Face job

This is the first set of serious sculpting I've ever done. Can't wait for the next bust project.

Today started out beautiful... blue skies and puffy white clouds. It was due to the showers from the early morning. But strangely, as I headed back for school again in the late noon, I sensed a blanket of haze over the city! What a drastic change from just a couple of hours before. I chanced on the opportunity to study lighting as the haze provides a perfect setting for atmospheric lighting. :O)

And lastly... my school has a open house 1 to 3 Oct, and 8 to 10 Oct (10am to 4pm). Details are found here.

Nose job

This piece is the second of my facial series. All of which are due tomorrow before we begin the bust. One great thing I am picking up about sculpting is the ability to see and understand how different facial parts overlap each other, especially the nuances. The 3D is tough but fun at the same time. This helps me when I draw as I begin to notice the minute and slight contortions and curves of the human body!

How long did I take to do this? I remembered digging my nose all of last Sunday!! :O)

Will post all my facial parts when I am done!! Stay tuned...

Bouncing Ball 4

Today, I completed the bouncing ball down the stairs project. The shadows were not a requirement but I decided to see if I understand its concept. Obviously, I don't and there's much to learn.

On Wednesday, I had to hand in my primitives rendering. Not so well done, that's why it's not hosted up. Will do so when I feel it's good. For now it's more bouncing balls... boing... boing... boing...

Stik 'em up

Today, we spent nearly the entire Digi Arts class prepping for our next project featuring Stikfas® characters. Needless to say, we had to purchase our own individual models. Thank God, someone from class knew a toy shop at Suntec City selling it at very reasonable prices!! The shop's called The Toy Room at #03-26H. I got my G2 Alpha male for only S$3.

Our project prepares us for matte painting that traditionally incoporates some form of a real 3D object within the frame. During our shoot, we all had a wee bit of fun by snapping interesting poses of our characters. Here's mine! :O)

Sculpt this

Recently, I've been sculpting four different expressions of my mouth. I'm done for now. Can't move on until I get more input from my teacher on Tuesday.

In this fundamental sculpting class, we work with oil clay. Think of it as a very premium type of plasticine. We're using this as oppose to super sculpey (the kind concept artists use) because oil clay doesn't harden at all! But of course! The school is kind to us newbies! :O) In the first 10 weeks, we will be learning how to sculpt parts of our face - nose, eyes, ears and mouth. Sculpting helps us understand anatomy, specifically the folds of the different parts of our face we often take for granted. :O)

Ahhh... cheeeew!!

The inevitable happens.

While at the Digital Arts class today, the PC that I was using got infected by a virus. The best part is, I didn't even know that I was being infected. Oh, I guess this happens because I am a Mac user and have never experienced this form of technological warfare before - yes, virtually NO viruses on the Macs. There's always a first for everything!! I don't even have a clue to what a virus is. That's why I use a Mac. (Have I rubbed it in enough?) ;p

So I went on doing what I had to until I couldn't budge the cursor any more. Fortunately, one of my classmates knew how to contain the problem before helpdesk arrived to remedy the issue. So my files are still intact! Phew! Thank God! :O)

Principles of Animation

This is our Animation Lab and the module is taught by Philip Garcia. He worked as a layout artist on The Simpsons while living in Los Angeles.

The image above shows the portable animation table that we use to animate on. I've always seen animators using these in the featurettes of the Disney DVDs and I'm quite excited to be actually using one of these "turn tables" here in class.

We're studying the basics of Animation at this point. Learning about squash & stretch and understanding the Bouncing Ball. These are the building blocks that animation is based on, and just about anyone can TELL you this. The trick is in the animation itself, especially with the added elements of time and space!

Looking forward to completing my bounincg ball down the stairs project. Watch out for that! :O)

Bouncing ball 3D

Continuing on from the bouncing ball project, I used the extra class time I had to come up with a 3D feel of the project. It needs to be a little more foreshortened, but this should work for now.

There has been a swap of two of my classes to accommodate the anatomy drawing session which will now cater to three classes (two from cohorts 6 and one from cohort 5). So now two days in the week ends at 7pm.

In other news, my "jimmy" arrived today as twittered! I'm looking forward to smoother workflows for video projects. :O)

Bouncing Ball 2

Wow! What a weekend! Spent all of Saturday running a programme in Church called the East District Youth Day 09! It was an afternoon of reflection for 15 year olds culminating with Mass with the Archbishop at CHIJ Primary at Katong. The theme is Spera in Deo (Hope in God), and it helped remind the teens of God in their oh-so-busy lives! Oh how noisy and distracting our lives can be every second of the day! In fact, this reminder is useful for anyone at any age including myself.

Last Friday, I ended the school week with Principles of Animation. We spent the class reviewing our first round of the Bouncing Ball. While at it, I conveniently came up with two other pieces. Here's one where I added the element of 'live' action into it. This piece pays tribute to the Disney's Alice Comedies made popular even before Mickey Mouse and Snow White. :O)