FINAL - Adv. Perspective

This class was both exactly how I expected it to be, and also much much harder. The best part about the class was painting subjects that I never thought I would ever be painting. Samurai, Egypt, Greek Myth….. never thought I would ever paint something like this.

It definitely pushed me to think about creating scenes, instead of just characters, or just environments. Telling stories is what's most important. And that has only been reinforced by this class and Joko's amazing lessons. He made perspective seem so easy. The way he broke it down was so basic and clear, and it was incredibly helpful. I'll definitely be taking the lessons I learn in this class and infusing them into EVERYTHING I do from now on.

The last couple of weeks of the class, I worked on my thesis project, and I felt like I accomplished a lot.

FINAL - Urban Landscape Painting

I really feel like I've learned a lot from this class. Craig is by far one of my favorite teachers I've had here at the Academy. His style and technique is exactly where I would like to be one day.

I started this semester with only minimal oil painting experience under my belt, but I feel like I've accomplished quite a bit from painting more and more, both on location, and in class. Being surrounded by Fine Arts majors helped tremendously, I think. They bring such  unique view on creating art, that I think has permeated more own process and overall workflow.

24"x36"

I've also noticed quite a difference in how I approach my digital work. I'm noticing more confidence, and my "knowledge" of color has definitely improved. But I still have a lot of work to do.

I plan to do a whole lot more painting in the future. I'm taking Quick Studies with Craig in the Spring.

FINAL - Thesis Development

I've made a lot of progress on this thing. Where it was a semester ago, to where it is now, is, quite frankly, shocking. I'm actually pretty proud of how much I've accomplished story wise: tightening the beats, starting to see the world of The Tuner, and developing the feel and mood of the short as a whole.

Sherrie had some basic value notes on many of the beats, but overall, she thought they were really successful.

She told me to "Stop thinking, and start doing." Basically, stop trying to fiddle with the story any more, and just start completing the paintings. 

We also talked about what I'll be trying to accomplish over the break. I'll be working on my paintings..... FINALLY! And while I'm working on them, I'll be doing exploratory drawings on different props, environments and characters to further refine my knowledge of the world, and figure out what everything ACTUALLY looks like, in the scene.

I think I'm gonna land in a more painterly style than a finished, rendered look.... but we did talk about certain things like character paintings, or call-out pages for props and environments, that I could do a more polished look, or at least have call-out bubbles/swatches with the intended texture for the piece.

Overall, I'm really looking forward to the break. I feel like I have a decent-enough springboard to work from, and hopefully, by the Spring, I'll have a lot more work to put into a portfolio, and my final thesis book.

WEEK 15 - Adv. Perspective

We kept working on our Final Boards. Taking the notes we received last week, and keep developing the beats, refining, and clarifying. I basically started over on a lot of my boards, after my meeting with Isaac and Sherrie. Which is great, and daunting. 

Next week is the final Final Boards. We have to print them out on 30x40 boards, and then give a really quick pitch for our story. Still a lot of work to be done.

WEEK 14 - Urban Landscape Painting

This week, we kept working on finals and finishing up past assignments. I worked up my Slide painting, and my Nocturne painting. I thinking bot are starting to look really cool. I'll keep pushing them further, though.

Craig mentioned to me that I need to work on keeping my shadows less black and more in relation to the local color. In my Slide painting, I was going WAY too dark, WAY too fast, and cooling it off too quickly. The sand especially wasn't looking like the same sand from light side to shadow side.

WEEK 14 - Thesis Development

I think I'm starting to find a groove for the story that makes sense. It's not everything I'd like it to be, but it's something.

Sherrie liked how it was coming together. Her notes were really to the point. I love that.

I need to introduce the OVERCAST weather sooner. Make it more obvious.
For the first panel, I need to make the layout of the room and floor plan MUCH more obvious. She was very confused where he was in the scene, and which direction the light was coming through the window.
The rehearsal space has 20-foot ceilings…..
I also need to add a pocket watch beat much earlier in the sequence so that the pocket watch beat at the piano makes some sense. Right now, it's coming literally out of nowhere, and subsequently is meaningless.
When Albert is leaving Lucy at the piano, we can't tell that she's sad, or even that he's moving. She suggested he could be tipping his hat to her, which is genius. Because that's what he does to her after he saves her. Symbolism!

I've also made a change that the Blue Butterfly is now the symbol of inspiration. Albert will be literally chasing the butterfly through the streets…. and it's the blue butterfly that gets Lucy's attention and leads her to Albert. Subsequently, the color blue is the magical color.
Yellow is danger (taxis)…. Albert's color is also blue, but Lucy's is red. So, when their talents combine in the theatre, the light that pours out of the piano is in hues of purple.

Sherrie also showed me the amazing watercolors of Joseph Zbukvic. Particularly his rainy day scenes. Seriously, crazy, awesome! I'll be definitely looking to these for rainy day inspiration. Plus, when I go back to Seattle, over break, I'll be taking tons of pictures on overcast and rainy afternoons.

