ben hu - artwork

Undersea Adventure

2011-04-21T17:06:00.000-04:00

A little painting I made. Been interested in scale lately.

Caramel Soup

2011-03-31T21:44:00.000-04:00

The Caramel Soup music video is finally live.

I find the music really catchy - even after listening to it hundreds of times. I'm pretty happy with the visuals we created too. The riff on adventuring worked out well and I think we kicked it up a notch on the overall quality.

Finished the video itself a while ago but they added the video challenge now. Answer a few simple questions about the video and win a free prize for your pet's room. A snazzy Meso-American themed wallpaper. Nate Palmer made it.

Ganz isn't much for screen credits so here's a summary. Sorry if I forgot or misattributed anything.

Storyboards and Concepts -Ben Hu
Character (and wall painting) posing and animation - Jenn Kerr, Ben Hu
FX animation (dust, fire, dynamic lighting, caramel) - Mitch Manzer
Backgrounds - Anna Li, Luke Ryckman, Rocco Commisso, Ben Hu
Assembly and compositing - Jenn Kerr, Ben Hu

Lyrics - Howard Ganz and Christian McKibbin.
Music - Christian McKibbin. Not sure of the vocals.

Hope you like it.

City Diner

2011-03-07T01:54:00.003-05:00

Location,location, location.

Sketch experiment with Toon Boom and Photoshop.

Winter sketch

2011-03-07T00:47:00.001-05:00

Messing around with a simple mood piece in Illustrator.

Tiger Tiger revisited

2011-03-06T21:16:00.000-05:00

A lot of the detail goes un-noticed in the Youtube video.

Here are a few stills and some concept art.

Final vector backgrounds, day and night versions. Illustrator plus photoshop.

My original color concepts/rough layouts for the above. Photoshop.

Nightime approach.

Transformed for the Dance Party

(minus animated elements like the speakers, strobes, and floods)

Sun's up. Party's over.

Got another epic video in temple ruins coming soon.

Homework Hydra Detail

2011-03-06T21:02:00.001-05:00

A still from the film.

The full pan, minus character and overlay, showing kid's personality.
Click to enlarge.

Monster Bash ft. the Graveful Dead

2011-03-06T21:00:00.000-05:00

Promo poster layout I made for our group film. Surprised I hadn't posted this earlier.

oldies

2011-03-06T20:55:00.000-05:00

Happy Birthday

2011-03-03T19:19:00.001-05:00

Even busier since the last post....

I got married. :) It's pretty awesome.

This little sketch wasn't for any recent birthday, I made this quite a while ago but just found it again... moving, changing computers, etc... you know how it goes.

Tiger Tiger

2010-06-19T00:44:00.000-04:00

I've been VERY busy since the last post update.

I got engaged :)

I also directed the following music video at work.

(Posted by Ganz. Flash version available on the Webkinz site.)

Thanks to the very talented Stephen Bennett and James Stewart who put in many long hours animating, and to the numerous others who helped out. Thanks also to my boss, Dan Philips, for championing the new visuals and giving us the resources we needed to make this happen. Credits to come, and notes, if permitted.

P.S. I do not own any rights of any sort to this work, my employer owns all those. Now go buy a Webkinz and keep me employed :)

Western

2010-03-08T18:31:00.000-05:00

A layout/painting I made last week. Another experiment in style.

Valentine's Day

2010-02-20T13:31:00.011-05:00

A Valentine's Day e-card. It's personalized, but you might like it anyways. It has music.

Originally 1280x720. Made it last week but it was a rather convoluted path to embed the swf. It took more time to get the embedding to work right than to animate and paint it. For those interested, I'll post the how-to in the comments.

Skating

2010-02-04T23:33:00.001-05:00

just trying out a different style. hope u like it.

Beach

2010-02-03T00:08:00.001-05:00

I was going to go cafe drawing but I painted this instead.

Go Fly a Kite

2010-01-20T08:12:00.005-05:00

Enjoy :)

Also, Rachel posted her Sheridan short film Junko Jango. Go check it out.

edit: replaced b&w version with sepia version

for Mom

2010-01-17T15:47:00.005-05:00

From last year. Looks better printed and framed but since only a few relatives have seen it so far, I thought I'd post it. Rachel advised on the autumn colors, it was originally more of a summer scheme. Each family member is depicted as their Chinese zodiac animal, though not caricatured. Still if you know us, you can probably figure out who's who even without knowing our birth years.

Homework Hydra

2009-11-18T20:35:00.009-05:00

Homework Hydra, May 2009. My Sheridan BAA Animation 4th year thesis film. Hand-drawn in Flash with a tablet and Cintiq (for cleanup). Music by Brendan McElroy.

