 1950, 2002”.

I swear I’ll get a better composed shot of this, but I can’t always get the right seat or weather conditions for it when I take the train. The reflections in the photo are there because it was shot through the train window, and the interior of the car is lit.

On a longer and more exciting trip, I snapped the following photos from a moving car (don’t worry, I wasn’t driving).

Forgotten Keys

2009-07-31T10:00:00.004-04:00

Sometimes my animation exercises were just too ambitious for the time allotted, or in this case, too ambitious and slightly stupid.

Either way, there are usually some worthwhile drawings that get left in a pile collecting dust. While cleaning and organizing my room, I came across some forgotten assignments and decided to scan a few in. These are from a 3rd year exercise that I ended up scrapping completely. There were a ton of other drawings involved, but these are the keys from the set up for the “Note” assignment.

Not pictured is the second character, a zebra munching some grass. The lion sneaks up on him.

But the zebra just keeps on eating, unfazed.

The lion keeps trying.

Then he turns his back, scratching his arm.

There was more to this, but kind of loses steam from here on, so we’ll leave it at that.

Fluff: Childhood Americana in a Jar

2009-07-30T22:48:00.001-04:00

While walking through the food store the other day, I noticed something that hasn’t been in my kitchen cabinet for a long time: Fluff. So I bought a jar.

That’s when I realized how perfect the overall product design was.

The jar design has been in use since 1947, and the logo design looks like it hasn’t changed since about that time as well. That makes it awesome. (If the logo were redesigned today, they’d try to make it look edgy and hip. And then I’d cry a little.) I love the typeface, the painting of some Fluff on a spoon, and the stippled glasswork. The ingredients are listed right on the front (corn syrup, sugar, dried egg white, vanillin). And look, its overall red, white, and blue theme makes it patriotic!

Next to peanut butter, Fluff’s best compliment is a Ritz cracker. Seriously. Put Fluff on a Ritz, it’s amazing.

Counter seat or booth?

2009-06-15T12:24:00.004-04:00

Grab a seat at the Animation Diner!

Still in the process of making this as diner-esque as possible, but it's a start. Props if you know which real-life diner the word "Animation" is referencing up in the header.

Also, I added some new friend links to the side, so go pay them a visit sometime.

I've got a comission and some freelance work on the table right now, but I'd like to get back to my own work as well. I'm going to revisit some scrapped thesis ideas and see if I can make any of them work. I'd love to get back into full prodution mode. I feel like a total slacker otherwise.

Cheers!

Trade Winds!

2009-05-10T23:26:00.023-04:00

Woah, we’re done. (If you can't see the video below, click on the title of this post to see my film on youtube!)

This is a post of random thoughts and facts about the film!

First, why’s it called Trade Winds?

A trade is both a noun and a verb; one is a specific skilled craft and the other is an exchange of one thing for another. My film title references both. The old man’s trade is kitemaking, and with that skill he essentially trades his boat for a kite in a desperate attempt to save his life. And the wind is obviously an integral part of kite flying as well as the source of conflict in the story.

How did you live?

Barely! I've been overnighting since February, and eventually worked my way up to being in the studio 6 nights a week. I got 1 1/2 to 3 hours of sleep a night and ate decidedly less than 3 meals a day. About every fourth night I'd have to sleep for 5 hours or so to recharge. The workers for every shift in the corner deli know how I take my coffee, so it got to the point where I'd just hand them a dollar and they wouldn't have to ask what I wanted. The total number of hours per week that I worked was about 110-115 and I kept that pace up for over 2 months. And that's why I'm tired.

Some end credits!

Very special thanks to my helpers, every single one of you. I do however feel the need to explain this large number of people to those not involved with the project. It would seem I didn’t do so much work because of the number of other people credited, but this is not so. The reality is that I completed roughly 85% of the character animation myself (plus 100% of the backgrounds and effects animation). However, the time crunch got to be so great that I needed the assistance of each and every one of those people, and we just managed to complete the film a few hours before the deadline. So absolutely everybody listed here helped finish this film, but within that list, a small number of people (you know who you are) went above and beyond to save my butt. Many, many thanks to you all.

