Happy Holidays...

My Current Work In Progress:

"DEATH OF A SNOWMAN"

As we cross yet another end to another year, I have been working non-stop and found little time to explore the creativity I once found so much time for.  To me, that makes 2016 yet another failed year.

The good thing about this year, however, is one particular project that has encompassed all of the free time that I do happen to have.

The project is called "Death of a Snowman" authored by the amazing Daniel Guyton. I've had the pleasure working with Daniel as one of his first performers in his stageplay "Where's Julie?".  Cast by Daniel as the part of 'Julie' in the sideshows at the Irene Ryan Competition in Altoona, Pennsylvania, mine and Daniel's history goes back many, many years ago when I was nominated for my stage performance in "The Glass Menagerie" while earning my first degree in Performing Arts to compete with other actors for theatrical awards.  Sort of like a small time Golden Globes for college students.  Not too many people know that I have that first degree or that I (was told) was also pretty skilled in it... It had a similar transparency as my artwork had back then.  People that were affiliated with that stage of my life discovered I was pretty good with drawing and creating characters some time afterwards...

Before the start of social media explosion, while I had went on to enhance my visual arts skills by pursuing a degree in digital media and computer art, Daniel Guyton went on to develop an incredulous volume of work.  He has a range that reaches all ages and identities while still upholding his ever quirky balance and peculiar sometimes unconventional outlook.  His work "Where's Julie" is still preformed quite regularly around the country-- most probably around the globe, too.  While we stayed in touch through facebook, Daniel had preceded to become a very active member in the playwright community, including a dramatic arts instructor, participating in the Writers Guild of America, and also as a member of the Board of Directors for Working Title Playwrights...

Daniel is currently involved in a fundraiser to help support local playwrights in his area.  To learn more about the cause, you can link up HERE.

I am very honored to be a major part of "Death of a Snowman"'s first digital reproduction, spoken as both an artist, a patron of the arts, AND as another captivated audience member who has filled a seat to indulge in a number of his stage plays over these years since first meeting him...

Although still very premature, I share pieces of it now, because after the holiday it will taper off into the changing of seasons and be somewhat lost in fevers of spring.   I am hopeful that 2017 will give me enough spare time to complete it for a properly timed line up the next holiday season.

So, first, before I explain my progress on this piece, let me wish you all a nice holiday season filled with everything you want, with peace and love, as well, and give my blessings for the New 2017 Year.  A Good New Year to you all.



SNOWMAN PRACTICE RIG

Since last summer, in and between multiple days jobs at a time, I have been burning the midnight oil to create some professional developments on this project.  While this process has taken tremendous efforts during general inabilities to live day to day (aka the sob story of every struggling artist) it has indeed come a long way that I am excited to show. I approached this proposal as if I were part of a preproduction team.  That is one of my goals, anyways, so I found these creations to be most enjoyable.  

The first part of my process was to open up the sketchbook and draw as many different designs of the two main characters as I could within as little amount of time and send them off for selection.  I did some quick builds of the two main characters, however, to try to get myself aligned from a traditional to a 3D mentality.   I was most content with the results of the snowman, and while he was not yet accurate to the initial 2D concept selected, I decided to make a practice rig on an unweighted / unskinned version of him in order to breakdown the types of controls I would eventually need for some of his animation:

 

 

While the rig still needs a lot adjustments, it was a fun quick little tasks to play around with.  It is very breakable at the moment.  I can't wait to put the real rig on the real character!

TEMPLATE SETS (First Versions)

 

I chose not to spend much additional time working with color or digital concepting yet, and instead decided to move on to researching and pulling reference to help start building some of the major sets.

  

INT.  KITCHEN



INT.  LIVING ROOM

INT.  CHARLOTTE'S ROOM



EXT.  NEIGHBORHOOD



 

 

 

 

CALL OUT SHEETS SAMPLES

After taking a mari class on CGSociety with Justin Holt a couple years back, I was inspired to develop a few templates that he would describe as a "Call Out Sheet":

These templates would include anything and everything relating to the character, object, or set to help demonstrate the direction of visuals in one united place...  color palette, texture, reference imagery, anything to solidify the development.

ANIMATED PREVIEWS OF WIP SETS

 

Additionally, I figured getting a head start on building some of the sets would help me find a firm grasp of the of the schematic and spatial information I wanted for the storyboards.  While it was tedious adding in some of the smaller details--  I figured the more inanimate objects floating around the more natural the set would look in the end...