Now that there are no more potential public screenings for it, I thought I'd post it online. Hope you like it.

I also realized that I never linked to the complete short film we did in 3rd year. Here it is. Enjoy!

Bloor Screening

2009-06-03T23:09:00.003-04:00

If you're in the Toronto area next Tues or Wed, check out some great animated short films screening at the Bloor Cinema (Bathurst and Bloor) for only five bucks. That's Tuesday June 9th at 7 pm and Wednesday June 10 at 9:30pm.

Original link to screening info here.

List of films screened here.

There's some great stuff screening, and I'm not just saying that because mine and Rachel's films are there. Yes, many of these great films were done by good friends but there are some real gems by people that I don't personally know. I'm not the only one to like these films either - some of these films are award winners, including Toronto's International Film Festival.

You can't go wrong for the price either, more entertainment for $5 than you'd get from many $12 "features".

Mark Mayerson's the man to thank for making this screening possible. He's put together a little trailer too.

I'll be there at least one of those nights. Come say hi.

Demo Reel 2009

2009-05-16T15:00:00.003-04:00

"Latest" demo reel. Just animation this time. I took the advice of putting whole sequences in, rather than just short clips, so the viewer can get a better sense of the storytelling in the animation even if it slows the overall pace.

My film is fully complete now, but I'm not sure if I can show the whole film online yet if I'm sending it to festivals. There are some clips from it in the demo reel that give a sense of what it's like. Hope you enjoy. The rest of the clips are mostly from last year's film and all TV work has aired. Flash, ToonBoom, and paper.

It was a hectic, but good year. Hard work, but lots of fun too. I'll miss everyone. :( Keep in touch!

Flipbook Page/Postcard

2009-03-18T13:18:00.004-04:00

Could be better but I'm pretty happy with this one. Besides, spent too much time on it to hide it away and it's already in the flipbook. :) Thanks Chalky, BK, Loben, Gman, AA, Chechik, and everyone else for their feedback and making this better.

some older stuff

2009-02-15T14:05:00.005-05:00

Back in my teens, Spidey was my favourite hero. My brother and I used to collect all the Spidey titles until the storylines got ridiculous with the clones and too hard to follow without buying all the crossovers.

Some people on the train last December.
A partly painted lifedrawing from long ago - just to see how much anatomy I remembered without looking anything up.

More Monsters

2009-01-03T00:40:00.002-05:00

Two from the life drawing "sketches" pages. Fixed them up a bit based on Bobby's review at the end of the term. The feedback was really helpful.

Last Lifedrawing Portfolio

2008-12-23T17:36:00.004-05:00

hmm... the top three look a lot more yellow than I thought (using a different monitor now than when I originally scanned)

Royal Winter Fair Animals 2008

2008-12-10T00:14:00.003-05:00

3 pages from the Royal Winter Fair, November 12, 2008. Used the second page for my portfolio.

Monster Tourist

2008-10-25T11:15:00.001-04:00

i think these are the brightest colours i've ever used in my life. what do you think? does it work?

Some Flash Sketches

2008-10-22T20:12:00.001-04:00

Sketched in Flash but some Photoshop work needed for the first. The gradient on the hog monster rendered really poorly out of Flash. It was all "liney". Also, I know the kid sketch is pretty bad... he's just there for scale.

Some Concept Sketches

2008-10-22T15:02:00.000-04:00

Concept Sketches for my 4th Year film. It's about a kid procrastinating from his homework and the various monsters who try to motivate him. Top one is a cleanup test in Flash. Not sure about how well two-toning will work.

2008 Life Drawing Midterm Portfolio

2008-10-20T19:45:00.003-04:00

I feel like I've learned a lot about tones and cast shadows. Hope it shows.

Early 2008 Life Drawings

2008-10-20T19:17:00.004-04:00

Learning more this year about life drawing, partly due to the feedback from Bobby's Schoolism videos, and partly because I've been spending more time on it than last year. Fourth year is busy, but the schedules are flexible so I'm actually able to do more. Also I'm not commuting this year, so that helps.

Last Day

2008-08-08T18:48:00.004-04:00

That's me, sitting at my compewter revising animations for Kid vs Kat. Drawn by the very talented May Wa Leng!

Where's the Beef?

2008-07-19T14:43:00.006-04:00

A piece I did for our Studio's art show a few weeks ago.
It had two titles. The current title was something of a tribute to that classic series of Wendy's commercials from the 80's. "Where's the Beef" video here.

However, the original title was "Please sir, I want some more." which I thought was a fairly well-known line from a very well-known story, but while many people did associate the image with the story, I was surprised to discover that only a few recognized the line.

