I have no idea how Jennifer Harlow updates her blog so frequently. She is a time management goddess!
http://artofjen.blogspot.com/
I think I have been avoiding my blog because of the task of uploading and resizing pictures...so I have decided to use this as a journal for the rest of the semester. I'll post pics once winter break comes along.
CalArts has been a whirlwind of busy late nights and work, work, work. This is wonderful but it has been really hard to keep in touch with my family and friends back in Colorado. I think I'll save all the sharing when I see them during break. You do give up four years to this place. A trade that is really worth it because I fee like I'm improving everyday.
My favorite class so far is Dan Hansen's Perspective and Traditional animation with Mike Nguyen. Perspective with characters is a lot of fun compared to the classical perspective taught in art school. I feel I'm improving the most in this class. Mike's animation class is great! I really want to intern with him over the summer to help with cleanup on My Little World. I asked him about this, but he bashfully said that I probably wanted to work at Disney or Pixar instead. He's too humble ;) He's also working on a really cool project with Robert Duncan called Land of Zi. It's a children show that teaches kids how to write Chinese characters. They're trying to find a distributor. Man, I would love to work on this show. I have the most fun animating. I still want to become an independent animator, but I do want to work at companies at the beginning to get more experience.
Speaking about career choices, I'm beginning to think I'm not going to head down the job of story or design. The idea of pitching just gets scarier. I don't have a tough skin. The process is not as spontaneous. You have to go through so many revisions and even the best version may be left on the cutting room floor. Character design is something I need to work on. For so long, I tried to capture realism in my drawings and accurate proportions. Now it is the complete opposite. You have to exaggerate and vary shapes in a character. I need to keep pushing it. Its very uncomfortable for me.
On another note, we had some great visiting artists already. One was Ben Balistreri who worked on Danny Phantom and Foster's. He gave us good advice and tricks on character turns and designs. Then, we had Lisa Keene who is the Art Director for Enchanted and Rapunzel. She showed how she morphed photo references into her layouts. Last night, Jeff Snow visited and talked about storyboarding. He worked on Tarzan and Over the Hedge.
We already had a health incident with one of my good friends. From what I hear, it is quite common for students to visit the hospital for carpal tunnel, pneumonia, and back problems because of stress. I have been visiting him at the hospital during my free time. I can't get any work done if I don't visit. He'll be out soon thankfully. :D My health has been normal. I had my first all niter this week for my Story for Animators class. I'm terrible at sitting down and writing on the computer. I saw the sun rise, which was really beautiful.
That's everything so far in a tiny nutshell. I've met some really amazing students here, and I can already tell I found some additional life-long friends.
Up ahead for me: I'm going to see Nina Paley's Sita Sings the Blues on Monday night. And work my butt off. :p
3 comments:
Just hang in there... You can do it! We're all thinking about you and all the wonderful things you must be producing! We're so proud of you!!!
You have improved so much in such a short amount of time. Not only with character designs and drawing, but with WRITING as well. Almost every word is spelled right (you must be using Firefox ;) )
Here's your excerpt from NDK experience, one of my most favorite posts of yours:
"Wow what a great Sunday I had. This con exceeded my expectations and was wonderful. Everybody was nice and clean lol. Plus, at the last moment I got in to cosplay spirit and dressed poorly as Chitose Hibiya (the landlady in Chobits).
They had enough panels to keep me busy.
The panels that really wowed me were:
Airbrushing...wow I might ask for one for Christmas now. A really fun device that makes smooth color transitions and it has this odd graffiti sensation to it too :D
Meeting Brad Swaile...lol I almost fainted when I met him (gosh I'm such a giddy dork). He was soo nice and I even got a picture with him. He autographed my Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz movie. He even drew Quatre's head at the bottom. That's about the point where I almost fainted lol. I forgot that he studied as a graphic designer. He was also the MC for the closing ceremonies. He auctioned off a Megaman inspired painting he did for the Katrina fund. I wish I could have got it, but the bid went up to $90.
Cel painting...pretty cool. I actually never thought cel painting was that easy, but now since I experienced it, I'll try to paint some more cels."
And then there's your latest post--
"My favorite class so far is Dan Hansen's Perspective and Traditional animation with Mike Nguyen. Perspective with characters is a lot of fun compared to the classical perspective taught in art school. I feel I'm improving the most in this class. Mike's animation class is great! I really want to intern with him over the summer to help with cleanup on My Little World. I asked him about this, but he bashfully said that I probably wanted to work at Disney or Pixar instead. He's too humble ;) He's also working on a really cool project with Robert Duncan called Land of Zi. It's a children show that teaches kids how to write Chinese characters. They're trying to find a distributor. Man, I would love to work on this show. I have the most fun animating. I still want to become an independent animator, but I do want to work at companies at the beginning to get more experience.
Speaking about career choices, I'm beginning to think I'm not going to head down the job of story or design. The idea of pitching just gets scarier. I don't have a tough skin. The process is not as spontaneous. You have to go through so many revisions and even the best version may be left on the cutting room floor. Character design is something I need to work on. For so long, I tried to capture realism in my drawings and accurate proportions. Now it is the complete opposite. You have to exaggerate and vary shapes in a character. I need to keep pushing it. Its very uncomfortable for me."
So, yeah, what maturity in that last paragraph! And the sophistication of the second paragraph posted here in the comments is sustained throughout the rest of the post.
I'm also really proud of you, Melon, and I can't believe it's been this long and we haven't run into each other yet!
ENOCH
Wow, so many visiting lecturers, that must be amazing for you. I remember how exciting it was when the art director of SOE came to talk at our senior art sem. And now I'm reading you've had like four!?
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