D'inspiration Française

Ok I don't speak French, but in my attempt to write a good story for my film I find myself obsessing over hours of random animation shorts that I can find on Youtube, motionographer, vimeo, etc. etc., and I came across a bunch of films from Gobelins (a really great art school in Paris that produces incredible animation.)

And so I don't forget to come back to these for reference, I'm going to post a few of my favorites here:

Trois Petite Points, is one of my favorites because the main character has a very similar goal of Noemi's - to heal her husband and mend the wounds that life has torn apart through creative means. Unfortunately it doesn't have a very happy ending, but I love it nonetheless. I think the monochromatic colors are also beautiful and suit the story very well. 

 

These two, In Between and I'm a Monster, have really creative ways of producing a unique relationship between a pet/monster/creature/whatever and people- something that I would love to achieve with Noemi and Milo. I'm a Monster is also great for me to study how to frame a short character and an unnaturally tall character :3

One Day has a really cute story about a man who just wants a place to call home, and I love love love the first few shots of beautifully painted scenery. 

And while Le Ballet isn't a style that I want to go for, I can't help gawking at all the character and expression they put into all the members of the audience. Inspiration for my townspeople designs? I think so!

Hopefully you guys enjoy these mini films as much as I do, I, for one will be going back to these quite often for help. 

Random Colorful Shenanigans and Caffeine

Hello dear friends!

I can't believe it's almost the end of July. While that means there is only one more month left of summer, I'm super excited to be able to go back to school! (Although I'm not sure that I can maintain the same positive attitude about school 4 months from now...)

Anyways, these past two weeks have been super productive in terms of finalizing Noemi's character design (her size, etc) and really starting to get a feel for what the overall style should be. I realized that I probably should have started concept art/style design earlier buttttttt since it's my first time doing an animated short I didn't know very much to begin with.

Lately I've been fooling around with color a lot. A friend at Dreamworks introduced this super wicked artist: Pascal Campion to me and I've been obsessed with his work! The more I try to learn from him, the more I am in awe of his pure colors and simplistic shapes that still communicate SO much emotion. For example:

What. It's incredible to me how you can almost literally feel the warmth of the sunlight, the coolness of an early evening, or the buzz of a city with just a couple of colors. My friend told me he was a genius and I believed him, but I never really understood what that meant until I tried using limited color palettes myself. 

Drawing of a dream I had a few weeks back of two old friends

Concept art for Noemi's gloomy town?

Didn't quite nail it, and I sort went off and did my own thing/went a little "new brushes" crazy on the concept art haha. Oops? I can always come back to fix that later. 

What I did have a ton of fun with, and am quite pleased with, was my color study of a shot in Hugo. It's a beautiful movie with a magical story, so I wanted to do my own version of it and practice digital painting some more with some new techniques I learned on You freaking Tube. (Thanks Kelsy!) Seriously the internet can be such a life/money saver! If anyone is looking for a really good/free digital painting mini class you should check out that link I posted above ^

It started out from a basic tone/undertone layout: 

To this!

I'm probably tooting my horn a little bit, but I worked really hard and loved painting it so I'm pretty proud of myself :) Most importantly, I had a ton of fun doing it and learned SO much, even though this took me 7+ hours. The outcome was worth it and the educational experience even more so. I now have way more respect for digital painters and visual development artists. They just pretend to make everything look easy.

I'm also coming close to the point where I can lock my story! If anyone wants to read it and give me some feedback feel free to message me- I would love some constructive criticism :) This also means that I need to finalize Milo's designs so I can have it ready to be modeled and rigged by school, and that I need to figure out what I want my town/townspeople to look like. I have this game that I made up since I was little to try and find people in different shapes:

The first three are kind of boring, but the weirder my shapes get, the more interesting the characters are, at least IMO. My favorite is the girl holding a cat and the old lady doing some kind of weird dance. Or maybe she's stretching her back-who knows? I don't know if this is actually a good exercise that works with character designing, but at least it keeps me entertained :)

And lastly, here is a test of Noemi to demonstrate her size comparison with Milo. It just occurred to me that she has a pretty big head, but maybe that just means she's extra smart. :3

Cheers and love from a happy and caffeinated me!

Still alive! -and going back to the heart of Noemi's story.

Hello cyberworld! I'm not dead!

I'm back on this blog and hopefully going to do a much better job of keeping it up now that we're really starting to get into pre-production mode for my thesis! Yay!

Let me explain why I stopped posting for like, a quarter of a year: unfortunately after spring break school really kicked my butt and I was sick for a month and still trying to work as hard as a bumble bee. So basically, by the end of the second semester, I pretty much felt like this:

Needless to say, I barely had the time to catch my breath let alone update this poor neglected blog. Not fun.

***

But now that it's summer, I've been traveling a lot, meeting up with lots of friends, taking on a side internship with Sabeel Media, designing a friend's album cover, and reworking and reworking my thesis.

Lately I've been finalizing Noemi's look so that I can start getting her and Milo modeled and rigged. My goal is to have Noemi and Milo fully modeled and rigged, in addition to a bomb animatic before school starts so I can get the ball rolling immediately.

Here's a snapshot of my progress that some of you may have already seen on my Facebook:

p.s. okay so I realized that my "shock" face isn't a shock face anymore- it' supposed to be suspicious but I forgot to change the caption. Oops!

The more I work on my short film, the more respect I have for any animated film. These expressions took me so incredibly long to draw and figure out! But I love her and I love making up her story so it all pays off in the end.

***

When I talk to other students and animators who have made their own short animated film; they always talk about going back and finding the heart of the story. While I have a good idea of what the heart of Noemi and Milo is, I've realized that I've never actually given too much thought to where my inspiration directly comes from.

(For those of you who don't know, my film is about a lonely little girl (Noemi), who hopes for a happier neighborhood. Upon magically meeting a tree monster (Milo), she learns to be bold with her compassion and together they brighten up the town.)

Recently though, I've been looking through google for reference images for my sad little town and started out with images from the Great Depression (1930's), Hooverville, and deforestation, etc.:

Which led me to start looking up images that hit closer to home- skid row in Los Angeles:

The more I look through these images and compare them to my animatic, the more I realize how much Noemi and Milo's story is really a visual depiction of my own desire to see hope, love, and redemption blossom in broken communities–and not just poor communities; the rich also experience a different sort of brokenness and poverty. 

As a USC student involved in Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, living in south central LA for three years made me realize that we often overlook the immense poverty, pain, and emptiness that surrounds this golden city. This isn't word for word, but Pastor Tim Chaddick from Reality LA once said that "Los Angeles is an incredibly lonely city". Traveling abroad and visiting different cities has taught me that this can generally be said of almost anywhere in the world- especially in large urban areas where lost voices are so easily drowned out by the buzz of everyday city life. 

Towards the end of my story, Noemi realizes that her art alone is not enough to change an entire community, nor can she do it by herself. Instead, she learns from Milo that what her neighborhood needs is love and people who are willing to care. (Cliche, I know, but true.) Basically, Noemi and Milo is essentially my dream to contribute my God-given talents to heal a very broken world, one heart at a time.

***

That turned out to be a lot more preachy than I intended. Heehee.

On a last note, I watched Despicable Me 2 about a week ago and it is SUCH a cute movie! I don't think I've laughed that hard in a movie for a long time, and Agnes/the minions are as adorable as ever. Props to illumination for a super heartwarming story, amazing visuals, and a stellar sequel :D

Seriously, go watch it guys!

Love,
Keek