one head painting

here is my favorite study i did in justin taylor's head painting class this semester*. ideally, i'd show you all my less-than-great ones first, but this is the only one i have in a digital format and i'm getting antsy and want to post.

oil, 18x24 on gessoed masonite

he had us do monochrome paintings for a good chunk of the semester, which was extremely helpful when we delved into color. i think this was burnt umber. i used it in extremely transparent layers for the underpainting and darks, and then built up the lights by mixing white with it.

*semester of fall '11 -- august to december 2011

old school animation

i was so fortunate to take cynthia hogan's 2D character animation class this semester (cynthia is absolutely amazing, both as an animator and person). we had to choose a character from a film to animate, and i chose sawyer from cats don't dance, a favorite of mine as a kid. then we chose sound clips from our character's voice actor/actress (mine was jasmine guy) and animate scenes of our own using that character and sound clip. finding and editing the clip was actually one of the hardest parts for mine in particular.

due to some file format issues and some computers being exchanged, i sort of, um, lost my first animation (*aaarrrgghh!!*) .....but then i found it! the paper version, at least. so i re-shot it, though the timing wasn't perfect since i'd readjusted it when i first shot it. however, it was the best i could do with the limited time i had, so here it is.



the second and third animations were to include a hook-up, or a shift of camera in one scene ("hooking up" one shot to the next).

keep in mind, i hadn't animated since i took the intro class back in '09 and this was my first time animating to a sound clip. my shapes are all over the place. when she critiqued it, cynthia attributed this to the fact that i was drawing like a clean-up artist, rather than an animator. ah. that was the key. i wish i would have known the difference before i animated it. meh, live and learn. after i shot it, i realized i totally could have taken away one of the poses because it moves really fast. but i only got one chance to shoot it and that happened to be right before it was due, so, c'est la vie.

even looking at it now after having turned it in a few days ago, i know i could go back and make it SO MUCH BETTER. but i did what i could with the time i had to spend on it. someday this knowledge will make itself manifest in some brilliant project i work on. anyway, here's what it is for now:


even though the outcomes could have been much better, i'm seriously excited that i learned so much. and i'm stoked to apply it in the future.