The biggest expense for this project was sound and music. I wanted it to be good so I decided not to do it myself. Ross Bollinger did a wonderful job composing and recording in not a whole lot of time, and Chris Faulkner was incredibly patient with my weekly updates. I don’t personally know Matthew and Lindsey, but they rock too.

None of this would have happened without the support and feedback of Howard. It was great to work with him and the advice he gave me early on in the production helped carry me through to the end. For those of you familiar with him, you may have noticed that Howard is actually in the film. The biggest reason I put him there was to prove to people that my main character is not actually Howard.

See? He can’t be two different characters in the same shot, so clearly the grandfather is not Howard. The other reason is I thought it would be funny. No one really laughed but people do recognize him.

I am happy to say I was one of three Dusty Award winners in animation. The categories were Outstanding Achievement in Traditional Animation (Jake Armstrong, Left), Outstanding Design (Alex Wager, Center), and Human Spirit (Me, Right. I was actually happier than I look in this photo). I was nominated for Outstanding Design, which I wasn't expecting, and I won the Human Spirit Award. This surprised me as well. Seriously, I got up to the podium and didn’t know what to say. The film major that won that award had made a film about domestic abuse and was therefore sending a message with it. But what message did my film send that warranted this award? I realized that yes, the award is based on the film’s message and technical level of craft, but also on the person behind it. My attitude towards my work and my peers showed through in my film and how I conducted myself in the studio on a day-to-day basis. The studio was indeed my home. I worked, ate, and slept there (when I could afford to sleep at all). We laughed, cried, argued, and sweated through the worst and best times together. Thus far it has been the most intense, challenging marathon I’ve ever worked through, but I look back on it fondly and would do it all over again. And it is because of that attitude that I received an award.

With animation and filmmaking, no matter how difficult the process is, when I see the end result it makes it worthwhile. I am not a proud person and do not seek to be a rockstar, but I take great pride in my craft because I put so much into it. By extension, I have great respect for my classmates who I see work just as hard on their own projects. There are a few other people I can think of just as deserving of this Dusty, and I am honored to have shared space with them in the studio for all those months.

Yay friends! To my immediate right is Q. I still owe her a pony.

Howard

Random screencaps!

DONE!

2009-05-06T00:57:00.006-04:00

We finished! Thesis is done!

I have been done as of Friday, but there have been so many things going on keeping me from making a proper post here.

Even this is a placeholder, but there will be substantial updates happening over the next few days. Until then, if you're in the New York area this Thursday, come see my film, Trade Winds! There are quite a few other cool films made by my friends playing that night as well, so don't miss it.

7 PM show starts, my film plays around 8:40
Visual Arts Theater
W 23rd between 8th and 9th

Now Officially Entering Freak Out Mode

2009-03-15T14:36:00.001-04:00

PANIC! PANIC! MUST FINISH FILM!

PANIC!!!

Spring Break!

2009-03-10T21:23:00.004-04:00

Oh man, it's spring break and you know what that means!

I am totally lounging in my cabana in Fiji right now. I flew there on my private jet, and my own personal dolphin ferries me around to each of my private islands.

The dolphin can also mix wonderful pina coladas.

Ok, you got me. I don't have a drink-mixing dolphin. But I wasn't lying at all about the other stuff. And I'm happy to report my glitter-farting rainbow maned pony is also doing well at the private farm I own in England.

What's that? You want to know how thesis is going? I'm finishing my backgrounds up this week. Maybe I'll post them next.

Beaches

2009-03-04T08:33:00.003-05:00

I have no idea if I'm the first or only person to ever think of this, but I kind of really like it.

Also, I'm really, really tired.

Goings on

2009-02-14T22:42:00.011-05:00

Hey there, it's been too long. I've been computer-less since the last post. I mean, just to check my email I have to walk 3 1/2 blocks...uphill in the snow! My laptop is stuck in hell, I mean, Dell, and they're not giving it back. They're not even telling me what was wrong with it. They're just going to replace it, which isn't the point of me sending it to them to be fixed. And there's no telling when that new machine will show up.

But check out how crazy the thing looked when it was on the fritz! It's like C++ vomit!

