Harkosion

iPhone 4S vs. Nikon D3100

2012-02-08T01:02:00.000-08:00

I wanted to do a quick comparison test between my iPhone 4S and my Nikon D3100 with a 50mm 1.8 lens. As much as I love my iPhone's camera, there's no comparison to the DSLR. But on a bright day outside the HD camera on the phone is scarily close to the Nikon's video. Still, it can't beat that depth of field on the 50mm lens.

iPhone 4S

Nikon D3100 50mm 1.8

Chew It

2012-02-01T01:33:00.000-08:00

Here's a new song from myself, not from Harkosion:

KONO

2011-12-30T20:27:00.000-08:00

New Equipment, New Song

2011-12-30T02:36:00.000-08:00

This Christmas my best friend Kyle and I both got microKORGs:

This is the first song we made with the microKORG:

CTNx

2011-11-27T00:12:00.001-08:00

I went to the Creative Talent Network Animation Expo or CTNx the other day and it was a really fun, inspiring event focused on animation and everything that goes with it. It definitely made me feel like a slop artist because of how good a lot of the art on display was, but I expected that and handled the feeling of inferiority better than I thought I would.

One thing I did notice was a feeling of the slight inbreeding going on in the character designs and styles which was disturbing, especially CG characters. But for the most part there was a lot of good stuff to see and study.

Some topics I'd like to see discussed at next year's Expo:

Why is tuition so damn high at Calarts?
Discrepencies between US animation and Japanese animation in terms of themes and maturity of the topics explored
A panel dedicated to talking about animation from a single decade in animation history
Animation history in general
Television: Last bastion for traditional animation?
The decline and rise of the theatrical short
CG: Just another tool or a change in mindset?
Outsourcing and its effects on the US animation industry

One thing that surprised me was the presence of professional (clothed) models posing in the lobby with art horses propped around them for anybody to sit down and sketch. Here are a couple I did that turned out ok:

Harvey

2011-11-17T13:23:00.001-08:00

Four Finger Blues

2011-11-16T22:43:00.001-08:00

Here's a fake poster I did for my cousin based on a script he's writing:

A new song I made

2011-11-13T00:35:00.001-08:00

Sometimes I just get the urge to create music:

Some process

2011-11-13T00:22:00.001-08:00

I always intended to do an ink outline but I later decided that it looked better when it was just watercolor and pencil.

Lineup

2011-11-11T00:57:00.001-08:00

Here are some of my characters:

Sketchbook Diddlies

2011-11-10T15:19:00.001-08:00

I took some mud and smeared it around on the page before drawing the face on top.

Not sure what's happening here.

I tried doing my characters in a Peanuts style

Some Sketches

2011-11-09T22:48:00.001-08:00

Head Monster

2011-11-04T01:34:00.001-07:00

My comic failed me

2011-10-21T12:40:00.000-07:00

So the comic strip I submitted to my local newspaper's contest didn't win. I wasn't even one of the top 11 finalists. This guy won the contest. I'm not going to bag on his art or anything, but it feels more like a comic book than a comic strip, although I haven't seen the strip he entered which may be in a totally different style.
His winning strip is called "Mission: San Diego", which sounds horribly on the nose. See, the contest said priority would be given to strips that had a local setting. I wanted the local setting in my strip to be a bit more subtle. "Mission: San Diego" doesn't exactly sound subtle. But again, I haven't seen it yet.

Anyways, since I didn't win, here are the strips I submitted:

Update: Here's the article the paper published last week about the winner with a sample of his comic: Click

Now that I've seen his comic, I don't think it's as bad as what I linked to above. It's definitely better drawn than mine, although I was trying to strike a precarious balance between being effective and not spending too much time for just $25 per comic.
Not included in the online article but in the print edition was a sample of the top 11 finalists. The last strip of mine I posted is better than a few of the finalist strips printed. It should have been included. Damn you, Union Tribune!

My first political cartoon

2011-10-17T14:44:00.000-07:00

The other pot is supposed to be China but I didn't want to be too explicit.

Whoosh!

2011-10-16T15:14:00.000-07:00

Dennō Coil

2011-10-06T18:26:00.000-07:00

I've just finished watching a 2007 anime series called Dennō Coil and it was fantastic. The series revolves around a group of kids living in a city that is the center of a groundbreaking new technology that lets the wearer of a special kind of glasses see the reality around them but with a digital layer on top. It's like The Matrix, but in our reality. The kids form their own kind of hacking subculture around these glasses and the digital reality that is created by them.

