Peppy's Pizza!

Hey guys! Long time no post! But seeing as how today is the first day of spring break, I will do a little update of my current project.

The assignment:
Develop an original animated TV show idea, and storyboard a scene that highlights the show’s theme and main character(s).

Best. Assignment. Ever.

We had to develop convincing characters, believable relationships, and of course, an appealing world for all this to happen.  I started to doodle some different characters and see where that took me. I was able to narrow it down to three ideas.

Dust bunnies would be a children's show based off of actual dust..who are bunnies. The day to day would be them trying to escape villains such as Snippet the static cling cat or the vacuum. It would be a buddy buddy comedy, between Cole and Byron and their completely opposite personalities. 

Team Bovine would be a show based off of some characters I did a few semesters back. This show would be a riff on The Dukes of Hazard. But obviously for kids, on "moonshine" only  "mooshine". Hanford and B would get into all kinds of shenanigans and use cheesey catch lines like "You got beef with us?" 

Lastly would be Peppy's Pizza. This would be an adult cartoon, for the audiences of Bob's Burgers or the Adult Swim category.  This show follows Miranda, a girl who works at a kids pizzeria as the mascot. The supporting characters are a bit more developed here. This show would be based off of my experiences (good and bad) from doing the same job at Chuck E Cheeses.

After pitching all three ideas, I decided to go with Peppy's Pizzeria. The feedback I got was there is a lot of authenticity to these characters and story. And I'd sure hope so! Here are some story moments to go along with it:

I think what I like most about this idea, is I wanted the main character, Miranda, to be a strong female, but not super hero strong, but strong in her moral and ethical beliefs. I also wanted her to be chubby. As I am, I'm pretty sure this is the main reason at Chuck E Cheese they had me always be Chuck E when I worked, but there isn't enough of that in any cartoon out there. 

 Dillion is the game room attendant who started working at Peppy's in High School while selling pot. He dropped out of high school to continue his pot business outside of Peppy's. He also has the coin hook up. 

Lex is "dark forces" worshiper who is the niece of the franchise owner so she can't get fired. She openly detests kids, but works there for her friends and easy money. 

Tiffany is the birthday hostess who flirts with all the dads and moms to get bigger tips. She has not problem "going that extra mile" to ensure her families are well taken care of. Meaning, ethics are not in her wheelhouse. 

Currently writing the pilot episode and doing some sketches. Can't wait to update you guys again, stay tuned!

30 minute painting "Cliff House"

Did this little bitty in 30 minutes for the Spit Paint Facebook group. I liked the idea Barron Storey would talk about in class by having something at the bottom and using a taller canvas to put something at top. I didn't exaggerate it as much as I could of, but perhaps next time I will, or I will revisit this guy and work it more.

Virtual Plein Air

Virtual Plein Air is where you look at google street view, find a scene you like and paint it! =D All within the comfort of your desk chair! (me thinks I need a new desk chair tho)

There is a facebook group of people posting their paintings and findings, and I saw someone post this location earlier, and I loved it and wanted to see what I could do so here it is!

https://www.google.dk/maps/@55.684339,12.5903,3a,49y,260.97h,88.68t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sRKu6KWC2EBvF9eXKCZBZNg!2e0?hl=da

Overall I'm pretty happy with it. I like the colors and such. I would like to work on my lighting more so I will be looking for locations with strong lighting next. This was just to get my feet wet in the world of Virtual Plein Air. <3

Final Zipa!!

So I realized I never posted my final Zipa character. This was my first experience with it and I'm pretty happy with it. I developed him pretty early on which I think gave me the upper hand with him.  This was a really big learning experience for me as well.

A New Leaf: A New York Flower Shop

For 117b, our latest assignment was creating a flower shop and it's owner from the 1980's New York. It was definitely challenging to make the city feel like New York. New York has so much character and quirk that you know it when you see it.  So getting that feel was hard.

I really wanted to get funky shapes in and bring a 1990's Nickelodeon feel to it. 

After critiques, my teacher liked these two the best. 

For the next pass, I worked out some colors and some ideations for store fronts. 

Unlike the zipa project where I felt like I got a grasp on my character pretty quick, I struggled with this one.  Ultimately, I chose a character who was an ironic flower shop owner.

The inside of the flower shop was a whole other beast to tackle. Filling the space and making it fit the size of the front were some challenges.

To help with the inside of the flower shop, I built a Maya proxy.

This model helped quite a bit in realizing my space. Here on the bottom I tried to work out some color pallets and lighting.

I was still having trouble with my lighting, so I built the exterior in Maya as well and played around with the physical Sun and Lighting settings. 

