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well, i'm currently studying animation in art school (with some decent scholarships so i'm not anywhere near like 100k in debt) and i hope to land an internship at a studio next summer--i'm aiming for dreamworks, because i actually really admire the direction their films have been going in. but i'm okay with tv studios, smaller studios, etc. dreamworks did recently announce a full FEATURE that would be half-hand-drawn animation, which is pretty amazing. my chances of getting an internship at a huge feature studio like dreamworks, however, are rather slim considering the competition and talent i'm up against--so i'm not under any delusion that i can just get it. last summer i had an internship at a commercial animation studio where i realized just how little i knew about anything, and it really opened my eyes--that's really when i decided to get more serious about my work.

i think i find the most personal enjoyment in doing special effects animation (ie explosions, water, environmental stuff, smoke, etc.). i'd love to do that for a bit. some of my favorite effects animators are michel gagne and ryan woodward, and they've gone on to do really great independent projects outside of studios. i think that's something i'd aspire toward, possibly 10 years from now. maybe more. i try to be realistic about it.


edit: the character stuff--
yeah, the generator i use is at itscharacterdriven.blogspot.com, which is run by brett bean, a character designer whom i really respect/admire. though there is a lot of repetition, it was written not to generate a chaotic character but simply one that made you think before you designed. so instead of random words, it's randomly choosing from a sea of traits that can apply to any type of character. regardless, if i only work from this, i do think my work will begin to get a little stale; there's only so many random characters you can make before you want something a little more real.
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i made another "random character" from the random character generator at itscharacterdriven.blogspot.com


this time, my words were:
hairy
scary
queen (empress)
who may or may not be a viking


edit: also an explosion:
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actually, i made that entirely in photoshop. animation and stuff. i then imported certain image sequences into after effects, re-exported it, and did final touch-ups in photoshop again. finally, i exported it into a gif for the web. i might post the process if anyone is interested (but that takes a long time and i'm sort of lazy about it)
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this one is animated. concept art for senior project


@afura: i'd love to do some paid commission work one day. one day. right now idk if i'm up to doing any special requests unless it's something really fun. i might give it a shot. but if someone was like "hey i'll give you 60$ to do a short looping animation" then hell yeah i could pump one out


@jamie: thanks. i do like vespas. i'm going to stop with the two wheelers and stuff


edit: this piece in particular inspired by anthony holden
edit 2: and samurai jack of course
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i'm trying a more stylized approach this time, keeping the lines (mostly) black. this one is a little more stylized than usual, especially with the proportions
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hey no i'm writing a fanfic called "50 shades of black" it's about rubrt patensen being his own bdsm slave

Quote
i lavishly walked into the entrance hall unsrue of what to expect but the only thing at the end waws a mirror. it was a big mirror, as big as the wall! the building is over 20 feet tall too! then the door locked behind me all of a sudden, and then i turned around, and then i realize…
 
im the one who locked th door

i refuse to accept cirticism/edits because it's better that way..
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farren i think you're just spewing bullshit so you don't look as bad as you actually do right now. nobody is censoring anyone here, they're just saying you're being a jerk for making sexist jokes

like you know when someone uses the word "nigger," most people tend to regard them as racist assholes. but they're still protected by free speech as long as they aren't killing anyone, afaik. i think most of your claims here are rather overblown and grandiose. you're just mad because a few people didn't like your jokes and now nobody really likes you

maybe if you apologized
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man i thought the point was that mysognistic jokes really just aren't appropriate in a discussion about gender equality, idk about censorship (i always thought censorship meant like a mod editing your posts so that everything you said was gone or something, like actually beeping it out except it's on the internet)

but hey ignore me, i'm just a guy who's not a fan of ayn rand fans
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thanks dada for replying to me and putting it in a way that i can understand. i'm definitely against the ideas that ayn rand has, but it's always been hard for me to express in words why, especially when i try to talk to any objectivist friends and point out my problems with what they're saying. usually what happens is they'll throw a bunch of words at me and an ayn rand quote explaining the virtues of selfishness, and i won't have anything to say against that. sometimes i see someone just walking around carrying ATLAS SHRUGGED or THE FOUNTAINHEAD, just to impress people by the fact that they can read large books (which just looks like someone being a pretentious, dumb jerk in my opinion)

i need to start reading more books into philosophy/economics, because this stuff really interests me. i just don't have as much time as i used to to look into it as much and the language sort of gets to me.

