Paper Indians

Last Year I animated on a School 2D Production Called "Paper Indians". The story was about a hard working father who comes home and wants nothing more than to rest; however, his two active and Imaginative sons are running around the house playing, making noises, and pretty much acting like the children they are.

Take a look: Paper Indians.

Out of It

So I have not posted here for quite some time. This is due to laziness, lack of time, with a mix of "I don't have anything to post about".

However, I will try to get back in to it again.

First off; I am working on several new things currently. I am working to improve my CG animation skills in Maya, I am working with a team to concept a animated commercial for a local Barber shop, and I have just finished up a "Work For Hire" Contract for 12 illustrations which I will place on My website Portfolio when I finally get it made and setup. However, that will be down the road from now. Until then I might show them off here, But we will see.

Review: Princess and the Frog

I Finally Saw "The Princess and The Frog" with my family on MLK Day. If you had read what I wrote earlier, I was not expecting much from the movie beyond the typical Disney Princess Formula. However, I want to see the movie because It just looked so good from an artistic point of View; which It was. The art of this film is Surpassed, in my opinion, that of the lion King. The backgrounds were beautiful and each one made you want to stay there for a little bit longer. It really made the swampy seem just as "Enchanted" as any other story book world.
I thing I loved best about this is the solid Moral or underlying theme of the story. I wont ruin it for anyone who has not seen it yet, so I wont go into details. I believe that This solid underlying theme is due to the steady hand of "John Lasseter" of the famed "Pixar". A true visionary. Often times the older Disney movies lack a strong theme or moral, something beyond the obvious. For instance, The Lion kings theme was the idea that you can't run from your past and that its selfish to only think of only yourself and not others when they depend on you to do whats right. All good themes to be sure, but nothing hard hitting or something that we all have not seen over and over again.
The only Problem I had with the movie came done to what Disney movies are known for: Musical numbers. It felt, to me, like the story was only there to string together all the musical scenes. Like they were just small stepping stones to get to the flash and the bang, as it were. Now, this is nothing against the music, because I have to say that it was not your typical Disney musical numbers that you see in all the other Disney Princess movie- which has no Soul. And thats one thing you can say about Jazz- it has Soul. The music was an excellent choice beyond that it reflected the time and the setting. It had Life- It had energy that made you want to dance... In fact, my daughter did dance- in her theater seat. But Like i said, Too Much music. I would have removed the first musical number (which in my mind was not needed because we got the point by this point (not to spoil anything) to the main character was trying her hardest to open a restaurant), we didn't need the Musical number to beat it into our heads as well. I would probably have removed 1 or 2 other Musical numbers- But as to which ones I could not say. The movie is an hour and a half long: 20 minutes of story and the rest of it music (I was not actually timing it so that may be off a bit). Thats the worse I can say for the whole film.
There was one character I was worried about when I first saw the Previews of the Movie. This was the Blonde rich girl, Charlotte. typically you would expect to see the rich girl become furious with the poor girl (never mind that she is black and in the south of the the 1930's)stealing her prince in the end of the movie. Charlotte is a breath air from this near dead stereotype. She is an actual friend to the main character and just so darn optimistic. In every scene you feel like you should hate her because she is so soiled, but she is so full of energy, hopes, dreams, and kindness that it makes it all so impossible to do so. Every times she speaks it makes you out of breath while she just keeps on talking. She was just amazing and delightful. i bet it was so much fun Animating her.
The last thing I will say is that If you love Anything about this movie, It would have to be the energy. The Whole movie is ripe with it and it fills you up to you core. I am glad to say that If Disney (with them holding back on how much music they put into the film)continues to make films like this or better they will surely return to the golden age. And for this I think we have John Lasseter to thank. Not because he help on this film, but because Pixar changed the way animated movies were viewed, written, animated, etc. Pixars the top of the heap and everyone wants to work there, but only the best get the chance. and I like to think that the reason for this is because they put so much heart and care into everything they make - just like Disney of the old days (and maybe today as well).

Some Recent Animations

Animators as of late have become lazy in the TV field. Recently I watched the first Four episodes of “Secret Saturdays” from Cartoon Network. I enjoyed the freshness of the storyline and felt even if the villain was defeated the show could continue on. However, I noticed that the character design style lacked something. In fact, it lacked feet. All the main characters on this show, that were human, all had lazy big booty feet. Why? Did they just figure that the character was only important above the waist? And then there was the fact that if a character did have normal looking feet they were a background "Extra"- usually a female. In fact this has bothered me so much that I couldn't continue watching the show.