Robot Overkill

2008-04-25T00:02:00.003-04:00

Scene 72 from our group film. It was fun to make. And much quicker to do than the wolf animation (~2 days to rough, clean, color, and comp).

Wolfman and Frank get a beat down

2008-04-24T19:22:00.001-04:00

Our 3rd year Group Film "Monster Bash" turned out better than expected, and the team came together really well in the end. Hard work, but fun. The other 3rd year films turned out really well too. Good job everyone!

These are scenes 51-64. This film has consumed most of my waking hours these past four months (and stolen many sleeping hours too). I've got a few other scenes I may post later but these are the bulk of it.

It's mainly my work (animation, layout, design) but I had a some great help from Trevor (character closing and coloring), Garrett (BG painting, robot painting), Martin (Compositing and lighting), Alvin (Compositing and lighting) and Alex G (design). The Sheridan faculty gave a lot of good feedback and advice too (Natalie, DQ, Komza, and Tony). The 3rd Yr group film experience often gets a bad rap but I've learned a lot this year, and despite the stress and frustrations, it was a really good experience. It's what you make of it.

And no, the bike isn't 3d. It's just drawn in Flash. Actually most of this is hand-drawn full animation (on 2's) with selected use of symbols for efficiency (though most folks won't notice unless going frame by frame).

Watercolour Costume Life Drawin

2008-04-12T17:51:00.005-04:00

Been pretty busy with the film but it's been too long since I posted and since I had these scanned already, here's some costume life drawings from my final portfolio.

Some short poses (2-3 min)

Some longer poses (5-15min)

I like short poses more because the models tend to take more dynamic poses. Watercolour was a fun new thing to try. I hope to do more once I finish the rest of my schoolwork.

Nerd Scientist & Greaser Wolfman Roughs

2008-03-01T17:36:00.007-05:00

Some character roughs, poses, and revisions from a few weeks ago. Wanted to make them more cartoony and have stronger, simpler lines.

Group Film BG Paint Tests

2008-02-17T06:16:00.005-05:00

Just some test BG paintings in Flash to explore some concepts for the group film. These are not final finished works.

Mostly flat but with some gradient and blur tests for the lights. Next ones will be texture tests.

Besides the workbook, I've been working on more character designs as well as animation. Hope to post some of that soon too.

Group Film Story Reel

2008-01-31T23:56:00.001-05:00

It's been a while since I last posted. Mostly I've been very busy working on this. Hope you enjoy it.

Our group basically junked what we had at the end of last term because it wasn't working as well as we wanted. We ruthlessly cut everything until we had it down to just one basic idea. Then we rebuilt it all in less than three weeks*.

On Thursday January 10th, Alex G, Jinhee, and myself took the one idea and came up with the new premise. Then Jinhee, Martin, and myself storyboarded it several times with the first thumb reel by the 16th. Jinhee, Alvin, and myself cut the final reel and added the latest sounds on the 29th, but Martin, Andrew, Laura, and Mena contributed a lot on earlier versions.

The rest of the people were mostly on the design team, please see our group film blog for some samples.

*It's arguable that we shouldn't discount all the work we did last semester; after all, it told us what direction not to go.

Sheridan Online Portfolio

2007-12-13T16:29:00.000-05:00

One from my most recent Life Drawing Portfolio:

One possible design for our group film ghost.

Page out of my sketchbook from Hallowe'en.

Lots more stuff here:

http://animation.sheridanc.on.ca/portfolio/Internship/hub/

Ghost Story Mood & Design

2007-10-24T20:30:00.000-04:00

Ghost Story Beat Boards

2007-10-23T20:21:00.000-04:00

Selected beat boards for our group film about a ghost and a girl. It's not Casper.

Bikers

2007-10-22T19:54:00.000-04:00

Biker Beer Battle

2007-10-21T19:37:00.001-04:00

Setup, Conflict, Climax, and Resolution for my 30 second Action Analysis short film. The pose for the bandanna guy in 3 could be a lot better but I think it's still relatively clear what's happening.

Below are some quick rough exploration sketches trying to capture the character, attitude, and emotion of these bikers. Not great drawings, but I had a lot of fun doing these.

Wayside Episodes Now Airing on Teletoon

2007-10-20T15:54:00.000-04:00

It's been a long time since my last post here - busy summer and first seven weeks of school. Now with reading week, I finally had time to watch some TV today and I was happily surprised to see one of the Wayside episodes I worked on being aired on Teletoon.

I only caught the last few minutes of "Free Stewy" so I missed my octopus scene but I did see the ones with Miss Mush and the girls. Even if it's not spectacular, just a few scenes lasting less than a minute, there's something really cool about seeing your own work being broadcast on TV.