 

 

 

STORYBOARDS

And in the same sense, I chose to do the storyboards to become more acquainted with the characters-- their expressions, their body language, their physique from different angles. By the end of the design of the boards, which was drawn quite sloppily by hand, I had broken down a 15 Page Script to nearly 200 drawings and my flow to get accurate and confident line work down on paper had increased and cleaned up tremendously.  It was quite an amazing experience for me.  And it gave me a lot of courage to put it all together in an animatic once I had received the voiceover work.

My only regret is that I wish I could've had the chance to digitally render all of these drawings for the animatic... perhaps one day after it is all finished I will. For now, I placed the drawings in simple storyboard panels with its complimenting camera specifications:

PAGES 2 - 3

PAGES 27 - 28

 

 

Any more research of how to build a shot list would be great (how to organize a sheet with the numbers of cameras needed in each set etc)!  I looked, but wasn't really sure what was industry standard or not?  So, I winged it in the panels...

But organizing the boards and camera direction into a pamphlet will greatly assist me as a quick 'go-to' item for the 3D versioning.

 

 

2D ANIMATIC

As far as the completed 2D animatic, we have decided to reserve showing the full animatic publicly at this point to uphold some of the story for the final release.  Instead, I constructed a trailer with the very basics-- the 2D images from the storyboard with snippets of dialogue combined with very preliminary stages in 3D layout of the opening title sequence:

The trailer isn't much at the moment, but we are attempting to uphold some mystery for the piece to show the animatic in its entirety, for the viewers that haven't read the short or gone to see the show in it stage rendition.

My current stage of progress is at the start of building the 3D layout that will begin to replace the 2D footage.  I hope that in this wintery season, I can share some more of this progress with you all.  I can tell you I have a very long and difficult road ahead of me... but I will get to the finish line eventually and I hope to still have kept your interest it seeing the final product.

The support always helps carry me onward.  I know I am taking on a lot and my hope is that the feedback on it is positive enough to move my journey as a professional artist further up the mountain so it's begins to become a downhill fully reinforced battle.

I know that the story "Death of a Snowman" is a beautiful one and an opportunity that I could not refuse.  To be able to do more of this type of work in the future with such cleverly talented masterminds like Dan Guyton, would be a blessing.

So here's to an ambitious and prosperous 2017 year. This one will be better.  Exhausting, most likely, but better.  I can feel it.  :-)

Happy holidays, all.  Happy New Year.

You may follow the media page for Daniel Guyton's "Death of a Snowman" here.

AND THANK YOU,  AS ALWAYS, FOR READING!

CRUTCHES: Every Artist Needs Support.

It's been a while.  I've been meaning to collect my thoughts and write...

For some reason, I feel that for a creative versus the more logical brain, these days tend to be more abysmal than your average bad day.  Every artist, professional or hobbyist, has gone through dark days.    

If you are an artist and you hit these days, months, even years of feeling defeated, your goals feeling long awaited and pointless, and you are on the cusp of feeling like you will never regain the inspiration and drive you once had-- make sure you have a list of go-to's to help get your thoughts back in the right place.

Thankfully, my parents came to visit a few months back.  My father, again, two months ago.  And my Mother is about to my another journey to keep me company for my upcoming birthday tomorrow!  I'm so excited to see her and thankful to have them in my life.

So, this post, will be about my gratitude to them and the importance of having support in such a difficult field to break into...

Sometimes it takes so much energy to convince myself of the journey I am fighting over and over again, and then my family comes to reminds me of how realistic I need to be under specific circumstances.  Specific, meaning being an adult independent--- and trying to find any type of work in order to survive. 

My tax documentations also seems to remind me that I am a so-called adult "independent"....  My thoughts on the actualities of attempting to survive in this country as a proclaimed independent I will reserve for another topic some day.

But capping off the 4th of July this past weekend, I remember my country's birth, signing a Declaration of Independence, however, all of these hundreds of years later not yet proving that we can live independently as individuals versus as a community of independent states free from the rest of the world...  I doubt I will live long enough to see the day come where we can all survive independent of one another, but it is one of my dreams living in this country.  And it is truly the fairest dream of all.

Circling back to my point-- sometimes, no matter what, you have to find support outside of within.

For all that comes from within can only get you so far in life....  Not to sound defeatist-- but it's simply the facts when living in a systematic society.  And every society need a system, whether we claim anarchy or not.  Without order we cannot exist....

So, to steer away from all of the chaos, I always am lead back to my roots, my family....

Or some type of crutch that keeps me sane.

Thankfully, I am lucky to have my family's unfaltering support and faith in my success for a promising future ahead, whatever that may end of being.  It's very scary.

It is said that one shouldn't dwell in the past or worry about the future--- but live in the moment.  But what happens when you think about those moments affecting your future?  What if every moment, every decision, and every consequence-- when you are trying to shape the future that you imagine for yourself-- reshapes the future that you want for yourself?  Your life is not putty and only you alone can hope to have sense enough to control what you would "imagine" your destiny to be...

