This is for those of you who have not seen it. This is my buddy Tyson's senior project that we spent 14 months working on. Stay tuned for another glorious stopmo project with the same crew. But this time it will be my friend Drayson's senior project.
So this a music video my Motion Graphics class made for "Nonagon." The full description is on the vimeo page so I won't go into details.
My portion of this video is between 2:57 - 3:12
I hope you enjoy it
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Hey folks,
so I've been pretty steadfast at work on some projects. I'm enjoying Motion Graphics quite well. And I would like to share. Everything is a work in progress but I have no idea when I'll have time to go back and actually fix them up.
This piece above was my "shape layer" assignment. We had to use shape layers in after effects to portray the seasons. It could have been as real or abstract as I wanted, but I went with this.
All of my motion graphics so far have been done in After Effects. I will be posting more soon. I will be learning Cinema 4D soon, so I will have 3D motion graphics as well.
My skills as an illustrator are still mediocre. They are ever improving, but some things are much more tricky to get the hang of. My proportions are good. There isn't much improvement I need to be a decent illustrator in terms of proportions. I am really starting to understand what to exaggerate when drawing and sketching for animation. But my line quality still licks the sweat off the balls of the suck squirrel. Fortunately, my figure drawing class is really making me focus on this. It also makes me really focus on composition and placement. But this is all with charcoal. Pencil or pen & ink? Who knows. I'm OK with a pencil, pen I still need work on.
In Class Drawings
Rushed the rendering
Needs more work on foreshortening
Drapery sucks on small testes
Too dark in back
Didn't finish the hands
The shading on the face was a bad idea
The drapery shading is awful
Ugh
That sure is a small head
The inner contours are total chicken scratch crap
So I know what I need to work on improving. I have progressed very much in the last 2 years. So in another 2 years all be more than decent.
I am taking an astronomy class this semester and might I say how awesome it is.
The teacher is so into it and it rubs off onto the students, especially me.
At the end of class I am always so jazzed - which is unfortunate because it ends at 9:50 pm and I have to wake up early the next morning for my 8:30 class but can't get to sleep til 2:00 am because I'm so pumped.
But the reason for this post is to express to people my new revelation.
While discussing stars and galaxies my brain momentarily comprehended the grandness of the universe. My brain only does this once a month or so. It is such an awesome and humbling experience. For just a few seconds I am grasping the insignificance of our whole galaxy let alone our solar system or planet thus lives.
I call this brief phenomenon a Cognitive Orgasm or Brain Orgasm. I call it this because as I said it only lasts a couple of seconds and it takes some build up to get to it. I have to mull over the stars for some time before the "point of no return" if you will when it is inevitable that I will have one. The other reason I call it this is because over some time I build up a lot of stress and anxiety over trivial matters, and then once I have a brain orgasm, I realize how lame it is for me to be tense. And all at once my worries melt away. It is a wonderful feeling.
It only happens to me when I'm thinking about astronomy or religion. I encourage the lot of you to try and achieve one of these orgasms. I have never heard anyone talk about anything like this which (naturally) makes me feel like I'm the only one.
So, the end of the school year and now to see how my work has turned out.
My drawing skills keep evolving and my patience and understanding is growing. I don't mind sitting down to draw for a long while anymore because now the end results aren't total shit. But to be honest, I don't think I've ever put more than 6 hours on any 1 drawing.
This is my better stuff from my anatomy class. And it only makes sense that most of this was from the end of the year. I definitely know what I have to improve.
With this new found technique and knowledge, I now apply it to my own work.
I woke up early. I got ready for the day. I went to check out an apartment. We like the apartment so we had to get it. We did much coordination, bartering, and planning to get the place but we got it.
It's a snazzy little joint in South Park, SF by AT&T Park.
Then I helped my friend with his stop-mo project constructing building miniatures. Then went to a meeting, then back to help my friend.
Then I went home and my friend made cupcakes that looked like penguins in our room.
In the last three weeks of school, I have been busier than ever, which is a good thing. I will be very busy for the remaining semester, and I hope to keep learning and improving at this same pace. I will be producing much more stuff in the next few months.
I have especially been focusing on my 2D animation class and my anatomy class.
I inherited my brother's Canon 40D camera this Christmas.
I picked up photography in high school, but I had a point-and-shoot.
But now I have a good camera with a good lens so I'm taking lots of photos. Portraiture is my favorite style of photography.
This is my brother. He is reading some things about the camera. He was teaching me the ins and outs of it.
But this is the kind of thing that I wanna do. Spontaneous and candid portraiture.
But it's hard to get people who don't mind having their picture taken. And you can't be sneaky about it when the camera is so big, so it's hard to take pictures secretly.
But that's the way it goes. And I'm gonna have lots of fun with my new hobby.