The show airs on Teletoon, Saturdays at 2:30 pm. Enjoy!

Wayside at Mercury

2007-06-28T14:26:00.000-04:00

This is where I'm working this summer. Mercury Filmworks. A bunch of recent Sheridan grads are working there too. Plus a whole lot of Algonquin people... We're all animating using Toon Boom Harmony. So far, so good. I'll post more later, though obviously I can't say anything specific about what we're working on until the season airs. But this is what's officially released already, so check it out. Wayside clips on Nickelodeon's website. Extreme poses, wacky humour, lots of fun!

Demo Reel 2007

2007-06-02T10:49:00.000-04:00

Most of it is already on this site, now it's just all condensed into one reel. Most clips were cropped. Nothing the same as my first reel from last year except for the forest and farm layouts. Could have subbed in more recent layouts but they were thematically limited and I wanted more variation. The diagonal pan turned out well though.

After way too many crashes by Premiere, I finally got a working render at an uploadable file size with no frozen images, stutters, or dropped frames. And no random noise from youtube either. So this version is surprisingly pleasantly close to what I intended.

Your thoughts?

Inconceivable!

2007-04-30T14:34:00.000-04:00

Muzzle and Beak Synch Clean Up. I posted an earlier version of just the muzzle promising a completed version with the beak later, so here it is.

MAYA Head Rotation

2007-04-30T14:27:00.000-04:00

Modeled in Maya 7.

A better res still.

Office Personalities

2007-04-30T14:06:00.000-04:00

These aren't cafe drawings, I based these designs off my own visual stereotypes for sixteen different office personalities. In random order, they are:
(1) Boss, (2) pathetic office manager, (3) office nerd, (4) IT geek, (5) lecherous sales manager, (6) brash over-confident self-styled ladies man, (7) annoying overly cheerful one, (8) fearsome sour secretary, (9) anarchist street kid panhandling outside office building, (10) sweet homespun intern, (11) irritable goth intern, (12) quiet office beauty, (13) token black best buddy, (14) smiling on the outside salesperson who is really a nervous wreck, (15) nonconformist who is too intelligent to fire, and (16) salesperson stuck with a high school attitude.
Match 'em up! Let's see if I was able to communicate those personalities clearly.

Character Designs & Sketches

2007-04-30T13:57:00.000-04:00

The ink on the croc was watersoluble. It bled to give the yellow watercolor a nice greenish tinge.

These ape superheroes (or villains) were loosely based off the zoo sketches. Chimp, Mandrill, and Orangutan. I included all these as well as part of the Dreamworks portfolio.

Dreamworks Sketches

2007-04-30T13:42:00.000-04:00

Ink and watercolor. The Green Bean Cafe in downtown Oakville. Nice place but too pricey for me. A bit dark too and not enough people to draw.

Oakville Place.

Not cafe drawing, more like life drawings since they were 5 minute costumed poses, but from Emslie's character class.

I included all the above in the Dreamworks Scholarship portfolio. Ten of us were nominated this year. The others were Chris Darnbrough, Brock Gallagher, Bryan Huff, Sooji Lee, Sophia, Rory Madge, Tapan, Mark Sperber, and Pawel Spzytko... hope I spelled them correctly.

Experimental Life Drawing

2007-04-30T13:38:00.000-04:00

Two figure tonal gesture, total 5 min.

Drapery and tonal experiments, 20 min each.

Gestures that didn't make it

2007-04-30T13:33:00.000-04:00

These gestures didn't make it into the portfolio for various reasons, but I still like their overall feeling.

Monsters

2007-04-30T13:23:00.000-04:00

Some life drawing monsters. The idea was to morph the model into a non-human creature but still maintain the original pose. The pig is a little stiff but I like the tone. My better drawings are up on the wall in the Animation wing so I wont' get them back anytime soon. I do have photos of them but no access to them until mid-summer. Oh well.

Yr 2 Sem 2 Life Drawing Portfolio II

2007-04-30T13:16:00.000-04:00

10 minute drapery, and then three 5 minute tonals. Last one on some very rough paper. I included the first three in the Dreamworks portfolio.

Yr 2 Sem 2 Life Drawing Portfolio

2007-04-30T13:07:00.000-04:00

Gestures & some drapery for the final Yr 2 portfolio. Got better grades than I expected so I decided to include the first and third here in the Dreamworks scholarship portfolio.

Digital Paintings, Western Theme

2007-04-30T12:55:00.000-04:00

Digital painting of a layout for my Yo-Yo leica reel story. I'm thinking of actually turning that leica into a finished film, so I've been holding off posting it so I can post them together. Both of these I included in the Dreamworks scholarship portfolio.

