New blog alert

I'm abandoning this blog since blogger is a complete pain to manage. My future endeavors in art and animation can be found at http://drawnbydiego.tumblr.com/. It contains all the work I've done since transferring to SVA, and it gets updated relatively frequently. Hooray!

I hope I'll see you there!

Animations from Spring 2012

My blog has been woefully neglected like a bastard child, so I'm posting my animations from this semester to remedy that. The first is the midterm for my intermediate animation class. 

It's called 'Bagheera Takes Flight'. It's the first shot of my reinterpretation of The Jungle Book. In my version, the story is set in my homeland, the Philippines, instead of India. The apex predator (not to mention the national bird) there is the Philippine Eagle, so I decided to use it for Bagheera. As I was making my storyboards, Bagheera turned up in a lot more scenes and I inadvertently was developing him more instead of  Mowgli. I decided to make Bagheera the protagonist of the story, with Mowgli more as the plot device that keeps the story moving forward. 

Anyway, the quick sequence is of Bagheera hearing a human woman's scream (there's no audio in the video though) and he takes off and flies to the direction of where it came from. 

This animation was also my entry to the student art show. It didn't win, unfortunately, but I'm still really proud of it.

This second animation is my final for my intermediate 3D Modeling and Animation class. It's a quick action sequence of Quorra from Tron Legacy, although I made the scene up myself. It was animated in Maya and was edited in After Effects. The song is "Derezzed" by Daft Punk from the movie's soundtrack and the blaster sound is most likely owned by George Lucas. I'm giving them credit here before Disney or Lucas decides to drop the sue-hammer on me.

I decided this semester that I wouldn't want to continue working in 3D. I didn't enjoy modeling, rigging, and animating in Maya. The only thing I enjoyed in the program was working with cameras and lights. But despite the low-res model and the difficult, finicky, unpredictable, and volatile rig; I'm pretty happy with the end result. Although the animation isn't great, I put a lot of work into it and I feel strangely proud.

I also have another animation, my final animation for Intermediate Animation, but Flash is being difficult at the moment and keeps crashing. And besides, there's still some kinks I need to sort out and a few more frames that I need to draw so I'll upload it at a later time, I promise.

Assassin Ewok

An assassin Ewok for my animation class' annual coloring book

Game of Thrones sketches

I decided to rewatch season 1 of Game of Thrones before the premiere of season 2 next week, and do some sketching while I'm at it. These are from episode 2, The King's Road.

Harry Lloyd as Viserys Targaryen, the Beggar King

Lena Heady as Cersei Lannister, Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Jaime Lannister. I think I nailed the infamous "Cersei face" in that drawing

 Nymeria, the direwolf

Mark Addy as King Robert Baratheon 

Richard Madden as Robb Stark, Alfie Allen as Theon Greyjoy

I can't wait for next week's premiere. I was instantly hooked after the series premiere; it was well cast, well written, and the production values were fantastic. I started reading the books soon after, and I caught up about 2 weeks before the latest book A Dance With Dragons was released. I liked the series so much I even bought the bluray set. It's a great purchase because it has so many great special features, especially The Complete Guide to Westeros. It's a series of short animated featurettes narrated by some of the cast that explores the lore. I'll most likely post another set of these next weekend.

Monster Draw sketches

I haven't posted in a while, again. But here are my sketches from tonight's Monster Draw, Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits. It still stands as one of the strangest movies I've ever seen.

 I really need to invest in a scanner, these iPhone pics just don't cut it. Anyway, I'll make sure to post something about my trip to the Walt Disney Animation Studios next week.

Hugo sketches

It's been eons since my last update. I got swamped with schoolwork during the last month of last semester and regular work during Christmas break, but here I am back in the saddle. Now, I should be posting stuff for my new project for class (an adaptation of Jungle Book) but I don't have a scanner at home, and I've only produced only a few pieces of good artwork for it. But I will be posting stuff about it soon, hopefully this week. But for now, here are some sketches of the characters from Martin Scorsese's Hugo. 

First up is the title character, tinker and professional urchin Hugo Cabret (played by Asa Butterfield). 

Next is Isabelle (played by Chloe Grace Moretz), the budding author

This next one is the grumpy toy shop owner, Georges Melies (played by the brilliant Sir Ben Kingsley)

 And finally, the Station Inspector Gustave and his trusty sidekick Maximillian (played by Sacha Baron Cohen). Gustave was my favorite character from the movie. 

I wanted to sketch Christopher Lee and Emily Mortimer's characters too, but that would mean less time watching the movie. I'll do it when I watch the movie again, which is probably in the near future because it was so amazing.

Anyway, the next update will be about Jungle Book. I'll have character pages, layouts, and hopefully a color script up.

SJSU trip

My fellow students and I went down to sunny San Jose to visit SJSU's Animation/Illustration department. I was blown away by the talent and how involved the faculty is with their students. But the most impressive thing that I saw there was a simple little sketch in the hallway...

Glen Keane!!! It took almost all of my willpower to keep myself from squealing like a 7 year old schoolgirl with pigtails. Fanboyism aside, everyone in the department made me feel welcome and I'm definitely gonna put the school at the top of my application list