A Little Film

About 2 year ago I shifted back to TV animation after years of animating for games. It’s been such an interesting re-learning process! After years of tumbling around a 3D space, suddenly animations didn’t have to look good ‘in the round’! Character had to be lip-synced, and backgrounds had to be updated! Making a change was a really revitalizing for my psyche and I was lucky enough to be able to participate in Titmouse’s 5 Second Day- a day where employees take a day to make a short film or animation, or anything they want really, as long as it is at least 5 seconds long.

Honestly, it had been a long time since making a short film or putting myself out there like that, so I decided to just make something fun and delightful for myself and to celebrate the ‘new change in life’ energy. I found a piece of music that captured the joyous/delightfulI energy I was experiencing, and perused my own sketchbooks to find some thing that might fit the music.

The story (if you want to call it that, haha) came together really quickly once I had those 2 main elements. Here is what the first draft of the film looked like, just some rough boards!:

Below on the left, is about a days worth of work for reference, and to the right is the file after 2 or 3 days. The color design and details often take me much longer, but I think I like the end result and how the film overall came out!

An Illustrated Book!

These past year I have been working on a very special project; I've been illustrating a children's book!  My childhood friend, Ekaterina Petrova, approached me with a story idea late last year and we decided to collaborate.  7 months, 31 illustrations, and 1 cover later, its finished and available for purchase via Amazon!

The final illustrations are done with pastels but the roughs, layouts, final line-work and final colors are all digital. This was done to save time on the 'pre-production' and allow for flexibility in the images early in the process.  I thought this would make the final step, illustrating with pastels, very tedious but I found the process surprisingly freeing and I was able to have some spontaneity even with thorough plans. I guess it is like performing a dance, a lot of practice goes in but the final performance will still feel fresh because the kinks have been ironed out and we are left to focus on the art of the performance. 

Click on images bellow for some some step-by-step descriptions of the process:

Initial Sketches

Initial sketches are made according to the story.  These tend to be extremely rough because you are trying to get the essence of the story the quickest way possible. Clarity is key but no need to be precious! 

Finalized Line-work

After the initial sketches notes are given and the tightening begins. The layout is adjusted, and objects are clarified!

Shading and Lighting

I like roughing out the shading early in the process because it hints at the 3 dimensional space and reminds the illustrator where the lighting is (clear lighting makes controls the way your eye moves around the page)

Rough Color

At this point I gather all the pages in one file (so I can see them all at once) and rough in the colors for the whole book. Blocking in the colors this way lets you control story telling by color!

Finalized Color

After the colors for every page are blocked out I do detail work and incorporate any notes the client may have had. These colors are referenced and mimicked by the pastels.

Final Illustration

The line-work, shading edges, and any color notes are transferred to pastel paper via transfer paper and the pasteling begins! There is plenty of change that happens in this step but the basics are all there and the finalized colors are referenced frequently.

Also, I made a gif to show the evolution of the last page, I think the changes are fun to see in sequence :)

I've been particularly busy lately, by day I animate for mobile games and by night (and weekends) I illustrate children's books.  This may not sound like much, but lately scheduling a 5 mile run, cooking a meal, and doing laundry has felt nearly impossible.  What I noticed in the middle of this mayhem was I that I began to steal little bits of time here and there to work on something for myself. I would take breaks from drawing to… draw. Above is a piece done in those stolen minutes.  Its not the best thing I've done, but animating without much thought, and really 'going for it,' is really liberating.

I think my next goal, after I finish some urgent projects, is to animate and draw without that nagging, judgmental voice. That and maybe take a vacation.

A Room with a View

In my second year of college I was assigned my first solo dorm room.  Living in New York City meant dazzling careers, small and chic apartments, avant-garde clothing, fantastic bagels, and rent prices with too many zeros than they were worth. 

As luck would have it, when I walked into my dorm, my only window into the outside world faced a brick wall (literally.) I was pretty disappointed, until I went into the bathroom and found a second window (an unheard of luxury in the dorms). The view out of THAT window opened to a very small piece of the NYC skyline.  A few interesting buildings and one big, cerulean blue sky. It was like owning a small piece heaven.

For the two years that I stayed in that room I documented the view on a near daily basis. The sky seemed to produce a new shade of blue every morning, each with a new set of cloud shapes.  The overcast and foggy skies would strip the shadows and pump the colors of the man made architecture and at night the moon would position itself like it was following the rule of thirds. In winter all became quiet and the gentle snow drifts made me feel like I was in a snow globe.  I documented the view daily and then lost most of the pictures a few years later, however, I did manage to find a few.  Looking back I remember those two years were full of personal growth with lots of bumps in the road but the small apartment and that one beautiful view provided much needed peace and quiet for me.

The image above is the actual view! 

The Devil is in the Details

Or is it 'God is in the details'? I'm not quite sure. 

In my drawings and paintings I tend to gloss over the details, I defocus them with washes of paint, desaturate them with a coat of graphite and sometimes just take them out.  A viewer must understand the main point of the picture and whatever is not directly related to it, is simply unimportant and must be taken out!  Though, sometimes I wonder if something is lost after so much cutting out, have I stripped the message too far? Will the audience understand the thought process with the bare minimal? Or will they feel like it is too 'dumbed down'?  

But in photography I revel in the minute and unnoticed! I love to compose the shot, defocus the background, experiment with the exposure, move around for different lighting, mess with the ISO,  then shutter speed, focus, re-focus, re-compose the shot, ... etc, etc.  I love moving around an object to capture different light, different compositions, different shapes.  I love the way high key, black and white photos can expose patterns your eye normally doesn't spot in color.  I am highlighting the details and it often feels like making miniature paintings.  So far, that is one of the main joys of photography!

The Artist's Studio

The artist's studio has always fascinated me. Perhaps it is, like the sketchbook, a window into an artist's soul.  I find myself analizing the details of the space and pondering what those details reveal about the artist. What is the significance of that book on his table? Why are the curtains always open (why do they even have curtains?) Is the space as curated as a painting? Is it intimate like a bedroom, or just a space to make a mess? What makes one comfortable enough to tune out and listen to his or her own creative voice? Because that is what an artist studio is, a pre-warmed oven for baking idea cookies...