Searching For A Me That Looks More Like Me...

Hi peeps! It's another thesis update!

But first, a brief "real life" update:

I went on vacations (and a mission) a few weeks ago. What was the mission, you ask? I had to go rescue my car (which I left in Savannah when I moved back to Puerto Rico. The thing is they gave me 31 days to move it from where I had it, so it was a bit of a rush, and a drain to the pocket :-|. Anyway, I got it back and now I've been working on my thesis film during this whole week.

I've been solving some things I considered issues about the beginning scene (staging being too simple and not much camera work). I recently bought a book professor John Webber recommended me, to which I find myself nodding while reading it. If you're interested in developing stronger storytelling skills, I recommend: Francis Glebas' "Directing The Story: Professional Storytelling and Storyboarding Techniques for Live Action and Animation". Here's the link in case you want to take a closer look / read reviews about it or simply get it:



I'm trying to do one of those "Less talk, more pictures" approach here in my blog, but I don't want to either give out too much or show too much. So I'll just drop a few things here and there to keep it interesting. :)

In this picture (work in progress!) you can see how I update the early design I had for the character who is supposed to be me (at the right) to one that currently looks more like me (left).  No, my face is not purple right now (although I did go to the beach today, but didn't get sunburnt :D ).  But yeah, I haven't had a haircut in a while, I haven't shaved in a while either, and the bags of my eyes apparently have been tattooed there already since I slept so little while at SCAD, heheh.  So I've included all those actual details, to design a character that looks more like me.  I like the simplistic design on the right, but I felt it doesn't look much like me.

I'm back! Moving/Watercolors

Hi, peeps!

I know, it took me forever to get another post in here, but here's why:

The last days of classes were crazy:  getting classwork done, attending meetings, selling everything, mailing everything I kept (I went almost every day to the post office), giving away stuff, graduating (Yes!  I graduated!  I still have to finish my thesis, though!), cleaning the apartment, and moving back to Puerto Rico.  Once I came back home, I had to make space and unpack the 18 boxes I mailed myself.  Yes, 18.  I'm very proud of the USPS.  I got everything and almost nothing got broken (Only one thing, but it was my fault for not packing it right), but my guitar amp, which was my biggest worry, arrived intact! :D

Now that I'm organized, I'm back into work mode.  I've noticed how my last posts have been mostly words and not so many images, and if you're like me, you enjoy watching pictures more than only reading plain writings.  I'm aware of it, so I'll try to compensate the lack of images.

Speaking of which, here are two watercolors I did while in Savannah, as gifts for friends.  I like the crazy, untamed quality of watercolors.  For some reason, it makes it feel like the way dreams are made of.  Am I making sense here?  Guess I dream in watercolor...

<-- I made this quick sketch in my iPhone.  I met a girl from Germany who had a fear of butterflies, so I thought it would be nice to draw her running away from a monstrous butterfly, and give it to her as a gift.

<--This is the final version.  I made it in a small sketchpad.  I guess she "kind of" liked it, since she featured it on her blog, but I don't know how she felt about that butterfly, other than calling me "evil", heheh.











The other watercolor was inspired by this photo:

<--There was something about that wall on the right...

<--Yup, that wall reminded me of a giraffe, so I recreated the scene.  I'm not particularly happy with the lack of detail of the girl's feet, but I had to rush it in time while juggling with class work, since it was a birthday gift.







Oh!  Today around 2:00am I released one of my two experimental animations that were featured in the "Time Space Tenual" art exhibition at Meddin Studios, in Savannah, GA.  It features mixed media: Stop motion, 3D animation, 2D animation and live action.  It is best experienced in a pitch black room with the animation playing full screen, and the volume cranked up.  Here's the link:

http://vimeo.com/11316624

I'll blog soon to tell you about what I've been doing during these days! For now, I got to go! Take care and thanks for reading!

Jose

Thesis - Women Sketches

I started sketching some women before starting designing the female characters for my thesis.  I'm aiming towards keeping them in the same style of my male characters, but adding a little more definition in the details of the faces: colored lips, eye shadows, eyelashes, and eyes might be smaller than the big cartoony eyes I'm using for the guys.  I still haven't decided all this, but I feel I'm heading that way.  Meanwhile, here are some of my women sketches.

It's been crazy times: working with selling stuff and sending my things back home among other projects,  so thesis work has gotten delayed.  I'll keep you updated!

Thanks and have a good weekend!

Joz

Updates: Thesis, Those Imaginary Miles, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and the 2010 SCAD Sands Art Festival.

Hi!  I know the title sounds a bit overwhelming, but I want to talk about everything and didn't feel like making four posts to cover this, so instead I'm giving you a long one.

Thesis:

I finished the rough animatic, which I'm not disclosing yet.  I had different possibilities for the ending, so I asked around to get the opinion from my friends and professors.  What's to follow?  Character designs!  I will be uploading those once I'm satisfied... Meanwhile, you can see some of the characters' faces on my website, in the images section.

