Sculpture: Morpheus (Primer'ed)

I was expecting to paint the sculpture today in class, but unfortunately the instructor's paints disappeared. All I got done during the class time was filling in the cracks with gray epoxy putty, and spraying the sculpture over with a layer of gray primer.

I thought some of the porous skin texture was lost during the bake, but spraying the primer brought all the details back out. Looking forward to painting it and maybe make some plastic sunglasses for him if I have time during the break.




A closeup on the details of the face

Sculpture: Morpheus (Baked)

I finally finished sculpting my Morpheus and added the final details for the face and skin texture, and BAKED it.

I don't know if I baked it for long enough but it looks fine except for a crack along the side of his head. The instructor says all cracks can be fixed and no scars left behind, I will take his word for it. I'm going to start painting it today .

Keith's Caricature

For History of Animation class we were asked to draw a caricature of Keith, our instructor, to be handed in at end-of-term. I thought he would fit well in the KFC colonel's suit, so here goes. (The caricature doesn't look completely like him though, oh well).

Character Design: Concept Design

The 5th character design assignment is to draw a character from the paragraph provided to us below. I tried to go for a more cartoony style since this is a cartoon character design class.

It was about three blocks from my office building that I saw a cop car double-parked and the two buttons in it staring at something over by a shop window on the sidewalk. The something was Terry Lennox - or what was left of him - and that little was not too attractive.
He was leaning against a store front. He had to lean against something. His shirt was dirty and open at the neck and partly outside his jacket and partly not. He hadn't shaved for four or five days. His nose was pinched. His skin was so pale that the long thin scars hardly showed. And his eyes were like holes poked in a snowbank. It was pretty obvious that the buttons in the prowl car were about ready to drop the hook on him, so I went over there fast and took hold of his arm.

We also have to show concept-in-development drawings that lead to the final drawing of this character. I did lots of development drawings of him to get a better feel of his character and I deliberately added in some sober drawings of him too. I started off by drawing a more realistic version and then shrinking him down to a small cartoony version:

Photoshop: Wasp

Our first Photoshop class started on Week 5, I guess it is there to compliment our first texturing class that also started on Week 5. Photoshop class is pretty easy since I know my way around it very well. Our first assignment is to complete 1 of 2 matte painting tutorials : painting a wasp or painting clouds. I chose the wasp one since I am always more fascinated with living things than... say... clouds.

3d Modeling: Unicorn

Our second 3D modeling assignment is to model a unicorn. The focus of this exercise is to learn how to isolate muscle structure in organic modeling. I am fairly happy with this model, but I kind of spent too much time on the body muscles and ran out of time for the face. I would add more details to the face but I already spent 20 hours on this model and I think that's already too much time spent on a fancy horse.

Character Design: Cast of Characters & Faces

The 3rd assignment for Character Design is to design a cast of at least 5 characters portraying different archetypes, and using only primitive shapes to show poses, emotions, and silhouettes (as we did in the last 2 assignments).

I used the same wrestler character from my last 2 assignments as the "hero", and added the "damsel in distress", "sidekick", "henchman", and "villain". See if you can tell which is which .





The 4th assignment is drawing 5 totally different faces of characters from different universes, and then picking 1 of them and draw 5 different emotions. Again, we have to use the same technique of drawing with only basic primitive shapes as the basic structure.

I just did some faces randomly and the old man just feels more interesting to me so I picked him for the emotions. He feels like a drunk old man so I made sure to exaggerate that quality.

Composition: Appeal & Clarity

For the composition classes, we are always given descriptive paragraphs to base our drawings on. Below is my week 3 and 4 assignments, topics are appeal and clarity:

A dimly lit interrogation room. The atmosphere is heavy and oppressive. It is a small room with a table and two chairs. There is a ceiling lamp hanging over the table and the windows are recessed, giving the impression of a bunker. A soldier is sitting at the table facing the door, expressionless. A man in a gray suit and square glasses enters the room carrying a brief case. The man silently crosses the room and sits down. The two figures sit looking at each other, each waiting for the other to begin.

But Bobby had this thing for girls, like they were his private tarot or something, the way he'd get himself moving. We never talked about it, but when it started to look like he was losing his touch that summer, he started to spend more time in the Gentleman Loser. He'd sit at a table by the open doors and watch the crowd slide by, nights when the bugs were at the neon and the air smelled of perfume and fast food. You could see his sunglasses scanning those faces as they passed, he must have decided that Rikki's was the one he was waiting for, the wild card and the luck changer. The new one.

3D Animation: Bouncing Ball (3D)

We also did a bouncing ball assignment in 3D to parallel what we were learning from classical animation, but here we have a heavy ball and a light ball. This animation looks different from the classical one because we are not dealing with squash and stretch yet.


Bouncing Ball (3D)

Classical Animation: Line Tests

Here are the assignments I did for the first three weeks of Classical Animation class. Animation is probably my weakest link because I haven't done much in the past about studying motion. I faced many problems here and there and everywhere, but if something looks odd I try my best to correct it myself before I go to someone else for help.


Week 1 - Bouncing Ball


Week 2 - Hairball


Week 3 - Jumping Flour Sack