I just had a heart-to-heart with my folks. We talked about why they parented me the way they did. I'm glad my parents raised me. They let me do what I want, and I'm a better person for it.
I also learned where I got my middle name from. My father named me after a man he knew only when he was 13 and 14. He owned and ran a clinical lab. When my dad worked their he was just supposed to clean test tubes and stuff, but Marshall Jeckers went out of his way to show my dad how to do blood tests and to take blood and everything that went on there. My dad always remembered this. My dad wrote Marshall Jeckers years later to tell him he was going to name his son after him. As you can imagine this had a huge impact on him.
Take time to let the people who have made an impact on your life that you appreciate everything they've done for you. They don't know they've done anything until you tell them so.
The stresses of finals are really pounding my ass right now. My modivation is a rollercoaster on a track that leads to average grades. I'm not worried about failing. I am worried about my lasting impression on my teachers and peers. This semester has proven very valuable to me as an artist. My skills have improved immensely. Although I still consider myself a mediocre illustrator.
I guess this blog is just another factor I am implementing in my procrasturbating.
I am currently drinking a Mountain Dew, a soda. I hate Mountain Dew, and I stopped drinking soda save Ginger Ale for good at the beginning of the summer. Fuck it. Other Beverages I enjoyed today include the following: water, apple juice, chai tea, and bourbon.
Okay, now it's time for a bedtime thought. . .
If there were to be bands of animals, I think a jazz band of koalas could be pretty awesome. Picturing a koala a bass, a trumpet or with sunglasses on is pretty heart-warming. However, a death metal band of giraffes or a techno band of panda bears could be pretty tubular.
Now
If said bands were to be huge pop culture icons there would band shirts portraying these animals in stupid poses or obligatory album covers that are too deep or artsy to underfuckingstand. Millions of people of various demographics would listen and promote these animal bands. But some of these demographics are troubled and are only looking to do wrong because they have family and/or social acceptance issues. These people will fight amongst other people who support other bands and what they stand for. This will lead to vandilization and defacing of public property. Grafitti that reads "Pandatronic" or "Bloody Necks" smeared throughout the streets of metropolitan cities will influence the younger, newer generations to join the mayhem. There will be a few cases of Capulets and Montegues coming together to form interspecial relationships making disgusting but necesary gioalas and girandas and Pandalas.
If a Panda humped a giraffe? That's beastiality, right?
I'm gonna skip my thoughts on politics, religion, hymen, gay marriage, and Tommy Bahama for now and go right into a
BEDTIME STORY
My first Bedtime adventure. I think I will title it
BAKED
Preface
Once upon a time, there was the land of Quygonia. Quygonia is made up of many different cultures and was founded on the belief that all are created equal and freedom is the deserved right. In this vast land that stretched over many thousands of acres lived a muffin. His name was Jake. Jake was born in a time of war. A war between his native land and a nation called Bakria. Fundamental peoples who have lived in turmoil for thousands of years make up Bakria. Quygonia's main interest in this other nation is their flour. Quygonia get's most of it's flour from it's own land or neighboring lands. But Bakria has an abundance of flour that the rest of the lands use and need. Thus the fight is to keep the world's bake trade rising, but most importantly the war is to give freedom to these people and to finally give them rest from centuries of conflict. Jake was only now at an age to give notice and worried interest into the matter. He for one believed in the cause. The majority of his land however did not. Everyone had negative feelings about the war and especially of the ruler. He wasn't really a ruler, but he did represent the land. Dispite the masses beliefs that the ruler was the worst in history, Jake just could not see what everyone else supposedly saw. He thought the ruler was the best in the land he had ever seen. The ruler had been a lame puff ruler for sometime which is when the masses really started disliking him, failing to see that it was not the rulers fault. The majority oven had turned over from the cranberries -- which the ruler was and what it had been for almost 2 decades -- to the blueberries. Once this happened, the bake trade got really unstable, the cost of flour skyrocketed, the fight in Bakria got shaky and all the tons of good things that the ruler was doing -- and the people didn't want to acknowledge and that was hidden from the informers -- he could not do anymore because the blueberries didn't want him too. But still everyone blamed the ruler for all these problems that he did not create. Jake saw this and could only feel bad for the ruler. Any time Jake expressed his views the other peolpe would actually get mad and irritated and not talk to him. So Jake did not speak of these things much. He just let the people around him waddle further away from what the founders of the land intended. Jake did however feel that the Ruler did let the land get disillusioned. They didn't belive in Quygonia anymore. Jake knew the furture was only gonna lead to more problems. When it came time for the ruler to leave his position as the 5 star and highest ranking confectionary, the people were to decide on the next ruler. They chose a Blueberry scone. The first time in history a scone would rule the land. But no one knew his intentions or ideas. Jake thought he might have nuts in him like the brownies who believed that people should be completely run by the reigning establishment.