Isaac

My friend Isaac Orloff, who teaches the Visual Development Workshop on Mondays sat down with me this past workshop, and we hammered through a bunch of the problems I was having with my boards. I showed him the rough color boards I had "completed." I didn't feel that good about them, but I needed fresh eyes.

And in true form, he ripped them apart and helped me put them back together.

This is what I showed him. Hopefully I'll be able to make the changes we talked about to show Sherrie in time.

The best advice he gave me near the end when I showed him the color roughs, was to literally color pick scenes from films that fit the mood, or adjust the color to fit the mood I want, if I liked the lighting scheme. This was a great idea for a springboard exercise.

WEEK 14 - Adv. Perspective

This week we turned in our first versions of our Final boards. Basically just mockups of what we're thinking our pitch boards will end up looking like. This is the easy stuff for me. I love laying stuff out. It's creating enough content that really bogs me down. So this week was fun!

Most of the critique for my assignment was just nit-picky stuff on values and making the pages feel more organic. They hardly talked about the pieces themselves, which was a bummer, because that's really all I care about for this one.

Preliminary Work

Final Beats 

WEEK 13 - Urban Landscape Painting

This week we are still just working on our finals. I worked on tweaking older assignments and fixing problems that I saw. Now that they're very much dry, I figured I could easily fix some of the major perspective, and value issues I was having at the beginning of the semester. I think they're starting to come together. But there's still a lot of work to be done.

Also, I worked on a new little study:

The coolest part of class (which was unfortunately inspired by me) was when Craig showed us how to clean our brushes. I had never been taught how…. so naturally, my brushes were AWFUL! There were snickers.
But after the demo, I went home and proceeded to go through the cleaning process on ALL of my brushes, including one that was basically a brick. And……. I saved them all! Thank you Mr. Nelson!

"It's only wrong if you leave it."
- Craig Nelson

WEEK 13 - Thesis Development

My thesis is in constant flux. I feel like it's tightening up, but it's also getting looser at points. I'm definitely simplifying the story that I'm able to tell in 24 beats. I realized that I literally just don't have time to tell the nuanced story that I originally pitch at my midpoint, in only 24 beats. So I'm constantly figuring out ways to alter the story and add and reduce sections so that the story is bare bones…. but still makes sense visually on the page. 

It's an interesting process. 

WEEK 13 - Adv. Perspective

Class was CANCELLED for the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

WEEK 12 - Urban Landscape Painting

This week we simply worked on our in-class studies, and some of us started our Final Assignments.

I worked on a study for my Final. I think it turned out pretty good.

The final painting will be 24x36….. which I'm both looking forward to and dreading….. because of the size, on both accounts.

I also turned in my last assignment….. which is now two weeks late….. because of CTN, and because of a mixup with last week. Anyways…. I feel pretty okay about it… but I'll go back and do touch-ups probably before the end of the semester, and final grading.

WEEK 12 - Thesis Development

This week, we went over my thumbnails….. which are coming along nicely. I had to really bump up the values. My work is still trending on the dark side. And I find that lifting all of the values up and then pushing them slower into the darks is really helping to achieve the depth that I want.

Also, Sherrie and I really went through each thumb and made sure the compositions weren't repeating too badly. I need to add some more shots with extreme looking up angles. But she liked the rest of the development. I can't wait to start working on development for each painting. I hope that will help me to feel like I'm making more progress on my thesis in general. Because right now, I'm not feeling like I'm doing enough. Not nearly enough.

I'll be finishing my thumbs and starting color for next week.
I'm a bit behind schedule. But I push onwards!

WEEK 12 - Adv. Perspective

We are ramping up for our final boards!

We were supposed to develop 5 of the thumbs that received the most votes from our classmates, and then also develop 5 of our favorite thumbs. I combined the thumbs I was doing for Sherrie's Thesis Development class, with extra that I was planning on doing from Joko's class, and ended up with more than 10…. which is both good and bad.

I'm liking how they're turning out.

Joko's critique on them was to make sure to vary up the size of the characters from panel to panel. I need more looking down, and more looking up. So far, I have a lot of straight-on camera angles, and the story isn't feeling as dynamic as it could be. I also should have a panel of just environment, where the figures are so small, they become insignificant.

Combining size, composition, lighting, and performance ALL play into the storytelling!

Next week, is Thanksgiving. No class.

But the week after Thanksgiving, we are to prepare some mockups for our final presentation boards. Which are going to be very expensive. Like, unnecessarily so.

Joko stressed to us the importance of thinking of these boards as a body of work, rather than a collection of individual pieces. At Spring Show, your piece is judged based not he piece next to it (most likely not yours), so you need to make it stand out and stand alone. But in this instance, each piece doesn't necessarily have to be amazing on it's own. As long as it tells a story in connection to it's surrounding panels, then you've done your job.

WEEK 11 - Urban Landscape Painting

This week we took a field trip to the Legion of Honor to visit the Anders Zorn exhibit.