sorry for completely derailing the topic into one about objectivism. it's been really interesting
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is it wrong of me to dislike ayn rand simply because everyone who follows her ideology acts like a self-entitled prick with "perfect" logic? idk. i've always had a hard time trying to grasp what she's trying to say in her "books"/"philosophy" or whatever, but i'm not educated (smart) enough to really understand WHAT'S WRONG with it. it's always just been a headache for me trying to debate with an objectivist and their only arguments for everything is to throw an ayn rand quote that doesn't make any sense (to me) at me
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the film will star robert patensen as his own bdsm slave, i love it already
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i saw brave, i really liked it, but the huge expectation of it being a pixar hit sort of diminished the quality of the film, since it felt so unusual from what makes pixar films special. it was by no means a bad film, i just felt like they could have made a few of the story points stronger. visually, and from an animation standpoint, it was absolutely stellar. the rigs must've taken months to do. there is some incredibly sophisticated technology going on in the film, and i love how it all came together. the acting was also superb.

personally i'm a little more excited for wreck-it ralph, mostly since one of my personal friends is actually animating on that film, and also because it's being directed by rich moore (who directed some of the best futurama/simpsons episodes)
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thanks for the comments guys. i didn't realize how much it looked like gorillaz, but i may be subtly influenced by them because i've been watching that new disneyXD show called motorcity.


i'm really influenced by artists like shane glines (http://cartoonretro.deviantart.com/) and sean galloway (http://cheeks-74.deviantart.com/). i'm still trying to find my own specific style i guess.


oh and i'm also stupidly obsessed with vespas, idk why. i think that's like a character designer thing, every character designer has drawn someone on a vespa.


here's something i just finished. it's...uh...another fan art. and...more vespas
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it wasn't really a question, here's some stuff i made this week:



that's a self-portrait of me



uhhh....that's some fan art



this was a character design challenge based off of the words "glamorous fierce destroyer genie"





i wanted to draw a vespa but ended up drawing a lady too


i'm basically doing one illustration a day, i started this week. i think i might take weekends off to recharge/practice sketching.
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My roommate got Portal 2 on the 360 and we played through the co-op campaign and I played through the single-player. It's pretty neat, I'm glad it's longer than #1, though it's still fairly short, I mean all you do is go from room to room solving puzzles so, I guess that's about all I expected. Seeing aperture labs from the 60s or whatever was a pretty cool touch. Actually im right at the end of the single player, I have like 3 or 4 rooms from wheatley then whatever happens at the end, i don't know that, but I did look up how many puzzle rooms were left and its only a couple. I played it for like 6 hours though so I got burned out. Neat game but not worth 60 bucks or wahtever, I'll probably buy it when its 30 or less, just to have it. My brother for instance hasn't played either Portal games.

you can get it new from amazon for 30$ right now, that's how i got it
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yeah, sorry about sounding kind of mean. i understand the in-depth frame-by-frame analysis is something that takes a lot of time to do, and i wouldn't expect that from anyone except for paid professors/tutors. i'm thinking about enrolling in animation mentor after i'm done with my bachelor's degree because i know that 4 years of art school is not nearly enough to learn everything i can about animation

can you recommend any other websites/books where i can learn about traditional special effects animation? elemental magic is okay, but there's so much about it that it just doesn't cover. it barely touches on explosions and only has a few diagrams--mostly it has lots of writing about the "mindset" you need.
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you get paid for offering critique? lucky you. i've never heard of anyone doing that before.

