Goings on

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

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

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!

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

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!

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

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!