Art Thieves

The other night, I was contacted by an outside source letting me know that a few of my drawings (My Donkey Kong & Yoshi drawings I did back in '07) were stolen by some kid on this site called "scratch.mit.edu."

As you can tell, this really irks me.

It's not bad enough that this person took my artwork without my permission, but this kid has the gall to say that these are "his" drawings, claiming credit for my work. & not only is he stealing my stuff, but others too. Even though it's on such a small scale, it's still a immense outrage, nonetheless.

His/Her username is Yoshi645. Your mission (if you're willing to accept it) is to go to this guy's page & help me take this guy down. Flag his page, post comments, contact support, whatever! Tell him to give us hard-working artists credit or he'll get what's coming to him, one way or another.

This goes for all cases of art thievery out there. Young or old, professional or amateur, big or small... it doesn't matter, it's STILL WRONG! Do it for the artists!

*UPDATE* - Mission Accomplished! Thanks everybody!

Just a quick, brief update:

The other day, I got a phone call from an old friend of mine. He was watchin' the Sundance Channel & apparently, my Tribeca Logo was on there. Something I animated is actually on television. 

Yes, I'm very pleased & definitely surprised. 

Also, I just posted the logo on Youtube the other night as well. It's a bit buggy (definitely so when you try to watch it in HD) & because of the widescreen aspect ratio it gets slightly cut off at the edge, but it's there nonetheless:

Tribeca Film Festival Logo

For Eric Eiser's Digital Compositing class here at SVA, our assignment was to animate a 20 second logo for the Tribeca Film Festival. At first I thought it was just a theoretical assignment, just for kicks n' giggles, so I rushed & half-assed most of it in Flash in about a day. I added the logo, the camera effects & the After Effects technical mumbo-jumbo, gave it to Eric & went home. Another check off my long to-do list.

The next week, Eric tells me that the Tribeca people saw it, got a kick out of it & that they wanted to use it for this year's film festival, along with 10 others. I was surprised (& still am, for that matter) & thanked him for telling me the awesome news. Another week passes & I'm given a little reward: a 1 GB steel flash drive with a combination lock. It is awesome & heavy. 

Third surprise came this afternoon, when I get a call from my old man tellin' me he received a "SVA Newsletter" email with my snapshot & video of my logo attached to it. Apparently, all 11 logos will be shown all throughout the festival, each shown before the 700 screenings planned for the week. Surprises, surprises, one after the other.... 

While the other logo contributors are mentioned in the email, only mine is shown on the site, which is a real shocker. I thought Jessica Honore's was awesome, & I hope they'll eventually showcase all of them & put them up online soon. I'm dyin' to see 'em all. Still, I'm glad they saved me the trouble of posting the video up online myself (which I'll probably still do anyway).

Sadly, the festival crowd isn't really my schtick (I'm goin' to the Dusty's instead to root for my thesis animator homies!), so I'm definitely not going there to see it up on the big screen myself. But if any of you are going, look out for the logo with the little bee. 

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A little background behind this logo: the animation was all done on ones (yes, I am insane) in Flash. About half of the 15 seconds of animation I did are probably smears, which some of you who've seen my last few posts here know that I LOVE smears like hell. I went nuts with the amount of smears I did. 

While there's so much rackin' me about it's faults & things I should've fixed up before I handed it in, I'm still very satisfied with it. I think this was probably one of the most fun things I've ever animated thus far. 

So, without further ado, here is my logo, courtesy of SVA, PR Office(?) & Vimeo: 

Tribeca Logo Animation from PR Office on Vimeo.

More Smeariness...

Here's a series of smears n' multiples from a shot in Cat's Don't Dance, a film which is LOADED with goodies like this all the way through it. This film is so horribly underrated, & if any of you haven't seen this movie, go to Amazon.com right this minute & pick up a copy! I MEAN IT!

This shot only lasts for about 1/2 a second, but you can really feel it. 

& as a bonus, here's a rare smear from Land Before Time. There's only a handful of 'em (if not less) in the movie, but when they show up, they REALLY show up.

 

FtB - Giant Creepy Movie Poster

After walking through the city the other day, I HAD to do this. Make sure to click on it to make it bigger. 

Anybody that lives in New York City: Walk north up Park Ave. towards 23rd St., look up & you'll see this giant 50 foot tall movie poster for that new Zac Efron movie painted all over the side of a building. Y'can't miss it (trust me, I've tried to).