Experimental digital painting for an animation background. Experimental because there was no linework or roughs, I just went at it. Set up for the beak and muzzle animation. Somewhat similar staging to the Princess Bride's Cliffs of Insanity, which is where the original audio is taken from.

Classroom heads

2007-04-30T12:49:00.000-04:00

Cafe drawing. Can't remember why but some third years were in the class that day too.

Lollipop Layout

2007-04-30T12:29:00.000-04:00

Gouache. A little old, it's from 2006. I wanted practice designing a layout for someone else (Rachel's Lollipop story) and working under those constraints. It was good experience designing to support a scene, maintain continuity, and match a style.

Yearbook/Flipbook Page

2007-03-24T14:30:00.000-04:00

Animation students from all years are putting in pages for the flipbook or yearbook to be distributed to industry. As far as I know, only about half of our year decided to put in a page. 2nd yrs only get black and white but I'll repost some of these in colour. Anyway, here's my finished page. Hope you like it.

And here's an older rushed one. I didn't like it so when I found out the deadline was extended, I made the one above.

The Zoo (Part 1)

2007-03-24T14:24:00.000-04:00

I did scan a few other zoo drawings but left them at school so for now, this is all I've got. I'll post the rest later.

Carriage Layout

2007-03-24T14:22:00.000-04:00

The 3/4 front view of a medieval carriage, part of a Layout class design pack. The other views are less interesting.

Tonal Life Drawing

2007-03-24T14:07:00.000-04:00

These first two (3, 5) in orange conte are from before our class on tone and shading. The black conte costume drawing is after Brian's lesson. It's also a much longer drawing (20).

This is an old leftover one from last semester just for fun. Not related to the above tonals at all, just wanted to post it somewhere.

Inigo the Lion Muzzle Synch

2007-03-19T11:35:00.000-04:00

*NOTE: The Youtube conversion isn't friendly for any of these past 4 videos. There's some weird black pixels dancing around and the audio is off timing. You'll just have to take my word for it that the synchs really were originally "synched". Still, it's clear enough to get the idea across.

Muzzle Synch Rough Animation. It's pretty subtle movement but it's to contrast with the more dramatic beak character, which will be animated soon. Audio is from the classic movie, the Princess Bride.

Wicked Witch Lip Synch

2007-03-19T11:33:00.001-04:00

The first full-body lip-synch assignment of the year.

Some very rough drawings as I decided on the witch character's look.

Wave Boat Sack & Walk Run Mugging

2007-03-19T11:30:00.000-04:00

Wave Boat Sack Animation. The first assignment from first semester.

The first time I uploaded it as a QT mov file and Youtube couldn't convert it. I've re-uploaded it as an AVI, which works, but the audio was lost (originally done in Protools, which exports as QT, not AVI). Sorry.

Here's the Walk-Run Interaction Assignment from the middle of last term as well. Rough Animation for the walks plus key poses for the interaction.

Semester 1 Life Drawing Folio

2007-03-19T11:12:00.000-04:00

Here are the others from the end of first term's portfolio.

First one up for 2007

2007-01-31T10:31:00.000-05:00

Now that we're in the new wing, teachers have now put up new life drawings in the display cases. Brain took two of mine but only one made it up. Not my favourite and certainly not very elegant but it was a fairly difficult foreshortened pose.

I'm honoured to be included in the display case with such better artists. I must admit I've been concentrating on a lot of other things besides life drawing so I'm happy to know I haven't lost the touch. Well, according to Brian anyway. You be the judge.

Edit: These portfolio pieces didn't make it to the wall.

Parade

2007-01-07T23:35:00.000-05:00

There's a wise saying that goes something like this: If you're still talking about what you did yesterday (last week, last month, last year)... you're not doing much today.

I'm still somewhere in November but I'll get it up to date sooner or later. But here's something new - I actually did something not school related. I just painted these random characters for fun (and to use up old dried paint on the palette).

Royal Winter Fair 2006 - Cavies & Fat Pig

2006-12-22T17:49:00.000-05:00

Cavies are guineau pigs. They pretty much just look like cute little puff balls. There's more than twenty kinds, but I only drew three. And here's a fat pig to end it off.

Royal Winter Fair 2006 - Piggies!

2006-12-22T17:41:00.000-05:00

I think pigs are really fun animals and they've got a lot of potential. Too bad they just lie around in the same pose all day. And piglets move almost as much as chickens, even when sleeping they quiver. But so cute.

Tried to see if I could convert to line only. I think it'd be better if the lines were more continuous.

Royal Winter Fair 2006 - Sheep, goats, alpacas

2006-12-22T17:18:00.000-05:00

A bit of Weatherly influence on the above. If you haven't got his book yet, get it. It's very good. Brian really liked this one, said it had nice economy of line. I think a few more lines on the body would've given it much more volume. Oh well.

