break from thesis

...actually, not really. breaks don't exist. but i do get really annoyed now and then animating the same two characters day in and day out, so i ruffed this out in about an hour last night just to loosen up and have a little fun:



it's animated in plastic animation paper, which i highly suggest all you animators check out. right now they're still working on the mac version tho, sowwie. it's a great little program right now, and i can work so fast in it that half of my thesis film is being done with its aid.

in past events, i also went to go see Meet the Robinsons on the 9th this month. i was going to write a long review on it but i've realized i've been wasting too much energy doing so. i'll just leave all of you to determine for yourselves whether it's good or not, and i'm sure many of you are familiar as to my opinion of it, but for record i gave it a rating of 6 out of 10.

i think i found the problem...

heheh. been meaning to draw this.

Run Gary Run

Some more movement for your eyes.

Because photos are phun

...and internet spelling is phunnier. i am very tired.

A night working in the studio at Pratt with yours truly and the other animation bandits, sans one (Manny) who commutes to campus.


lucky bastards at calarts with their own little cubicles have nothin' against our little room and it's wall of skulls! (note kindergarten-like colored cut-outs on walls)

my little crooked desk I obtain the use of at times.

a defaced Meet the Robinsons poster, percentage done bars (ie. guilt trip), and lists of things to do make for a grand time.

deep thinking for my tush.

scissor fight!


*ponder*ponder*

More Animation for teh Blawg

a slightly update ruff version of the first third of my thesis film, "The Packrat". Sorry there's no sound yet.

More Dinosaurs

I like to take advantage of moments where I can just sit and get a drawing out of my system...something that doesn't exhaust me and is not part of a project that requires me to think a lot. This is usually when I get to drawing dinosaurs again =).

Here's a Cryolophosaurus that I was particularly proud of how sketchy and fun it turned out.


And an unfinished sketch of a T-rex...with someone...maybe me. Is he gonna make a meal of me or am I gonna show him who's boss??

Pratt Gets Starstruck this Semester...

So we've been having an amazing array of visitors grace our campus in Brooklyn with their presence. First it was Marv Newland giving us a little retrospective of his and his company's work, then we were really blessed to have long-time artist and animator from Disney and more Dan Haskett visit through the CG department. Dan gave us an amazing (and amazingly long but much appreciated) Q and A panel and a very inspiring display of work and advice. My friend and fellow animation bandit Lee Rubenstein got a great chunk of that night audio recorded before his ipod finally died. You can check that audio out here: Dan Haskett at Pratt. The audio gets a little funky at some points but bear with it...it's quite long too...I think my question I asked about his history at working in the studios at Disney is in there somewhere too... =)

Now today we had Michael Eringis from Blue Sky Studios. He showed a very well put together presentation of not only the studio's work and specialized tech styles, but a very "geared-toward-college-animation-film-makers" pipeline example that paralleled what their studio looks for in work but also relating to our work as well. Sorry I'm not much of a picture-taker or audio recorder, or I would have more stuff to show about all these visitors!

So tomorrow (that's right, TOMORROW. Sheesh!), Disney is coming back to the campus! This time it's a different group than what we've had before visit (thank goodness), and there's supposed to be bringing some goodies...
...Oh, and reviewing portfolios. I might give it a shot and see what they think of my stuff...

A couple of the CG guys want me to design a robot for them so they can model and rig it, maybe that'll give three of us something cool to show them!

Just a Dinosaur

...that I drew the other day whilst procrastinating. That is all!

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

a things

weeeeooooouuuuu i did a new drawing of meh self.



i have beautiful friends-

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.

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.

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?

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. =)

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! =)

Mmmm tryptophan...

it's the TURKEY OF WONDAH!



have a great thanksgiving everyone! =)

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 at

www.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