Thursday, March 01, 2007
Marv Newland visits Pratt
Our campus was lucky enough to get a screening and visit from animator Marv Newland, probably most known by those who didn't know any better (me) for "Bambi Meets Godzilla". He's a wonderful guy and I continue to wish him the best of luck with his films.
I don't normally enjoy films like these, or the more subtly strange and humorous, but Marv's stuff really found a niche in my heart!
Marv has a show tomorrow here in NYC at the Two Boots Pioneer theatre (www.twooboots.com/pioneer), and I encourage everyone to go check it out if you can (and if you're reading this blog obsessively enough to find out this late, which is a little creepy and a little flattering...). It's a great little theatre too, and actually where my fellow seniors and I will be having our premiere senior show.
Also, I further expand my growing knowledge in the vast world of HTML, and add myself a background image for the bloggidy blog. =D
Friday, February 23, 2007
Birthday Shindig and another Dino Sketch
So Wednesday night I finally had an actual birthday...thing. And since Saturday was my birthday and Sunday was Pat's, we all met up together and had an animator's birthday...of...animation goodness!!
my room mate attacking me in her usual fashion.
shots for everyone!
and more dinosaurs. lamest one i've done so far but there will be more.
my room mate attacking me in her usual fashion.
shots for everyone!
and more dinosaurs. lamest one i've done so far but there will be more.
Monday, February 19, 2007
Show and Tell
Think Samurai Jack is creative? Thought Disney animation was advanced during the 9 old men? How about a little something from the 60's...from Japan...that just might rival everything you thought you knew about animation...
Now, I love Samurai Jack...and I study the 9 old men's work day and night...but I think I wet myself a little when I watched it. And the poster on YouTube was also gracious enough to showcase the whole film as well.
Now, I love Samurai Jack...and I study the 9 old men's work day and night...but I think I wet myself a little when I watched it. And the poster on YouTube was also gracious enough to showcase the whole film as well.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Horraaaaayyy
Horray, I'm 22. 11 x 2. What a great number. Here's a girl and some dragons!
and a go at a sad little trex ala Heinrich Kley (sort of...), just for warm-up this morning before i get started animating.
and a go at a sad little trex ala Heinrich Kley (sort of...), just for warm-up this morning before i get started animating.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
More moving stuffs
Here's a clip from the work I had to show progress on for my film in class Monday. All the animation on Gary was done during the week leading up to class at 930 am. It's probably the most work I've gotten done in 7 days, animation-wise, even being sick half the time which made me want to sleep all the time.
I was too lazy to put the sound in for now.
Even after all of this, I'm still behind.
Pat: "That animation is so beautiful.....but it's not enough. Can't you, like, work MORE?"
*cue CRYING JESSICA ZOMG!!!1!11*
More to come next week on this.
I was too lazy to put the sound in for now.
Even after all of this, I'm still behind.
Pat: "That animation is so beautiful.....but it's not enough. Can't you, like, work MORE?"
*cue CRYING JESSICA ZOMG!!!1!11*
More to come next week on this.
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
mooo
i'm in that weird crazy state where it's 330 am and i can't go to sleep and i hardly slept last night but then slept after class for 5 hours so my internal clock is all thrown off and i want to sleep but i don't at the same time but i have class in 6 hours and i'm not sure what to do so here's a horsey butt -
i also drank lots of red bull.
i also drank lots of red bull.
Friday, January 26, 2007
zomg...it moves!
just a little bit. i've been animating nearly every day since i got back to pratt. and i had promised that i'd be showing progress more often on here. until i get some more animation up, for now, here's a bit of a run i have the monster doing.
it's the progress of tests i've done so far on it. any critique would be wonderful, but i have been told several times about the problem of weight already and that'll be fixed in the next tests i'll show.
i'd also like to take this opportunity to share with everyone what my film is about, since i've realized i've been kinda vague to many (that kind happens i guess when you're so involved with something and know it so well...you forget that others don't).
for our senior project as an animation student at pratt, we have to independently make our own film (though we actually had a pair of twins work on one together last semester). I started with a vague idea fall of 2005 when i needed to create characters for animation exercises in class, and the idea of two of them interacting with each other somehow budded from there.
i'm quite a sucker for monsters and large creatures (and dinosaurs), and wanted to use one i had recently designed for fun in the simplest story i could think of. i didn't want to bother with sweating over some complex story and just stick to having fun animating characters. so i turned my monster essentially in to a kleptomaniac, who ends up stealing a beloved teddy from a small child determined to retrieve it. i thought it would be very straightforward and i could achieve a plot with relative ease.
whoops - i was wrong. never take even the simplest story lightly.
i began thumbnailing the entire film over the summer last year. i was quite proud when i had all that complete for the first day of class and critique. i left that class quite exhausted.