Is this not appealing?!

I'd first heard about it when it came out years ago but hadn't gotten around to seeing it until now.
Unlike Death Note (which came out around the same time) which had a really ugly, unappealing style where the men look too effeminate and clothes are too baggy, Dennō Coil's style is very appealing; the character designs are cute and pleasing to look at. And since the designs are simpler, the animation is more fluid, cartoony, and better acted, whereas Death Note's animation was positively sclerotic (although both suffered from a bit of the 'radio drama with still pictures' budgetary issue, but Death Note took it to an extreme).

A very well animated shot.

One thing that anyone who's starting to get into anime TV series will quickly note is how many of them present a depth of character and the serious thoughts and situations characters get into and think about. True friendship, loss, betrayal, maturity, reputation, success, failure, and of course other mature events like murder, swearing, and bad-assery.

The integration of CG with traditional animation was very well executed.


You almost never see dynamic shots like this in US animated series.

There are plenty of well-animated little snippets like this sprinkled throughout the show.

Dennō Coil is more Miyazaki than Death Note though, and as a result has more of a heart. Things got a little dusty in the last episode.

So again, I keep thinking, "Why doesn't America get an animated series like this?" A show with a complex yet satisfying high concept, well developed characters one cares about, beautiful artwork, effective animation, and mature themes and events.

That's not the sun.

Avatar: The Last Airbender was close, and Hey Arnold came very close, although it wasn't a single continuous story. Something with the heart and adventure of Miyazaki, the coolness of Dennō Coil, and the maturity of most of these anime series that told a single story well would be successful, both ratings-wise and critically.

An illegal, a virus from "obsolete space".

I love comedy shows like Adventure Time, Regular Show, Superjail!, Flapjack, and The Amazing World of Gumball, but having a meal made up exclusively of these shows is all milkshake and no hamburger. The success of The Last Airbender reveals the huge market for a more mature, long-form animated series. The question is: who is going to make the next one and, more importantly, who's going to approve its creation?

Rhythm of Youth

2011-10-01T22:37:00.000-07:00

Gouache on watercolor paper 5.5x8"

These are the main characters of a comic strip I submitted to my local newspaper. They had a competition to have a new Sunday comic published from a local artist. $25 per comic is medieval, but I'm not in it for the money. It's just a fun side project. Even if I'm not chosen I'll keep making these comics because I like these characters.

This is also the first time I've ever used gouache. I like it.

The Lion King

2011-09-23T22:09:00.000-07:00

*Spoilers ahead*

I went out and saw the recent re release of The Lion King in glorious 2D (the first time since I was very small and it was on VHS) and I wanted to impart a few thoughts:

The first opening shots are probably the best in the movie, in particular the shot of the gazelle jumping through the mist onto a puddle of water. It's an immediate reminder of the beauty traditional animation can present. It quickly brought the audience of kids to attention and sucked them in.

The first half hour of the movie was the best part. That's when it felt most adventurous and took itself seriously. But after Simba left his pride and met up with Timon and Pumba, the movie became a little more self-aware (breaking the fourth wall), a little more cheesy, and a bit more light-hearted, much to its detriment. I didn't feel like it had the same amount of weight that the first act had, mostly because of Timon and Pumba. I'm not saying Simba should have had some deep existential crisis for all of the second act, but they could have toned down the kiddiness of it. There was a real sense that the dialogue was beginning to pander to a younger audience and was dumbed down. A lot of the jokes weren't as funny as I remembered them.

A few songs sounded pretty dated (I was cringing when the love song for Nala and Simba came on). But the more musical, choir stuff was still effective. I had a problem with some of the voice acting though. Simba had nice voice actor for when he was a cub, but when he becomes an adult, his voice sounds like a typical, generic Disney lead. There was no individuality to it and it's immediately forgettable, unlike his father's awesome baritone. I also didn't like Timon's voice. It was so grating and out of place.

This

Not this

I still think killing Mufasa was a ballsy move and added much needed weight to the film. Andreas Deja, who did a lot of the animation for Scar, did a really good job as well. Some of the animation for Nala was pretty good too, like the scene where her mom is giving her a bath.