I was utterly fascinated by the work of Zorn. His unbelievable confidence in his technique was just thrilling to see up close. From a far, the paintings are all so tight, and detail, and finely rendered….. but as you looking at them up close….. they're nothing. It's just gobbledy-gook! It's a mess, up close. But you back up, and the picture comes together. This was very enlightening, and inspiring, and disheartening, all at the same time.

I wanted to take pictures, but I was stopped by the guards. So I purchased the catalogue for the show. It's an amazing reference for painting. And I can see Craig has been severely influenced by Zorn's work. Many of the portraits in the exhibit, I could have sworn were done by Craig. Very simile run style and technique.

This is how I wish to paint someday!

WEEK 11 - Thesis Development

This week was a little thrown off, because of CTN. But Sherrie expected that.

We briefly went over the thumbs that I had. And overall they're going in the right direction. Still way too dark. A constant problem I seem to be having.

CTN 2013!

CTNX was so amazing this year! So many great artists all in one place, and tons of inspiration to see, hear, and experience. It was both reaffirming and eye-opening in many ways. The biggest thing I took away from the expo was getting a refocus on the larger picture. When I'm in school, I tend to get bogged down by the little things (I need to focus on sketching, I need to paint more, I need to do this and that and the other thing…..), but I always seem to forget why I should be doing all of these things. And going to CTN really helped me realize the larger context of what's important, and what the industry is looking for; from me, and from everyone.

I got the amazing chance to show my portfolio to a bunch of people, including studios like LAIKA, Sony Pictures Animation Studios, Reel FX, and Blue Sky Studios. And while it was kind of a mixed bag of critiques (as was expected), the response to good overall. I feel like I'm getting closer to having a  pretty solid portfolio. And yet at the same time, I'm absolutely mystified that my work is anywhere near "on par," because I still struggle with the efficacy of my work on a daily basis. But that is to be expected, I think.

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Justin Rodrigues mentioned that a major factor is clarity of story and establishing a focal point is edge control. My work tends to lean to the looser side, and unfortunately it starts to blur together. But tightening the edges around the areas I want people to focus on, and being more confident with my strokes, will ultimately help the piece to be more effective.

Josie Seid (LAIKA) talked about getting out my "comfortable zone." And more importantly, she told me to infuse story into everything I do. Every painting should have a story, and a clear one at that.

I heard from people, that showing PROCESS in your portfolio is paramount. Studios want to be able to see that you think about your work. And showing your process, helps them to see how you think. Something Anthony Christov said (after CTN, actually) was that he doesn't like to see only finished pieces in portfolios, because he can't tell if that artist is able to be art-directed. If you show your process,  then art directors will be able to tell if you can make changes effectively, and show a creative progression in your work.

I also had an amazing portfolio review with the very talented Tyler Carter. One of the nicest guys I've had the pleasure of knowing, and I'm going to work my ass off to work with this guy one day. In his lecture I attended, he talked about the difference between activity and efficacy, when it comes to producing work. The way he described it was that having only efficacy is like walking in place; You never go anywhere. But having activity mean moving from A to B and producing work that moves you forward. And this comes from pencil mileage.

Paul Lasain talked about spoon-feeding the studios with your portfolio. Be obvious with you layouts, and make it clear what your intentions are, and what you want to accomplish. Studios assume you know how to draw and paint. What they're really interested in is what you will add to their pipeline. Can you produce art in the context of the film.

Claire Keane talke about always having sincerity in your work. If your work is honest to who you are as an artist, and as a person, then the rest will fall into place.

And the thing I heard the most, from every artist, every lecture, every workshop, literally every conversation I had with everybody…… STORY IS KING!
Story is the most important thing to focus on. Your work should be dripping with story. Without a history, your work is flat, dull, and lifeless. Giving every element you put on the page something unique about it, will help it read so much better, and really make the difference between your audience forgetting it one second later or remembering it forever.

WEEK 11 - Adv. Perspective

Unable to attend this week, because I was at CTN

We are working on our 200 thumbnails for our final project. In class, we had our classmates select which thumbs were the most visually striking, and from those decisions we are to then pick 5 of the top-voted, and another 5 of our own choosing.

I posted my thumbnails on the Adv. Perspective Facebook group…. and got a good response.

WEEK 10 - Urban Landscape Painting

Unable to attend this week. Next week we go to the Zorn exhibit at the Legion of Honor.

WEEK 10 - Thesis Development

I didn't have much to show Sherrie this week. I've been prepping for CTN quite a bit…. and she totally understood. Which I was relieved to discover…. because I was super worried.

I had her look over my portfolio one last time…. and she gave me the go ahead on a lot of the pieces. So stoked! She also gave me so amazing compliments….. that my work is starting to look confident… and professional…. and that I've come a long way since last year. This is an amazing esteem boost for me right now. I've been very stressed over CTN and getting my portfolio…. and future career… in order, and to hear (from Sherrie, no less) that I'm doing well, and I shouldn't be worried at CTN…… totally awesome.

CTN…. here I come!