left hands aren't just for holding a watch

my left hand can draw too....sort of. The first guy was highly influenced by Sean Penn

muenstro del lago

the bug

This is the bug that is beating up my insides and threatening the integrity of my throat

waiting for "The Pixar Story" Documentary

found some 'mall' people to draw whilst I was waiting for the big show(Pixar documentary at the Keystone Arts Cinema). I've noticed that I love drawing people with coats, thick clothing, layers, hats, accessories, etc. Perhaps this is an internal rebellion to all of hours spent drawing the oh-so majestic, $5/hour, nude college student. Although, I think I may have mastered 'the sitting man' from every angle.

One little thing can be so important...

!!!

In Progress Animation for Mediasauce

This guy is trying to get across the room with all of these space heaters in his way. He then sees this woman frozen in a block of ice (hard to see) and jumps back.

....another pass

Backgrounds

Here are some backgrounds for an upcoming animation for a Heating/Cooling client. We're trying a new method at work, where we give each part of the animation process it's due focus and time. I definitely feel that dealing with each step seperately, has improved the end product, ....so far. I'm currently in the midst of storboards, ...more to come on that.

Color

First of all, there are no right or wrong colors, but I think there are colors that just seem to work so well together. Color is a ongoing challenge for me. As soon as I think I've got it all figured out, I find a new color struggle. I look at it like a relationship of color, give and take, colors have to be in agreement and harmony. I tend to desaturate colors in order to get all of my colors in agreement with each other, but I learned with this illustration (and others) that obviously you can take it too far and you end up with a lifeless scheme. Of course colors will agree when they are so desaturated that they almost become the same color of gray. When everything is desaturated it's all 'give' and no take. So, as I began to (take) add some saturation into certain colors and areas, life and energy began to creep back into my colors. I guess I look at it like a hierarchy of color. There are one or two important color 'leaders', and then every other color has to support those leaders, but also do there own job in the right amount. If there's too much agreement....boring. Get some rebel colors in there to spice it up. All right, ultimately, formulas/books/strategies only get you so far, the magic comes from your departure from that. I did this a while ago and revisited the colors, recently. Hope you like what I came up with. This is more about me figuring this stuff out for myself by writing it all down, but I'd really love to hear some other people's approach to color as well. That is, assuming that people are reading this.

meeting drawings

more planning and character ideas

more planning for the dialogue test. I think I'm gonna go with an angry Joe Pesci audio clip.

some planning

I'm working on doing a scene with dialogue. Here are some sketches to try and map and where I'm going. I haven't committed to anything yet, but it's helpful for me to see it all together to see all of the possibilities. I think this will be 2D ultimately, so there are also some ideas for the characters.

Trash Throw in Flash

Here is a clip from a current flash animation for work. I'm trying some new techniques and I've found this one to be very helpful in the world of flash/cutout animation. I first started by quickly roughing in the keys and a few breakdowns with the brush tool, focusing on poses and timing...

...then I quickly placed the vector work over top of the roughs and manipulated where necessary,

I mention this because......When doing cut-out animation, it's easy to get stiff and lifeless animation. There's a tendency to rely on one pose and milk that for all it's worth. Adding that step of quick roughs in the beginning helps loosen it up a bit and allows me to think outside the pose. Although this is still rough, it is a much better performance than if I'd just rotated vector art from illustrator, and it really didn't take much more time.
Since I work in a commercial/ad business, these animations have to be turned over quickly, but I think we can still get a good performance, just maybe not so much polish. I would rather see this than a super smooth "Flash tween" rotation. very mechanical=no life

Flight to Los Angeles

Just got back from a short vacation to LA. Got to visit with an old friend and see the famous city. Also got to check out Siggraph in San Diego (Top Gun). It's quite the motivation, to be amongst greatness.

neck teeth

Visionfest 07

I get the awesome pleasure to be a juror in this year's Visionfest . Lots of great entries in here. Be sure to check it out, August 16-18. More to come on that... For now, here is a random drawing.

I'm approachable

snailhands

miles and miles of squares

monthly meeting contour lines

Art Swap Illustration

mrrrrrh

The Parker Pen

I found my Parker pen set, which includes 4 different nibs and 4 different colored re-fills. Got it when I was about 8 or so. Haven't opened it since I was about 10. So, I had to put it to good use.

Take that PC!

What I would like to do to all Dell PC's

Outro Animation for Mediasauce Demo Reel

Bookends for Mediasauce's upcoming demo reel. This was animated in Max. I don't feel like I have the control in 3DS Max as I do in Maya (graph editor,etc..). But I feel it forces me to go outside my comfort zone. I'm pleased with how these came out. My buddy Andy is working on the foley, which I'll post as soon as he finishes. Here is a rough, compressed version of the outro...

STU poses

Here is STU, the official intro character of AM. Once we got a strong pose in our drawings, we would pose the 3D character STU. Here are some of my favorites. The planning drawings I discussed earlier here.

Preview of Mediasauce new Studio site

click to go to site with animationsSneak peek of the new site to come. There will be a menu/interface to the right of 'Vibbert'. There are about 4 short idle animations that play at random after so many seconds: Yawn, sneeze, gear spit, and the what's up.

Planning, planning!

One thing they drill into your head at AM, is that planning is one of the most important steps when animating. This is quite brilliant and also pretty obvious, but it has made a big difference for me in the final product. When you have a clear picture of where you are going, it makes the process much more enjoyable. You don't second guess every decision you make along the way. I try to plan until I have something on paper that I would like to see, then when I get into the computer I have a bar set to at least what I captured in my drawing, and I don't call it quits until I at least capture what was happening in the drawing. So while I'm animating, I can really focus on the overall performance. That's my goal, at least.

Here are some planning thumbnails of poses expressing: concern, excitement, strength, and a few others. Details aren't important. Gesture, attitude, line of action and silhouette are the focus. Any additional thoughts?

STOP, don't shoot!

Had our long meeting today at work about the coming week, perfect time to do some sketch'n. I started tracing the shadows that the blinds were making on my paper, and a few pencil marks later... Not sure what to do with it, but it may have potential.

Do robots get colds? a.k.a.Sneeze animation

I got to do some 3D character animation at work. Gazunheid!

four legged animals=lots of keyframes

This is a flash animation I did for work yesterday. Head and body were animated cut-out style and the legs and tail were redrawn just about every frame. My first shot at a walking four-legged animal, which is quite intimidating at first. But it seems that really it's just like 2 people walking together, only the back legs are staggered a bit earlier than the front.
This was supposed to just be a still illustration on a website of the raccoon holding a sign, but we kicked it up a notch for one of our good clients. Lucky for me, cuz I lovez me some raccoons.

The truth about Kenny Bloggins...Animation Mentor Class 1 Demo

If you are in the business of learning animation, you should know about Animation Mentor
I just finished up class 1 and learned a lot in a small amount of time. The bummer is I will not be going onto class 2 yet, because it is quite expensive. So to keep productive, I started a blog. I really wanted to name it Kenny Bloggins, but reconsidered. Anyway, for the last assignment I had to put together a reel of all of my projects so far, and here it is.

After years of waiting....

What better way to start a blog than with a monster.