I was really proud of the shorts this year. I wanted to make a list of the films I enjoyed. Nine freshman got into the Producer's Show this year....so now you know why I was so damn nervous this whole year lol.
LIFELINE by Andres Salaff
Madame Babette by Marcos Cohen
Ad Astra by Elle Michalka
Who's Hungry? by David Ochs
Leonardo's Chase by Carlos Romero
The Thirsty Gargoyle by Sabrina Cortugno
A Werewolf Film by Noel Belknap
Study Hall by Jeff Liu
I got your nose by Skyler Page
Captured by Jennifer Harlow
Kiss Cam by Benett Kim
l'elevatore by Janine Chang
Value Blind by Tahnee Gehm
Tight Robots by Nick Desimone and Clay Fessier (I'm one of the Asian animators.)
April 20th has rolled on by and things are finally winding down for my first year at CalArts. Making a film here is a lot different than last year. The three days before films were due was the most excruciating, heartbreaking, and amazing experience. You sit in a Mac Lab for 15 hours straight with other upperclassman. As you struggle to compose your animation, you gain a strong will to keep going.
For the lack of a better comparison, making a film is like war. Everyone comes into the battle together, but not everybody makes it out. It is a bittersweet experience. I hope technical difficulties and low morale will be less next year.
My film Remember When played at the Open Show. It was a fun evening to see everyone's films. I didn't get into the Producer's Show because there were so many great films, and my film was unfinished. I'll post links to my favorite shorts this year after The Producer's Show.
I will post my film when it is completely finished.
Here's a screen shot to keep you happy lol.
Oh and yes our group won first place for PSAid contest :D
For Hobaica's Color and Design II class, we entered a Public Service Announcement contest to promote that "Cash is Best" when donating for international disasters. I think the judges will pick the top five and have the public vote for the winner.
Vote for whatever PSA you like the best. Thank you and I hope you enjoy them!
Both PSAs are up for viewing. Please post links to them and share them wherever you can as part of the voting is influenced by the number of views and comments.
Right now, I'm in crunch time. I've never had so many all-nighters in my life. The process of making your own short film is an amazing learning experience. It is exhilarating and painful at the same time. April 20th is the due date for the Open Show and qualifying for the Producer's show. I know right now my film will not be as complete as I want it to. Clean-up is a long process and I want to give a little extra to the performance of my characters. I'm a little depressed it won't be shiny complete by the Open Show, but I will work on this over the summer and polish it up for festivals in the fall.
I must be a choo choo train and climb up that mountain. :D
Our department received a visit with Dead Man's Bones to collaborate on a music project with them. I hope I will be able to because their music is really beautiful and soulful. I want to work on this during the summer after my short is done.
The James Baxter lectures were great. I'm sad I missed the last one because he explained how to animate four-legged animals. And I think everyone at the lecture will remember this line at 1:59.
Shells!
Shane Prigmore and Shannon Tindle gave a character design lecture. Everybody had to do the characters Fagin, Oliver, and Dodger from Oliver Twist.
For Dodger, I wanted his sleeves to barely be able to roll up. He uses clothes pins to snap them up. I tried to model him after James Cagney.
My Fagin was the least successful. They suggested he was closer in mannerism to Dodger. I need to make him more grotesque.
They said my Oliver was the most successful although the patches may look like a pattern. I wanted Oliver from the start to be emaciated. I looked up starving children with their rib cages exposed.
Both Shane and Shannon were character designers on Coraline. Their designs were translated beautifully in the film. I went to the panel at Nucleus Gallery. I didn't get to see much because it was so crowded, but I did get to meet the artists. I'm embarrassed they posted pics on the gallery's website. I'm in some of them with my friends lol.
I'm finally animating my short. Ahhhhhh!!!! I'm beginning to realize I love animating, but I'm really slow at it. My short will be around a 1:12. I want to avoid the 90 second mark so I can have more time to polish the film.
