Future ninja animator

I used this vacations to improve my drawing skills. I have learn a lot from all the great artist that study at AM. From people like Alec McGibben, Dan Segarra, Megan Hobby... to name a few, is incredible how somebody can improve by just being near with people of such excellent skills.

By years, I tried to draw better the human form, I bought some books and took figure drawing classes, but my technique didn't change very much... maybe because I'm a bad student =p

But since september, I felt a giant leap in my drawings. I bought since the beginning of 2005 a sketchbook to practice and since AM started my drawings skills I feel had improved a lot.

For the first time, I have to admit that drawing stickman style people to create quick thumbnails helped me a lot. Matthew, gave me some advices on my thumbnails and with the help of some books, one day everything started to make sense... an organic feeling started to come up in my drawings, a more natural pose and a more understanding of how the body is creating a pose.

I decided to study how my AM fellows draw to compare that to my findings; then put these things into practice by drawing at least 2 times by week. One huge help came from a conference that I somebody at AM posted, the speaker was a lead animator from Disney, that talk about character design. At the beginning, I just draw following the advices of this speaker without understanding why. But by the end of my AM Semester, somebody talk about the force in a drawing and the line of action... that's when all the points of the conference made sense.

So after finishing AM, I decided to practice and practice my drawing skills, because there's a lot of that I still don't get... but I think I'm on the right way. =)

3D

Working in 2D or side view, was a great way of learning all the basic stuff. Because, now that we move to the perspective view... there is a lot of things that an animator has to pay attention. For this assignment, we have be sure that the hips were moving in a real and natural way.

This was my last assignment of this first class. I really enjoy learning and I'm eager to start the second class... body mechanics... and for what I been hearing, it seems to be very challenging and something that one class can't cover. Because of all the possibilities of the human body.

Mariachi loco quiere bailar

If trying to make Ballie walk was difficult... making a personality walk, was a real challenge. Beginning with what kind of personality should I put on my assignment was very difficult. I had around 5 ideas from a sneak, sad, happy, baby, fat... bla.. bla.. .bla... In the end with the help of my friend Marcos Oliveira, I decided to make a "mexican" version of my Ballie. So I started making a reference video of the way people dance with mariachi music. After that my decision was that Ballie should be a fat and more or less older guy.

The blocking stuff was really not a problem, but once the refinement phase started... what can I say... the phantom of the knee popping appeared and make my life very difficult. With the help of my friends of AM forums I refine and refine my work until I was happy with it.

After that just some fun, I added a mariachi hat to Ballie and some music to complete my personality walk.