Too Draw to Think

Hey everyone!

It's been a while since I posted any art. This one is doing double duty because I also wanted to announce that I'm preparing to launch a Patreon in a week!

After my last post, I received a lot of messages from you all about starting one and I always avoided it since I worked full-time at a studio, but now I don't so this is probably the best time to do it.

Hey everyone!

It's been a while since I posted any art. I know I said I wasn't going to post non-professional work, but I guess I just don't know how else to live. Bleak as things are or not, I still want to share stuff I make with you all. Thanks for being here and sorry for the radio silence.

I've been getting a lot of mail backed up in the last several months about a few things. Thought I'd answer those most common ones.

q- When will you be posting more art? a- When I get some work I feel will be a good reel/professional piece.

q- Will there be more HOTO? a- No. I quit my job at Make. I will not be working with/associating with Make ever again.

q- When/will you release your film? a- if there are laws controlling AI usage put into place, maybe. Otherwise no. Not for the foreseeable future, sorry.

I will attempt to keep my words brief, so please bear with me.

the film is done, the sound is basically all there. Just some final professional mixing to do.

I'm not sure how I feel about releasing the film or any more personal artwork. it has become crystal clear how much artists are despised at large by a society that wants what artist's can create but is offended at the idea of an artist making a descent living off of their craft.

I'm not sure at this point that publishing any more personal artwork is doing anything more than training pattern learning AI models for company owners and business centric suits.

Still undecided what to do with the film since it did take roughly 10 years to make, but It is also only important to me and it will realistically not leave a lasting impression, so it really has already served its purpose.

Will update when I've made up my mind about the film, I just thought you all deserved an explanation as to why the film is still unreleased.

As of last night, all compositing, animation, background painting, etc, has been completed! There is literally no more art to produce for the actual film.

So what's next? All that remains is to re-edit the music to the new timing of the film and have it professionally mastered. This could take a month or so. The next step after that is to complete an intro sequence that has minimal motion. My plan is to complete the film in its entirety before the year is out and then prepare for the festival circuit.

Isolated one of the shots that I did from start to finish. This shot was done over the course of roughly 3 days. We were in a rush!

The intro was just released! I animated this whole thing in about 3 weeks.

Hey all! Proud to announce that a project I've designed/wrote/storyboarded/directed at Make is finally ramping up to release. Check out the trailer!

If you are aspiring to be a commercial artist I would strongly discourage going to school/college for any of it. Schooling will set you on average 100k+ in debt in an industry that nearly most animators will never see above 50-60k in yearly wages on the high end. Animation is a high debt, low income industry and it is only becoming more so.

Hello all! I'm sorry for the long stint of radio silence. I have been busy compositing the film. All animation is complete and locked down. It has been a long process of putting everything together. If I'm lucky I will be able to finish the compositing this year!

Hey all!

The studio I work for just released this episode of a 4 part series! Go check it out! I animated half of the shots. I know I post 2d animation and work mostly on here, but I’m pretty proud of this as it was my first real step into animating 3D. Shots of mine worth noting are the shots where Kai is running through the forest, and the shot where she scrambles backwards on the ground. Did a handful more but I guess I’ll just have to make a reel! (Also still need to make a reel of my Klaus animations..)

Hi!

I think if I could have done anything different it would have been to composite my film as I completed animation/background paintings. It would have made some aspects of editing/compositing easier. It's also such a slog to be compositing over 200+ shots in a row now, too. Also I would have made more thorough character design sheets for myself. I was kinda loosey goosey with it since I didn't have anyone else animating the characters but me, but I inevitably did naturally change how I drew the characters over time and that resulted in me revising a lot of work.

In terms of film duration, I am only completing the first act which is at roughly 11 minutes of full animation. I am toying with the idea of animating a simple, moody minimal intro though, which would probably put it at 12-13.

Good luck on your personal film! I hope you can get funding for it. I wasn't funded and it has taken me nearly 10 years to complete. If I could be bold enough to give you any advice, I would just say to make sure you're sleeping enough. My health is not what it used to be and I'm sure that can be traced back to my awful sleep patterns.

Hi there!

Great question. My answer may seem stupidly simple, but it just comes down to really, really wanting to make the project. If I didn't really want to make the film I would have just quit years ago. I also decided very early on in my career that I wanted to make animation and drawing a daily/nightly part of my lifestyle which I stuck to, so at this point the practice is habitual. I also pushed video games largely out of my life to make time for animation and I don't miss them, really. That said, there are times when I'd rather draw/work on anything else but my movie. But there are things you can do to keep it fresh as you go.

Since my personal film is a large project, there have been a wide variety of tasks and shots that I can jump around to at different points in the production timeline. Scripting, designing, storyboarding, animation, layout/background painting, effects animation, compositting, researching motion, audio design, etc. If I get sick of a particular part of the project, I just shift gears and work on a different part of it so that I'm always moving while keeping things from getting stale. Sometimes I stay focused on how on track I am with my milestones, and sometimes I like to work diligently in a vacuum.

The hardest part is near the end of production (currently) when you inevitably only have a couple of tasks left to do like compositing and editing. In that case, I commit to a schedule of few hours every night where I work on those remaining tasks between set hours. It really helps to set milestones and completion goals as you go. This can help you stay focused and also see the volume of work shrink as you progress. Although I try not to look at how much work I have left because that can drive you to madness. Definitely had a couple sleepless nights.

Anyways, there's my novel. Thank you for your question!

An update!