No, she's not levitating the sheep on the right, it was on a small metal platform that I didn't draw in.

Royal Winter Fair 2006 - Caricatured Animals

2006-12-22T17:10:00.000-05:00

Llamas (or were they alpacas?) and goats are so much easier to caricature than bulls or cows.

Royal Winter Fair 2006 - Bulls

2006-12-22T17:02:00.000-05:00

Tried to stay away from drawing the same way I did last year. It's hard not blocking-in or working big to small, but I think it turned out okay. Grease pencil.

Royal Winter Fair 2006 - Cows

2006-12-22T16:53:00.000-05:00

Chickens rarely stay still but cows hardly move at all. Cows are more like limited animation, where just the jaw moves and the rest of the cow is a held cel. This year, I tried a few drawings "straight ahead" without really blocking it in. Kinda shows.

Royal Winter Fair 2006 - Chickens & Caricatures

2006-12-22T16:46:00.000-05:00

The trip was mostly for life drawing but we were also supposed to take a more caricatured approach for character class too. Here's some caricatures and straight gestures of "grown" chickens... at 44 days old!

And some more chicks... I messed up the marker stuff, that last chick looks kinda burnt. Crispy wings anyone?

Royal Winter Fair 2006 - Chicks

2006-12-22T16:31:00.000-05:00

I always have fun at the Royal Winter Fair. I tend to go overboard, spending the whole day there last year and this year. This year, I focused on two things: trying different tools and trying to capture the animal as quickly as possible (so as not to get too attached to any single drawing). That resulted in a lot of throwaways (about 80 pages worth) ... so next year I think I'll change my tactics and take my time. Less is more, right? :)

Here are some of the original pages before putting them together to hand in. Chicks move too fast. Brush pen + marker, Grease pencil, Layout pencil.

Contrasting Characters

2006-12-21T00:19:00.000-05:00

Here are the pose and turnaround sheets (with a fancy schmancy line added) for my Contrasting Characters assignment. My goal here was to make much more appealing, entertaining characters - with real distinct personality - without flattening out the characters too much. Whether I succeeded or not, well, you decide.

As always, I see quite a number of things to improve on, but I'm pretty happy with it and of all the assignments done this term, I'm probably proudest of this one.

Weight Lift & Toss Character Design

2006-12-21T00:13:00.000-05:00

Here are the pose and turnaround sheets for my Weight Lift and Toss character design. Very "sculptural" as Emslie said, but I definitely felt it was missing something... something I tried very hard to achieve in my next assignment (Contrasting Characters). Check my next post and tell me if you think I "got it".

Yeah, I know. This is also old work... I'll try posting something more recent soon.

Superman Animated Series Seasons 1-3

2006-12-20T13:44:00.000-05:00

Not really an art post, but I just got this 3 season set for only 30 bucks plus tax. Ten bucks for each entire season of 18 episodes? I think that's a really good deal and it's still on sale.

Get it from the Best Buy Website... if you go to the actual store, it's 52 plus tax. I ordered online with a store pickup and they gave me the internet price.

Here's a link.

Characters in Color

2006-12-19T22:05:00.000-05:00

That was a crazy last month of school there... but I'm home for the holidays and now with regular internet access and some actual free time, I can update! Rachel was just saying (well, actually about a month ago) that my blog needs more colour... and looking back, yep! it sure does! So here's a bit to start off.These were done as concepts for our Contrasting Characters assignment.

Cafe Drawings and in Class Stuff

2006-11-17T23:38:00.000-05:00

I have a new favourite pencil. General's Layout Extra Black. Flows almost as smoothly as ebony, but much more erasable.

Cafe Drawings from Oakville Place Food Court...

A mixed page of the above plus a few classmates.

Elephant Day

2006-11-17T22:26:00.000-05:00

Yes... I realize this was almost a month ago. I'm a little behind in posting. :) This is Limba, an Indian elephant. I got to feed her jellybeans. It's so cool. She sucks up the jellybeans into her trunk and then fires them into her mouth. Her skin is rough and warm, only the tip of the trunk (nostrils) are moist, otherwise her skin feels pretty dry.

Top two done with a conte pencil and the bottom with col-erase.

Napkin drawing

2006-11-17T22:22:00.000-05:00

At Monaghan's. I drew the top one. Ken drew the bottom one. I'm not posting it because it's good, but because it's a "real" cafe drawing... spontaneous with whatever's there. No sketchbook or fancy pens or pencils. This was some time back in October.