i had so many kinks i had to work out. fine-tuning the characters so they made sense; helping the story flow and weeding out all the questionable struggles and random decisions made. it was a nightmare all last semester. i think i worked on my story more than i did animation.
after mulling over and meditating on everything over winter break, i came back to work really refreshed and re-set up key points in the story. but getting a story just right, even with a buttload of animation still to go (and consequently running out of time), makes me feel oh-so much better about the film and more confident about it's success. i can sit at my light table in peace for hours knowing i don't have to spend extra time afterwards and continue tweaking the story.
the premise and outline are basically the same from the original idea.
it's the progress of tests i've done so far on it. any critique would be wonderful, but i have been told several times about the problem of weight already and that'll be fixed in the next tests i'll show.
i'd also like to take this opportunity to share with everyone what my film is about, since i've realized i've been kinda vague to many (that kind happens i guess when you're so involved with something and know it so well...you forget that others don't).
for our senior project as an animation student at pratt, we have to independently make our own film (though we actually had a pair of twins work on one together last semester). I started with a vague idea fall of 2005 when i needed to create characters for animation exercises in class, and the idea of two of them interacting with each other somehow budded from there.
i'm quite a sucker for monsters and large creatures (and dinosaurs), and wanted to use one i had recently designed for fun in the simplest story i could think of. i didn't want to bother with sweating over some complex story and just stick to having fun animating characters. so i turned my monster essentially in to a kleptomaniac, who ends up stealing a beloved teddy from a small child determined to retrieve it. i thought it would be very straightforward and i could achieve a plot with relative ease.
whoops - i was wrong. never take even the simplest story lightly.
i began thumbnailing the entire film over the summer last year. i was quite proud when i had all that complete for the first day of class and critique. i left that class quite exhausted.
i had so many kinks i had to work out. fine-tuning the characters so they made sense; helping the story flow and weeding out all the questionable struggles and random decisions made. it was a nightmare all last semester. i think i worked on my story more than i did animation.
after mulling over and meditating on everything over winter break, i came back to work really refreshed and re-set up key points in the story. but getting a story just right, even with a buttload of animation still to go (and consequently running out of time), makes me feel oh-so much better about the film and more confident about it's success. i can sit at my light table in peace for hours knowing i don't have to spend extra time afterwards and continue tweaking the story.
the premise and outline are basically the same from the original idea.
The Packrat
Gary, a little boy, has his precious teddy stolen from his backyard after dropping it by accident one day. A creature that inhabits the woods behind Gary's house swipes the teddy away deep into the forest. Stunned, Gary makes his way into the woods in search of teddy. Gary stumbles upon his abducted friend, but the monster as well. Frightened away, Gary is lost in the woods, still without teddy. The monster subsequently tries to rid Gary's disruptive presence and noise from his woods, but will they both get what they want?
Monday, January 15, 2007
Some production stuff...
So...some people like to cry when they haven't updated their blogs in a while, and usually a page-long apology follows suit. Frankly, I don't think that many people read my poor little blog for me to apologize to...besides, when Jessica isn't on the internet she's probably getting things done. Lots of things. Like these background paintings for my film. Mmmmmm...paaaaintings.
Enjoy. =)
Enjoy. =)
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Production Updates - November 28
So even though we had thesis this Monday, I didn't bring in a thing to show. Doesn't mean I didn't have new stuff though. I was just really tired and got two hours of sleep and felt a little rebellious. Ha.
Backgrounds for The Packrat have been coming along now, and I've slowly accepted that they will all be hand-painted instead of digital. Also been tweaking out some of the story kinks I kept getting stopped for and re-laid out scenes.
Lookit all the storyboard craziness!
Good thing about all this tweaking is I believe it's making the film a tad bit shorter. Which means more room for padding and any extra animation that sneaks it.
I'm using so much paper. Thank God it's free. I grab printer paper from one of the offices on campus that gives it out since it's apparently "unusable" because of four butt-end text characters left at the top of the page when they're done printing out audits or some such nonsense. They don't get in the way at all though and I'll take a huge chunk of the freebies and get them acme punched in our equiptment office. At least it's sort of like my school is funding my film in a roundabout way!
Mmmmm dead trees.
Here's a little background I'm working on:
k thnks bai! =)
Backgrounds for The Packrat have been coming along now, and I've slowly accepted that they will all be hand-painted instead of digital. Also been tweaking out some of the story kinks I kept getting stopped for and re-laid out scenes.
Lookit all the storyboard craziness!
Good thing about all this tweaking is I believe it's making the film a tad bit shorter. Which means more room for padding and any extra animation that sneaks it.
