My Mini-Board

Ohh myy.

Yes. This is it. My first mini-board blog.

I actually tried to board what happened in my painting class today, but an unexpected foe interrupted me.
Perspective. That backstabbing jerk is ruining me...And I thought we were friends :(

Okay! Let's do this. (Happy/excited Donna)

Alright. Here we go. Drew the teacher and now the floor.

 Hmm. Something looks a bit off...

This...or...

....this....

 .......

Man, even posting this up was such a challenge. I think I'll ask my instructor on how to do this...

My poor computer...

More Love and Luke Characters

Hello!

I haven't posted in awhile. There's no internet at the apartment that I'm staying so I apologize for the delay.
Yesterday in my Story Development class, I introduced my characters for my new story "The Magic Elevator". I'll repost what I put on my class blog.

My story is called "The Magic Elevator", and it's about how two children stumble upon a magic elevator that can take them to the land of dreams and no rules, and they discover that there is a way to create a "perfect" world.

Here's the cast of the characters.

This is Love. 

She is a nine year old girl who loves to play with her dolls and miniature horses.

She's considered small for her age, but don't let her size fool you. 

She is intelligent, snappy, orderly and awfully mature for her age.

She is never prone to making mistakes, but when she does, she gets around them 

by her cuteness. Of course, this never works on Luke, her older brother, since 

she usually tattle-tales on him. 

She can easily be annoyed and become tempermental, hence

her constant arguments and fights with Luke.

Love's playtime is always filled with laughter, dancing, running, jumping, but when 

it's time to get serious she can instantly calm herself and think. 

Also, rules are rules for Love.

She will do whatever she can to follow them 

even if it means to leave the other person behind. 

Luke is a ten year old boy, who is the older brother of Love.

Luke is a silly, playful and absent-minded character. The poor boy usually becomes Love's

victim when it comes to getting in trouble.  Luke always hopes and strives to be 

on his parents' good side, except he can never really

realize what he's doing wrong. 

He's very talented at being bold and creative, but 

unlike Love, he doesn't know when to be 

serious. Both Love and Luke are persistent characters,

however, Luke can get the most persistent especially when he knows

there's something amazing waiting for him. Between the two, Luke has the 

biggest heart, and always has good intentions. 

This is the Elevator Service Bat. He controls the elevator

and tells the kids how the dreamworld works.

Banner design

Sigh. I wanted to make a new banner for my blog, but I'm not sure how to do that...
Can someone be kind enough to share that information with me? haha

But here's the design that I wanted to put up.

I posted it up on my facebook so it wouldn't go to waste :(

More Ms. Fortune Concepts and LA Film Festival

Here are some more Ms. Fortune concepts that I've been working on. I've put some more details on the environment and some more color studies. In this scene, Luke and Love have their first interaction with Ms. Fortune.

Yesterday, I went to the LA Film Festival with my cousin and a fellow film classmate from RISD, Grace. Although Grace and I already watched Laura Colella's "Breakfast with Curtis" in class, we were both ecstatic to watch the finished edit of the film. It was great to see all of the characters/actors of the film in person. I seriously thought their personalities were the same. It was great. 

Now, today was just like any other day, however, I thought I would observe how my cousin, Luke, would eat. Haha, I must say, he eats with quite a personality. While he stuffs his mouth with as much food as possible, he still tries to make the effort to make a statement or whine about something. Nonetheless, he is still a cutie. I'm just waiting for the day when he's gonna be my height and be as tall as his dad. 

Classes

On Monday's and Tuesdays, I usually stay at Art Center library and head to class around 5:30. I must say that the environment of Art Center and RISD are really different. I wouldn't say one is better than the other, but I feel a different level of professionalism and seriousness. Perhaps it's because of the older students? But, I'm not gonna lie. RISD feels alot homier. The one thing RISD doesn't have are mountains and nature. The nature here is so pretty.  

My classes are going great so far. I really enjoy learning more about storyboarding and the details of cinematic compositions. Unfortunately, my teacher wasn't able to come to class so we watched a lecture that Kevin provided for us instead. 

The Ms. Fortune

This was part of my doodles of the day. 

She's a character that the protagonists would meet in the beginning of their journey, but warns them of the grave danger that lies ahead of them. 

Cousin Characters

My little cousins and I were brainstorming for a potential movie that I would make in the near future and they suggested that I should make a film about them. Not a bad idea. So I started to sketch them out and discovered that these guys are full of character. hahaha, these guys are literally human gems to me.

A Peaceful Sunday

My second Sunday of California has arrived, and I was...bored...haha


I went to a church called YNCC, but I ended up going to their "Young Adult" service. Apparently, there's one for college students, and keep in mind that this church was huge. If this isn't a mega church...then I'm scared to see one or even in drive in it. While I was driving there, I realized that the 110 N. freeway is super confusing and jammed all the time! I definitely prefer the 2 freeway.

Then at night, I had little Disney karoake night with the kids. Love really liked singing to Mulan's "Honor to Us All".