Since I had a character who looked like he belonged working in a creepy photo studio rather than a flower shop, I needed to come up with a story for him. So I invented his wife, Edith. They never had any children, and therefore she treated her flower shop as her own child. When she passed, Harold ( my little guy), didn't want to lose the memory of her so he kept the flower shop going. 

So here on top are some story moments from Harold's life.  On the bottom is a first pass for the interior of my shop. The lighting is all over the place and it feels really glum. That needed to be fixed.

The exterior was feeling better, but needed some more details and stronger warms in the lighting. 

Finals: I decided I wanted the interior of the shop to feel sad after Edith's passing. Without her, it was no longer a happy place.

Harold has definitely seen better days, but here he is sporting his late wife's apron and trying to make it through each day.

Adding the warm oranges to this shot really brought it home. I'm happy with this piece tho style wise I miss the lining drawing in it.

Hugs!

Felt inspired by today's lecture in class and came up with this little girl. Took about 20-30 minutes.

El Dorado

We are still working on our character designs. I have chosen the round overweight character to continue with on this assignment. But here are some ideations before I made that decision.

We also have to come up with environments for Lake Guatavita. This is the most challenging part so far. The first ideations I had were way too constructed. Too many structures that would be still be there in present day. 

Then, I went way to far on the other end, and left it too minimalist. 

Then, I threw in color and lighting and came up with this.

I chose to go with a morning type light in the majority of the environments here. For the final pass, I'm choosing the second from the left with some alterations. More to come!

Character Designs

For 117b we had to come up with character designs for a zipa or "el dorado".  In short, I read up that he was a leader in South America that would get covered in gold dust and would jump into Lake Guatativa as an offering as others threw in gold pieces.
I had never done character designs and found the process to be quite fun and challenging. These are still simple ideations. I started by drawing shapes first, then adding the face and such. I think that process worked well for the first pass. I look forward to see how he finally develops!

Practice Practice Practice!

Trying to practice sketching more on my tablet. This just reminds me of how rusty I am at figure drawing. But practice makes perfect! So let's keep at it!

Women in Animation

Last week was the second bi-monthly WIA meeting. WIA stands for Women in Animation and is a great organization of women in the industry as well as students. It's a lovely opportunity to get to speak with women from other schools as well as women in the industry. At the latest meeting, I had a chance to speak with Esther Pearl, who is a founder of Camp Reel Stories.  Camp Reel Stories is an awesome camp designed for girls ages 13-18 to help show them that women in the industry have a voice as well.  The girls break into groups and each group greats a short film over the course of a week. Check out the video below!

She was looking for volunteers, and I am excited to work with her next summer and help inspire some girls!
Also at the meeting, I proposed an idea for a fundraiser. SJSU has put together several charity art auction events and I was hoping to get one started with WIA and to help out WOMAN INC (a domestic violence woman's shelter). This idea is still in the early process, but I'm hoping to get it up and going soon!

Cannot wait until the next meeting!

Gary Soto Garage Illustration

Our first illustration was based off of short stories by Mexican American writer Gary Soto. I chose a specific story, "The Inner Tube" to focus on. A specific beat in the story, Gary tripping over fishing tackle, is where I wanted to focus. Upon further research, I found out that when Gary was just 5 years old, he lost his father. For my garage, I wanted to focus on the lost memories of his father, while still including the inner tube.  The process started with ideations.

Here I am trying to figure out which items I want in my garage, and what my garage would actually look like. After I find out all of the items, I need to build a schematic.

Using the 3D software Maya, I was able to create my scene, drop a camera in the center, and view every angle of my garage.  From there, I find 2 shots that I like. A wide shot, and a medium shot.

And now I need to decide which shot will best tell my story.  The wide shot seems a little vague, almost disconnected from my original story idea. However, I want to work with values to see if I could get it to work. So from there, I move on to value compositions.

These value comps have confirmed that the medium shot is going to best represent my idea.  I pick my favorite value study, and render out a full version.

After I have figured out my values, I move to color.  This is my first time working in color.  I've decided that this is morning lighting, and decide to use Van Goghs "Starry Night" as a color palette.

The feeling I was going for was morning before the day becomes hot.  The garage is still a cool place to hang out.  However, to get to the inner tube to make memories of this new summer, he has to get through the boxes of his fathers old things. I chose to keep the background warm and inviting, while the forground remains cool and unwelcome.

We had to take this shot, and give it a different lighting scheme.  From my value studies, I discovered that with this composition, it would be hard to light it any other way.  But after trial and error, I found away to reverse the idea of the morning image.  In a night time image, I would make the father's items, the things he did together with Gary, the focal point. The inviting pointing in the story.

In this image, the foreground becomes the place where we want to stay.  We can see the baseball, the box of Gary's fathers clothes, the fishing tackle, and encompassed in warm light. I found this painting to be my favorite and I did have the most fun with it.