November Thoughts

This has nothing to do with animation. However, I think it's necessary as an artist and animation "producer" to step back from the art and just focus on life for a while. I'll blog about the new job once I start on Monday. But for now, I think health and fitness is a good thing to focus on. Bill Maher has a great rant about how America is addicted to "drugs" and people should look to health and fitness as the cure to all their problems. Here it is if you haven't seen it:

What I wanted to bring up, though, is all of the resources we have as humans that can essentially put us into the best health possible are 100% available to us outside of a pharmacy, and none of them will get us addicted to anything or cause anything else to go wrong in our bodies that may need more medication to fix. It's called DIET. Crazy concept.

Now, I know most of the people reading this probably aren't the ones who need telling about diet and exercise, but it needs to be said nonetheless.

Here is a plan I've set in place in order for me to sort of "up my game" in achieving maximum health the more natural way:

-I have poor eyesight (nearsightedness). I am still researching, but I'm going to increase my intake of carotenes and zinc that are possible contributors to healthy eyes. I also read somewhere that if you want to improve your vision (if you're near-sighted), you can get rid of your aids during the exercise (glasses, contacts, etc.) and poke a small hole in a piece of paper. Then for about 5 minutes a day (I believe this is a starting point, you can increase to longer if your eyes get used to it) look through this holewith one eye, then switch. Maybe try to read some large text in front of you or something. I will also try to decrease my use of glasses or contacts while I am at home, all while decreasing the prescription I order for my aids so that will compensate (hopefully) for the better vision I may get. Our bodies were made to adapt, maybe it's time I put it to the test.

-I bought The Natural Health Bible, I'm going to start reading through different foods and nutrients that solve common problems I have. My goal for all of this is to never need anything from the drug store. Clearly, getting sick is a result of poor diet, too much alcohol, and potentially lack of sleep, and I may need some things to last at work, but hopefully, the colds will be few and far between from now on. I always try to get 8 hours of sleep, I haven't been inebriated in who knows how long, and I am slowly becoming more responsible about meals so last minute fast food is always more inconvenient than cooking at home (I defrosted the meat, had the broth cooking overnight, fresh vegetables go bad fast, etc.). But as far as the health bible goes, I look forward to discovering what plants I can grow in my house as natural remedies and what can replace ibuprofen or anything else most people have a dependence on.

-Another note related to diet, I have found that understanding the psychology of humans is a very important thing when you are setting goals. Knowing what your personal weaknesses are can definitely help you reach a goal, you just have to be creative in your process of achieving it. I find it fascinating how I didn't understand why I was late up until around high school. I could never plan enough time to get somewhere on time. I started setting my clock about an hour fast so that I would always arrive before I needed to be there. That started giving me a more accurate way to measure time in terms of traffic, parking, driving to a new place, registering for an event, setting up events, etc. I basically tricked myself into being early and quickly learned how much time is appropriate to accommodate for every situation, even the ones I'm not familiar with. So what I'm trying to say is you can find your weaknesses and try to trick yourself into being healthy. My problem at first when I decided to change my diet was that if I had money in my pocket, I would be able to plan for a "treat" and go to Inn N Out, which was ruining my progress. So I would intentionally leave my credit/debit cards at home, knowing I wouldn't need to buy anything for the day, and force myself to make a sandwich in the morning. BOOM. You have no choice but to be healthy. Spending all my money on groceries so I had no money left for going-out food was also a good way to do that, as well. But hopefully that won't be the case forever :)

-I bought some roller blades at The Salvation Army, I'm going to start going to the beach again before work, because I start at 10am now. That should be pleasant. I can't decide what activities I should plan for morning workouts, but if I do 80%, that's more than nothing and I'll figure it out as I go.

-I am buying less and less packaged goods. I'm avoiding all the aisles in the grocery store that have little to no nutritional value. I pretty much fill up my cart with veggies, fruit, meat, and sometimes dairy and that fulfills my weekly quota for the pantry.


My last random thought... I've been in LA since May and the longer I'm here, the more I realize how stupid people can be here. In driving, finances, materialism, general responsibility. Please be respectful, responsible, and make intelligent decisions every day. Don't add to the chaos. There are already way too many people in this city, so if it's going to get bigger, I would prefer it be people that actually make conscious decisions based on reason and logic. Thanks.

"Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness is largely a matter of conscious choice, and discipline." -Jim Collins

Until next time!

"XRay" Update

I think this process is just as important (if not more) than the piece itself. The whole purpose of doing this piece "XRay" is to not only show that I can complete something that I start (believe it or not, it rarely happens with my own work that only depends on myself), but also to really break down the figure when it's in motion and seriously analyze what happens to the line of action, the body's composition, and how that all interrelates. I also want to understand how the physical and accurate movement of a person directly relates to if it was animated, what can be pushed, what shouldn't be pushed, and what the audience sees vs. what is actually happening. I find all of this fascinating and usually an artist is either exposed to one or the other in extremes, very rarely both- unless it's motion capture. And even then, it's not drawing.

So in taking this opportunity to learn all of this, and I think it's imperative that I share my findings with the public since most of you probably won't do anything to this extent.

First off, I have to get out of the way that I am my most creative when I have obstacles in my way. For this project, namely, it's drawing. Haven't been drawing my whole life and it definitely shows. So I am using a combo of photoshop brushes that I manipulated to create the splatter effects. And instead of drawing these out as they are thrown against the canvas, I'm using a method I have very commonly used before... erasure. I take the final image and erase backwards frame by frame to make it appear as if it's being painted when it plays forward. Mind you, it's not JUST erasure (I'll usually manipulate it a touch to breathe life into what's happening), but that's the basic principle. And since it's only 15-30 frames or so each, that doesn't have to be as accurate as another project would require.

I also haven't been doing figure drawing my whole life, and it took me until recently to fully understand the meaning of an "Action Line". At first, I didn't quite get it. I literally drew the entire piece (extremes only) about 3 times before it really started to click for me. I started out pose by pose following only the spine, and then I switched to just the weight and energy, but neither of those will accurately display what is physically going on with the figure until you combine the two. Now this is where it gets good... animation helped me understand that because figure drawing is static and relatively lifeless. They put the model into a pose, and you have no idea how they "got there" in context, where they are going, or where they are transitioning their weight. Clearly, in the figure drawing, this doesn't matter because it's based on the energy of the pose, but ultimately, it took a moving figure for me to really get this. Now when I apply it to a static figure, it makes WAY more sense, and I can pull from that idea when I'm lost. Another key point is you should keep the line going through the middle of her torso, and incorporate the head. Ultimately, it looks like just a line, but there is a lot of thought and analysis that must go into it in order to capture the essence of the pose. Here's an example of my lines thus far:

Another handicap is anatomy... I never took the class and I barely understand it. I can tell when something looks weird, but I can't tell you why. So for the part where I turn her into a skeleton, clearly there is a lot that I don't know and I don't want the piece to be about how inaccurate the anatomy looks since it's solely based on live movement. So I have a 3D skeleton, and I'm going to very loosely take renders of it in those positions and draw over it. I don't want to draw all 250ish bones, but the basic ones should do the trick (large and defining bones). But, this will serve two purposes: I can learn about how the bones will look relative to the body position (if the rig's integrity holds), and I will learn a little about perspective.


I'll upload more with transition tests, screen shots, and some more updates when I have them. Next stop is the boxes, however, I have the feeling (due to my complete lack of talent in perspective, it's going to be a while). I am really happy with how far I've come with this piece, and I can't wait to see the final product!

Let me know what you think so far! Thanks!