Obviously, this has hurt my production schedule, but there isn't much I can do about it except just keep working on what I can at school. I'm going to miss that computer. It was quite the workhorse.

In other news, the George Washington caught on fire. Ok, the building next to the GW caught on fire and we all had to evacuate. I'm pretty sure part of the GW was damaged because there was water in the lobby when we returned and the place smelled like smoke, but FDNY is on that stuff and there were no visible flames by the time we all evacuated and ran around to the 23rd Street side to see what was going on. It was almost disappointing--I think most people were hoping to see the building engulfed in fire.

But it was definitely the dorkiest fire you could be at. There were people fleeing with large paintings trailing behind them, film majors filming the scene with the cameras they rent from the school, and photography majors taking pictures with huge lenses. I happened to have my own little camera in my pocket and took some pictures and video. I was also lucky enough to still have my thesis secured in my backpack so I just had to grab it and go. Thankfully, nobody was hurt so it was more of a party than a tragedy.

Speaking of thesis, I've been plugging away to say the least. I basically lived at the studio this past week, and though I can't exactly make a habit of the kind of schedule I pulled, it's going to be pretty intense for the remainder of the year. I'll devote a post to thesis stuff specifically sometime in the future, but here are some things I doodled in Alias Sketchbook when I needed a break from animating/compositing.

This one was from awhile ago

The weather was ridiculously nice on Wednesday, so I drew this
It's legs don't really work so I kind of just made it...float. I was tired, ok?!?

My friend Paul did this one. He'll take objects around and try to design a character out of them. So here is a lady based on my eyedrop bottle and a guy based on my ipod.

I drew this one just before I left on Friday. I was done with work at this point and just needed to draw something that wasn't thesis. That and I was wasting time so I didn't have to take a rush hour train home.

Also, it occured to me that this pose, kind of the iconic sea dragon pose, makes no physical sense at all. I guess it would move in a wave motion, but not that bunched up...whatever. I had fun drawing it.

FAIL

2009-01-24T19:26:00.002-05:00

Did I say my computer was working? I lied.

Something is seriously wrong with the graphics card connection. It was fixed two days ago.

It's ok. It's not like I have a thesis to do or anything...

So yeah, my screen looks like this:

FAIL.

Roadside Diner

2009-01-24T11:08:00.015-05:00

I promise I’m working on thesis…that’s why I’m not here!

But since you could use a break from thesis news, here’s a post that’s related to both animation and diners!

Last semester we were given an assignment to create a pitchbook for a commercially viable television series or feature film. Seeing how long it took me to develop my thesis idea, I decided to take a shortcut with the pitchbook idea. In order to jumpstart my brain into coming up with something, I thought of things I'm familiar with. So here it is, my pitchbook about a sitcom series set in a diner.

To give you an idea about how desperate I was for ideas, all of the characters (with one exception) are based on either my pets, current or past, or teachers I’ve had. As for that one exception, he’s based on a large number of students I have encountered at school while simultaneously poking fun at an obscure family member that I’m not actually related to.

The drawings leave something to be desired (and you can probably pick which character was drawn with a tablet and not a Cintiq). I don’t really consider design to be my forte, especially when pressed for time, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t try. The diner on the cover is an homage to the Mack Diner of New Brunswick, a defunct record shop that stopped being a diner over 40 years ago. I really like its design…so I stole it for my diner. The Mack is a brother of the Empire Diner on 22nd and 10th.

Picture copyright whoever took this picture…I just wanted to show the diner as reference, don’t sue me.

When the pitchbook was done, I bound it with red gaffers tape and acetate to look like a diner menu. (I had tried to get a real diner menu so I could use the plastic sleeve and make it really authentic, but couldn’t convince anyone to give me one…which is another story.) Unfortunately I didn’t take any pictures of the finished product, so that’s gone forever now that I’ve handed it in. Though I could make another.

I’m also happy to report that my laptop is up and running again! This gets me back on track with my backgrounds (the studio Cintiqs distort the color ever so slightly, and since I already started doing color work on my laptop, I wanted to keep it there for consistency’s sake).

So the next post will be…backgrounds!

New Name!

