Austin Motion Artists Group animates "Mmkit" by The Octopus Project!

This is a project that I had the pleasure to work on a couple'a weeks ago!  The Austin Motion Artists Group, wanting to showcase and celebrate the local animation scene, organized an event in which a bunch of talent was corraled, each one given a beginning-frame and end-frame, who then had 48 hours to animate ~12 seconds of animation.  The final product came out pretty amazingly:

Austin Anijam 2014 - The Octopus Project "Mmkit" from Austin Motion Artists Group on Vimeo.

It's passed 100,000 views and now been labeled a Staff Pick on Vimeo, which I really kinda can't believe.  Watch and enjoy!

I was part of the crew that produced the segment with the 2d-animated cyclops and octopus.  We all came up with the direction together and then Ryan Cullen animated the cyclops, Louie Granda animated the octopus, I made animate'able assets for the environments and the explosion, and Willis Bulliner did the compositing. Awesome job, guys!

Figure-Drawing, 2/4

All figure-drawings were done last night  at the Austin Visual Arts Association!

1-minute gesture drawings

More 1-minute gestures..

The top pose was 5 minutes, and the bottom one 10.

15 minutes.

Fairies

I guess it's a start?  Paints to be applied as time allows..

Life Drawing sketches, 1/28

A check of this morning's traffic reports tells me that every major intersection along my commute to work is either covered in ice, or covered in cars that have crashed due to ice.  While I wait an hour or two for the city to thaw out, I thought I'd share some figure-drawing sketches I did last night at the Austin Visual Arts Association!  I hope to get back in the habit -- Lord knows I need the practice.

Lando Calrissian WIP #01

For my next digital-painting piece, I decided to try out a Star Wars theme!  I'm also taking a more regimented approach than last time; having reminded myself with the John Carter piece that I'm not yet experienced-enough as a painter to slap down some shapes and trust it to work, I'm focusing more on the underdrawing this time around.  Here's the rough idea as I have it so far..

Those blue lines are my attempt to take a cue from this Muddy Colors blog-post by Howard Lyon analyzing Baroque compositions, trying to hook compositional elements onto the diagonals and the subject matter inside of the diamond around the center.  I won't be able to touch on it much during the holidays, but we'll see what develops ~!

John Carter Final

I've used about as much time as I dare to, so I'm callin' it done at this --  There are still so many things I could keep finessing/correcting, but I really need to call it a day on this one to move onto other projects.  I've learned a lot while I chipped away at this piece, which hopefully will help out the next time I try something like it!

Hope you've enjoyed watching it come together!

..Just putting it out there -- Is anyone interested in seeing it as a convention-print?

John Carter WIP, 12/4