I'm going to blog less often over the summer

Even though I have a backlog of blog post ideas, I'm going to take a break from my bi-weekly blogging schedule for a little while. For the rest of the summer. I've picked 3 days that I will blog through the summer; these days fall approximately one month apart and they are Tuesdays.

I constantly shift my priorities around and right now blogging is going down on the list. I've got a lot on my plate! I can't wait to whittle down the mountain of work I've got to do and get back to animating on my film.

The 3 Tuesdays I plan to blog over the remainder of the summer:

July 23
August 20
Sept 17

September 22 is the start of autumn!

Old Sketchbook Findings

I was cleaning up my apartment and found a couple old sketchbooks. One is maybe 5 years old, and another one about 2 years. I found scribbles and sketches of Pickled before it really took shape. I found storyboards, storyboard revisions, layout roughs and even old character design ideas. And a few life drawings. I'm glad I hung onto those sketchbooks. Take a look at some of my rough stuff:

ancient character design ideas

ancient character design ideas

ancient character design ideas

This are the oldest storyboards that found for Pickled.
This is waaay back in summer of 2008 when I had the idea that maybe Birdie could be a mail order bride robot.

Pickled storyboard revision drawings

Pickled storyboard revision drawings

Pickled storyboard revision drawings

Pickled storyboard revision drawings

a rough kitchen layout drawing

Pickled storyboard revision drawings

Dr. Sketchy's Toronto

Dr. Sketchy's Toronto

Dr. Sketchy's Toronto

My Inspiration of The Day: Look Books

Yesterday I saw this slideshow of the evolution of Kanye West's style. It's a bit crazy that celebrities have their outfits tracked and put into public slide shows for the world to see. It's also fascinating to be able to click through images and get a sense of a person's style evolution. One of my favourite blogs is The Cut by New York Magazine. A favourite "celebrity" of this blog is Kate Middleton and she's got her very own slideshow there as well. On the front page there are links to the most popular or trending slideshows and you can access them all if you hit "more look books".

Personal style is personal expression. Sometimes we want to dress down, sometimes we want to dress up. We may have a current favourite colour or fabric or pattern. Maybe we follow trends or reject them. There's a reason behind our choices. A film maker or character designer would do well to remember that the personal style of a person reflects how they feel at a given moment and that personal style evolves, just as does the person wearing it.

amazing

I saw an advanced screening of Monsters University!

Monster's University is a good movie! It was mild in terms of new content or bold character or story choices but it was extremely well done and quite entertaining. It was extremely family friendly. Everything in the film was well developed and beautifully executed. Very worth a watch.

Here's the sign from my press section seat :D

I ended up getting free tickets to see this movie. I noticed an ad in a newspaper that asked me to text my postal code so that I could get 2 advance tickets. The line up at the theater was long. When I was only 5 people away from getting in there was a bit of a wait and I thought we would be told that all the seats were filled. But instead we were told that the rest of us in line would be getting the better seats in the press section! We had to make sure our phones were shut off while everyone else in the theater had to surrender their phones for the duration of the film. This time being fashionably late paid of.

A view of the MU campus

Interestingly, I felt as if the film was a metaphor for working in the animation industry. Though I suppose it could just represent any industry. Here's a list of ways in which I felt that the film could be a metaphor for educating oneself and entering an industry (such as animation):

1) picking a great school and being excited about learning and meeting like minded peers
2) hard work is very valuable
3) riding on your "talent" or your name is not a way to succeed
4) people are valued for their own particular unique strengths
5) being creative
6) being responsible and professional
7) it's important to recognise the value in older employees at a company that perhaps don't have the same speed as in their younger days but still have great technique/value/experience
8) one may enter an industry via an unconventional way
9) one does not HAVE to graduate from university or college; educating oneself and having dedication and being hard working are more important than a piece of paper that says you graduated. (However completing higher education is valuable and often necessary depending on your industry and the path you take)
10) starting small in an industry and working your way up is a great way to learn

Before the film started the audience was treated to a new Pixar short; The Blue Umbrella.