ROM Bones

2006-11-12T02:13:00.000-05:00

Animal skeletons from the ROM bone room (not open to the general public). The room was so small and packed that we had to split into three groups, each with only about two hours to draw. The assignment was to do a 5 minute sketch followed by a longer study from a different angle. I've got three 5-10 minutes sketches and 2 longer studies. I completed one later using my block-in and photo reference I took.

Storyboard Concepts

2006-11-12T02:02:00.000-05:00

Some concept art for my Western showdown story in John Williamson's class. Got carried away with that ebony pencil.

Tried to contrast the laid-back nature of the hero with the uptight villain. Villain reminds me a bit of Lee Van Cleef from the Sergio Leone/Clint Eastwood westerns. Didn't realize it until afterwards. Funny how certain stereotypes of bad guys just stick in your mind without you even knowing it.

An alternate bigger and tougher villain, but not as quick and sleek looking. I decided to stick with the original since he seems more dangerous. This one kindof reminds me of Angel (Alfred Molina) from Maverick. Another subconscious influence.

Just some townsfolk.

Cafe Drawings

2006-11-12T01:57:00.000-05:00

Oakville Place Food Court.

These girls were drawing us so we drew them. One was in fundies, the other illustration.

Discovering Ebony

2006-11-12T01:53:00.000-05:00

My first drawing with the Ebony pencil. I really like the flow.

1st Painting of Yr 2

2006-11-12T01:49:00.000-05:00

Gouache on watercolour paper. Last of my Cotman block from last year but the bookstore has a great sale on them for 14 bucks (20 sheets, 10"x14"). That's about ten bucks less than Loomis or Curry's or Wallack's. Based on a line art template given to us by our painting teacher. I only added some background spires and the clouds.

"Pushing" Life Drawing

2006-11-12T01:43:00.000-05:00

Started to "push" my life drawing a bit. Still have to work on my accuracy but thought it would be fun to loosen up. Pushed the pose in the 1m and gave the 2m a big pot belly.

I think these are somewhere around late September early October.

More Life Drawing...

2006-11-12T01:36:00.000-05:00

Trying new and different ways of drawing and slowly getting myself back on track...

This is either a 30s or a 1m, followed by 2m's.

Desk Area Decorations

2006-11-12T01:30:00.000-05:00

My desk is in the small "back alley" room they call the "Fishbowl". It was pretty bare at the start of the year and I don't have any posters with me so I drew a few things to decorate.

Yeah I know his hands/hooves are messed up but I still like the colours. NuPastel on newsprint.

This one is for Rachel's desk. The newsprint is getting really old and yellow. The photo had a bit of greenish tinge to it so I just amped that up since she likes green anyway.

First Life Drawing of Year 2

2006-11-12T01:18:00.000-05:00

Pretty rusty... I didn't do any life drawing over the summer.

People tell me they really like the 30 (above), but it's my least favourite. No one really likes the 2 minute blind one (below), but I do. Brian had us all try these different exercises including blind drawing, memory drawing, and left-hand (or other hand) drawing. It's pretty cool but unfair to mark us based on something we've never done... and giving us only 2 tries.

I love these ten second dwgs... never drew so fast before. The first dozen were crap but I got my rhythm by the last few.

Summer 2006 Concepts continued...

2006-11-12T01:12:00.000-05:00

Here are a few more pages. I actually finished half a leica reel for this film but ran out of time and motivation. The leica is in Flash, which started out fun but ended up a bit of a drag. I like computers but really prefer drawing on real paper. I may pick this idea up again later.

Summer 2006 Concepts

2006-11-12T00:55:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the long absence in posting. I'm posting a bunch of stuff now. Thought I'd put it in chrono order, so let's start with the summer.

Ideas and designs for characters for a short film I thought up over the summer.

Fall 2006 Schedule

2006-08-29T00:01:00.000-04:00

Monday
9-11
Vis Dev: Layout & Painting, Caple
1-3
Art History?
4-5
Action Analysis, Mayerson

Tuesday
9-11
Action Analysis, Mayerson

Wednesday
10-12
Vis Dev: Layout & Painting, Hitchcox
12-1
Music & SFX, Degazio
2-5
Fig Dwg, Hladin

Thursday
9-11
Action Analysis, Emslie
2-4
Music & SFX, Degazio

Friday
1-4
Story, Williamson

Who's got the same?

Leftover from the end of first year

2006-08-28T23:36:00.000-04:00

All the following life drawing was done in the last two months of second semester (March & April, 2006) except for one of the 30's. I was going to put it up sooner but I never got around to it.

This one reminds me of the Thing. It's clobberin' time!

I call this one "Tarzan".

This one is pretty old. It's from the Royal Winter Fair of November 2005.

