Storying Boarding

It occurred to me on countless times when I looked at someone else's brilliant works, then looked at my own work, and I thought: "What the heck have I been doing in art school...can't even draw a figure properly."
This happens to me more often when I'm storyboarding. Storyboarding is about clarity and simplicity. Sounded simple, but I struggled. My respect for storyboard artist and cinematographer has centuple since I start doing storyboard myself. When doing storyboard, I need to think about the actings the camera movements, shot angle, composition, the storyline (I'm writing my own story) and clarity. With so many things going on at once, I cannot put my 100 % concertation on the slick quality of my drawings. My figures usually end up looking like bacteria cells.

thumbnail SB for The Wolf and the Crane fable 

When I do my panels I would try to sketch down as fast as possible and revised it again and again.

If you look at Disney and Pixar's SB, or if you go on Google search for "storyboard", the drawings all look clean and beautiful. This is because the drawings have been revised for more than one time.
I learn that from the "Extra" in A Cat in Paris DVD.

In the "Extra" it shows both the thumbnail SB and the final SB side by side. The thumbnail SB looks just like me rough SB. So, don't feel discorage when we see other people's brilliant works. We can do it too!








This is a good song."Story Board" by The Album Leaf (one of my favorite instrumental band)

Atli Örvarsson: Another Great Composer

After taking the Sound to Image class, I have been reassure once again that soundtrack is just as important as the movie. I love Hans Zimmer and I found a composer who's not as famous as Hans Zimmer but he made some great soundtracks that came close to Zimmer's.
Atli Örvarsson

Vantage Point (2008)

I love this soundtrack

Here's a bonus drawing of a chipmunk I did last night

Laugh of the Day: Quote from Animator's Survival Kit

I bought this book a while ago but I never got the chance to read it until this winter. Animator's Survival Kit by Richard Williams. It is really a book that all animators should read.

I happened to come across a passage he wrote that is so genuine and true that it makes me laugh.

"Some animators want to save themselves a lot of the work so they draw very rough. ('Ruff' - they don't even want to spend the time spelling 'rough'. Too many letters in it to waste our valuable time... ) And they leave lots and lots of work for the assistances.

I've never understood why some people in animation are so desperate to save work. If you want to save work, what on earth are you doing in animation? It's nothing but work!" (99)

It is funny because I often try to find ways to save work.  I guess I need to change my attitude. There is no other way round or short cut to make good animation; like it or not, it's lots and lots of work. My favorite part of animating is when I shoot my pencil test and see my drawing moving. But what really keeps me going is when I'm sitting in my classroom with my friends, bathing our faces with the light from florescent bulbs, cutting our noses while flipping the papers and laughing at how ridiculous and crazy we are to choose to be an animator. Really, anyone who have done animation understand the tedious process of inbetweening and cleaning up.

It's too late for me to turn back and I don't want to turn back. Animation it is.

Circles Animation

This is a project for my sound animation. I'm very proud of it because I made the sound-mix myself.
It is all made in Photoshop and After Effects. This is my first time making animation in After Effects. I am ready to dig deeper into After Effects. It's really a fun program to play with.
I'm still working on how I should end this shorts. Potentially this could go on for hours without an ending; my friend made a suggestion that I should made it into a desktop screen saver. Sounds like a good idea, but I have no idea how to do that.

Long Long Time Ago

It has been a while since the last time I updated my post, almost a month ago. While I'm still trying to wrap up my finals, I want to share my wonderful experience yesterday and through today.

Yesterday, two of my fellow animator friends decided to go watch The Hobbit premier regardless of the fact that we have our final critique the next morning. I think it's a legit to say that watching movie is a form of  "research" for us. Thursday afternoon after classes, we entered our little private animation room and animated till 9:30 pm and headed to the theater. We brought our computers to the theater and continue to work on our final (I took the time in the theater to relax because my computer is malfunction at the time.) I love the theater environment. The theater is full of energy even though it was already midnight. People were really excited about the movie.

The Hobbit

Bilbo is more adorable than I have expected! The movie simply would not be the same if Martin Freeman did not was not play Bilbo.

After the movie we came back to school, back to our little private animation room and working our way through morning where we then had our critique. I came back home at noon and woke up at 5 pm and I had the urge to update my blog.

Btw, this is my 100th post!