Manga Studio 4 is AWESOME (also Shannon's been here)

My girlfriend Shannon and I have been spending the last month or so together. We've had a really great time; taking drives, going out to eat, even spending a week in Disney World! It's been a blast!

During that time, we've also been drawing together. We've done a few jam comics and a couple little doodles back and forth. The other day, she asked me to draw a picture of my dodo, Randy, that she can use as a desktop background on her laptop. So I started roughing out a picture for her:

Earlier this month, she gave me her copy of Manga Studio 4. I've been fiddling around with it for the last few weeks and it's really grown on me. It's a REALLY fun program to draw and ink in. The brushes are really versatile. I'll be doing my comic with that program.

Then I moved on to inks:

I have to say, I usually don't like the inking process. But in Manga Studio, it's a lot of fun. I don't think I've ever had as much fun inking as I did with this. The uke and tree are a little wonky, but otherwise I'm really happy with how this came out.

Finally I sent it off to Shannon (all the way on the other side of the room) and she started coloring it in her program of choice: PaintTool SAI. I've heard nothing but good things from my friends and colleagues about that program. In fact, while I was at SVA, a lot of the underclassmen were using it to ink their films. And I don't blame 'em! The brushes in that program are godly-amazing. Sadly, it's a PC-only program, so I won't be able to use it anytime soon. Oh well, I'm content with Manga Studio.

Anyway, Shannon put in color, highlights and shading, cropped it a bit and the final product looks like this:

I really think Shannon and I make a good team. I can't color for jack, so I definitely need her help when it comes to coloring. She'll be coloring my comic, which HOPEFULLY will be starting up soon. I would've started sooner, but Shannon and I have been busy with other things.

Sadly, she's leaving in a few days to go back home to Washington. But I'm not too sad, because we'll definitely be seeing each other again real soon! Besides, we'll be talking and collaborating on stuff all the time, so we won't really be too far apart.

See you real soon!

More Yearbook Scans!

Here's the rest of my Yearbook:

17) Nigel Clark

18) Berdian Torres, Daryn Wolfson and Robert Hom

19) Kaukab Basheer

20) Jimmy Harrigan

21) Mike Zecca (3rd Year)

22) Mark Minnig (our floor manager/superhero) and Jillann Hertel (our animation advisor/super-heroine)

23) Eric Eiser (professor)

24) Brody Klotzman and Alyssa Alecci

25) Calin Fernandez

26) Greg Yagolnitzer

27) Jes Sang Lee and John Lee

28) Justin Irizarry and Jessica Honore

29) SaetByul "Rachel" Shin

30) Courtney Amber

31) Judy Lee

32) Celeste Lai

33) Sachio Cook

34) Stephanie Lynch

35) Zach Bellissimo (again) and Tara Billinger

36) Melody Shaiken

37) Mirella Toncheva

38) Julianna Ventresco (not pictured)

and Shannon Murphy (background colorist/moral support)

I wish I got to hand the book out to more people. There were so many more awesome friends and teachers that I had missed. I miss all of these guys so much, it's hard to accept that once this summer's over I won't be going back to school to see these guys together again.

They're all incredible artists, filled with passion and who strive to excel in this field. And I know that in the next few years, they definitely will do so. Many of them have websites/blogs of their own (many of them are linked on the bottom-left side of the page). Do yourself a favor and click on those names, look at their work and get inspired.

I know it helped me out.

Thanks guys!

My "Yearbook"

While at SVA, a lot of us were disappointed with the yearbooks that were given out to seniors over the past few years. They were very artsy looking, with unique layouts and over-the-top patterns, but they were always a jumbled, unorganized mess of images and fonts. And you'd think an art school yearbook would have places to DRAW in them, right? Nope. Packed to the covers. I guess it's because the non-drawing departments of the school are the majority or something, but I digress.

I decided to go to the local art shop, buy a new sketchbook and pass it around to all my friends and teachers to draw in. I got a heck of a lot of nice messages and wonderful drawings from all of them, and I thought it would be nice to share some of them with you.

1) Ed Olis and Chris Cruz

2) Ivey Ao and Kathy Shin

3) Doug Crane (professor)

4) Michael Kurtz (First Year)

5) Chris Niosi

6) Keenon Ferrell and Alice Bing

7) Joan Hur

8) Messina Smith

9) Howard Beckerman (my thesis advisor)

10) Celia Bullwinkel (professor)

11) Yanise Cabrera

12) Zach Bellissimo

13) Vivienne Medrano (First Year)

14) Ryan Peterson (Second Year)

15) Caitlin Fogarty (First Year)

16) Luz Batista and Courtney Vonada (First Years)

More to come soon!

What's in store for me this summer...

Well, besides that....

