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Action Analysis~The Gymnast. Traditional Animation from Quarter Two at CATO.

With animated films, the element of action has been the one thing that kept my focus attentive as I would watch the choreography of a chase scene/fight scene unfold. I was excited to do an action analysis assignment which held various possibilities from getting up from a chair to dancing, doing a baseball pitch, or serving a volleyball. However, there was only one thing that fascinated me about any choreography in action: gymnastics.

This gymnastics routine was inspired by a viral video from January/February of a gymnast Katelyn Ohasi that caught my eye and made me decide to interpret her routine in an animated format. Of course, my version isn’t anything like the original reference since she did a high flip before making her triumphant landing.

As I seek for self improvement in my animation, I noticed that I was struggling in making this model do a running start before starting their routine. The poses are there but I would wish to fully complete it and adjust the timing toward the end so it can have a presentable merit in piecing together my portfolio.

For now, I am happy for where it is now until I go back to revise it.

~Kels

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Friso Meteor, an original character design from the third quarter.

I was anticipating to do this final character design project and delve deeper into character design. Going in, all I had was a name, a role, and a rough background for this character, and there was no final design. With the process that I have observed and noted from other character designers in the industry that guided me to find my own method that made designing a character more exciting rather than dreadful with no inspiration to assist.

Friso Meteor is a character that is meant to look like he is in his prime, but yet is an undead floating apparition of his former self when he was alive. His role is meant more as a secondary character as he is a part of a graphic novel I am developing. Capturing this description, with the fact that he is dead was tricky to visually find something new to the idea when there has been so many reinterpretations of how we as artists view ghosts/the afterlife in visual media. With some references and feedback was helpful in nailing down the final look without drawing away from the overall appeal of this character.

I feel pleasantly satisfied that this character now has a solid design that compliments his overall personality and demeanour. The routine that I’ve made my own has certainly aided to the evolution of this assignment and it is a practice that I’m intending to continue using for creating more characters much like Friso Meteor.

~Kels

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From the second quarter at CATO, this is a miming assignment that I was eagerly looking forward to doing. The goal of the assignment was to show a scenario w/o dialogue with clear action and change of facial expressions.

For this assignment, I wanted to go for pure mime acting, which of course meant that there was no environment and no props to aid in telling the scenario. This was tricky to figure out how a mouth shape looks as a person would drink from a cup.

The character is my own original whom I dubbed Marley, and in this scenario, she is drinking from an invisible cup, and goes through a change of expression when she spots another character.

If there was anything I would’ve done to improve the quality of the assignment if given more time is make the lines darker so that the character(s) could be seen more clearly and I would fix the oversaturated capture of the result. And I would include the unnamed girl (who appears at the end), to see her reaction and response to Marley’s blushing.

This is indeed something I would like to do again in my own downtime to experiment with character action.

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Chapter Three: Wise Words of Experience

As the second quarter was coming to a close, my teacher Sean Ridgeway announced a week in advance that there would be a special guest speaker. All we knew was that she was from California and she specializes in recruitment with her own company that would be coming in the afternoon to speak with the 2D/3D students in their respective programs. 

I was really eager to meet her as I wanted to expand my resources/contacts in animation recruiters looking to hire new graduates from CATO such as Yeti Farm Creative and Bardel Entertainment. I brought along a notebook to write down pointers/advice that could be useful to me. 

She was formerly introduced as Rachelle Lewis by another experienced lady in animation called Anne Denman (I’ll talk about meeting her through the Professional Development workshops in the next post). Rachelle’s main focus for being at our school was to give a realistic and informative presentation on entering and surviving the animation and visual effects industry. 

A lot of crucial pointers from her presentation stuck out to me the most. For one, I needed to include my full name and position so that recruiters for animation studios like her could easier for followup on being hired. The second, that made me ponder and reflect from what I’ve learned and improved from the last two semesters: pick two of your best strengths and hone them. 

I was really glad that I got to ask her a couple of questions after the presentation for what she has plans for (I wish I could say but that is confidential) and I really took a lot leaving from the presentation that made me think so much for what I should consider for my portfolio towards the end of the program and becoming prepared to self-market myself for animation work. 

~Kels

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At the beginning of the previous first term, the bouncing ball was revisited with two variations: the first one focused on a bouncing ball and this one focused on the same cycle only adding a tail. The goal was for the tail to follow along with the ball in a fluent motion as the ball went through its cycle. 

