Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Lift n' Toss

An old animation exercise - the Lift and Toss exercise is the first one we get in school that has a proper character we can animate (not a flour sack or ball and the like), and it also deals with weight - the way it is first carried and then disposed of. 

At first i came up with a mean little girl, who picks up a present which isn't hers and tosses it away. 

character rotation

first - getting ready to pick up

struggling with the lift

then the toss!
I never got to finish it since i unfortunately left at the middle of the semester.. and this is the only file i managed to find of the animation: partial and requires a lot more work, but at least the beginning is somewhat to my liking -


Then when i came back in 2010, i wanted to go for a character that would be atypical and hard for me - a big, burly man. a caveman! 
somehow they all turn out super-curvy at the end. i HAVE to tone it down with the crazy curves. but, for the character rotations, a deadline's a dealdine:



and the final animation:


Hope you enjoyed!

Now i have a fully functioning YouTube account with videos and everything! my other animation are uploaded there as well.
you're welcome to check it out here:




Thursday, January 3, 2013

Woohoo! I Got Published!!

saw my previous post about the storyboarding assignment? here.
Tomato with a bad case of hoebris, right? :)

So back in late 2010, after everything was handed-in, our sotryboarding instructor Nancy Beiman took me to the side to ask me an amazing thing - would i MIND her using some of my boards in her upcoming book on storyboarding, PREPARE TO BOARD, second edition?? Gee, WOULD I ??


The edition was scheduled for release in 2012 Fall - and sure enough, in November a delivery man knocks on my door with the edition... and blows my mind!






this is seriously one of the aweosmest things that ever happened to me!!
i'd like to give a HUGE THANKS to Nancy Beiman for her invaluable guidance, teaching and this amazing opportunity.
Also, i couldn't have done it without the creative, supportive environment of wonderful classmates - you guys rock :)

Story Time 2.0

OK, this is a long one but bear with me please, it has a point!

A couple of years ago i posted the results of a 2nd year storyboarding assignment - here.
Our teacher, the one and only Nancy Beiman, gave us nursery rhymes to set a basic idea, based on which we were supposed to come up with an original story.

When i came back for second year again (fall 2010), we got a similar assignment, with the source material changed - the rhyme i chose to develop goes like this:

"I wanna be the leader, I wanna be the leader,
Can I be the leader? Can I?
I can? Promise? Promise?
Yippe, I'm the leader, I'm the leader!
OK what shall we do?

first we sketched up various initial ideas:
first i thought of the basics: politics, jungle, boy scouts, and lemmings...
then, going to get groceries, i thought of vegetables who compete to be selected !
the tomato is the vainest, but she doesn't know that being picked out means DEATH!

The idea we like most is developed into Beat Boards (4 major story points):

and a character line-up is made to show their proportions:

then we go on to full story boards, which were revised, finalized [characters were changed, the story became more focused and more Dante-esque :) ] - and then pitched:








Finally, the whole thing is edited together in Premier to make a Leica reel accompanied by music (turn up the volume :))




hope you enjoyed ! any comments are welcome :)



Wednesday, January 2, 2013

New year, new sketches

On Friday got to Tel Aviv to meet my mom. Being a bit early, i was hovering around this crazy expensive Italian office/business supply store, not intending to actually buy anything of course :)
But after lunch - BAM - my mom surprised me and got me this fancy-ass sketchbook from the store! It has GREY pages, so it's a great chance to do some light/shade studies.

but first, i came home and just experimented with all kinds of pencils. here's the first page of actual recognizable shapes:



tomorrow i'll post something MAJOR, so stay tuned :)
thanks!