The second semester has started out a little bit more relaxing. I have less classes that involve late nights of essay writing. All of my classes are geared toward my finished film. The big deadline is April 20th. I'm excited and very anxious at the same time. My goal is to have a finished short that I enjoy. I'm not concerned about the Producer's Show. I want to enter my film into film festivals. My film idea so far is about a father and son going to a playground. The dad is too big and clumsy for monkey bars, slide, and the animal seat ride. I felt this way when I visited my elementary playground.I was so intimidated by the monkey bars, but now I easily touch the ground. I'm saving my guinea pig for another time.
Our first lecture this year was Mark Osbourne! He was the director for Kung Fu Panda. What I did not know until the day before was that he also created the short More.
He made the short using CalArts facilities during one summer. I remember watching this film on the internet. It is a surreal feeling to meet the man who made such a memorable and beautiful short. He directed Kung Fu Panda in order to fund his upcoming film, which is awesome.
The second lecture that I saw was James Baxter. He most recently did the animated part of Enchanted and the incredible opening to Kung Fu Panda. The fourth year animation class invited him over to do a four-part lecture series. For the lecture, he is animating Gisele talking to a rabbit while doing a turn. It's amazing to see how he plans the scene and acting so it is believable.
Also this Thursday, if you are in Valencia. The Character Animation Department is having their art show. I put four pieces up. The art is quite breathtaking and inventive. Please come by if you can!
I felt really bad for not posting any of my work. I have been really busy, and I feel that my work is not the best.
To begin with, here are just a couple of perspective assignments:
This was a one-point perspective assignment at the beginning of the year. The requirements was to have a scene where the character touches an object. I did a Saloon!
This one was fairly recent. The assignment involved stairs and a chase scene. A huge guinea pig chasing me is like a dream come true!
This is the most recent perspective homework. The first one I did in color! The window ellipse still needs to be fixed, but otherwise it was successful.
I will upload my SD card soon with life drawing pictures, my silhouette project, and of course my animation assignments.
Sorry folks...this is not my animation. My animation is still tightly hidden on the pencil test machine. My friend Carlos kicked ass on his first 48 hour film and put it up on Youtube.. He completed it right after he got out of the hospital. (Shaking fist!)
This is the competition and talent here at CalArts, which is awesome and scary at the same time. Enjoy!
Finally, it is November and the infamous CalArts Halloween party came and went. I had fun dressing up a little bit as a guinea pig. I had bunny ears crumpled down and Michael painted an awesome nose on me.
The night before I had an all niter doing a pitch for story. My group did a parody of Snow White as Snow Grimson. Basically, Snow White gets manipulated into killing maidens after Prince Charming cheats on her. Again, it was a long night.
The Halloween Party was a drunk and drug fest. A lot of crazy costumes and naked people. I'm beginning to see a trend here at CalArts. People do crazy things and nobody gets in trouble. Just recently we had a screening of 48 hour films for this year's theme hair. My favorite shorts this year were Jeff Liu, Carlos Romero, and Henry Yu films. During the screening, someone barfed all over the stairwell near Keane Street where my cube is. Our janitor wasn't going to come in until Monday. Me, Carlos, and Ashley grabbed cleaning supplies and bonded together while cleaning up barf. I feel proud that I cleaned it up...just a weird feeling like slaying a dragon :p I just hope this doesn't happen again.
Class wise everything is great. I'm improving each week. My artistic caliber is not as high as my classmates, but at least I'm improving. I'm thinking Wednesday before Thanksgiving I'll scan my most recent work. I hate not showing any of my art on this blog.
The big assignment I'm looking forward to at the end of the semester is my mini animation as me as a six-year old. My activity will be using chopsticks.
Our recent guest lecturer was Don Hahn who is the producer for Disney animation. He showed us the final feature film is always revised. Elton John's original Circle of Life sounded like pop music, but was revised to the African soul song of today. Hahn is also publishing Walt Stanchfield's lecture notes on gesture drawings for animation. It's a must buy and will come out this May in two volumes.
I'm going to try to see Fred Seibert of Frederator Studios this Wednesday. I'm willing to skip my critical studies class to see his lecture. I want to be an independent short animator, and it would be great to meet such an influential person in this department.
On Columbus Day/Indigenous People's Day, I went to see Sita Sings the Blues at Redcat with some great upperclassman. The film was really interesting with the three storylines surrounded Ranma and Sita. I love how Nina Paley combined her own life with this myth. The animation is limited in its movement, but I really can't blame her since she made the whole movie by herself! The best part of the night was a surprise encounter.