When the kids finished their fight for the fluffy pillow, they finally fell asleep and the night got 10 times more quiet and peaceful except for one. At the corner of my eye, I could see Yepe (my aunt's dog) turning over and rub itself on the ground. Apparently, he gets super hyper at night for no reason. It's funny because all that dog does in the day time is sleep so I guess he's just trying to burn off all his energy into one shot. haha crazy dog. 

Cleaning and Grocery Shopping

On Friday, the kids and I followed David to Art Center and had an okay time at the library. The kids seemed to be tired, but they managed to keep themselves entertained. After David's class, we went to the new apartment to do some pre-moving cleaning. It's unbelievable how the previous owners left the place in such mess, and things still needed to be fixed like the floor and the mailbox.

Then today, we pretty much stayed at home until we went grocery shopping with my aunt. While we were waiting for my aunt to finish shopping, there was a little shop that sold korean pins and keychains. I bought Lovey a purple shoe keychain that she spotted on the rack and she attached it to her purse that was given from her mom.

Summer Journal Entries

Summer vacation at Cali!

Starting tonight, I've decided to keep a daily summer journal of what I do in little sketches. I've finally gotten the pressure pen option on my tablet so now drawing in photoshop got 10 times more exciting!

I've been spending much of my time with my little cousins, Love and Lukey, these days, and they are just filled with energy and crazy, imagination. Today, we watched Wallace and Gromit and the Curse of the Were-Rabbit. The kids and I had a blast. Then at night, Love decided to take out her old bead kit, and organize her tiny, plastic beads of butterflies, flowers, spheres, and leaves in their rightful places. The way Lovey picked up the beads with such care and delicacy was so cute to watch. Then Luke on the other side of the bed, was clinging like a monkey belching out random sayings from movies or tv shows.

I posted up two versions of Love's drawing. I prefer the line drawing over the colored version. I think I might've killed it with the color. How can I fix this problem??

My African Masks

Today, I had my African Arts Final project due, which I have created these two characters as my inspirational work from the Bwa masks of the Boni people. Their masks are quite interesting due to their simplified, geometric shapes to show the personality of the mask's spirit. Bwa masks are used for performances and ceremonial rituals for the ancestors. If you have the time, you should definitely try to read the background info about them.

These are some actual references. The brown stuff are hemp ropes. They get flung around when the performers do some crazy dancing. It's really cool!


Now here are my own mask creations:

The top one represents a Secretary bird spirit. If you don't know what Secretary birds are, they're African vultures with feathers that jut out of their heads just like the pens that stick of the back of the secretary's ears. HA, get it?? But since I made it into the secretary bird, I illustrated some of its movements as a predator. It has forceful swooping motions to portray its strength and a heavy leap as it mimics the bird's action when it's capturing its prey.

The bottom mask represents a "cloud spirit". At the top of its head shows what the character does such as covering the sun (hence the semi-circle), gives rain (the red dots), and rolls over the mountains (the jagged lines). Just like the real Bwa masks, each detail is a symbol and every single thing counts. Also, since it is a "cloud spirit" it makes wind and thunder, which I made the character show its actions by making strong, lunges as if it's blowing fiercely, and interacting with a musician with a drum to create loud booming thunder.

Overall, this project was fun to do, even it was last minute. Definitely learned new things about the African culture that I didn't know before and will try to incorporate them into my future work.

V's Sketches

Here are some sketches and in-process storyboard that I've prepped for my Character Animation final.
Since my teacher seemed to enjoy the mom character alot I'm gonna try my best to put her into the final, if time permits. Overall, I'm afraid that I'll run out of time because my animation might go on for 2-4 minutes. But oh well, I'm pretty determined to do this and gonna do whatever I can to make this work! Wish me luck!

Meet V

Hey y'all,

I just made a few character animations starring the young, energetic V, short for Vena. I must say that I've made to be quite the spunky, eleven year old girl. I got my inspiration for her from Hogarth from the Iron Giant and Coraline from Coraline, which are both fantastic films by the way. I definitely love using V as my subject for all my character animation exercises and it's always exciting to see my flat, dead character brought to life with a bit of personality and careful timing of her motions. I'm hoping that I could continue to work with her and possibly use her in one of my feature films someday. haha someday...

The first animation  is V's lipsync exercise. This is her first exposure to having a reaction with a dialogue.

The second animaton shown is V's weight exercise. I still need to add in the second part of the animation where she'll be throwing a baseball, so hopefully with enough time, I should be able to animate it and post that up soon. 

The third animaton shown is V's walk cycle with a panning background. The end is a little vague as of now, but it's V trying to scare off this little girl in the car by the object that she just picked up off the ground. The one thing that you gotta know about V is that she doesn't like it when people look down on her especially when it comes to her curiousity and creativity. She likes to be outspoken about her thoughts, but of course, she knows better to not to create a big scene about it.




  

i a m b a ck

Wow. It's been awhile since I've last updated my blog.
I'll post up all my illustration work first and make my way to my animations.