I'm using so much paper. Thank God it's free. I grab printer paper from one of the offices on campus that gives it out since it's apparently "unusable" because of four butt-end text characters left at the top of the page when they're done printing out audits or some such nonsense. They don't get in the way at all though and I'll take a huge chunk of the freebies and get them acme punched in our equiptment office. At least it's sort of like my school is funding my film in a roundabout way!
Mmmmm dead trees.
Here's a little background I'm working on:
k thnks bai! =)
Thursday, November 23, 2006
Saturday, November 18, 2006
Still here...busy as always
Not much in the updates department. The Packrat is going along a little slow and going through a few story revisions and changes, and some bigger changes like me dropping out all use of dialogue. I'm trying to get a whole scene mostly finished by Monday but I somehow doubt I'll get that far done.
Working a bit too on some freelance for Asterisk, Inc. inbetweening on a feature they got a few minutes or so of to work on. That's going well but it's suuuuch a detailed character. Thank God I'm only inbetweening.
I'm excited for New Years this year. I'll most likely be going to the grandest New Years party ever. Check it out atwww.scythianmusic.com . Scythian is perhaps one of the grandest bands out there kids. I can't say it enough. Though some of my friends hate that. =D
Working a bit too on some freelance for Asterisk, Inc. inbetweening on a feature they got a few minutes or so of to work on. That's going well but it's suuuuch a detailed character. Thank God I'm only inbetweening.
I'm excited for New Years this year. I'll most likely be going to the grandest New Years party ever. Check it out at
Monday, October 30, 2006
Friday, October 27, 2006
Coloring Scare
So I hit a big roadblock recently when I was asked to put together a color test using a shot in my thesis film this past week.
Wow, a lot harder than I thought.
Now I can spend hours or days musing over colors in an illustration, but I have well over 100 shots to layout and make bg's for...though some I'll be reusing, and some will be very simple and quick. So I don't have days to spend on each bg, and barely a few hours each really to meet a deadline next semester.
My first color test looked like this:
Bleh. It's nice and clean and professional looking, yeah. But pretty bland I was told. And I really started to see it afterwards. It only took me around 45 min to complete this one...but it shows. I was proud of getting it done fast, because I want to breeze through color without much of a thought and have a fully colored film. That's a big mistake though. I hate the way this is colored now. It's pretty flat, and the colors are really typical. My thesis professor pointed out how it looked too nice, too predictable, and others commented on how it was just looking like "another student film". I didn't want to think about color because I didn't want to make a statement in revolutionary looks or anything, but now I realize that if I don't pay attention to it at all, my whole film can suffer.
So I've been musing over color all evening, and practically at the point of pulling all my hair out. I'm without a tablet at the moment so I'm doing everything by hand. It was a real struggle at first, dabbling in watercolor again and getting it to look just right. I didn't know what kind of colors to use really, to make a scene...a mood...a good environment.
Then I finally came up with this one:
A ton better I feel. More texture too (at least for the bg), which I want to show in the film. Maybe not exactly what the final look will be, but a much nicer mix of color (not to mention an actual style now that might work a ton nicer with my animated characters). It's kinda Calvin and Hobbes - ish, but I like it. It was a lot easier to mix colors you wouldn't normally use for areas right on paper. We'll see how this goes more this week later...
By the way...John K happens to be ranting and raving about color uses in cartoons over at his blog...which I highly reccommend everyone check out. It's quite a nice coincidence that he happens to be talking about color right at this point and time. =)
Wow, a lot harder than I thought.
Now I can spend hours or days musing over colors in an illustration, but I have well over 100 shots to layout and make bg's for...though some I'll be reusing, and some will be very simple and quick. So I don't have days to spend on each bg, and barely a few hours each really to meet a deadline next semester.
My first color test looked like this:
Bleh. It's nice and clean and professional looking, yeah. But pretty bland I was told. And I really started to see it afterwards. It only took me around 45 min to complete this one...but it shows. I was proud of getting it done fast, because I want to breeze through color without much of a thought and have a fully colored film. That's a big mistake though. I hate the way this is colored now. It's pretty flat, and the colors are really typical. My thesis professor pointed out how it looked too nice, too predictable, and others commented on how it was just looking like "another student film". I didn't want to think about color because I didn't want to make a statement in revolutionary looks or anything, but now I realize that if I don't pay attention to it at all, my whole film can suffer.
So I've been musing over color all evening, and practically at the point of pulling all my hair out. I'm without a tablet at the moment so I'm doing everything by hand. It was a real struggle at first, dabbling in watercolor again and getting it to look just right. I didn't know what kind of colors to use really, to make a scene...a mood...a good environment.
