Decided to add a few pieces to this severely neglected gallery!

Yup... going to art school now. Finally. Totally loving it. It's kicking my ass, there's a lot of talented students there so the competition's really high (which is great). Majoring in visual development for animation/film, gonna get the MFA. Also gonna be working on a few animation projects, so life is gonna be insanely busier.

More stuff to come. This is the last week of finals, so I can't wait to start working on personal stuff over the summer!

...I kinda miss drawing as a hobby.

Yup, life's been pretty crazy lately, and figured I might as well briefly update this place while procrastinating on a term paper that's due in 6 hours.

I've been working hard on putting together a student-run art showcase with two other classmates. I will be screening the storyboards that I've been working on this whole semester, and they will be animated (in aftereffects) and voiced. So all of that has been sucking up my time for the past few months, and I still don't feel like I've gotten very far.

Now I'm looking forward to graduation, and then I'm off to Malaysia to visit family for a month. I'm pretty nervous about when I get back, because I'm not sure what I'm going to do next. I am interning for a small animation studio in downtown San Francisco, and they're developing a cartoon series for Adult Swim on Cartoon Network, called "Lucy: The Daughter of the Devil," so hopefully they would be willing to hire me for an art or editing-related position.

So that's it. The most recent art stuff is on my blog ([link]), and once the art show is over, I hope to get back into the swing of things and produce more of my own hobby illustrations. I miss that. I miss the calm life.

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Blog: [link]

Pan's Labyrinth.

If you're 17 or older, go see it.

One of the best movies I've seen in a long time. Not everyone may agree, but I definitely thought it was a great film, experience, and story.

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Blog: [link]

Check out these two awesome artists:

Alex Ross: [link]
Norman Rockwell: [link]

These guys are great not only in that they have the whole realism thing down (light, shading, etc.), but have managed to add an extra oompf to their paintings that a photograph would never have. I really admire their style, and even though I don't think I'll want to go that far in realism, there's a lot to learn in terms of composition, expression, and dramatic lighting from them.

And another great 20th century artist:

Al Hirschfeld: [link]

Also, the internship at Pixar University had ended on December 7th, but I've begun a mentorship with a storyboard artist there. For this mentorship I'll be working on my own short film (which'll run from 3 to 5 minutes long), building my portfolio around this short film, and also do drawing, film, and reading assignments that'll help me understand and practice w/ visual storytelling.

Films that he's recommended:

Jaws (1975)
Paths of Glory (1957)
High and Low (Kurosawa, 1963)
The Duelists (1977)
The Train (1964)
Sahara (1943)
Das Boot (1981)
Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

Most of these he recommended not only because their stories are well delivered in the film, but also because the visual storytelling is strong. In other words, you could watch it on mute or in a foreign language and still know what's going on and get an emotional response.

As for the drawing assignments, he gave me two:

1. Draw three versions of any subject. The first version will be directly referenced, the second will be referencing the first drawing. Finally, the third version will be completely from memory/imagination. (check out my blog to see some of the exercise drawings I've scanned) I'm to do three pages' worth of this exercise every day... which is A LOT of drawings! The point of this exercise is to practice and learn how to see - how to compose a picture/study and push/exaggerate it for a more powerful effect (i.e. when drawing someone leaning on their elbow, by the third version I should exaggerate the pose more so that you "feel" the weight more on that elbow, making the effect of gravity stronger in the drawing).

2. Take something small enough to move around, and draw 20 different angles of it. For instance a cup, salt shaker, or a person's head. The point of this exercise is to get used to unusual angles, foreshortening, and perspective.

The ultimate point of both of these exercises is that the more I draw, and the larger variety of my drawing subjects, the more I have stored in my brain. So when I get presented with a script containing a car race scene or a futuristic cityscape, I won't struggle with drawing cars, buildings, or -anything-, because I will have already practiced drawing them.

Finally, the books that I've been reading to help me out with storyboarding and general story structure:

The Visual Story by Bruce Block
Story by Robert McKee

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Blog: [link]

A friend e-mailed these to me. Check them out:

"Some notes on composition: [link]

General drawing/painting notes (a lot of it is stuff you know, but there are some gems in there.): [link]

some more cool painiting notes: [link]"

As for myself, I've been reading as much as I can on story structure for film. After finishing my internship for Pixar University, I've come to the conclusion that I want to be a storyboard artist (now called "story artist" regarding those who draw digitally). I am currently doing a mentorship with one of the lead story artists there, and am working on producing/animating my own short film by the end of next semester under his guidance.

If anyone wants to see the progress on that, check out my blog.

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Blog: [link]