Good, solid animation.

One of my favorite shots

I just wish the film was more Miyazaki than Hollywood. I don't think it needed the musical numbers or the one-liners or a second act with two annoying side-kicks making fart jokes. When the opening title comes on screen, it implies an epic adventure. Toning it down in the second act really undermined what I felt it was originally going for and, in turn, undermined the intensity of the third act (having Timon and Pumba help Simba fight off hyenas definitely didn't help).


What is this doing in the epic final action piece?

But that said, it's still a joy to watch traditional animation on the screen. I still feel like there's more of a sense of honesty in the eyes when they're drawn than with CG. Hopefully with the complete domination of the box office this re release has had, Disney will take a cue and put on track more hand-drawn features. With today's technology, they should be easier and cheaper to make then ever. The audience doesn't care if it's drawn or CG as long as it's appealing and has a good story (more so appealing. Audiences can shell out for some pretty badly told stories. But if it's ugly? Well, just look at Mars Needs Moms). With the cheaper price, Disney should be OK letting directors have more personal visions and take greater risks. Not every animated film has to be the biggest thing ever. Can't we have some smaller stories and settings? Where's the US version of Kiki's Delivery Service or Totoro?

Ugly as hell. No one went to see this movie.

Anyways, so yeah, The Lion King is a bit overrated, but if its box office is any indicator, traditional feature animation isn't completely dead to US audiences (whew!).

My own Shorpy page

2011-09-18T01:31:00.001-07:00

Yay! Now I've got my own little sliver of Shorpy.com for my photos: http://www.shorpy.com/TonyW

Some random things

2011-09-15T18:00:00.001-07:00

Frazetta

2011-08-28T16:11:00.000-07:00

As has been stated many times before, Frank Frazetta is a GOD. The book of his rough sketches, appropriately titled Rough Work, is like liquid gold to me. Just like the old renaissance masters, the rough sketches of a pro are almost more interesting to me than the finished works. I like seeing the different approaches to figuring out an idea at its conception.

One sketch (out of many) caught my eye as a good example of solid drawing principles:

Pure, solid drawing.

All lines lead to the head which leads down the arm, then to the arrow point, or the arrow can lead to the head. I think they're both important.

But the overall lines of action are clear.

In silhouette it's still easily readable as an Indian shooting an arrow, muscles flexing and everything.

I think it's also worth mentioning just how organic all of his stuff is. With the proliferation of anime there seems to be a tendency these days to straighten things out and sharpen corners on the human body (to streamline it):

Anime is a style, Frazetta is nature.

Jim

2011-08-01T17:34:00.000-07:00

Here are some drummer boy sketches to help me get an idea for a character I'll call Jim, after Treasure Island.

Sketches

2011-08-01T17:11:00.000-07:00

Here are two sketches I made in Escondido the other day:

2011-07-28T13:48:00.001-07:00

Sen Blast

2011-07-25T22:49:00.001-07:00

Coconut Short Update

2011-07-18T03:19:00.000-07:00

Getting through the line-work now. I started out not wanting a great variance in line thickness as I thought it would give the animation more continuity (I've had Flash line-variance-agony before) but as I got through some animation with a really thin line, I found that every little bump and blood pulse in my hand shows through. Adding color helps hide it but I decided a slightly thicker line would be less of a headache.
Speaking of headache, looks like Sen here is in the process of getting a headache as well (or a very serious concussion).

So I'm nearing the end of line work now. One thing I'd do differently next time is, and I've only realized I skipped a step now after some agony, that I'd do the rough animation, then do a cleaned up version, then do the line-work. It's frustrating making up some things on the spot with the final lines over the particularly rough drawings. Things like hair and body mass become inconsistent.

And another thing; I seem to be more accurate when Sen is exaggerated than when he's perfectly on model. It still feels like night and day drawing on the Bamboo tablet compared to drawing on a piece of paper though.

Still

2011-07-06T14:05:00.000-07:00

Here's a still from my upcoming short. It'll be way better than the last one. Plus, this time around I'm using TVPaint which has much better sketching capabilities than Flash. And I find the timeline easier to use. But we'll see how easy it is when it comes to inking and coloring, which will come later.