While we were waiting for the film to start, I looked back and thought I saw Craig McCracken (creator of Powerpuff Girls and Foster's) and Lauren Faust (worked on Iron Giant and Foster's). I learned about CalArts through an interview with Craig - on I think a PPG dvd. After the movie was over, he was standing off to the side. I nervously went up to him and shook his hand. All I could was that I was from CalArts. I didn't ask for a picture because I found out there is a unspoken code in L.A. to not be a fangirl. To tap off the night, we ate ramen in Little Tokyo. It was really good and had huge portions. This always reminds me of Tampopo. :D
My CalArts friend is now out of the hospital. He finally got out after two weeks! Now he is catching up and kicking ass.
We finally did Hobaica's silouhette project where we cut five scenes with exacto knives. A lot of people went all out with tiny miniscule details on balcony columns. I liked how mine turned out. It is not the best, but I had a lot of fun doing it.
I'm still struggling on storyboards. Now our teacher is allowing us to add cuts and angles to the scene. I must keep at it!
Trad. Animation is still magical. My timing is really slow still, but I still get excited when things move.
Our recent visiting artist was Mandrews aka Mark Andrews. He was the head of story on The Incredibles and Ratatouille. He is an extreme and funny man. He showed us the majestic qualities of the triangle and talked about what movies suck. I learned all good storyboard artists watch bad movies to learn why do these scenes fail and how to fix them. Michael Giacchino (wrote music scores for Lost, The Incredibles, and Ratatouille) tagged along for the lecture! It was a great lecture and I think he comes every year!
Sadly, I didn't do the 48 hour lockdown, where you animate a film with the picked word and make it in 48 hours. You do post production for one week and then turn it in. The word this year is "hair." I really wanted to do a dancing guinea pig, but the homework was too much for me. I promise you people, I will animate a dancing piggie someday!
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
CalArts is really wonderful and is like a dream. I keep thinking I'm going to wake up and be back home lol. Valencia is very hot and CalArts sits on top of a hill. Suposedly, the CalArts area is the basis of the Edward Scissorhands movie. Weird lol!http://laist.com/2006/12/18/edward_scissorhands_lived_near_los_angeles.php
My dorm is really big and has lovely storage. I'm thankfully on the quiet hall. People are known to run through the halls screaming (acting majors lol). My roommate named Disa is super sweet and is a very good match. The window looks out to the pool, which is clothing optional o.o I got to visit Santa Monica as a field trip and finally got to see the ocean for the first time. There were a variety of stores and I finally got to eat a British meat pie!
Very interesting people go to CalArts and are extremely nice. The animation room or The Palace has cubicles on top where we need to work. The cube sign up sheet was actually up at 6:30 pm the day before sign up. I was doing laundry at the time and didn't know. I came in at 7 am the next day because I wanted to sleep in my bed. Everyone else camped out in the halls for no reason. I guess for tradition :p I got number 39 lol out of 49 or something. Luckily, I got a cube #3 in the main building. I'm on Keane St. and Dejas Rue :p (Animator street signs around the cubes). I'm sharing with 3 other people.
My desk is a bizzare story.... It has graffiti and paintings on it. Your allowed to paint the walls and desk in your cube. Mine had unicorns painted on it with Lisa Frank and the cabinet....someone drew men's privates in it. o.0 I later found out that a junior named Henry had this cube. His classmates played a prank on him over winter break and painted horrible things in his cube. The funny coincidence is last year no one got the desk, but I got it this year. Henry's last name is Yu lol. He is now my long lost brother lol!
I have Dan Hansen as my Perspective teacher. He started on the Rescuers. My traditional animation class was awesome. My teacher Mike Nguyen was so enthusiastic. He started to show us how to flip in the last part of the class when he finally mentioned he was the Supervising Animator on the IRON GIANT! Everybody gasped! So I have to learn how to flip with his Hogarth walk cycle. I love CalArts!!!!!
Side note: I've found out about some websites for those who can't make it to CalArts or are interested.
