Behind my Behind!

That was the title of the film project I worked on over the summer, directed and created by David Chai! This one I felt was a real challenge because none of us on the crew ever did stop-motion animation so the whole process was a good learning experience for us all.

Some character sheets I made for the main character

Before I get to the stop motion part I'll go over what I did for the 2D side. The film is about Ernest Knapp, a man who feels miserable with life until one day he discovers something right in his own home. My first task was to animate people in a subway train with Ernest, then a bunch of other people piling in and squishing him.

Although that wasn't always the case, the original animatic had Ernest just sad on the train.

This is the animatic for the updated version.

I really liked all of Dave's design for the subway characters so I wanted to keep it as close as I could to them. Here they are one by one.

and here's the finished version! Inked by Melissa Paff, background by Catharina Sukiman.

For stop motion shots we had to animate in pencil first to get rough planning and timing for the shot to make it easier on us noobies. Luckily it turned out to be more helpful than we thought since we found out in DragonFrame you can import a video file and follow it frame by frame! My shot was Ernest blowing a kiss. This was hard because I had to get the right feeling of longing, loving, sentimental and happiness.

The animatic for the shot.

My first test for it was too happy and carefree.

 He needed to feel nostalgic and sad but a happy sadness like he's moved on.

After getting somewhat close, next came animating it with puppets! The fabrication part was challenging as well. We only had one person creating the puppet the entire time as she had the most experience and access to the lab equipment. The awesome Rosie Diaz had to go through many trials and errors with different types of puppets before the final one was made.

Here's two early versions she made before casting and molding the final version, which is on my head.

Animating this guy was fun and challenging. It got a little frustrating sure when it wouldn't cooperate the way we wanted it to but we had to make do with what we had! We would use other people to help hold the puppet while another person animated and took the pictures. I learned a lot from stop motion, in traditional and CG animation the movement is thought out and can be easily manipulated, for our set up since the puppet wasn't really held down, we had to be quick and hope the shot in the end would work. It was amazing how little and how large you would have to move him for the pose you want to work.

With the help of Samia Khalaf, we were able to create this shot in the end. I'm very pleased with it and feel we kept it pretty close to the original!

A little bit of rest

YO, I had this giant post written up then something happened with Blogger then I lost it all. So this will be a quicker 3 in the morning version of my semester. Basically it was busy and crazy and to show for it I have 5 oil paintings, 3 animation shots, and a short film called Hello Debra. From my oil painting class I'm only really satisfied with the recent one I posted and our last portrait painting on which I did Ollie Johnston. I went over Hello Debra on another post and I can't put up the final film since we're sending it to festivals so I'll mostly talk about Raquel's advanced animation in this post!

Ollie Painting

I learned a lot from doing these dialogue shots in class. Keeping in mind everything I learned about body mechanics, now I had to incorporate lip syncing, more character performance, subtleties and general appeal. I also learned that I take almost forever picking a dialogue so after hours and hours I finally came across Adam Sandler yelling "You blew it!" from Billy Madison.

The line

My friend Samia came up with this great idea of a guy getting a bad haircut so I rolled with that.

My planning/animatic 

And the final thing!

For our second dialogue test, we had to choose from specific directors and one of them was Woody Allen. So I picked a line by Owen Wilson in Midnight in Paris. I wanted to use the line for a totally different feeling from what was done in the movie so I came up with this. I don't have the storyboards for this so straight to final!

In the film Owen Wilson was excited about meeting his hero writer and eager to show his book but he had to get it first.



For our last assignment, we were put into groups of 4 and had to pick a longer dialogue to chop up between us to create shots we can stitch together into a final mini film. My group consisted of Michael Bliss, Ting-yu Chen, Samia Khalaf, and myself. We really wanted to do a female villain and picked a dialogue by Charlize Theron's evil queen in Snow White and the Huntsmen.

Our initial storyboards (so bad)
Here we had her mostly sitting so we changed that later, to help the character move around more and also because it resembled another groups animatic.


A second pass at the storyboards by Samia



One of the earlier stages of blocking for our shots



And the final thing! Off to sleep!

Change of pace!

Other than my animation classes, I am taking a figure painting class this semester which is a nice change. I haven't got to paint much over the last couple years since I been focusing so much on my animation. Here's a progression of my latest painting. Painting in oil is really fun and relaxing! Next painting I'll be sure to take more pictures of the progression! These type of things are always fun to look through.

Big jump here since I forgot to take pictures...

Hello Debra!

Been currently working on a new film project called Hello Debra! It's also my first time being lead animator! I'm still not used to it or feel like I'm the most suitable for it but its definitely a great learning experience. Some back story to how this film came to be, Adobe had approached our school and asked us to create short films about the future of technology. Our film focuses on the future of cosmetics and vanities.

The film is still not finished, we are finishing up 2D animation while simultaneously cleaning up animation in Flash. Our goal for the final look of the film is a graphic look with very minimal use of lines. Therefore we decided to go with Flash to keep a clean look.

These are our characters and final look. The older sister is Debra and younger sister Jessica.

While the focus of the film is the technology, it's still important to have a good story in a short film so our film also revolves around the relationship of these two girls. I'm very anxious for this film to be done, I think it will come out great and I can update this post then!

This is my shot for the film! (also she has hover boots in case it's confusing why she's in the air)

Scene 7 of Hello Debra from aldo kcomt on Vimeo.

Jimmy Loves Juice!

We finished Jimmy Loves Juice! It's such a fun and silly film, I had a great time working on it. I won't be able to show the finished film but you can see some shots I worked on here. In total I got to animate four shots and well as do some turnarounds for the characters.

These are two of the shots I got to work on.


Jimmy sucks Juice from aldo kcomt on Vimeo.

It's always a great feeling seeing people react to your work, it's one of the best rewards you get from animation. I remember the guy sitting behind me during the screening said "oh my god!" during my shot.

This shot also got a big laugh from the audience. The finger was later blurred of course.


1 from aldo kcomt on Vimeo.

It was also the first time I cleaned up animation in Flash. I figured with being able to use symbols and copying and pasting that Flash would be faster than cleaning up in Photoshop but it ended up taking the same amount of time. Since the look of the film was very clean we had to be very precise in flash so it took a while to get that clean graphic look. Overall had a great time and I hope we have success in festivals soon!

Brandon's Goal Foundation!

Over the summer, or August I should say, myself and a couple of other artists were asked to create a 30 second commercial for Brandon's Goal Foundation. Brandon's Goal is a charity that focuses on childhood cancer and aims to raise awareness as well as raise money to support research for childhood cancer. More info at their website here! Trying to finish this thing before classes started was hectic but was an awesome experience. 

Here is the full commercial (I was responsible for the first shot). The challenging part was of course the plane, trying to keep the volume consistent and having it rotate smoothly. A classmate suggested doing it in Maya and drawing over but that takes all the fun out of it! Our small group consisted of  Wendell Dalit, Youri Dekker, Kevin Lam, Catharina Sukiman and myself.

Brandon's Goal Foundation Ad - created by SJSU Dept of Animation from wendell dalit on Vimeo.

Edith and the Bear!

Last semester for my advanced animation class, I had the pleasure to work on a cute and fun short film directed by Hillary Bradfield. Here are a couple of pencil tests I did for it. Overall fun experience, I really enjoy these film projects and I learn a lot from each one.