xmas animation preview

This is me being crazy. Hopefully my experiment will work and I will finish it very soon. So far this is the first frame of a snowman animation.

koopa paratroopa

A turtle-bird from my sketch book.

comp sample

This is a sketch from seeing the old spice commercial over and over while "watching my stories" on hulu. I ought to sketch more commercials I see.

I've been drawing a lot lately. It amazes me that I can now draw for at least 2 weeks in a row-well, minus weekends. It sounds kind of sad when I put it that way, but it isn't. I still have shoulder pain after a long day, but try to stretch and rest as much as possible.

I'm not going home for xmas for lack of cash. What else is new? It turns out that the amount of money that I'm owed for the past few months work is same amount I owe my landlord. So, if I had those future moneys today I could pay rent, still be broke, and let my family buy the ticket the way they had offered. I hope to pick up some more gigs over the holidays.

Poker pig

I've been playing a lot of online Texas Hold 'Em in the past week. I drew this sketch while playing. It's very much inspired by Animal Farm, as I think you can see.

8-bit bee

I really like drawing on the graph index cards. I'm curious about making a little animation on them. I may have to use the notebook size for more pixels.

Desk conversion update

2-4-2011

This is still not completely finished.

I replaced the 14" drawer slides with 12" ones. Now the keyboard tray slides all the way in allowing room for the flip door to fold up and appear like 3 separate drawers.






This a shot of the drawers before I knocked out their frames and made a facade of the fronts.

Desk conversion

I'm converting my writing desk into a computer desk. These are sketches of what it should look like once I've attached a drop-door.

Here are some pictures of my progress today.

...positioning how the closed drawer will look.

The drop-door will rest with doors tucked underneath while the board attaching them sets level with the keyboard tray. I'll add hinges after I screw the facade together. Oh, I'm cutting the wood with a jigsaw, thanks to Philip.

I've glued and stapled the drawer faces together and varnished the attaching board. Sorry, I don't know what to call these pieces. I hope it's not confusing.

Pepper Spraying Cop...my collage.

Everyone is doing it...I wanted to make one too.

Weekend Projects

A few weeks ago I started to get some freelance work outside my apartment. Somehow, doing work during the week makes me want to do domestic things on the weekend. Now, I have a sort of rule that weekends are only for house projects/exercise/relaxing and weekdays are for work, looking for work, etc. Hopefully with the separation of time I will get more things accomplished instead of feeling overwhelmed and doing nothing but watch hulu marathons.

Here is a shelf I cut to fit with a small hand saw. I nailed a block of the sawed off wood into the wall as a ledge.

Using the ledge idea I cut a canvas a stretcher in two and nailed them to the cabinet sides. The board was already cut the correct size.

This shelf has been up since summer, but I hung a mirror underneath. It pointed more downward before I added a screw at the bottom to balance it.

My big project this weekend was cutting and installing a keyboard tray to my writing desk. I had to hammer out the drawer holders. I plan to attach the drawer faces to the tray as a facade...next weekend.

commercial

This is my latest work. I drew the 2D character animation on a commercial for Flips cereal. Produced by Dancing Diablo.

Weekend stuff

I'm following a tutorial from This Old House. I really hope this project turns out right. So far I'm on step 3 of a 6 step process. Using the joint compound I found in the hallway, I'm doing the labor of fixing the bathroom ceiling myself because I'm months behind on rent. I really hope my landlord appreciates the gesture.

Before starting the ceiling project...

I handed out tangerines to NYC Marathon runners.

The day before...I took a mile run around Marcus Garvey Park with a friend. Then made tasty egg and avocado sandwiches.

Earlier this week...
I purchased this cintiq from ebay. However, it came with a serial port and another archaic cord for which I needed an adapter.

I went in search of cables but only found Celebrity Apprentice cast members, Arsenio Hall and Dee Snider. Pictures soon...

Shark

Last minute effort for a shark costume. Here's a blurry mirror pic.
...and here's the shark in the surf at sunset.

garbage video

A few nights ago I heard crackling outside my window. After hearing it a second night I decided it must be coming from the garbage cans. So, I gabbed my camera and gloves. What I found was the cutest rat.

8-bit thoughts

16bit style kitty

This is based a friend's photo of her cat. Pretty much a trace, but tried to render more pixels and colors.

My first attempt.

I tried to simplify it.

The original size.

Mario...is 30

...but today is the anniversary of Super Mario Bros. which is 26 yrs old. His first gig was that dude in Donky Kong.

My drawing isn't terribly original, but I wanted to draw Mario by hand and on graph paper, which is how the old games where animated. So here's my tribute.

Tegan and Sara

I'm playing around with another little animation. Here are T&S as very small 8-bits.

Hurricane Crab

I know Hurricane Irene has proven to be pretty serious in some places, but the weather symbol always looks like a crab to me. I hope everyone stays safe out there.

:V < 3

I know it isn't totally original to draw Pacman chasing hearts instead of ghosts. I still wanted to.



I sent the frames to a friend's phone. She used them to make this video. I think her timing is pretty good.

New Born Kitten

Totally emo kitty (;

"Launch" Illustration Friday

I decided to make something for Illustration Friday. Since I can't draw very much now I made a cut-out piece. Yet there was lot more drawing evolved than expected. I'm very proud to have cutout the tower left-handed.

Here's a pic of the lightbox.

Wednesday

I'm sitting at my writing desk. An unvarnished shelf across three open drawers serves as the keyboard and mouse tray. Goo Goo Dolls is playing on my itunes which I am listening to with large heavy gorgeous sounding headphones. I've worn them all night for fear that my subwoofer would annoy the downstairs neighbors. My office -I like to call it my office- is in the floor distinguished from the rest of the room by my bay window. Like the top of a muffin. There are three living plants in my window.