2009-01-05T20:20:00.014-05:00

Welcome to The Animation Diner! I've changed the name of this blog because frankly, "Animation Etcetera" was lame. I never even talked about the Etcetera part.

So the place doesn’t look very diner-ish right now, but it will once I get out of thesis mode. I love diners. I could do whole posts just about diners. But I won’t because right now it’s only a good way to procrastinate when there’s legitimate work to be done. In the meantime, here are some nice diner pictures I've taken.

I actually tried to write a thesis idea that took place in a diner, but couldn't come up with anything suitable this time around.

Alive...for now

2008-12-29T23:23:00.010-05:00

Life is good at throwing you unexpected things. I expected to come home for the break and get a whole lot of work done. I did not expect to get sick.

Now, I'm not dying, but it certainly throws things off enough to put me further behind even though I'm currently "catching up". It's hard to stay focused and do good work when you're feeling miserable.

But I wanted to post some new things up. It's just a few color keys for the beginning part of the film. These are mock-ups solely for color and are not the actual backgrounds. If I play my cards right, those will all end up as watercolor paintings, but if things get sticky, I can fall back on them fancy-pants compooter programz.

The sun is streaming into the sky but hasn't really broke the horizon in these ones.

Contrast is important for images to read quickly, but I really like times like this when I can push it. I looked to a piece of Wall-E color script for inspiration.

Everything you're looking at is still being tweaked here and there, and since these are just mockups, the finals will be vastly different, and ideally a little simpler.

Don't mind the photograph for the sky. I took that picture myself while at the beach. I got up at dawn and took a series of photos as the sun rose. I didn't know two years ago how much that would help me with my thesis.

But the photograph will be replaced with my painting--inspired by that photograph. (The sea is a gradient because a 3-4 drawing cycle of waves will be on top of it, each key fading into the next...effects are exciting!)

This one is still in progress but lacks a lot of contrast on purpose.

So I've been busy, but not busy enough. I am happy to say though that I'm finally into the animation part of things, which is a great relief. Until I get there I just feel like I'm spinning my wheels, working, but not really working. Still...I'm kind of dreading the start of the upcoming (and final) semester of school for me. I know that in order to finish this film, I'm going to be working at least 80 and probably closer to 95 hours per week on the film alone.

But hey, that doesn't make me special or anything--all of us thesis students are stuck in the same boat. Here's to us, here's to 2009!

Updates soon!

2008-12-07T22:10:00.003-05:00

Hey guys, I'm in too much of a crunch to update anything right now, but look for a whole lot of new stuff in about two weeks!

Theory vs. Practice

2008-12-03T16:28:00.006-05:00

Boy, this thesis stuff seems easy so long as I'm not sitting at my desk actually trying to make headway on it.

Once I actually start to work on it, Photoshop freaks out on me, files are magically the wrong size, I've forgotten my Flash shortcuts, my backgrounds are a jumble of letters and numbers--seriously, how does that happen!?

At this point, I'm like, "Go ahead, thesis files, go nuts. I'm going to make something out of you anyway." Mostly because I don't have a choice...

In other news, I downloaded "Ninja Rap" off itunes today and it kind of made my day.

In other other news, I am a big dork. Go ninja, go ninja go!

I have an IMDB!

2008-11-19T10:59:00.004-05:00

It's a small entry, but it's real. (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3162198/) Congrats to everyone who worked on Superjail!, especially the interns. We all have IMDBs now!

That's My Dog

2008-11-06T23:48:00.008-05:00

“What kind of dog would you make it?”

That was the first question Howard asked me when I agreed to add a dog to the film.

Without any second thoughts I replied, “An Airedale, it’s a terrier.”

Airedales have been part of my life since I was very young. I know what they look like, what their character and temperament is like, and how they move. Indeed, the dog in the film is heavily based on the two Airedales I’ve been lucky enough to have in my family. (I’ve known a few other Airedales too, but they didn’t belong to us.)

Our first family dog was Cooper.