Then I finally came up with this one:
A ton better I feel. More texture too (at least for the bg), which I want to show in the film. Maybe not exactly what the final look will be, but a much nicer mix of color (not to mention an actual style now that might work a ton nicer with my animated characters). It's kinda Calvin and Hobbes - ish, but I like it. It was a lot easier to mix colors you wouldn't normally use for areas right on paper. We'll see how this goes more this week later...
By the way...John K happens to be ranting and raving about color uses in cartoons over at his blog...which I highly reccommend everyone check out. It's quite a nice coincidence that he happens to be talking about color right at this point and time. =)
Friday, October 20, 2006
Doodles and Such
As such things go...=) Some doodles of Peridot (that's her name sillies):
and my thesis movie poster! everyone loves posters!
this means my film is pretty much moving up from pre-production to production. exciting!
and my thesis movie poster! everyone loves posters!
this means my film is pretty much moving up from pre-production to production. exciting!
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
I suck so bad...
I hate art history. Really. Very very sick of it. I just can't seem to get the hang of taking it for, oh, 3+ YEARS OF SCHOOL here. And that's not including how many times I'm retaking a few of them. =(
I had a midterm for it today. I studied pretty last minute but was doing ok on the ID's. It's the essays that were killing me. Strange thing is they usually don't. I just totally went blank though a little more than halfway through. This is what I did for maybe 40% of the time spent on the test:
horray for spaceships and dragons! sorry...but they're just way cooler than Neoclassicism. Take THAT David!
I also kept doodling myself on the exam booklet doing things like stabbing myself in the head with a pencil and hanging myself at the end of it. They were kinda funny actually...I hope my professor doesn't have me call some help hotline.
Hrm...well at least I'm going to go see Bill Plympton's Hair High tonight and hang out with some cool peeps. Maybe that'll cheer me up. Maybe.
I had a midterm for it today. I studied pretty last minute but was doing ok on the ID's. It's the essays that were killing me. Strange thing is they usually don't. I just totally went blank though a little more than halfway through. This is what I did for maybe 40% of the time spent on the test:
horray for spaceships and dragons! sorry...but they're just way cooler than Neoclassicism. Take THAT David!
I also kept doodling myself on the exam booklet doing things like stabbing myself in the head with a pencil and hanging myself at the end of it. They were kinda funny actually...I hope my professor doesn't have me call some help hotline.
Hrm...well at least I'm going to go see Bill Plympton's Hair High tonight and hang out with some cool peeps. Maybe that'll cheer me up. Maybe.
Sunday, October 15, 2006
Website Blues
So, sorry if you guys ran smack dead into this but the website is down for a bit until I pay for more bandwidth. Aye be a poor college student and hafta scrape me together a few dubloons to get it back up for this month. Hopefully this will be soon. Peace.
Friday, October 13, 2006
Agony and Torture!
i finally get in the mood to start animating...with all my new gear...and i can't find my pegbar. anywhere.
=(
=(
Theatre Jessica presents....
...some youtube favorites. On friday the 13th waaauuughhhdsljfkdifoda! =D
and of course, footage of a 99 year old master. he'll kick all yer arses.
and of course, footage of a 99 year old master. he'll kick all yer arses.
Thursday, October 12, 2006
Too tired right now...
...so....really I've just been too tired/busy/lazy to really keep up with updates on here, what I've been drawing, etc. But I did get to build my desk finally last night to put on the most beautiful hand-crafted animation table made for me:
haha drawing in progress up there ^
Keep in mind, I did NOT make the piece on top. Mister Lee Rubenstein's dad was wonderful enough to make one for me (with payment of course...though I feel like I robbed him for such awesome handiwork). I just build the shoddy-looking table underneath. But I'm so happy though...my very first animation disk and desk. The lightbox has now officially retired. =D
Also, Ottawa and Orlando were a blast this past month of roaming around the country. I put more accurate updates on those two trips on my portfolio website, which I finally got up and running: www.jessica-plummer.com. There's pictures too, yaaaay. Everyone likes pictures!
I've been drawing a bit...started memory sketching. I'm just...yeah, too lazy to put them up yet. Want to color them actually. Been coloring a bit.
Yay.
haha drawing in progress up there ^
Keep in mind, I did NOT make the piece on top. Mister Lee Rubenstein's dad was wonderful enough to make one for me (with payment of course...though I feel like I robbed him for such awesome handiwork). I just build the shoddy-looking table underneath. But I'm so happy though...my very first animation disk and desk. The lightbox has now officially retired. =D
Also, Ottawa and Orlando were a blast this past month of roaming around the country. I put more accurate updates on those two trips on my portfolio website, which I finally got up and running: www.jessica-plummer.com. There's pictures too, yaaaay. Everyone likes pictures!
I've been drawing a bit...started memory sketching. I'm just...yeah, too lazy to put them up yet. Want to color them actually. Been coloring a bit.
Yay.
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