i'm just a little annoyed that i'm being told to take life drawing classes/practice more when that's all i'm doing with my life right now--that's not the type of critique that anyone wants to hear, especially if it's something they're already doing (and specializing in at school). it's hard for me to respond to this kind of advice because i don't want to look like some kind of self-righteous asshole demanding that you like my art.

i am studying great cartoons. i do look through them frame by frame. that's what i'm doing now. maybe my demo reel doesn't exactly show it, but like i said, it doesn't show every piece of animation i'm working/worked on. it's mostly high school/first year stuff.


that being said, i don't want to say that anyone's critique is bad. i appreciate any input. i guess i wasn't too clear on what kind of input i would like/where i'm coming from.


i'm studying animation at an art school. a lot of it i'm studying by myself between classes. i've been watching a lot of animated short films this semester more than last and i'm practicing a butt-load of figure drawing every week. i'm very interested in special effects animation: things like fire, water, explosions, etc. i understand the mechanics of character animation and i've read richard williams' the animator's survival kit several times (and i'm currently practicing from examples in that book). other animation books i've been reading include: the illusion of life, force (life drawing for animators), and elemental magic (special effects animation book--not quite as in-depth as i'd like it to be).


i know what i need to do to get better at this stuff. i know i need to be studying the great classic cartoons. i guess i would appreciate it more if you gave me some examples of cartoons or animators or studios i should look at that aren't typically recommended (like MGM, WB, Disney...and for the contemporary ones, Frederator/Nickelodeon/various anime studios).


it might be a lot to ask for, i don't know. i'm just somewhat frustrated when someone tells me to do something i'm already doing
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i always attend life drawing classes. i'm taking a figure drawing class and i go to a four-hour drawing co-op every sunday. i've read richard william's animator's survival kit in high school. i'm doing a walk every week and also have been focusing on animating splashes and explosions more recently.

i understand that i need to do more "slow" animation, but it bores the hell out of me. i also know about all that rhythm stuff, and i also took a few music theory classes when i was growing up. i figure that if it registers with the audience, then i'm golden. i'm inspired by the extreme speeds that tex avery's stuff has.

your criticisms are good, but you should assume that i understand the animation vocabulary quite well (you don't need to explain what "holding the key position" is to animators in critique). i also understand that i've always got to keep drawing--especially life drawing. these are things that i've hammered into myself for years.

sorry i'm criticizing your criticism, which is silly. i'm quite glad you gave me some insightful critique though and i'm not dissing you/being defensive in any way (well maybe i'm being a little bit defensive, but only because i'm a somewhat cocky bastard. i will take your crit to heart though, and i'll do slower animation. that and lip sync are things that i don't particularly enjoy doing and should work on improving)
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i'm 19 though so it's not as good as helter skelter's


really the only thing good about it is the intro i guess


you can watch it here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BVhtX6BN1g

i made it for a merit scholarship at my school. i'm a sophomore. this is currently my second year in the animation program, though it feels much more like my first (freshman year is just stupid art school foundation classes)


by the time i'm through with school i'll probs have a veeeery different demo reel. also this one has some stuff i made in high school so yeah


gimme some critiques, i like them
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for webcomics there's gunnerkrigg court. i guess that's kind of a guilty pleasure of mine but i really really like it. also charles christopher is a definite must. i also follow snowflakes.

as for print comics... my favorite batman comic is "the dark knight returns." it draws some parallels to watchmen (i'm assuming you read watchmen because everyone has)

there's a bunch of good print comics that are more contemporary but i'm not able to think of any right now whoops. you could read the flight anthologies for indie stuff, all of which has pretty good art style (i love the artwork from the guy who started flight, kazu kibuishi. you may know him from the online webcomic "copper," which isn't updating anymore. he also has three published books out including a copper one--the amulet series, which is pretty kiddy fantasy adventure stuff but has awesome art)