I was only 4 years old when we got him. For some reason Mom thought it would be a good idea to let me name him, so I chose Cooper. It stuck, and he was probably the greatest dog I’ve ever known. For the most part, the dog in the film is based on Cooper, and is in fact named after him. He isn’t quite all Cooper though. My perception of Airedales has been added to by our latest dog, Encore. She’s gentle like Cooper, but is really more of a mush than anything. Whereas Cooper would never even sit on the couch if you were in the same room, sitting on the couch with Encore around will usually compel her to crawl up and lean on you.

What they have in common though is that they’re both chowhounds. It’s a characteristic that drives many dogs, and is also the single biggest motivation of the dog in my film.

Of course, those who know me personally know I've left someone out so far:

Andy and Encore are close buddies.

About the Story

2008-10-30T13:28:00.003-04:00

And it goes without saying if you read this post, you’ll spoil the ending…

After spending the past three years vowing never to be like “those seniors” running around, stressing out, begging for help with their thesis films, I’m slowly turning into one. (I’m not to the begging for help part yet, but hope not to get there.) The principal reason I’m in this spot is because of the story.

I had a viable thesis idea.

I wrote it in a freshman storytelling class and promptly took that and made it my second year film. (Viewable in two parts on Youtube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOdCad3MZp8 and here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kscIBF1zKps) It was by no means a bad film, but in the long run I’m glad it isn’t my thesis. Way back then I figured I had plenty of time to come up with another story, but I didn’t know how long it would take me.

Well, it took me right up to the first August thesis deadline. I kept coming up with ideas but knew that they weren’t thesis material. There was a point I met with Howard about two weeks before the deadline and I was pretty bummed I still had absolutely nothing to show. He assured me “You’ll think of something,” and I believed him, but the specter of starting thesis year without a story was beginning to haunt me. For someone who had wanted to start animating at the start of the school year, I was pretty behind. Finally, one week before the deadline, I had the beginnings of what is now my film.

The game-changer here was that I limited myself to a single theme or idea, and I chose flight. Flight is one of myriad fascinations that I have. When I was very little I wanted to be able to fly, and to some degree, sometimes I still have that desire. And a film about flight or flying things is easily made in animation versus, say, live action.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the very first story idea was about a man in a boat. He was stuck at sea with no land in sight, no wind, no food, and no water. He sat back and watched the seagulls fly over head while the sun was slowly baking him. After awhile it all begins to get to him and he starts to go crazy. At this point, he took out a bag of tools (sure, he has a bag of tools, why not) and begins to dismantle his boat, building a giant pair of wings. What he doesn’t notice is that as he’s doing it, the weather is changing quickly. It has become very stormy, and right as he finishes making the wings, he is about to get sucked up into a waterspout. He does, and glides to land that he sees far in the distance. There was more to this story as far as payoffs and such go, but they’re not worth mentioning here.

The whole thing was really contrived, but it was the beginnings of a better story. I was excited and kept working.

In his initial critique Howard brought up a good point, that we didn’t care for the character enough. Even if he survived everything, so what? With that, the man was placed on land first. He was made older and given a young granddaughter, about 4 years old. His occupation was a kite builder, and early one morning he leaves on a trip. The granddaughter stays at home (I felt this was okay because it took place in a town and there were other people around) and waits for him. He travels for the day at sea but at night encounters a freak storm. Again, we’re at the point where he builds wings out of his boat, only this time he hasn’t gone crazy, he’s a kitebuilder, and he knows these things. He glides a ridiculous distance home on crosswinds and air currents and returns home, where from his granddaughter’s vantage point, he appears to fly out of the rising sun, right into the breaking waves on the beach.

Overall, this version was more dramatic, and at times, sappy. Now maybe the audience would care about the characters, but probably not in the way I wanted them too. On top of that, we still didn’t have a reason why he left home in the first place. And that point is what led us to the last version of the film.

Howard suggested to make the main character a lightkeeper (though he’d still be a kitemaker in his spare time). Another big point of his was to give the girl a dog. Every time the design and character of the girl was brought up, Howard would always say, “She should really have a dog,” and “you know, a dog would be good here.” It seemed like just one more thing to animate until I thought about it. The dog could be given a real reason for being in the film. With that, not only did the dog become sort of a comic relief and the token “cute” character, he provided the reason for the man to go out to sea: to get more food from the mainland.

