Link of the Week!

Hey Guys!
Welcome back to a new semester! We're continuing on with our links of the week for everyone to get some inspiration. So I'm giving the link for CGArena. It's basically like CGSociety. However, if anyone looks at CGSociety alot then they know that you will see alot of the same images everywhere and, as awesome as it is, there's only so much stuff on there. So CGArena is somewhere else to go when things run dry. ALSO, CGArena has a digital magazine that they release every month or 2 which is awesome.

http://www.cgarena.com/

Meeting Overview, 11/13/11

Hey guys! Here's what happened at our meeting on Friday:

Tom Richner came in and talked a bit about drawing for animation, gestures and improv. Here's his bio from the CCAD website:

"Thomas Richner, assistant professor, Animation and Graduate Studies, teaches animation and time-based media. He specializes in traditional, hand-drawn animation. His professional work includes layout artist and timer on "The Simpsons" for six seasons. In additional to producing his own short films, which have screened at festivals around the U.S., he continues to work with animation industry professionals in Hollywood to develop and pitch animated properties primarily for television. He also is a consultant for EA Games. BFA, Denison University; MFA, UCLA."

His blog can be found here.

We focused on gesture drawing (various lengths and poses), and also had fun drawing to music/music videos. We looked at some classic animated show intros from Retro Junk. It was a great time! Here are some notes taken during the drawing session:

- EXAGGERATE your poses: bend the knees more, twist the body more. Animation is all about exaggeration, so the more you stretch your poses in the gesture stage, the more fluid your drawings will be.
- Try building your figure out of shapes such as spheres and cylinders so you can see how the body is constructed.
- Be aware of the camera angle and placement. Are you looking up? Down? Head on? All of your lines should serve to define your camera angle.
- A good exercise: study your pose, and then draw it from the opposite angle: a full 180 degree flip.
- Pixelovely is a GREAT tool for gesture drawing.
- Take mental snapshots. Study your pose for 10 to 15 seconds, then look down and try to redraw from memory. Don't look up!
- Look at a pose and draw it with one of your characters in place.
- Always have a mirror next to you! It helps so much for capturing expressions and poses.


- Bethany also gave a fantastic tutorial on hands and how to draw them. See the post below for detailed notes!

Some Animation Collective reminders:

- Portfolio Reviews are coming up! If you signed up at one of our past meetings, we'll let you know about the details soon. The reviews will be either the 2nd or 9th of December.

- The Animation Collective will be doing a Secret Santa exchange for the holidays! At our next meeting (November 18th) we'll have everyone write their name and their favourite animated character on a slip of paper. We'll mix 'em up and hand 'em out and then we'll all draw our own version of the character we get on an Artist Trading Card. At our December 9th meeting (the last one of the semester, oh noooo) we'll exchange them! :)

- Our Bake Sale is next week! November 14th - 18th, from 11am to 12pm in the entryway of Design Square Apartments. BRING BAKED GOODS! We need as many as we can!

See you next week!

Hand Drawing Tutorial Notes

Hello everyone, here are the drawings I did during the hand tutorial. I cleaned up the drawings, organized them for you, and added some notes. Enjoy! And get drawing! :)

Links of the week!

This doesn't take much explaining! The Living Lines Library is basically a database full of TONS of production work on everything from The Thief and the Cobbler and Akira, to How to Train Your Dragon and Hercules! We're talking pencil tests, model sheets, character designs, YOU KNOW IT!

 CHECK IT:

http://livlily.blogspot.com/ 

And now for a porfolio.....

LOU ROMANO

Where to start! How about just some of his work!

 

 I know right? 

Lou Romano is a LEGENDARY visual development artist, specializing in color scripts. It might be safe to say he's the best color script artist in the biz! Mention color scripting in any studio, and Lou Romano is sure to come up! 

His blog can be found here! 

http://louromano.blogspot.com/

Meeting Overview, 10/21/11

Hello again, all! Here's the overview for the last meeting, in case you missed it:

- We started with our usual brand of administrative nonsense, reminding everyone about our snack fund. We brought up the possibility of doing a bake sale, so keep that in the back of your minds!

- We also want to remind everyone of our leaders' limited time at the school, and that we'll be looking for replacements soon, so if you're interested in stepping forward to take over, be sure to see Rico or any of the other leaders. We'll be hosting "interviews" (probably relatively informal interviews) with people interested in a leadership role.

- Rico also wanted to share with you all some images that he found and compiled as a useful tool for studying facial expressions. You might find them useful too, and you can FIND THOSE HERE.

- From there, we moved on into the Cintiq Lab for a Zbrush Tutorial, hosted by DeJuan McCoy and Charlotte Belland, Chair of Animation.

-We had hoped to record this tutorial, but there were some last minute complications. However, DeJuan prepared notes for those who missed the tutorial, and the notes can be found HERE. A list of hot key's were provided as well, and we still have physical copies in case you're interested, so just ask at the next meeting.

-Last but not least, we're still compiling a list of everyone's blogs/sites to add to this site, so if you're interested in growing your audience, feel free to email us the URL


Next week's meeting is "officially" canceled so as not to interrupt your BigBoo/Halloween party planning, but a few of the leaders plan to be in the lab working that night, and anyone who wants is welcome to join us.