Recently, I also watched a few episodes of the “Ironman: Adventures” show and had to wonder about why the characters wore the same clothing every day. I mean, this is a serious styled show, nothing like the Flintstones for example where you would expect the character to wear the same thing day in and day out.The designers seemed to have put a lot of though into the show - which makes me want to see the concept art for it. I bet its all quite lovely. I'm thinking that This is more of a combination of lazy modelers and the producers who don't want to spend the extra money on several sets of clothing for each character. At least they all have normal sized feet and ankles.


By the By, I really like the storyboards off to the left.

The Princess and the Frog: Dud or Boom

I, myself, like many out there am waiting for Disney’s newest 2D animation feature film to reach theaters. Many even thought at one time that Disney would forever be lost to 3D animation and never make another 2D feature film. I figured this was more paranoia than anything. Sure at the time 3D was the new kid on the block and can do things easier than can be done with 2D, but it does not have the same charm that people like myself love that can be gained from 2D.
But I digress, back to the reason for me to write this. I have been watching all the previews for “the Princess and the Frog” and think everything about it looks great. With that said, however, I must point out that I feel that it may not have the effect that Disney and many animations are expecting. I feel this way for one reason; Disney has done the same thing that it has done to most of its films, with a few exceptions. They have over run the movie with Broadway musical like scenes where the characters break out in song – song that some extent that has nothing to do with the plot other than to explain the obvious or hand the audience a gift wrapped lesson or moral. I think this is Disney’s fatal flaw, the reason why people enjoy Pixar or Studio Ghibli movies over Disney classics like Snow white and Beauty and the Beast. Neither Pixar or Studio Ghibli films need the Musical scenes- they understand that the audience is not idiots.
Some people may feel that I am wrong or too cynical in my observations; however, I would like to point out that the observations that have brought me to feel this way are not mine. The observations that I use are those of my Daughter, the person who these movies are made for. I have had her watch several of the older Disney movies: Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, etc. The ones that she loves and would sit through have not been the Princess classics, which are the most heavily musical, but instead have been movies like 101 Dalmatians, Lilo and Stitch, and many of the Pixar and Studio Ghibli movies. All these movies have one thing in common; they are not over run by pointless plot slowing musical numbers.
This is why I fear that “The princess and the frog” will not do as great as everyone hopes. Sure many people will see it, but I doubt that it will become a classic (except by Disney). The best thing that Disney can do is re-analysis their films to discover what makes one movie more likable for children now compared to 50 years ago. I believe that they will discover that they don’t need the lengthy musical numbers any more.

Steampunk: Wizard of Oz

A couple of weeks ago I was assigned a project that required me to choose a story and design several characters from it in a steampunk style. So for this assignment I chose to go with the Wizard of Oz; which I was informed later on has been steampunked before. This would get some people down but not me, I just figure that, since I am steampunk that whatever I do would look more steampunk than what other people have done before.
For the characters that I chose design I went with our heroine Dorothy, the Tin-man, and the Gate keeper to the Emerald City. Dorothy became a tornadonaut, an explorer and traveler of the dangerous tornado twisted skies. The Tin-man was no longer a metal lumberjack, but a machine that lived in a dense metal forest where he unscrewed the bolts that held up the metallic trees so they could be turned into scrap metal. And the Gate keeper was still the gate keeper with his endless supply of green glasses (goggles) and keys. Here is the end result.
I plan to at some point to make more of these, I had a lot of fun making them; when I get them done I’ll post them here.

Animation Character design

I am working on designing two characters for my final project in my adv. Animation class. My first step is to figure out the basic shapes that I want to use. This is what we call “Shape Language”. This is because it is much easier to move simple shapes around then complex ones when it comes to animation. So if I have the simple shapes figured out first then half my work is done.

When designing character there are a few things that I have to keep in mind: Shape (which I already talked about), silhouette (which will help the characters read better.), and attitude (this would reflect the character’s personality). These are even more import for the turnaround, if everything is not designed correctly then the turnaround of the character will look weird and then I’ll have to go back and fix the designs and have to do a new turnaround until I get it right. So it is best to get everything looking right the first time.

The child character was not working out right. First time it was because he did not fulfill the one requirement for the project; he is a bit too skinny. So I tried to make him more fat, however, this did not look good either so I ended up going back to my sketches and going with another character that worked better.