Merry Mimes

From the Lams

9 Car Train

With what all there is to do, the majority of my time sketching is spent on the train to work, like that's really any different from before.  It's really time to take more opportunities to be solitary, haha!

It's My Brother's Birthday Today

No one will get this except for him

Seattle Sentiments

Sorry for not updating for a while, I've had many-a-things to attend to and take care of...  Above are a few gifts I made for some friends before leaving Seattle.  Oh right, update to life... I have since moved from Seattle and have returned back to California, Bay Area to join the ranks of the infamous and reputable Double Fine Productions!  I will be animating on one of their upcoming titles which has so far (having finished my first week) been both exciting and overwhelming!  There's a lot to catch up on, but I could have not asked for more with such a delightful position and group of people to work with!  Apart from the BART strikes and looking for a place to live, it's nice to see that California sun again.  Of course, Seattle, you shall be missed as well as all the folks that remain there.  Living in the Emerald City has been such an adventurous experience, especially having started not knowing anything about the city or anybody for that matter.  I will surely visit in the near future!

Tick Tock Emerald City

Like Breaking Bad everything comes to an end eventually.  It looks like I will be leaving the beautiful city of Seattle in another two weeks and will return to Cali, back in the bay area.  A lot has been going on, I'll do a proper update about that later.  I still have plenty to do before officially leaving, but I will definitely miss it all!

But I can't wait to see every one back home again! :D

Biding

I like how that guys shirt became that lady's arm...???

 I've been pretty preoccupied lately with freelance and other miscellaneous going-ons, enjoying the last month of Seattle's summer.  I started a new animation in Flash/Photoshop which I'm slowly working on in my spare time.  I made a lot of progress this pass weekend, so maybe in another weekend or two I hope to post it!

Back It Up

So at last, I have finally developed a simple pipeline to create hand-drawn animation in Photoshop.

So it's back to the basics, the dreaded walk cycle...  I've been longing to do some hand-drawn animation.  I initially tried to do this in Flash a few months ago, but I found Flash extremely difficult to draw in (not like Photoshop at least), and I hated how Flash would vectorize every line unless the settings were turned off, but then the file would end up becoming huge!  So I did some research and found out that many animators were turning to Photoshop and producing some top-notch results.  Of course, the tools to animate were not on my version, so I had to download a trial of Photoshop Extended which has the "Timeline" feature.  I started at square one and did some initial ball bounce and stick figure jump test in order to develop a comfortable pipeline.  Then I bunkered down the pass couple weeks working on this darn thing whenever I had free time, and it made me really appreciate those guys on YouTube that produce animations more frequently... it is TIME CONSUMING!

For those curious, it is certainly not the most efficient way to do 2D animation.  You have to end up creating custom actions and shortcuts in order to make it work.  The worst thing about it is the inability to flip drawings like paper, AND the fact that you can't manually move frames, you actually have to delete and insert other frames in order to actually move other frames.  In this case, it makes blocking/timing very time consuming and tidious (but not imposible).  Some benefits of Photoshop are, of course, all the tools (move tool FTW!!!), the ease of drawing lines, and color.  Plus, if you're already fimiliar with Photoshop, it beats having to purchase and learn new software, at least doing it causally like I am.

In anycase, hand-drawn animation rules!  I would like to do some more advance pieces eventually, once I get a legit copy of the right Photoshop version.  Also got to upgrade my Bamboo tablet, its too small and my hand felt like it was going to fall off by the time I got to cleanup...  There's obviously more cleanup that can be done to rid of some of the jiggle, and it would be nice to do a shadow pass on this guy, but I think I am going to leave it alone for now and move on to a new piece.  Anyways, thanks for reading this ramble, I'm sure some of you know better ways of creating 2D animation, please let me know.

Broadway & Republican

Did some chalk art after work.  The challenge was to get this one done before the sun came down.  Again more amazing support from the local Seattlelites.  This piece is in honor of dance month here which is July supposedly.  This time I also brought a few dark pastel sticks, which helped enormously (thank you Kiriska) along side my mainly lighter-toned chalk set.

9th & Pine

So this pass weekend I finally did what I've been daydreaming about, and that was to simply create some chalk art on the streets of Seattle.