When this short started my eyes were glued to the screen. The realistic but charming world was "filmed" in a way quite unique to animated shorts. The short felt very artistic and looked as if it was expertly shot with a camera. There were several shots of elements in the environment and of "smiling" objects on a city street on a dark rainy night. It was stunning actually. The story ends up being about a blue umbrella that notices a red umbrella and a love story follows. The music was really sweet too. Unfortunately the plot of this short was exactly the same as the last Pixar short; Paperman. That is; boy meets girl, boy likes girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl again. Why must the boy always be the pursuer, the action taker, the plan maker? It's true that society expects women to be the pursued, but it is a tired and outdated stereotype that men and women all want this to be the norm. The red "girl" umbrella (you can tell she's a girl since she's got eyelashes, which is another animation trope) is passive. Of couse it's ok to have a story like this, it's perfectly lovely and wonderful, it's not an unrealistic story possibility either and it is charming, but I'm a little disappointed that the same boy meets girl formula (which was just used in Paperman) is used again here and there are no real surprises.

Saschka Unseld was the director of this short and truly, it was beautiful and extraordinarily charming. When I saw the environmental elements smiling on a rainy day I thought of those old 1952 Disney shorts storyboarded by Bill Peet; The Little House and Susie the Little Blue Coupe. Unseld says that he got the idea for this short one rainy day when he was walking in San Francisco and saw an abandoned umbrella lying in the gutter. “It was the saddest thing,” he said. “I stood there and wondered what had happened to him. I think that was when I got the idea of giving him a story.”

And the animation itself is striking. The two umbrella characters have very simple facial features but they are expertly animated to convey expressions and micro expressions. You can tell just what the characters are thinking and feeling. I got goosebumps when the blue umbrella notices the red umbrella for the first time. He lets himself watch her a bit, while she enjoys the sensation of the rain falling. At least at first he somewhat tries to conceal his interest. Then he's a little embarassed when she notices him looking.

I did in fact really enjoy this short.

Hand Drawn Animation in Progress! This time it's for my day job

I've been pretty busy recently working on the new adult dragon animation for the game I work on. I put together a pencil test and I've cleaned up the key drawings and finalised the timing based on that. Unfortunaly I cannot share this work in progress until the art is live in the game. But I've been taking notes as I go and I plan to put up a big blog post about my process! So for now, I'll keep working away and when my work is done I'll have a boatload of stuff to share.

Here's how the corner of my desk currently looks:

I'm using a combination of physical and digital media. You can see that there is paper, pencils and a pegbar, but also a scanner and my cintiq.

Visual Post: Dragons of Atlantis Cloud Baby Dragon Animation

I realised that I haven't shared any of the animation that I've done for Dragons of Atlantis online. I was working on my demo reel a little while ago but for reasons it didn't get finished. I would still like to finish updating it and get that online soonish though. For today, please put your eyeballs on the animation I did of the Cloud Baby Dragon!
Cloud Baby Dragon Idle Animation from Andrea K Haid on Vimeo.

I'm already getting antsy to get back to work on my film after being away for just a week! It's like a Siren, calling me. I've watched a few movies since my painting milestone and I made a fitness schedule for myself that in theory would be easy to keep up with. Part of that schedule has me getting to the gym after work and before dinner but since I decided to do that I've ended up socialising or being too busy every evening. Argh! I would much prefer to work out in the morning but, pretty much due to my hair, that means I'm late for work every day. My hair is long and it takes forever to wash, brush and dry it. Dammit. Cut it you say? I don't think so. So I dunno. I really want to exercise more but I have a hell of a time fitting fitness into my daily schedule. Maybe I'll just try exercise in the morning again.

I have made a little bit of time for learning Maya on my own in the last week! I don't think it's going to be a stretch for me to get comfortable animating in Maya. I feel like it's completely within my reach. It would be cool to get better at modeling and just have a general understanding of more Maya tools, though animating is always going to be my specialty and passion. I'll keep at it and put up some tutorials that I complete sometime.