Drawings skills!

I think I'm getting better

The time I've been waiting for!

If you're reading this and you haven't seen Cloudly with a chance of Meatballs, shut down the computer and run to the theater and watch it. Now.

http://jgchan.blogspot.com/2008/04/future-of-3d.html

About a year and a half ago, I talked about the potential future of 3D. Having just seen Horton Hears a Who, I wondered how long it would take for the other Hollywood studios to pick up on the fact that they didn't have to copy Pixar to make good films.

Apparently that time is now!

Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs is an absolutely terrific movie, no doubt about it, and I absolutely love it. The aesthetic is strictly cartoonish- no attempts at photo-realism (except for the food, which looked delicious), and the animation was terrifically cartoony-- fast moves, really exaggerated poses, the stuff I absolutely love in 2D cartoons. The takes and double takes were all absolutely outrageous too, some of the wildest I've seen in a 3D cartoon.

So the movie's great, no doubt about it. But, the other reason why I'm so excited is because I'm graduating from college this year, and I'm heading into a field which has started to diversify. Disney's starting up their hand drawn stuff this year. Imageworks and Blue Skies figured that they don't have to follow the Disney/Pixar formula to be successful (Dreamworks soon to follow?). It's an exciting time, and I can't wait to get into it.

Chalk Pastels?!

Drifting Dreams storyboarding

I started to thumbnail out the action sequence in the cartoon




Production of "Finding Jesus" is over for now. Patricia, my advisor, said she'd rather have me spending time on my BFA rather than trying to salvage that dumb cartoon.

2 more shots to animate + BFA character redesign?

2 more shots were finished today:
https://udrive.oit.umass.edu/jgchan/jt_032_07.swf
https://udrive.oit.umass.edu/jgchan/jt_032_10.swf

2 more shots to animate (one of which is a long walk). And then it's another pass to add more details into the backgrounds/sets/whatever you call it.

Also, I'm being MANLY and pumping iron today and watching cartoons (Powerpuff Girls and Dexter's Lab, to be exact) when the thought hits me:



Why am I always drawing Dee like this, kind of a pseudo rip off of Disney (and failing)?

what's to say he can't be geometric and simplified?





And now he's SUPA KAWII CUUUTE. I'm not sure if I'm going to keep this, though (he is a lot easier to draw this way)