I just need to clean up and color those last couple of shots and it'll be all over. I want to start sending the film out to festivals and see if it has the legs for it. Sadly, I've been pretty preoccupied with stuff at home, so I haven't really had the time to put any more work into it. I just gotta bite the big bazooka and get it out of the way so I can move on to some of the new things I planned on doing.

While a lot of my friends have started working at some of the neat studios in the area, I decided to take a bit of a break. My body's been pretty wiped; I never really had a break since the summer of 2009. So I'm taking most of the summer off to relax and work on some stuff I've been putting off, like sculpture, kinetics and life drawing, which I never had time for over the past year.

Part of that time will be spent with my girlfriend Shannon, who's coming over to the East Coast for a month or so. I'll show her the sites, spend some quality time, and best of all, a trip to DISNEYWORLD!!! I'm really looking forward to it!

Another thing I've been planning for a while now, and now that I have a good chunk of time I can finally start working on it: my web comic! I've been writing out the story and will start drawing out some comics, which'll be posted on this new blog I started HERE. I'm gonna backlog a few comics so I have a bit of a head start, so I expect to start posting on a weekly basis starting in mid-late July. I'm really looking forward to it.

See you guys soon!

SVA Aftermath, or "What have I learned from all this?"

Yesterday, I received my diploma and was pronounced a college graduate with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, along with the nearly 50 fellow animators who I lived and worked alongside for the past four years. And after packing up my dorm room and leaving the city one last time, I reflected on what I've been through here. Sure, there were plenty of bumps in the road and politics to deal with, but overall I really loved being part of SVA and I'm pretty bummed that this stage of my life is over.

The past few weeks have been pretty crazy, especially the last one. Last Sunday was our big animation screening; 42 films in about 4 hours. Yes, a LONG show. But to me, those few hours really flew by. I saw all my friends have their few minutes of screen time and felt really proud of them. Despite the bias, what with them being my friends and all, I really felt our year's show was pretty solid, diverse and a lot of fun! And even mine, being a bit unfinished, went over pretty well with the crowd. I had pretty sore arms from all the hugs and handshakes I had as I made my way out of the theater.

And that was that, or at least I thought it was.

Two nights later, I came to the awards show to support whichever of my friends was going to win. I ended up walking away with one of these:

"No Obelix, that's not a menhir."

Definitely a shock to the system. I'm still kind of in denial over it. But I'm glad I was able to share this award onstage with my friend Zach, who also won (we tied), and Mirella and Zack, who won for production design and stop-motion respectively.

I was left both humbled and proud, not only of myself, but of all my friends that I worked alongside on the 5th floor. Even though it has my name on it, I feel that it really belongs to everybody. Over the last year, I've been exposed to so many inspiring and talented people, and I sincerely believe that without their influence or guidance, I would never have gotten this far in a million years.

It's pretty surreal. One of the first posts I made on this blog was about my acceptance into SVA. I didn't know what was going to happen, or what I was going to learn or who I was going to meet. I've had so many unforgettable experiences since then, and I feel that I've grown not only as an animator, but as a person. And it's only the beginning.

So that's it. I've won my first award, got my degree and finished my college years. So now what do I do?

Well, I think I've earned a bit of a rest. After finishing those last pesky few shots of my film, I'm gonna take most of the summer off to relax and recharge my batteries. I'd like delve into other types of art like sculpting and painting, which I never had the time to do while I was in school. I want to hone my drawing skills a bit more and try to build a portfolio. I'm also going to (re)start my comic and make a separate site for it. And on top of that, Shannon's coming to visit for a month, and we're taking a little excursion down to Disney World! It'll be a fun and relaxing way to cap off my educational years, and come August, start my professional career.

Thanks everyone!

Storyboard to Film Comparison

I made a side-by-side comparison chart for my film. The images on the left are panels from my preliminary storyboard from last July, and the images on the right are from the finished film, 10 months later.

These few examples are special because they pretty much stayed the same from my first pass (albeit a few minor changes here and there). Not every shot in the film was copied verbatim from the storyboard. Some of my original ideas for how shots were going to be laid out were either too flat and uninteresting (like a Hanna-Barbera cartoon) or so complicated that it would've been a real pain to animate once I got up to layout and animation later on.

That's why it's always good to get a second opinion on things. That's why I had my thesis advisor (and good friend) Howard Beckerman help me out on every step of the process. To me, Howard was my "test audience" to see whether things were working or not. If he didn't understand what was going on, that's when I knew that I needed to make some changes so he would understand it.

Whenever I had an issue, I went to Howard for advice on how to fix it, and every time we would straighten things out so they worked. Sometimes it would be a minor tweak in the camera angle or a pose, and other times whole story ideas were thrown out the window. It's hard to let some things go, but for the sake of clarity it's important to fix things so the audience won't be left scratching their heads and asking questions.

CONTACT!

Here's a few selected images from my film.

I'll eventually post it up online, but I'm going to try to submit to a few festivals to see if it has the legs for it.

Or wings.

God, I hate bird puns.