All I want to do is draw pretty pictures

We meet again cyberworld!

I think I've pretty much given up on convincing myself that I can do a good job of regularly updating my blog, maybe once I graduate I will be better at living a more consistent life? But then again, I'm a pretty spontaneous person so je ne sais (that's about the extent of my French.) Shout out to my friend Cauchy for reminding me that I need to keep this blog alive :)

Graduation is really starting to close in on me. It's strange to think that in 2 months I will be out of USC, and floundering around in the world somewhere. By floundering, I really mean that I will be joining Intervarsity's Los Angeles Urban Project, and then living in Tanzania for 6 months where I will be an animator/artist for Pamoja ministries, but between then and now I still have so much to prepare. And so much of that involves having minor identity crises every other day. Leaving Los Angeles for such a long time is becoming more of a reality for me, and I am starting to realize how much I really, really love this city. This video of celebrities/random regular people in Hollywood, for example, makes me really emotional and homesick for a home that I haven't left yet. 

Where was I going with this? Anyways, I think a general theme in my life is that I have a tendency to aim in a certain direction, and hope that life will land me somewhere in that area. There was some quote like "aim for the stars, if you miss you'll land on the moon," or something? That seems like a pretty accurate description of my life right now. 

I really would type more but unfortunately I'm starting to find myself in more and more of a time crunch. My last post in December closed with my re-figuring out how to redesign my story for the ground up. That may have sounded crazy at the time, but in the long run I am so thankful to my 2013 self for having the balls to scrap my old story and start over. I love my story- it's not perfect, but it definitely says what I want to say way better than my old one. And it's one that I can connect to so much more. If there's one thing I learned through this entire process, it's how ridiculously difficult it is to come up with a good story. Daniel Sousa, one of the academy award nominees for the animated short film said that in order to be an animator, you have to be a kind of masochist. (Someone who takes pleasure in their own pain.) That sounds so disturbing, but it's so true! For the moments when I am animating or working on my film, there is literally nothing more important than giving my lifeblood to these little moving pixels on screen. It seems stupid and totally irresponsible of taking care of myself, but I guess it's just a poison all film students have to take at some point. 

So anyways, here are some rough passes of what I have done so far. We still have a long way to go, but I've decided to be an anti-social hermit during spring break and shut myself up in the film school... aside from some occasional trolling...

Josh found a mysterious new monitor at his desk today.

film still

(p.s. please click on the actual youtube link to view my animatic- blogspot is a poop and only lets me upload in 144res)

Keek out cyberbuds!

New Story and Inspiration

So, I know a lot of you are wondering exactly what I've been doing in the past few weeks of my absence. And honestly, it was reworking my story, to the point where I decided to scrap my old story and come up with a new one. The characters are the same, but everything is on a smaller scale so 1) I can maintain my sanity, and 2) to make the story better and tighter.

Anyways, I'm on crunch time for my midsemester review so I'm not about to spoil too much about my new story! But just to make things easier for me I'm going to post some concept photosgraphs I dug up online :)

Days of Heaven

I realize that I haven't been updating things lately, and my story has actually gone through a lot of changes pretty last minute haha, typical. So in some ways I feel like I'm back to square one, but I figure,  if it's to improve my story, it's probably worth the sacrifice.

After talking to Kathy Smith, the chair of my program, she suggested that I watch the movie Days of Heaven for cinematic reference. It's really one of the most beautiful films I've seen yet, and I wish I could have seen it in HD instead of randomly streaming it. But I think the heartbreak would have been greater, because the entire film was so, so tragic. It will probably be a while before I'm brave enough to see it again, because I'm still reeling from it.

Anyways, here are some screenshots of scenes that I thought were particularly gorgeous and haunting.

My favorite shot is the one with the locusts, because the way the sequence was shot just communicates the utter sense of despair and defeat perfectly.

Locusts starting to rain down on the farm

I know I don't usually end on a heavy note, but man. This film is one of those movies that I will be thinking of for a long time.

Color tests/Composition Experiments

Lately, I've been learning a lot about composition and cinematography, thanks to a class I'm taking taught by Gil Zimmerman- the head of layout on How to Train Your Dragon 1 and 2. It's on a Friday night, and my only Friday class, so that really stinks, but judging from the material I've learned from that class I'd say it's worth the sacrifice. Before taking this class, I assumed composition was simply placing cameras and your shots in a way that looks aesthetically pleasing, but I'm starting to realize more and more that cinematography can play such a huge part in playing stories! Gil showed us this video series called Hollywood Camera Work, which used stand-still figures that slide around to show how camera angles and composition can tell a story. That blew my mind. 

So anyways, I've gotten back into a streak of working really hard and I've been on a roll for this past week! Aside from studying cinematography and reading books outside of class (Framed Ink and The Filmmaker's Eye,) I've also tried to do this exercise where I crank out one digital painting in an hour. The first one took me two hours, but the last two I did in one hour, and ended up playing around with colors towards the end. I realized that my color choices are actually usually pretty crappy, because I end up wanting to use every color of the rainbow, and then everything turns really muddy, so I had to constantly go back to find references of artists like Pascal Campion who is a genius at color. I also needed to look up a bunch of films and see how they composed their shots and mimicked those shots. 

testing out skies and a simpler way of painting

p.s. side note: the above image was inspired by one of the pictures I took at the Leighton house! I wanted to capture how the sky looked and thought it would be really cool reference for the final transformation of my little town. 

Reference photo for  the sky

Noemi looking out to her gloomy neighborhood

Also I started studying the houses around Vermont Avenue, and combining them with the houses of Hooverville during the great depression. I love the colors of the houses in Vermont, but the hooverville houses have soooo much character! Here is a quick sketch that I did of both types of houses- I tried to make Noemi's shack more hooverville-looking in my last painting exercise.Hopefully I can somehow bring in characteristics from both types of houses.

Below is a drawing of Noemi's shack, that I based off of the hooverville houses I found online.

I was too lazy to draw Noemi in the house, but this is when random neighbors pass by and she gets scared

playing with different color choices

more colors! This is more sickly-looking and reminds me of The Backwater Gospel

Anyways. I'm super excited and really hope this animation buzz will last me throughout the year. One can dream!