Why?  Well for two reasons: one, I wanted to try something a little different than just arting in my sketchbook or in photoshop, and two, for other folks to enjoy something random in their everyday routine.  I ordered a bunch of chalk from Eternityarts and it works very well on particular pavement, mainly the smooth pavement with as few large rock chunks.  The chalk itself come in think sticks and I only ordered a few dark tones which actually becomes a bit problematic when trying to add shadows or contrast.  I definitely need more practice with the medium, it is very similar to pastel (which I have little experience with too).  I'm glad I started with a small, simple piece, I definitely underestimated the time it takes, and I wonder now how much time it takes to do those large murals professionals create... I heard it takes hours, sometimes days.  What I enjoyed most about it was the freedom to utilize a large space, and people were extremely supportive of the idea!  I got a lot of questions to whether I was doing it for money, or if I was part of some promotion or festival, and I had a couple of people take pictures.  I tried to make it more inviting for passing folks by playing music through a portable speaker I ordered; a lot of dnace music to keep the spirits hyped!  I will definitely do more as long as it's sunny and I still have chalk left.  My goal is to eventually do a piece near Pike's Market by the end of summer.

Happy Gals, Sunny Moms, And Grumpy Dads

Got my chalk!!!!

I Can See Clearly Now the Rain Is Gone

Supposedly according to the locals (the veteran locals that is), summer starts the day after the 4th.  Maybe all the fireworks scare the clouds away or puncture a hole in the troposphere.  In any case, the sunshine is quite lovely!

Heatwave! Oven Apartment!

...after eating corn for dinner...

It's been hot... but plenty going on last weekend.  Had the pleasure of seeing Seattle's Pride and enjoying the outdoors kayaking and sketching.  My apartment's super stuffy when I get back from work, so lately I've been retreating to cafes to "chill" where I've been getting a lot of drawing and pondering done.

Recovering

Actually, it's my Mom's birthday today, haha!

Twinsies

Visit my new Tumblr Page

 

Actually, I'll be posting the same content to this blog and the tumblr, I just wanted to be part of the cool kids.  But I'm enjoying the tumblr feeds that are available to follow, learning new things everyday.

Finally drew that damn Space Needle

 Also got tired of drawing people sitting with their iPhones on the bus, so went out to sketch during ever-inevitable-upcoming Seattle sunny weekends.  It is extremely beautiful here, and I've had the opportunity to go on some nice hikes, go canoeing and kayaking.  I had the chance to attend several screenings of the Seattle Intl Film Festival from May 16 - June 9.  Like any festival there were a handful of good/mediocre/not-so-good movies.  The most interesting films were the documentaries and Monsters University.

Cafe Cruisin'

Do It Anyways

Couch & Potatoes, the stop-motion film I made with Eunsoo, has been selected as a National Finalist for the 40th Student Academy Awards!  This nomination is a humble and honorary surprise.  What a journey it's been for the short little film, we had no idea it would ever amount to this kind of recognition.  I can still remember the first conversation we had about it, just to do something challenging for fun, and being inspired by all of our fellow schoolmates who had also directed their own self-initiated short films, a couple of which I had the pleasure of working with them on.  And what an honor to finally represent SJSU's Animation/Illustration program!  It's such a good program and it deserves to be recognized as such.  This post is a shout out to all its wonderful members!

Purp and Yella

I took a break from freelance work and started playing around more in Photoshop, and this beauty and the beast happened.  Also continuing to perfect the Flash pipeline for hand-drawn animation.  Stay tuned...

Roots

Recently I've been able to finally figure out a pipeline to create some hand-drawn animation in Flash!  I'm very excited to do some fun little test since my current laptop has failed to run efficiently enough to animate in Maya.  I'm currently working and freelancing to save up for a new computer so I can once again do some 3D animation, but there nothing like getting back into 2D animation that doesn't give me the chillies... in a good way.  First, I'm going to replace my Bamboo tablet, I've been hanging on this thing for nearly 5 years now.

Chilly Fingers

PokeArt

I got Ditto for the Pokemon Charity art gallery, enough said.

To the Creator

Here is my piece for the 3rd annual Cult 28 Xmas exchange.  This year I had the pleasure of giving a gift to the coordinator herself, Ms. Kristina Wayte!  The theme this time was to create a piece based on three words which were: raven, dinosaur, liar.  Sadly there will be no gallery this time since this is the first year that all of us are not in school and everyone's so spread apart, including myself... but from what I could tell, all the pieces looked fantastic!!!

Raining Back Home

The Lams, it's like they're very happy about something.

I made this shadowbox for my family for Christmas.  Sorry for the bad photo color and lighting.