Those Imaginary Miles:

I'm working on a second scene from the project.  Today the group met and we started compiling everything into Final Cut Pro to get an idea about how it will look like.  I will provide a few stills soon.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit:

I recently bought this movie.  The last time I saw it, I was probably about 8 years old.  I remember as well some friends had the NES game, and that I owned a coloring book from it.  Watching it again, 20 years later (probably), was quite an experience.  It was like watching a completely different movie.  I noticed so many things I didn't notice the first just because I didn't have the malice I have today.  (What has society done to us?!?!  Hahaha...)  If you haven't seen it, you should:  It's a great movie and it set a milestone at the moment for its innovation.  It's great to see Donald and Daffy in a piano duel, and Mickey becoming Bugs' accomplice.  What I did enjoy most about it, besides the overlapping of cartoons in the real world, was the message about the purpose of cartoons.  Being in an art school, you can meet plenty of people that suddenly become too critical about cartoons and they forget their purpose:  to make people laugh, to entertain.  Roger Rabbit had it clear.  Jessica Rabbit understood it too.  If it were for animation Puritans like that, many shows playing on TV today wouldn't be where they are.  "The Simpsons" wouldn't be there because they are too yellow, and no humans are that yellow (No, I'm not going to talk about Asians).  "South Park" wouldn't be there because they are too "cut-out" and "poorly animated", just because the animation is not Disney-feature-film style. 

If there's something I've learned about all this, is that we should celebrate diversity.  Not only in animation, but in pretty much everything:  race, culture, religion, gender, sexual orientation, everything.  How would the world be if everything was cookie-cut "perfect"?  Perfect, really?  Sounds more like boring to me...  

Of course, animation as an art form can reach different sensibilities and convey different emotions.  I got into art school to learn how to animate properly in order to be able to get a job, with the ultimate purpose of bringing more happiness to this problem-ridden world.  "Smile, darn ya, smile" is the main song from the cartoons at Toon Town.  That's what my goal is, either by music or cartoons, on the long run all I want is to make this world better.  Having that said, let's go to tonight's final topic.

SCAD Sand Arts Festival 2010:

 Yesterday (April 31), I went to the SCAD Sand Arts Festival 2010 with a group of friends.  We were a team of four.  Armed by 2 buckets and a small trash bin, we started working, in the attempt of doing two dolphins kissing.  Our fourth team member then joined in, and she brought a shovel, so our working conditions improved. :)  After noticing we had a huge empty space between our two dolphin shapes, I suggested my team "How about we fill this space with a turtle, so that instead of the dolphins kissing each other, they're kissing the turtle, one on each side".  Everybody liked the idea, so we went ahead.  First we were taking sand out of the center of the piece, now we were taking sand from outside and bringing it in to make a significant shell for the turtle.   We started detailing the shapes:  the faces, then adding fins, legs, shell patterns.  In between, a pack of dolphins, probably about 8, was swimming close to the coast, so our piece suddenly gained more interest and relevance from the spectators.  After the faces were detailed many people passed by and couldn't resist saying "Awww, that is too cute!"  It was quite uplifting and it helped us to keep working hard till completion.  (While I was typing this, there was a blackout and it's 11:41pm right now, so the entry might not be published until tomorrow.)  I got interviewed by Savannah's local press, and I was quoted on the news (with my last name misspelled, but that's still me, heheh).  We also ended up calling our sculpture "Turtlely in Love" (as totally in love) but I guess the organizers of the event understood "Turtle-y Love".

Here's a link to the article:

http://savannahnow.com/news/2010-05-01/scad-students-sculpt-tybee-beach

Oh, and I want to say thanks to the Gray's Reef National Marine Sanctuary, since their judge selected our sculpture as the First Place in the Best Underwater Sea Creature Contest!  All our hard work paid off!  Thanks also to my awesome team, for without Tran Do, Sofi Petersen and Whitney Taylor, we couldn't have made it as good.  Thanks to all the friends who showed up to hang out, support and cheer us up, and last but not least, thanks to the mom that was sitting next to us for worrying about me getting too sun burnt and spraying me with sun block and ultimately leaving us her sun block bottle after she left (The world needs more people like you, lady!  Thanks! :) )

Here's a picture of the team, some of our friends, the sculpture and the "first place" tag.  I'm the one with the baseball cap next to the dolphin.

"Those Imaginary Miles": Photos / Fotos

Hi. Here are the pictures I promised:

Hola!  Aquí están las fotos que prometí:

Here you can see my workstation cluttered with papers. The sketches of the ideas I come up with at the bottom, the writing that we're using to make the animation, and my iPod connected to get my music fix while I work. :)

Aquí pueden ver mi área de trabajo cubierta por papeles.  Los dibujos de las ideas que se me han ocurrido están al fondo; arriba, el escrito en el que estamos basando la animación, y a la izquierda, mi iPod conectado para brindarme una dosis de música mientras trabajo. :)

A closer look to one page of my sketches / rough storyboard. Note: the content shown might or might not appear in the final animation, since we're still in pre-production.

Un vistazo más de cerca de una página de mis dibujos / secuencia. Nota: el contenido mostrado puede o no aparecer en la animación final, ya que aún estamos en pre-producción.

Side Project: "Those Imaginary Miles"

Hi again.