The best you can do is try your hardest, right, even if no one seems to be paying attention?

Outside of family ties, there is only finding enjoyment picking you up enough to continue a forward moving journey --- forward moving ONLY-- with friends and company that not only  give you reassurance in yourself, but also lend those crutches you need incase you're in need of a pick-me-up.  Some families just simply aren't there for the quest.

CRUTCHES are important in this business.  In life, in general.

With or without the aid, I always try be in control of my destiny,

Sometimes, though, you will turn around thinking someone is looking over your shoulder to criticize you or sitting on your shoulder as an angel looking over you-- but you're alone.  And there's no one there.  So, as much as you can say we need each other (or don't need each other)-- we are alone to try to shape our destinies.  For our destinies our consequently by our own doing, our own fate, and our own decisions. 

I have been alone while doing this for the most part-- so the observance is for sure-- if my advice is questionable.  Not sure that being alone has gotten me far-- but it has kept me loyal to myself and "doing" despite roadblocks and adversity.  Ultimately, stepping away from others for a while will help you see where hands stretch out to meet you and where they don't, although you can never tell why or why not help would be there to begin with or not...

Work as hard as you can, and no one can deny you didn't work hard as critical as the world is, whether it's by the way you choose to live your life or the quality of work you produce.

The decision is always yours.  Even if that decision is to throw in the towel or truck onward and struggle until you hit a spot that your comfortable with both creating while surviving.  But it's a real difficult trick to find both.

I've been looking for a long, long time.

And luckily I have had some great opportunities all the way.

But new choices must be made.  I must find a way to survive, now, and standing just outside of the industry years after I have graduated, I have to look into a way to keep on my feet.  I'm sure the choice has been made by many artists before me... and I wonder what became of them and their artwork.

I wonder what will become of me, because without creating art-- I feel incomplete.

Without recognition for my talent I feel wasted.

The images are a few photographs my family took for me when they went to see my work in the exhibit showing at Fashion Institute of Technology.  When you DO hit some random accomplishments, they go support your successes.  That's the best feeling...  And working on bringing these student's concepts to a reality was one of the greatest jobs I'd ever had the pleasure of having! 

Here is the link to professional pictures from the exhibit:
 

Things have been busy these past few months, in some good ways and some bad ways.  I'm so busy I haven't been able to produce much work of my own unfortunately.  But I am glad to put 2015 behind me in the vault of another year where I am working really hard in pursuit of becoming a steady professional artist and trying to keep my faith that all of these long hours of crafting and learning and then crafting again, will eventually bring me some type of content in the course of my career. 

In the cusp of spring 2016, I recently hit a small stint as an in-house Zbrush artist preparing and cleaning up models and scan data for prototyping with very prestigious toys / collectibles company out here in California.  It was short lived, but I was very fortunate to land the job in the first place and even more fortunate to be lead under the direction of such headlining talent and to be giventhe chance to work around top notch traditionalists / finishers.  The experience was invaluable with all of the new techniques and skillsets I've developed...

On the homefront, I recently moved out of my one living arrangement and upgraded to a better living environment.  I am working on organzing the prefect studio space for myself, so that my remote work is sweet and concentrated....  so far so good.

But that remote work I've been stumbling through since last summer, one of the greatest opportunities I've had, has come to multiple stalls due to my finances, bills, and the time it takes working to make a little bit money to keep me above water...  The project is large scale, but small budget.  However, we are hoping to start showcasing all of the preproduction work soon to possibly get some leverage for the next step in production.  More on it to follow in future blogs for I hate to discuss it in detail, as I am not as far along as I would have liked to be at this point... it's trucking slowly but surely through the storm.  For now I have just been battening down the hatches.

Lately, I've been sprinkling it in here and there, but it truly is a struggle, and my time is often comparable to a watch that has fallen into water.  I'm exhausted and disoriented with what should come first-- when some things that aren't quite responsibilities weigh so heavily as priorities.

And I keep being reminded that:

Support is crucial.  Find some things.  Anything that that brings comfort.  Even if it is just to ease the troubles and nerves in times of stress--  I can't imagine not walking away for a while to find my physical and emotional comfort zones.  I am thankful that my family has stood by me through this struggle, but sometimes I even feel like they want me to give up or that they are tired of hearing my agonizing frustrations.  I have to admit-- an animal is good, because it can just be there and even if it doesn't know what you are saying-- it's there to listen.  I am so thankful to have my dog, Waffle, out here with me. 

And, in closing, I hope to write again with more news soon.  Up and UP only...  :-)
Thanks for reading...