From there, it’s basically the previous story all over again. He leaves the island, goes to the mainland, and on his return trip, encounters the storm and the waterspout. He builds his wings out of his boat and glides back to safety on the island.

The entire film is jam-packed with acting, and there is no actual dialogue. Writing this story in words will do it no justice, so keep an eye out for an upcoming post in November of a rough cut.

Next up—who’s that dog?

A Character's Journey

2008-10-11T23:18:00.012-04:00

It goes without saying that things change as you work on an idea, especially something like a film. There are so many variables, from location, time period, character, plot, and music, to name a few. My thesis story has changed a few times since its original incarnation, and with that, the main characters have changed as well. Here's a look at how the main character has evolved since August.

The very first version of the story was about a man stuck at sea with no supplies, no wind, and no land in sight. He was much younger than than he currently is, and except for a few seagulls, no other characters made it into the film.

While trying to design this younger man, I doodled this older guy. Something about him made me laugh, and I liked him. At an earlier meeting, Howard (my advisor) had suggested making the man older and introducing more characters. I decided to keep working on this design and see where it would take me.

The design is a little tighter now, but lots of variation in his head shape, face structure, and hair patterns.

Now I was starting to get somewhere with him. I decided to take it a little more towards the "cartoony" side of things. It's easier to animate simple shapes, and I felt that a more basic look for the characters would balance out the backgrounds, as well as make Howard happy. Besides, I love dot eyes.

So now I was here. At this point, the setting of the story was much different, so his clothes reflected that. But in the third and final version of the story, the setting changed from somewhere in the Mediterranean in the early 1800s to somewhere off the coast of Maine in the 1890s. With that, he got some new clothes.

Everyone that sees him says that he's Howard himself. I can see the resemblance, but I don't think he's quite his twin. Don't worry, when I draw Howard, you'll know it's him. For now, we've got this guy.

Next post...how the story came to be!

The State of the Blog

2008-10-06T22:16:00.000-04:00

Well I'm happy to say that I've finally come up with some actual ideas to talk about on this blog. I realize there's been little of substance up to this point, but check back this weekend because there's going to be a whole bunch of new stuff.

It's a time crunch until then, but I'm pretty excited for the way things are going. Cheers!

Character design

2008-09-27T17:41:00.000-04:00

The growing down of a character:

Still needs work though. I might have made her a little too young.

Concept- Island

2008-09-26T20:39:00.001-04:00

Internet troubles = less posts.

Also I've been busy, so the only thing I have worth showing you right now is this early layout:

Since blogger isn't letting this image load larger when you click on it and I'm not a techie, here are some details of it:

Of course, I haven't just been working on this...more to come soon!

Thesis!

2008-09-13T13:54:00.000-04:00

Finally, some stuff about thesis. I don't have a title for it yet, but I'm working on it. Here is a third round of character designs. Don't mind the anatomy of the dog too much, it's going to "work" when I have more than 5 minutes to draw if for a model sheet. Here is one of the "backgrounds" I submitted as well. This is going to be part of a larger pan, but right now all we're looking at is some digital coloring over the linework of a Flash scribble from the animatic.
This is another background. It's an early layout, so I guarantee that this whole design will change, but it's going to be a kite builder's workshop.

With any luck, I'll be updating this at least once a week with material. It helps keep me accountable, as well as keeping my work presentable. No one wants to put up ugly looking drawings on the internet for the world to see.

My advisor is Howard Beckerman, a living piece of animation history. I'm honored to have him on board with me. (There will definitely be posts about him in the future.) The storyboards and animatic are still undergoing revisions, but parts of them will show up here in time. For now it's back to work, not just with thesis but freelance as well.

Questions, comments, arguments--go for it. Cheers.

Still busy

2008-09-02T10:26:00.001-04:00

Still settling in for the school year. Once that all settles down, I'm going to be tackling thesis and freelance. More to come soon!

Yello!

2008-08-28T22:35:00.001-04:00

Well, whaddya know, a blog.

Once I get this up and running, there'll be thesis posts, ramblings, all sorts of crazy, random stuff you probably don't care about unless you're my Mom!

It's also a good way to keep in touch, so drop me a line sometime, will ya?