Sack Hop continued

Sack Hop Animation from Mlong128ir on Vimeo.

Here is my latest version of the sack hop taking into consideration many of the notes Mike gave me on the last two. This one actually is about the 5th version of this particular hop if you take into account all those eraser marks you can see at the beginning. Right now I feel it's just "good enough"mechanically but can be better overall, Mike had a few notes on this one as well and felt the bottom portion was working fine, but the upper body can use some work. The way he put it was, "You have the technical aspects down, now it's time to work on the emotional." He said next week after the holiday he will sit down with me and draw over my drawings to demonstrate exactly how he goes about doing that. I know I'll have many "A-Ha!" moments when I see him plus-ing my work as is always the case when I see him demoing. Stay tuned for the results from that in a couple weeks.

Also this time around I tried out Vimeo, I think it preserves the video quality better than Youtube. Hopefully you can all see it.

Sack hops

For those of you who visit my blog (anybody left?) that may not know, I've been fortunate enough to be allowed to hang out around July Films www.julyfilms.com a few hours a week and learning some things about animation from Mike Nguyen www.rainplace.net okay learning A LOT of things.   It's been a great experience and I can see the growth in my work and confidence in animation. Staring at a blank page before getting started is no longer as scary and intimidating as it once was.  

Above are two quick animations I did last night at July overlayed into the same video. Both share the same first two drawings, and both need work. The ghost images that appear are due to this being done on old pieces of animation paper, it pays to recycle. Just thought I'd share since I thought this place could use an update.

Another FX post

Here's an explosion I animated a little while back, just trying some new things. It was fun to do.

Just a little something

It's been a long time since I last updated, and some people have been giving me a hard time about it. Maybe I'll begin updating it more often to silence them all.

Here's a flame FX animation loop I did the other week really quick, my first time trying to animate fire. It's not looping very well though.

More pictures of the gallery

This is my fiancee' Miyuki's sketch wall, she included her wonderful life drawings in hers, and most of the flip books are hers as well.

Here's my sketch wall, including my Herobear maquette and my Shere Khan maquette which is still very much a work-in-progress.

Another closer view.

Successful Gallery Opening!

I would like to thank everybody who was able to make it to Miyuki and my gallery opening this last Saturday night at Cal State Fullerton's Exit Gallery, we had a good time and hope you all enjoyed our work. Miyuki will be opening it this week until we take everything down Thursday evening, so feel free to drop by and take a look if you have not already.

We have sketches, flip books, our pitch we made for Nickelodeon for last year's competition (made it past the first round of eliminations but not the second), as well as some of my early childhood drawings to contrast with my current work, and a TV playing our animation that we have done in school. Here are some pictures I took after everything was finally put up.

This is the wall of animation, we have flip books to flip through as well as some of the drawings posted above for a better look.

This is a small portion of my sketch wall.

My Herobear maquette is also on display, poor guy still needs his cape.

Another portion of my sketch wall.

Little Update

Hey everybody, since my blog was posted in the PMC newsletter, I'll throw something up here. These are some thumbnail sketches for a dialog test I was hoping to finish by the gallery, each about an inch and a half tall. The dialog is a clip of Joan Cusack getting a bit angry at the person she's become. I don't think I'll be able to finish this in time, maybe just the keys and a couple of breakdowns. Anyway, enjoy the sloppy mess. Maybe someday I'll post some finished work on here.