iAnimate Workshop 1

I just finished Workshop 1 of the iAnimate course and I have to say IT WAS AWESOME!!!

I can't compare it to any other online course out there, but I would love to share what the course was like for me.

If any of you are considering iAnimate I would highly recommend it! The administration part granted was not as organized as it could have been, but once we got into our classes things were amazing! I took their first Workshop (WS) starting with the bouncing ball, going all the way up to a walk cycle. For someone who had never used Maya before, this was a good decision. Knowing animation going into the WS was great but not necessary. For me it helped to solidify and experiment with spacing and timing. The progression of assignments from bouncing ball, to a "luxo-like" character, to full character really got me used to the graph editor and all the controls in Maya.

Besides your own classes you also have access to all the other classes that are being taught. I found this really cool! I got to watch in on some of the later workshops to get a feel for what they would be like and found this super informative. The students are also collecting a "best of" selection of the best Q&A's of all the teachers. This way if you don't have time to watch everything (which I assure you, you will not! There is way too much stuff to see), you will still know which Q&A's were really informative and watch those. Also Jason Ryan, the creator of the program gives a weekly lecture to show how he animates. These range from him showing us how he would tackle one of our assignments, to showing how he would analyse acting and how to tackle any new rig that gets created. All of these lectures are also saved in a section that you can download/watch as a student.  I seriously tried to watch as much as I could, but there is no keeping up with all the amazing stuff on that site. We have a month break in December, so I'm going to try and catch up then.
Also something that should be noted is the "iAnimate rigs". They are really amazing! Again, I'm new to Maya, so I'm probably not the best person to judge, but the more experienced people told me they are the closest thing to a feature rig out there.

To see what iAnimate is doing, you can watch their current student reel here
http://www.ianimate.net/index.php/ianimate2011showreel.html

I also want to give a big shout out to my teacher Jacob Gardner. He was really great to learn from! Patient, enthusiastic, funny and an inspirational animator! If you guys get the chance to learn from him I would say jump on that opportunity right away!

Also, in case you guys are interested his friend Stephen Melagrano, Ben Willis, Adam Strick and him have a great animation websites called "Speaking of Animation"
http://www.speakingofanimation.com/
They also have a podcast here
http://www.speakingofanimation.com/pods/

That's it ^^ Let me know if any of you have questions and I'll try to answer them as best as I can :)

Fashion

We'll miss you

This is a drawing I did for my friend Billy, who will be leaving next week to move to Spain. We'll miss you!!

Fall is here

iAnimate

Just wanted to share with you guys that I just started my first workshop at iAnimate! I feel really happy to be part of the program and couldn't be more excited!

For my friends 06

For my friends 05

One of my friends just pointed out that I hadn't posted in a while. Sorry about that!!! I've been really busy with work. I'll try to update again soon with more drawings, but for now:
This is a drawing I did for my friend Deborah.

Different style

I had the chance to experiment with a different style recently. I have to say it was quite fun :)

2010 Sanborns Commercial_hairdryer

This video is a commercial I did for a Mexican Restaurant company called Sanborns.

For each commercial I did I got a 3 panel storyboard explaining the gist of what they wanted. That left a lot of freedom to create interesting staging, adding gags and personalities to each commercial. It was a real pleasure.
Hope you enjoy watching it as much as I had fun working on it :).



Peinados de Moda = Fashionable hair
Para chicos y grandes = For kids and adults

Prolonged absence

Sorry for my prolonged absence!! I've been super busy with work, and I currently don't have a scanner available. I did want to finally update with something however, but I want to ask your forgiveness for the quality of the image. All I have is my camera, so that had to suffice for capturing this image. Hopefully I'll be able to update soon again, and it might even be some animation if I'm allowed to show it :) Hope you're all well, and I'll try and post again soon.
Cheers :)

Love

Merry Christmas everyone

For my friends 04

This is for my friend Glenn. He's such a nice person and he always helps people, so I just wanted to say thank you.

For my friends 03

I did this drawing for my friend Faith! She has such a cool style, that I couldn't resist drawing her. I'm really happy how the picture turned out!

For my friends 02

This gorgeous little girl is the daughter of my friend James and Jen :)

For my friends

I'm doing a lot drawings for my friends at the moment. I'll try and put them up over the next few weeks.

Derek & Chloe 06

Derek & Chloe 05

Thank you Stephen

For those of you that like to listen to motivational speeches and podcasts about drawing, you should definitely check out Stephen Silvers UStream Videos. He gives some great insight into what he thinks about while he's drawing; he shares mentalities he's picked up over the years and also some wonderful stories with his listeners.

Here are some facial studies that I've been doing recently and I thought the would fit in well with this post. I had lots of fun doing these. Comments and critiques are as always more then welcome :).

Birthday Party 01

Derek and Chloe 04

Happy Birthday Sam !

I did this image for my friend Sam, whose birthday it is today :D!
I also have to give out a BIG thank you to David Sourwine for helping me finesse the colours.

Derek & Chloe 03

I found Chloe really hard to draw. I think especially in this image she doesn't quite look right so I apologize for that in advance. That said, I still like the atmosphere in this drawing though so I thought I would post it none the less.

Also I wanted to post a link to my friend Anne-Maries blog. She's the one that got me reading "The Summoning", and she did some amazing drawings of the books. Two of her posts can be found here
http://sweetnpepper.blogspot.com/2008/12/summoning.html
and here
http://sweetnpepper.blogspot.com/2009/09/sorry-thanks-love-darkest-powers.html

And a Happy Canadian Thanksgiving to everyone out there :)

Apple's gone goth

Scared?

For Steffi

Hockey

I did this for my friend Chris. He's been playing hockey since he was really young.

Childrens honesty and enthusiasm is wonderful!

Happy Birthday Hans!

Derek & Chloe 02

This was one of the first drawings I did of Derek & Chloe. I was still trying to figure out what they should look like here.

Derek & Chloe 01

The Summoning

I just read Kelly Armstrong's book: 'The Summoning', which my friend Anne-Marie lent to me. We both love the characters Derek and Chloe, so there will be lots more drawings of them coming up. Some of them are from what happens in the books, but there are some that I just came up with as situations for the character. These are the characters from the second book "The Awakening"
Hope you enjoy it ^^.

Gouache

Diving anyone?

New Shirt

Awesome Hair

We always go sketching on Saturday and my friends Faith and Tim both had awesome hair styles happening, so I couldn't resist to draw them ^^

For Tim

A friend of mine had a great idea. She said she would create 5 pieces of art for 5 friends, who in turn would each also create 5 pieces of art for 5 other people...and so forth.
I thought that was an amazing idea, so I joined up. This first piece was for my friend Tim. They are his characters Mallori and Travis. ^^

Happy Birthday Tom

I've been doing a bunch of drawings for my friends, but I haven't had a chance to post them. I'll start with this one. Happy Birthday Tom ^^

Little cat