Summer Sketches: Part ONE

This installment has been brought to you in part by the Posemaniac's gesture drawing app, Tom Bancroft's Character Mentor book-assignment #2, and my summer-brain. More on their way!

Back to the Grrrinnddd

First week back at CCAD has been great so far. I did a big scan of the rest of the sketches I did this summer, so I have a big post underway. Time to wipe the slate clean for a new year! This particular sketch above, though, is one I did in reaction to having my sleepy self accidentally somehow call someone way too early in the morning. I have been accidentally calling people a handful of times ever since I got my iPhone, and it is so extremely embarrassing!

This semester has me in a class I've been dying to take through the years, Character Design. We are required to keep up a blog for it (click here)(much like my Cafe Sketch blog from last fall)!

In-Class: Pixelovely Gestures

Inspiration Sketch-Overs

Original images by John Kricfalusi.

In-Class: Paperman Gestures

Roomie Ryun

This week, my roommate returned from his internship. We have a fun senior year ahead of us.
What better way to celebrate than with a quick doodle of him dancing and looking swanky?
I may have dressed him slightly differently, but he is fashionable indeed. I plan on making more sketches like this before school starts so that I can get ready for my character design class! 

Football Gorilla Guffaw!

My last update was August 5th, but I have kept busy. I first off wanted to thank everyone for giving me such a positive response to my Hardcow short, which was featured on an animation tumblr and also has over 300 views on Youtube!

I have been trying to sketch often and have a simple website in the works. With only one full week of summer left, I am trying to stay on my toes. My cousin asked me to make a quick poster design for his next comedy night event in Chicago:

 This will be the second poster I have done for these $5 events, and it's much more simplified than last time.
Be sure to check it out if you're in the area!

Hardcow - DONE!

It's finally here! It's been a long time coming (the first post about it was September of last year), but this is finally done. Summer has been good to this project (I only had this much done at the end of the semester) - it started out as a few smacked together scenes of cows dancing.

I was able to manipulate a handful of scenes in post-production/After Effects in order to make a better end result (the effect during the dance sequences, the way the cow and the pig are watching the rooster eat the boombox, etc). I could extend frames I needed more time with (for example, the first two frames of the pig were both one 1's, then pulled apart and drawn out into a longer jitter, etc). I used a bunch of fun sounds I found on freesound.org.

The idea behind this short, as mentioned at the end, to "SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL HARDCOW". Listening to a handful of local bands and making it a point to go and see a handful of local shows was one of the most memorable things from my teenage years. I was watching people in my generation essentially express themselves and putting all the time and money they could into it, regardless of their background. I wanted to make this short as a way to remind us all to embrace what type of art is happening in our backyard (or in this case, our barnyard) - everyone has to start somewhere.

The best thing about being even a small part of the local music scene's community was that you got to watch musicians grow. While I was working on this short, a band I had literally watched play in a BARN (how fitting) back when I was a sophomore in high school got signed and went out on a tour. Another crazy thing happened while working on this short: I met a guy at a mutual friend's house who, turns out, had also been a part of the local music scene for a handful of years. I was in need of finding music for my cow to dance to, and the band he was working with had the perfect song. This summer that band landed a spot to play on the Ernie Ball stage at Cleveland's Warped Tour. The way I grew up watching bands play simply because they loved it translated straight to how I want to do my own art for the same exact reason.

What's next? Revisiting my senior thesis plans.

That being said, I hope to make more cows dance in the future.