Personally, I think giant painted movie posters are really cool, especially if they're action-packed, but this one is just creepy. Besides the fact that it's Zac Efron of all people, he's as tall as a building, he's got this chimpazee "ooh-ooh" expression on his face, which is heavily airbrushed to make him look all tan, sparkly & shiny, & he's wearing two pairs of pants. I think this one beats out the giant airbrushed-to-hell Jack Nicholson head for The Bucket List that was up on the same building last year. All around, he reminds me of a mini Tom Cruise. 

I guess it's just that I'm sick & tired of hearing about him. Everywhere I go, I hear this "OMG!11!1! Zac Efron is like SOOOOOO blarbitty blah blah & blah" etc. from all the tweeny-boppers I come in contact with. Hopefully, like all the other Disney teen stars that have come & gone, he'll just eventually fade away. 

Poof!

Late for Easter

Oh well... Happy Belated Easter, everyone! 

For the Birds Goes to the Dogs

Uh oh... here it comes...

This year, us second year animation students have been in the process of creating our own little animated films. & I, being one of those eager beaver animators, is completely ecstatic over the it. Back at the beginning of the semester, I was all set to get this production running at full throttle. I had my story down pat, my characters all designed & I was just about to start animating shots. Everything was going alright.

Then my heart nearly stopped.

Since my little heart scare back in February, I haven't felt quite the same. I've been considerably weaker, my sleeping & eating tracks have been knocked off kilter & I've become a bit more moody & emotional, which to me is very uncommon. I've even had a good amount of nightmares since I got out of the hospital. But worst of all, due to my lack of energy (emotional, mental & physical), I've neglected my little film (as well as some of my other projects for school). Work has slowed down to a crawl & I've actually gotten to the point where I've lost almost complete interest in it. Long story short, I won't be able to complete my film by the end of the school year. I'll be lucky if I get at least a minute out of the intended 2-3 minutes completed by then. 

I don't know what part of my heart hurts more, the physical or the metaphorical.

Yet, there's a little flame in me that still has emotional backing in this project, & I still want to go ahead & finish it, deadline or not. One of the few things that I could never let myself do is quit. I wouldn't be able to live it down if I did. So no matter what, even if I'm nearly struck dead by an act of some unspeakable force, I'm gonna finish this film. I've decided that I'm gonna make this a little summer project, something to keep my hands & mind busy the four months I'm away from school.

It was decided pretty late in the game that I was going to animate the whole thing in Flash. I already had about 3 or 4 scenes already animated on paper, ready to be shot. But when I began to think of all the trouble I'd have to go through to complete a shot, I had second thoughts. For a scene, each drawing would have to be 

1) animated & tested until it looks just right

2) cleaned up 

3) scanned into the computer

4) colored in Photoshop

5) composited into After Effects

& repeat until the whole film is complete. 

& for someone like me, who just happens to enjoy animating on ones, this would take an incomprehensible amount of time & effort to tackle. In Flash, you kill about 4 birds with one stone, all in one program. So, I threw al my completed scenes in the trash & started over.

For me, my use of Flash is a love-hate relationship. While you can accomplish basically the same exact things in Flash as you could traditionally drawing on paper, the program still doesn't suite me right. It almost feels like I'm cheating. Besides, I don't want to be solely attached to the computer. I want to have a thorough grounding in doing it the traditional way with good ol' pencil n' paper. Starting next year, I'm gonna stay as far away from the computer as I possibly can. 

But for now I got a film that needs finishing, so Flash is my last resort. & so far, I'm pretty satisfied with what I've animated. If I can spend at least 3 hours a day working on this cartoon, I may have something decent to show off. 'Til then, I'll be working my ass off (or at least whatever's left of it)

Earlier today, I animated in the Cintiq lab for about 5 hours straight. & of course, I had to have a doodle break:

It's almost like a sneak peek, but it's not. 

& so, I'm off to draw more doggies!

Ciao!

I Love Smears

Smears are one of the few things I can never get tired of seeing in animation. They add a bit a snap, they're beautiful to look at (in motion as well as the individual drawings themselves) & they conserve time & money. But most importantly, they're loads of fun to animate!

I love all kinds of smears:

Smears with trails

Stretched-Face smears

Smears with multiple eyes

Smears with MORE multiple eyes

Smears with multiple everything

But my absolute favorite type of smears are the ones where the characters are so skewed that they look almost nothing like the actual character. They're like 1 frame Salvador Dali paintings.

Darla Dimple or Quasimodo?

I even like the mini ones

For a recent animation project, I animated a 20 second logo for the Tribeca Film Festival, & a big portion of it was all smears. It was probably one of the most fun things I ever animated. I'll post it up on Youtube within the next few weeks.  

More smear goodness to come soon.