Steppin' up

Here it is! The cartoon test I've been finishing up. I did most of the animation during my last APT session with Keith, and then tweaked it afterwards. I also wanted to try a loose, rough style of rendering and backgrounds, to go with the animation style.

Nothing ground-breaking here in terms of animation, but doing this stuff in CG takes work. You're constantly finding ways to work around the inherent stiffness in the software tools.

Painting the backgrounds was a lot of fun. They're heavily influenced by the golden age cartoons, of course. And if you've seen the recent trio of cartoon paintings I posted(here, here and here), you'll spot all three of them in the background of this piece. Yes, that was the plan from the beginning. Although making those paintings was great fun in itself.

Enjoy!

Tree

The third in a series of cartoon style paintings (after the clouds and the mountains).

This one's based on one of the tree thumbnails I posted earlier.
Enjoy!

Tree Thumbs

Some quick thumbs, trying to have fun simplifying the shapes of trees. I just searched for "tree" on Google images, and drew from the thumbnails it threw at me in the results pages.

By drawing only from the thumbnails, I forced myself to see just the broad simple shapes and not the details. Squinting and de-focusing my eyes helped, too.
One of these thumbs is abstracted from a scientific diagram of a tree; all others are from photos.

Nature is the best artist, and the best art teacher out there.

Mountains

Another one in the same series as the clouds.

Coming soon

Clouds

Sleeping With Force

While reading Don Graham's notes on animating force vs. form at Hans Perk's blog, I decided to try out the principles with a quick sketch. The only "life" around that I could draw was our cat, Curry, who happened to be sleeping at the time.

Here's my quick attempt at capturing her pose.



Forceful sleeper, isn't she?

La Maison en Petits Cubes

or "The House of Small Cubes", if you so prefer. Whatever the name, it's a deeply elegant and touching animated short. If the goal of art is to evoke and amplify what it is to be human, then this short IS art.

Directed by Kunio Kato. Winner of the 2009 Academy award for best animated short.