Time to visit Calarts!

Well, my flight is in a good 12 hours, and this will likely be my last access to a computer for the next five days. Can't wait to get there and finally see the campus and the artwork. I'm going to take tons of pictures and bug as many teachers with my awful portfolio as possible. Whats even better, all of this is occurring during a lecture from one of the animators at Pixar and someone else at an advertising animation company!

A weekend full of critiques, life drawing classes, lectures from professionals and animation lockdown! The holiest of combinations for any animator. Man, if one weekend is like this, imagine what being enrolled at Calarts for a whole year must be like! :D

Dear world, I'm in portfolio hell.

*various grumbles among swear words*

The Preferred deadline is like, right here almost. It's just three weeks away! Whats worse, I don't think my portfolio will be up to snuff by that deadline. Nothing I have in it really has a punch in it, at least I think. Add in the stress of college applications and you have yourself one hell of an exciing month coming up. Oh well, I'll get profesional pointers in little under a week, during my trip to Calarts which should be pretty damn exciting. But really, putting together a portfolio while getting piles of homework done is a horrible, horrible thing. Remember kids, get your crap done early!

I'll upload some portfolio considerations given the time. Right now... I got a biology report that needs doin'.

Movies you may have missed! : A Boy Named Charlie Brown

Every now and then, I'm going to dedicate a post to some of my most beloved animated films that may have not necessarily been the most visually stunning or popular films but are still true gems to behold. These movies deserve to be checked out for their merit even without visual fidelity.

I'd like to start this hopefully continuous series of posts with the motion picture, A Boy Named Charlie Brown.

Featuring the theatrical release in 1969, this movie has seen a number of cable-TV re-airings in recent years (well, if you count the early 90's recent). As a child, Charlie Brown was a major influence in my drive to draw, and many of the specials and movies I saw heavily guided my artistic direction early on. Charles Schulz's charming cartoon for this reason is very near and dear to me. But in particular, I feel this movie stands out from many by far.

Not only does it feature a charming story that never needs to go over the top to stay interesting, it is well paced and humorous without needing to be edgy, something modern animated films have trouble grasping. In addition, it features some of the most memorable musicals on par with Disney ones. Vince Guaraldi's Skating with Snoopy and Schroeder's rendition of Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata stand out.

Most importantly, as with many Charlie Brown specials, this film taught a very important lesson: failure. It would be hard to find a modern animated film that didn't have the usual happy or favorable ending serving as the crowd pleaser. But a Boy Named Charlie Brown has the main protagonist fall flat on his face at the end of all his endeavors, but teaches that regardless of one's failures, the world doesn't end. One of my most favorite animated films, A Boy Named Charlie Brown is not a movie to miss.

New Batch.

Well, not new exactly, this is all partially August early September stuff. I'm hoping my next batch is more experimental. Here's the dump anyway-

Don't know how much you guys might follow videogames, but Valve has been releasing trailers promoting their newest game, Team Fortress 2.

However, these trailers stand out from the standard video game trailer in that they feature stunning CG character animation, an attractive style, and tons of humor. These are real gems. Take a look.

While browsing over John K's blog and his interesting perspective on cartoons, I found this french CG cartoon. while the lip syncing is laughable, it's pretty hilarious. I don't know why, but I must have watched it 7 times already.

Holy crap, it's been two months, hasn't it!?

Massive update time! Here's all my stuff from July. I'll have some more recent stuff up soon, but for now, here are some mixed sketches and life drawings. (this is about 30%-40% of all I did)

Some of the proportions are off by a deadly margin in my life drawings. In addition, they aren't... well... creative enough. I gotta make sure to pump some more personality into these! More experimentation!





























































Feel free to leave any and all critiques!

Rabid Simpsons fan makes a post

That rabid fan being me.

And my excitement for their feature film only mounts with every passing second. As of this very moment, only 18 days remain until one of my most anticipated movies ever. Sure, the show doesn't carry the charm and comedy it once did at it's peak (the '93-'98 era) but I'm hoping the movie can bring back some of what made me love the series so much to begin with.

...I'm so sorry, my dear Tablet...

What a shame. I've been shunning my tablet as of late. Felt it was only necessary to give it some use.