01-02i Progression - Animation now on 2s, all frames redrawn.  Additional frames may be added.  Coloring stage is next.

In the meantime enjoy some other random art on my deviantArt profile

Is it weird that it takes me 3 years to understand my own film?  That can't be right, after all, a filmmaker should know what they're film is about?  Yes and no.  I think on some level I knew what it was about, but at the time- because I was still so heavily involved with the inspiration for the film it was impossible for me to really externalize it and put it into simple words.  Of course this meant that no one else truly understood the film- but it did seem to have an effect on people.  As my professor for that workshop said, the film felt like a 'breath of air', that there seems to be a longing, and that it was beautiful.  He compared it to mannerism due to the emphasis on technique and the lack of clear perspective (or focal point).  Which makes sense, because no one ever really knew what the story was, or exactly why these characters were doing what.  I gave just enough information to create an effect, and just an effect.

At the time, when I screened this film in front of the school- I didn't understand my audience's reaction.  There was a dead silence from the start of the film to the end- and while I'm sure some people watching were simply bored, others simply confused.  I'm betting that the silence was largely a, "How do I even respond to that".  The only comments I got were compliments, and it was about how the film looked.  Normally in that situation, no one holds back when a film is actually awful.  Really simply, when your film only appeals to the emotional sense of your audience, there's not much more they can say than, "That was beautiful" (or awesome if it's more of an action).  Those who didn't like it probably, likewise, couldn't really come up with a way to say so because they had no point of reference for a film like that.  I think the best way to describe it is that it's like an action-flick, with drama instead of action.  Glimpses into moments of drama for the characters enhanced by the barren cold winter setting.  The single tree representing the isolated subject.  But at that time, I thought my movie must have been terrible, especially since I had a hard time telling  anyone what the movie was about without rambling on about some entire story that's not inside the film.

But now I see that exactly what I had wanted was actually what happened, and I actually understand what this film was about- it was about abandonment and a longing what you once had.  Once you know that, the story is probably a lot more obvious.

Watch "Nat's Wish" on deviantArt film
or on Youtube
or on Vimeo

In fact, if you like it, I'll love you if you like/favorite it on all 3 sites <.<

And please excuse me for not proofreading what I just wrote, I'm too tired.

So the first time I animated sync dialogue for a film I said, "I am so going to do full animation because no one expects an anime influenced style to do lipsync."  And so I did, and it kind of sucked because I drew lip shapes for every single vowel.  Then in a 3D Animation class, my professor, Mark Reisch explained to us how people are actually very lazy about moving their mouths.  At this moment I actually forget the more scientific breakdown of how mouths move based on shapes.  But I remember that one good way to tell is to say the dialogue yourself and actually listen to the sound and write it out, for example, "I think it'll be fun" as, "Ayee-tink-ittle-beeh-fahn"  Another good idea of course, that goes for all forms of animation is to actually record yourself doing the action and use it as a reference (much like references for still art).  It's actually a very good way to work.  It's quite common for animators to at least act out what they're animating at some point during a shot even if they don't record it, just paying attention to how your body/face feels while doing it.  I recall another professor, Johnny Robinson, saying that it's not uncommon to see animators skipping around the studio like little girls- Although that could just be a very nice excuse....

Anyway this shot, I kind of cheated on, like I will be for a lot of shots because it was already done....just not as well as I wanted.  So what you're seeing here was 90% drawn in 2010, but I've been trying to fudge around little tweaks to make each individual drawing more solid so that when i convert this to an animation on 2s it'll be amazing.  This shot will probably take a lot longer than 01-01iii and I already know it has less screen time LOL.

Colored by my friend!  Apparently it was relaxing - http://ceruleanwing.deviantart.com/

Now all that's left is a million other things, many of which aren't as fun...

Partially tweened.  All I have to do is finish drawing all the unfinished frames...and still need to add that blink beforehand.  This is Turning her head away is Ayu's response to Ezri saying "hi there".  I think it's great, that's how I like to respond to friendly people.  I'm particularly proud of the non-twinned pigtail secondary motion.

A larger version of this can be found here (this link will always show the most recent progress)- http://xenoandroid.deviantart.com/art/01-01iii-Pencil-Test-260560286

Now working on this completely new shot...


It's on loop, but it's a simple head turn, right now it's 6 frames mostly on 4's, to be inbetweened to 2's or 1's.  Ayu turns her face on Ezri, because she's annoyed.  I kind of want to write more about the project and my life as an artist since the last post but I'm actually incredibly tired- so I won't this time.  Instead, here is a link to an image with some commentary on this production- http://xenoandroid.deviantart.com/#/d4ayqel

Enjoy the secondary motion, I know I do.

Exactly one year after the initial screening of The first animation of Dream Bubble, I decided that because I haven't felt willing to release the film in it's current form on the wild, that I should go back and make it into something I'm satisfied with. Despite the praise it got and those that were impressed, I find that if that a personal work does not satisfy me, both the client and the producer, why should I settle for it? So I place here the first two screen shots from Dream Bubble 1.1 or it's real title,
「DREAM BUBBLE : One Summer Morning」.


The two shots previewed here have also been completely reanimated as well, and are now on 2's (For those who don't know what that means, just think 2D Feature/Disney animation) and the 'acting' has been improved. The sound track is also now in actual 5.1 surround sound and the entire film in it's current cut runs 7 minutes with several additional scenes. Due to the kind of production values I'm aiming for and my paying work, I don't expect this film to be (re)done until 2012. Unless a large wad of money falls from the sky and I can pay people to work on it.


On a side note I've discovered that magpierss works badly with unicode, so my site is now using something else to display the blog on the homepage.

...this thing in a long time. Sometimes I wonder why I even bother putting a blog/news thing in place every time I design a new website. Maybe it's because it's just so 'normal' to have one that I'd rather get it out of the way in the early design stage rather than having to shove it in later on.

I have however posted some new artwork to the gallery...like two or three weeks ago, which I still haven't posted on dA. I have a bad/good? habit of not posting most of I make. I find it important that when I post something I feel completely proud of the work and for that to be the case it has to be finished, better than anything else I've done, and something of meaning. If I feel the work is somehow incomplete or needs to be reworked, few people will ever see it. Add that to the fact that I have so many other things that I need to do or want to do, and client work that I can't really show yet, it may appear that I've totally stopped doing art. Another thing is that if the work is someone else's idea of amazing but not my idea of amazing, it will also find itself in the vault. I am aware that can become a problem when it comes to selling one's self to clients/employers, as many times client types want to see variation and range so they can get a better idea of what they want from you and be a little more assured that you can produce what they want.

So for that I plan to once again recut my demo reels, especially the generalist reel which I may rename to 'montage reel'. In the new reel I'll be sure to include some things that show a bit of this.

All of the tweaks to make the site look the same across all major browsers has been done.

Site is now live to work out any kinks that may be more difficult to find in the testing environment.

All of the hard stuff for the website is pretty much done. All I have left to do is to update my primary animation reel and post it here and link it there. This time I'm quite pleased with how the site is turning out. The code is 100x cleaner than the last site and the structure is more manageable. I've also tied my gallery into the home page slideshow for dynamic updates. And started using ajax/jquery for a few things to make it more user friendly. Since I'm also using google voice, I've added the widget to the site on top of my listed phone number. My email address and phone number are on the site for the first time via javascript encryption to deter bots and spammers.

So it's been many years since I seriously used a publicly hosted blogging service and the first time I've used one in a more professional(?) attempt.