Work On My Film Continues

I continue to make headway on my film. I have posted the latest version of my film to my website which includes two newly animated scenes. This now brings me to the longest and perhaps the most involved scene of the film. It is the first time that the two characters actively engage with each other. In previous scenes one character is generally only reacting to the other. This time they exchange dialog and have physical contact. Though the big guy dominates the scene I need to be sure the little guy doesn't become stale. I'm looking forward to the challenges it presents and to sinking my teeth into it. After this scene there is really only one major scene. All the others are fairly simple and straight forward.
The two new scenes I just completed are for earthquake and flood insurance. When I originally did this film as my 3rd year student film at CalArts I removed these two scenes due to lack of time to finish them. So it is nice to be able to include them now into the film. I feel they help push the big guy over the edge and his crazed reaction in the scene I am about to start makes more sense. That is the nice thing about revisiting this film. I am now able to make it the way I envisioned it when I was a student but was unable to accomplish. That is both in my animation and storytelling abilities.

Out Sketching Again

It's been a busy month or so around here between the panels, presentations, teaching and family I've been here there and everywhere. My son's school puts on a Halloween carnival every year and this year I went with him. As a parent of a 10 year old that basically means I sit around while he goes off with his friends and has fun. For part of the time I sat and sketched. Often I like to sketch people around me but in this case I just didn't feel it was a good idea. So I let my mind wander. The village is a painting I have in mind to do and thought I'd get it down on paper to work out some of the angles. When I do more stream of conscience type of drawing I usually start with a shape and build from there. Nice thing about this way of sketching is I get a lot of characters out of it. I suppose that's because it's the same approach I take when designing a character. Lately I've been using these sketchbooks that have a thick paper that has a tooth and little particles in the paper. The roughness has a look and feel I like. It also works well for markers and brush pens, allowing you to layer color in an almost painterly way. I posted some painting sketches I did several months back using this same sketchbook. I find it interesting how often certain shapes and characters tend to show up in my sketches when I work in this way. I wonder if it's because they are shapes I like or that I am comfortable with. If I notice it while I'm sketching I will make a conscience decision to change the shape and hopefully come up with something new. In this case I actually saw a man walk by that had a fun shape to his head and so I used it. Thought the character doesn't look like him at all it gave me an nice base to build a character on. I do find that sitting down and sketching often takes a bit of a push to get started. It's that blank page syndrome. That's why I do these kind of sketches...they are something to just get me drawing. I even have done this type of thing when working on projects. Just start sketching out of your head to get your artistic and creative flow working.