Given that I became familiar with the concept of the bouncing ball due to attending the CATO Digital Arts boot camp two years prior, I took this exercise from a perspective for the purpose of a challenge to this assignment. I constantly found many minor things needed to be changed in order for the fluent motion of the tail to follow along with the olive from the shadows to the tail movement that applied S and C curves from a previous exercise in the blade grass principle. 

I am very pleased with how this exercise turned out and the revisions that were offered from my course instructors and from my peers helped immensely. 

~Kels

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This is an assignment I received the last term in my classical animation course. The aim of the three-week assignment was to create a realistic or cartoon inspired water fx splash and this is what I came up with. 

Originally, I was planning to approach the assignment in an ambitious approach with an aerial shot of water shooting up at the camera angle (i might attempt going through with this next break.) Given the time constraints, I went with a plan B. The advice I received from my fellow friends and peers made me realize that this would be easier to get done within the time I had. 

I still ask myself why I chose to go a water splash from this angle and it still remains ambiguous. With creative assignments like this, I always seem to take a realistic approach rather than cartoony. I’m happy with how this turned out and hope to complete this to add onto my portfolio. 

~Kels

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Chapter Two: A Visit from a Guest

Recently last week, our class was introduced to one of the co-founders of Yeti Farm Creative, Todd Ramsay. He came to speak to the class about what he looks for when looking to hire new animators in the studio, his story in discovering his passion for animation, and the origin story of Yeti Farm Creative along with his co-founder and wife Ashley Ramsay.

Todd felt really down to earth about his personal struggle to figure out what he wanted to do with his life which hit close to home with me. I knew of this struggle because my older sibling had trouble figuring out what he wanted to do as a career. I liked the advice he gave on starting an animation company from the ground up and how to prepare pitching an idea to be developed into a series. He mentioned that there are a lot of opportunities for animators to also work as writers in Toronto.

Hearing his advice and considering the skills I have gained thus far before coming to CATO made me determined to strengthen my skills as an animator and as a writer if I do want to seek going to Toronto.

~Kels

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Chapter One: Yeti Farm Creative Tour

Last month, me and my peers went to an animation studio located in downtown Kelowna called Yeti Farm Creative. The studio has been known for being in charge of the animation for Mysticons, Max and Ruby and currently they announced that they will be animating the second season of the Hotel Transylvania series. We were there to get a tour of the studio and get a real taste of what it is like to work in the animation industry.

I found the studio very chill, laid back, and intriguing. I could feel a sense of creative liberty and modernism. These made the work environment in the studio made me feel relaxed and confident in entering this industry. Me and my classmates were free to ask the animators any questions as they were working and they were really friendly in explaining how certain aspects of the animation process worked. Also, they had two golden retrievers roaming free throughout the studio and one of them was very welcoming.

~Kels

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Prologue

Hello! My name is Kelsey. I enjoy sketching, animation, writing, the performing arts, fitness, shopping, food, and hanging out with friends.

This blog is dedicated to logging about my zesty art journey at CATO, giving commentary on my animation assignments and what I’ve taken out of doing it and life drawing sketches. I will also reblog art tutorial posts that can become essential to me in improving the quality of my work.

If you want to contact me on a personal note, my email can be found at the header of my blog.

Come along with me in the adventure!

~Kels

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Character designs for Mary Poppins Returns by James Woods. (x)

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Animation art from A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS (1965).

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How The Grinch Stole Christmas! model sheets and storyboards (MGM/Chuck Jones, 1966). #Christmas #MerryChristmas #Grinch

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So, Disney storyboarded Hercules in live action with dancers. My mind is blown

Source

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Got to animate the DBX finale. Gotta say, I’m honored to have been given the chance to do this fight.

Big thanks to @themsjolly for helping me with animation and cleanup, @nannercoco for the fantastic backgrounds and cleanup assistance, @rwappin for helping with cleaning up animation in the clutch and of course @cvanimation for giving us this opportunity!

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Animation smears lecture from Chapter 3 or FULL VERSION of my Complete Introduction to 2D Animation which you can find on https://gumroad.com/stringbing

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How do you even make a good quality gif? I don’t know, sorry

Full none animated painting here

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wonk