I'm currently working in a collaborative project with my friends/classmates Eric Spivey and Navdeep Singh. Our professor Christoph Simon approached us and told us Mr. Harrison Key wanted to have some experimental animation for one of his writings. How experimental is it going to be is still to be decided. The voice recording was handed to us yesterday and we're working into coming up for ideas, and then tomorrow in class we're going to study them, decide what works best where, and link our versions together.

I was going to take a picture of what I'm doing right now so you have an idea of how do I approach animations before animating, but I just remembered a friend of mine has my camera... Oops! Guess I'll just post that later when I get it back.

-----///------

Hola otra vez.

Ahora mismo estoy trabajando en un proyecto en colaboración con mis amigos/compañeros de clase Eric Spivey y Navdeep Singh. Nuestro profesor Christoph Simon nos hizo un acercamiento y nos contó que el Sr. Harrison Key quería hacer un vídeo de uno de sus escritos y acompañarlo con animación experimental. Cuán experimental será, aún está por verse. Recibimos la grabación de voz ayer y estamos trabajando individualmente en trabajar nuestras ideas para mañana en clase estudiarlas en conjunto, decidir qué funciona mejor dónde, y conectar nuestras versiones en una.

Le iba a tomar una foto a lo que estoy haciendo ahora mismo, para que tengas una idea de cómo trabajo antes de las animar, pero me acordé de que le presté mi cámara a un amigo... ¡Ups! Supongo que subiré la foto entonces cuando me devuelva la cámara.

To tell you a little but not all... / Para contarte parte, pero no todo...

Hi! Thanks for visiting my blog!

As for an introduction, I'll give you the past, present and future of the matter:

The Past:

Before locking into one idea for my thesis, I had a few prospective ideas that almost made it: "Screwed", "The Waiting Room" and "Cayendo" (Falling):

-"Screwed" was going to be a musical, but I wasn't completely satisfied with the story. It had a few funny moments, but ended somewhat sad. So then I switched to...

-"The Waiting Room", which I felt at the moment that was going to be it. I had a lot of playing ground with this idea. I started writing the script, and then I got overwhelmed. I had 7 pages of dialogues and I was just introducing characters. So I talked myself out if this idea, thinking: It's a great idea, but to do it the way I would like to do it, I'd probably need to make a feature film or a half-hour animation. So summer showed up, as usual life inspired me to...

-"Cayendo", a song I partially wrote about how I felt by the end of summer. Should I be more specific? Maybe. Well, it was about how I felt after a girl made me feel great and all of a sudden, insecure. She basically disappeared from one day to another, so I didn't know exactly what happened at the time, since she didn't tell me until a week later. Meanwhile I was driving myself crazy, thinking what did I do wrong? Anyway, I started thinking about the previous relationships I've had and what has happened here and there, so I came up with a conclusion...

-"Todas las mujeres están locas" (All The Women Are Crazy). I know, this is debatable, but let's say it's a humorous way of saying women are different from us men. We're just built different, we think different, and it doesn't matter how hard we try, we will never understand each other to a 100% completion. So starting at 12:45am from September 21, 2009, with my guitar on my lap, I wrote/composed this song.

A funny anecdote I have about the topic: The next day, I approached one of my professors (Whose name I'll keep undisclosed) and asked him about this new idea I had. I told him about my concern: that I didn't want to offend anybody, that it was based on my experiences and I just wanted to be comedic about it. In summary, I don't want feminist organizations rioting next to my window, since the purpose was never to offend. My professor liked the idea, and told me to go with it. Not only that, but he told me "It's true, they're all crazy. And you should do this because you'd be speaking for all the rest of us males out there. Of course, you can do something like this, because you're Latin, and Latin people already have some sort of reputation of feeling strong about this."

Just to clear things out: I know that sadly there's still a lot of inequality out there based in gender and what-not. So even though Hispanic people tend to be affiliated with machismo, I am not. I believe both men and women should have the same opportunities. Gender doesn't make anyone better than the other. We're different, but we should be treated equally. Respect! :)

So I locked into "Todas las mujeres están locas". I feel quite happy with this animation in the making, since it combines my three passions: animation, music and humor. I started storyboarding, made a small animatic for the introduction of the story. During December 2009-January 2010, I recorded the song with a little help from my friends (Just to throw a Beatles reference here). It wasn't really a little help. They were very helpful, specially my friend Javi Morales, who put all his recording studio expertise into function and made the song sound like something you could listen in the radio.

In January 1st of 2010, at 9:08pm, "Todas las mujeres están locas", the song, was taken out of the oven.

During the Winter quarter, classes had me so busy, that I couldn't work on my thesis, until now.

The Present:

I'm back and working on my thesis now! I've been selecting the best clips we recorded for the dialogues, and making some dialogues to give a little of ambient to the initial scene. Besides that, I listened to the song a few times and made a lyrics / music breakdown. Now, I'm working on a revamped version of the storyboard, including new ideas, trying different things related to perspective. I'm doing everything in Flash, to create an animatic and get an idea of the timing, see what works and what doesn't, and how everything falls into place.

The Future:

That's what you'll be reading / seeing in the upcoming posts.

Thanks for reading! :)

-Joz