Other than no longer being the slayer of house plants, some things never change about me. In fact I can remember nights that lead into mornings like this over 15 years ago. Listening to the same music. Working all night on projects that couldn't wait until tomorrow. I had planned on sleeping. I always plan on sleeping.

My chiropractor must think I'm always hung over as I drag myself into his office and constantly forget to sign in and shy from light. The other night I entered my building behind a neighbor who chewed her face while twitching up the stairs. I believe she was jonesing. Poor woman, she seemed nice. I had a dream that my mouth started doing the same...like a crack head.

I really thought that limiting my coffee to one or none after 4pm would allow my body and mind to just pass out around midnight. Now that my files have sent there isn't much reason to be awake. I sort feel like I'm relearning to draw. I wonder how much lower my con ed would be if I slept at night? So far I've managed stay cool with a large box fan and running the AC for only a few hours at a time. Apparently an AC can raise the bill by $50 a month. Plus, both my brothers claim after going to Iraq, that your body will adapt to the heat after awhile. Ive also read that the increase in AC's over the past 50 years could be one of the many contributors for the rise in obesity. Partly, because your body burns calories to maintain its temperature and because heat makes people less likely to over eat or eat heavy foods.

This is making me tired. I think I will crawl under my pillow for a nap.

some photos

A few MJ video frames

These are a few frames from the Michael Jackson video I boarded a while back. I don't know when the video comes out.

MARKER

This is the video Jose, Gina and I made last Saturday morning for the 24 Hour Film Race.

I didn't think to document the production as we only had 3 people and few hours to shoot. Below is a picture of my video camera and slate with a couple stills.

Here is a dolly I made from PVC pipes. The camera mount wasn't very sturdy and fell off a few times. We used it in a brief shot of Gina drawing and on a slight dolly-zoom. I'm going to redesign the mount to have wheels on the outside. To tape the tracking shot of Gina walking to the Plaza, Jose pulled me on my skateboard while I held the camera...in case you wondered.

more 24 hour film stuff

This is a still frame from "Marker" a short Gina, Jose and I made over the weekend. It will play on Thursday in Brooklyn. I hope the picture looks okay on the big screen . It's shot on a free craigslist video camcorder that didn't record sound or focus on a zoom. The image above is what came out after adjusting in post. I planned to use my G9 Cannon (which I did for a few b-roll shots), but I stuck with the Camcorder because of time. The next time I enter a film race I'd like a 48 hour or longer one.

I don't remember if I have explained the rules...the contest emails a theme, a prop and action at the beginning of the race. Then you have 24 hours to come up with an idea, write, shoot, edit and upload to their site. My theme was "identity theft." My first thought was I only have one actor. The location was set before I knew my story since I wouldn't get the email until 10pm. I chose the Plaza partly because Big Business was on my mind and its close to Gina's apartment. It just happened that the tulips were in bloom which worked out perfectly.

See, that's the thing I really like about live-action. With animation I have control over everything, well as much control as I have over my hand and the medium. With live-action you have to think on your feet in a different kind of way. Such as I had planned to shoot the fountain in the background, but(could have location scouted beforehand) we found there were 12 statues veld in front of it. It would have been very distracting, so we shot the Plaza and flowers instead. Plus, I love Gina's jacket and how it looks with the tulips. I wanted her to wear her green dress, but it was much colder than than forecast.

Something I learned while editing live-action... allow action in the shot to run longer. I was creating cuts on location when I should have let her go through more than one action at a time. That was something that looks ok in a storyboard, but editing it may not work. Actually, I may be relearning things I knew in high school...my stuff was sh*t by the way, but I enjoyed making it.

Sometimes I feel like everything I make has to be good and I need to let that go. I always joke about not caring, but deep down I do. So this movie isn't perfect but I think its kind of cute.

Thanks Mom

Mom paid the 24 hour film race entry fee as my early birthday present.

I've now been playing around with the soundless video camera...trying to mimic "film" in After Effects. I still plan to use the G9 for pixelation/stopmotion, but it couldn't hurt to use two cameras.

I'm working on getting two crew members and will probably end up using them as actors too since it's nearly impossible to animate characters in such a short amount of time, but animation will still be apart of this somehow.

Here is my bootleg-I mean DIY slate made from a white 3 ring binder:

The color chart was purchased from B&H, the rest is Sharpy. Dry erase markers can be used on the plastic covering.

24 Hour Film Race

I'm contemplating entering the 24 film race, a contest in which a movie must be written, shot, edited and uploaded in 24 hours from when the theme is given.

I don't have a crew now that Jose has work. Of course I'd like a film crew team... but I don't want to show up with my G9 (see photo) and try to get everyone excited about making a movie frame by frame. This is how I plan to transition into live-action. Frame by frame with little dialog (if any) and maybe a human character. I'm not sure. I figure if the outside stuff sucks I can fall back on animating ani-jam style. That is if my arm is doing ok.

My arm has been acting up again. I'm not sure what is exactly wrong, but I will see someone about it next week. I haven't decided on a doctor or physical therapist. Either way its about 100 dollars each.

G9 Cannon. By the way- Urban Stencil and Lighthouses was shot with this.

Plus the G9 looks more film-like than my camcorder. Oh yeah, I have a mini dv camcorder that does not record sound and a 16mm Bolex that I barely know how to use. The film processing would take too long anyway. If I prepare my computer and B reel I may enter. With the exception of a few brilliant ones, most of their films are very bad...I think I'm just talking myself into it now. Speaking of bad, I'm watching Titanic II and it has made me want to write screenplays.