Walk Cycle Exercise Using Flash

2006-06-08T01:49:00.000-04:00

Although I've used Flash before, it's been a while and I've never actually used it for character animation before. I've decided to see if I can actually make decent character animation using Flash this summer. It's looking busy so I'm not sure how far I'll get but this is what I've completed over the last week.

Update: Uploaded to Youtube for those without Flash 8. June 9.

Vimeo Flash Player @ http://www.vimeo.com/clip:79631
(update: you need Flash Player 8 for this)

Download as 6 MB avi

I've been doing some "research" and I've noticed there's a lot of Flash animation out there. Much of it is rather poor quality stuff (probably because the creators don't have any animation training or even drawing ability) but there are some real gems out there as well. IMHO Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends is one of the best examples of how to use Flash to do character animation. Although the characters are broken up piecemeal into different symbols for rotation, scaling, translation, and lip-sync, it's my understanding that the animators also draw many frames as shapes and the tweens are done by the animator, not the computer.

My aim here is just to practice and figure out what the minimum requirements would be to make it look half-decent. The character is broken into six layers, plus an invisible treadmill (just like we learned in 1st yr). Each segment or symbol should be fairly obvious (just look at the joints) since for efficiency I did not use shapes or tweak the instances. There is no computer tweening. Each frame is "keyed" in Flash. It's shot on 2's.

What do you think? Maybe too much hand-arm swing...

McNeill Scholarship Nomination

2006-05-19T13:19:00.000-04:00

It's been a while since I've updated this blog, not for a lack of content, but rather a lack of time!

But I'm back, and hopefully I'll be able to post something soon. The last few weeks I've been working on my reel for the McNeill Scholarship Award (for 1st years) and then packing up and moving home. While I'm mostly happy with the content ( images on left) for the scholarship, I overlooked one button when assembling it in Encore(the main timeline links back to itself instead of going to the animation timeline so you won't see it unless you go to scene selection) and I forgot the cover letter! Gahhh!

Truth is, I probably could have corrected those things within an hour and updated my file after the deadline but it didn't seem quite fair to the others for me to do so. Besides, Rachel, Elmira, and Naz are all friends and I'd be just as happy if they won (well, almost). Next time, I'll just have to manage my time better and leave more time for error checking.

So.. all that is to say that yes - I do have a new demo reel and I would love to put it up. Unfortunately, my version of software is incompatible with the school's version that I created the reel on... so I can't open my files to export for web. Give me a week or two for a solution.

In the meantime, here are some more examples from my reel/portfolio. Plus I'll be updating/adding some new links on the sidebar shortly. So check them out too.

Above Left: The bottles still life is gouache on watercolour paper and the life drawing is just HB conte on rough newsprint.

Below: The farm interior layout is gouache on cardstock + photoshop and the 5 minute portrait is conte on medium newsprint.

P.S. Sorry if the formatting of this post is nuts. It doesn't look anything like the preview does. And the images look a little distorted (bottles are squashed) compared to the originals. Anyone know why? What blogger settings should I use?

Demo Reel 2006

2006-03-18T17:04:00.000-05:00

EDIT: I embedded the video in this page so you can see it here without having to open a new window. Note this reel is from March 2006.

Thanks for coming to watch my demo reel. The video is several MB in size and may take some time to load on slower connections, though the reel itself is only 1 minute and 18 seconds long. It consists of my most recent work as of March 2006.

Select the size and format of video you prefer below: (Personally I find the mpeg files to be higher in quality than the quicktime files and also faster to download.)

Large 720x480 MPEG movie (16.2 MB) Hosted by Vimeo.

Small 360x240 MPEG movie (6.5 MB) Hosted by Vimeo.

Small 360x240 Quicktime movie (8.7 MB) Hosted by Vimeo.

To download the files, right-click the links above and select "save as".

*The following videos are hosted by Youtube. The quality is degraded and the aspect ratio is altered (vertically stretched) because Youtube reformats the video so that it can play in flash but it's better than nothing.

Small 360x240 MPEG movie (6.5MB) Hosted by Youtube.
Small 360x240 Quicktime movie (8.7MB) Hosted by Youtube.
Large 720x480 MPEG movie (16.2MB) Hosted by Youtube.
Large 720x480 Quicktime movie (17.2MB) Hosted by Youtube.

If a link doesn't work, try cutting and pasting one of the following into your browser window:

720x480 MPEG-1 File (16.2 MB)
http://www.vimeo.com/clip=61231

360x240 MPEG-1 File (6.5 MB)
http://www.vimeo.com/clip=59023

360x240 QT MOV File (8.7 MB)
http://www.vimeo.com/clip=59020

Updated April 8th, 2006 by adding the high quality MPEG.