Mike Nguyen http://rainplace.net/
Chong Suk Lee (My storyboard teacher) http://chongtoons.com/
Chris Meeks http://homepage.smc.edu/meeks_christopher/
This is just for future reference...plus you get to see how much stuff I'm taking!
CLASS DAY BP –Basic Perspective Mondays: 9am-noon IDP –Intro to Digital Perspective Tuesday: 9am-noon C&D1 –Color & Design 1 Tuesday: 1pm- 4pm BA –Beginning Animation Tuesday: 7pm-10pm Doubles- Doubles, in art and culture Wednesday: 10am-1pm BSD –Beginning Story Development Wednesday: 7pm-10pm BLD –Beginning Life Drawing Thursday: 9am-4pm BCGIA –Beginning CGI Animation Thursday: 7pm-10pm SFA –Story for Animators Friday: 1pm-3pm
Holy crap lol! I start tomorrow ^^ and will battle for a cubicle on Tuesday. Freshman get the leftovers and since our class has 44 people (reguar is 25), space will be limited.
I arrived safely at Calarts in lovely Valencia. It has been really hot, but the scenery is so beautiful. The students are really friendly, and I think Ron Perlman's son is attending CalArts.
Chouinard, my dorm, is way bigger than I expected. The rooms are huge. I regret not taking some of my dvds. The pool here is clothing optional lol.
I'll put up a better report with pictures. This week has been pretty busy.
Here's a Pictures for Sad Children by John Campbell that I simply love!
I didn't realize they posted this on Youtube. I did this during the Starz Film Festival during a workshop.This was done before I did Check the Label. I started with a guinea pig animation then gave it to another participant. The next person animated my pig as being blown up o.0
My drawings are at 1:10 with the dancing leaf, 1:13 with my piggie, and 2:14 with the flower head.
I didn't get to see this compiled together until now. I had to go see the screening of Persepolis ;)
These past two weeks I have been staying up watching the Olympics. Normally, I never watched the Olympics. I think I ignored the last one in Athens.
I felt so much pride and excitement that it was taking place in Beijing. My whole family and a lot of other Asian cultures seem to be excited and celebrating as well. We rooted for China and gasped at the beautiful venues for the Olympic Village. World Records were breaking with the help of the Water Cube's design. China finally showed off, which is wonderful since people associate China with lead paint and pollution.
Now the spotlight is on Denver!
The pic above is me on the light rail Saturday. Media trailers were covering everything.
I'm a little sad the Democratic National Convention had to happen the last week I'm in Denver. Roads are closed off and the media is going crazy. Most of my friends who live in Denver are hiding in their apartments. Protestors are at their footstep. Where the convention is held, The Pepsi Center, is right across from university I went to. I can't believe their using the campus as a security checkpoint :p
Well, I leave Colorado this Friday on a road trip to CalArts. I feel nostalgic and sad that I'm leaving such wonderful friends and my beautiful home I grew up in. I'm leaving behind my precious baby Xiao Bao. I hope to gain new experiences and develop into a better artist and person. It's an exciting transition. California here I come!
I finally graduated with a BFA in Drawing. Sort of bittersweet since I have four more years at CalArts. I have been looking for a summer job. It is an odd situation when you have a college degree that pretty much doesn't matter at all in the job market. Oh well, I enjoyed my stay at CU Denver.
I'm posting the ever popular guinea pig portraits! My teacher John Hull just kept telling me "more" guinea pigs. My whole independent study was just that....guinea pigs :D Out of that great experience I created my comic zine Fight or Flight. My study was during a painting class where I did portraits of my friends.
As a farewell gift to John Hull, he was moving to Charleston, I made him a guinea pig. Lots of inside jokes in this piece.
The newest of the drawing is my guinea pig portrait I gave to the Flight of the Conchords when they played at the Ellie Caulkins. True bliss I have to say because I got to give it to them.
The very sweet and tall Jemaine Clement!
The also very tall and sweet Bret.
And because I am lazy....my thesis art...the one with the pandas can be found at my new deviantart account. I mainly got one because all the CalArts peeps update that thing like crazy. I think when I probably post my thesis art on this blog, I will discuss that I hope people don't consider my art "furry art." I just think people as guinea pigs is silly and fun.
The also very tall and sweet Bret.