Background Process

2011-06-14T22:00:00.000-07:00

I'm making a new short for my portfolio starring the same Samoan character as my last one, Sen Popo. Here's my process in making the background for a shot (which is all done in Photoshop CS5):

For this upshot of a coconut tree, I decided to start with the coconuts as they are the main focus of the shot. First I lay down the basic colors.

Then, using the mixer brush, I smoosh it all together.

Add a little reflected light from below.

Add the rest of the coconuts.

Block in the basic color of the tree itself.

Then add the other colors that make up the tree.

Smoosh it all together.

Add in some leafs in the background, some more detail in the tree, and the basic colors of the stems.

Smoosh the stem colors.

Here's where the thing really starts to come together in Photoshop. It's all about the textures one either finds online or takes with a camera.
Lay the desired texture over the coconuts (in this case an egg shell texture) and set the blend mode to a desired setting (in this case, overlay). Add a new layer with gradients (also set to overlay) above the coconut layer to add more shadow.

I overlayed a picture of fire over the leaves above and some organic textures for the trunk.

I put the fire texture over the background leaves. Then I added some blur to the leaves in the background and on the bottom of the trunk. Then I overlayed a paper texture while also adding a warming filter. That's it. Good enough for a quick shot.

Also be sure to make lots of layers for things. For my situation, I'm going to have the left coconut move slightly so I made it a separate layer. Separate layers also makes painting separate things and overlaying textures to specific objects easier.

Bad Staging, Bad Composition

2011-06-08T02:54:00.000-07:00

This publicity still for Transformers: Dark of the Moon is terrible because it has bad staging. The complexity of the character makes it hard enough to see it but put an equally complex mass of gyrating, transforming crap behind it and that makes for an indistinguishable mess that is hard to read. There is no clear silhouette, no clear line of action, no pleasing arrangement of shapes. It's all just computer graphics puked out onto the screen in a haphazard fashion with no design sense.

How am I supposed to be in awe or say how cool it is when I can't even tell what it is? This is pathetic marketing.

Graduation Band

2011-05-28T02:34:00.000-07:00

It was the last day of class this semester and I brought my sketchbook along to see if I could find anything to sketch after class. I heard some music that sounded like it was a live band and went to check it out. Little did I know that a graduation ceremony was taking place later in the day and the band was warming up.

After a few sketches the musicians were cool with me and let me get really close to them and behind them on the stage.

2011-05-22T01:41:00.000-07:00

Tom Jones

2011-05-16T02:19:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure how I feel about this scene: gross, sexy, funny, intriguing; I couldn't look away. At some point I thought, "Somebody stop these people!"
There's a beauty to it in that it's all visual storytelling:

A Tantalizing Feast
Tom Jones— MOVIECLIPS.com

2011-05-07T02:05:00.000-07:00

The Future Boy Conan

2011-04-25T01:19:00.000-07:00

So, I just finished watching Hayao Miyazaki's 1978 TV series The Future Boy Conan and I'm absolutely stunned by the quality exhibited in this show both in its narrative qualities and in the background artwork and animation.

The story starts after world war III devastates the planet, sinking the continents and killing billions of people "in an instant", as the opening describes.

A boy named Conan grows up on an island with his grandfather 20 years after the war. For him life was peaceful but his grandfather worries that they may be the last humans left on Earth...

...until a young girl named Lana washes up on the beach.

And then adventure ensues.

I won't get into plot specifics, but I'll post pictures from the series that exemplify what is so great about it.

Backgrounds:

My god, how great are these backgrounds?

I'm a sucker for jungle scenes and there are plenty of them throughout the show.

High Harbor, the island paradise where everyone works for each other. It's basically communism, but it works in this small community.

The graves of millions.


This is civilization circa 2008 before it all exploded.

Back to High Harbor:

Animation:
You need to see this crawl. Click on the image to view the GIF.

I think one has to put this into the context of the time. When I think of the late-seventies in terms of TV animation, it was pretty dismal. The U.S. had, what, Jabberjaw?

And while all this silliness is going on there are beautiful backgrounds.

Conan has a tough emotional moment here.

Captain Dyce, who had some of the better facial expressions throughout the show.

Narrative and Thematic Elements:

One of the first things I noticed was the swearing throughout the show. Had it been released as a movie today, the pervasive language could have possibly garnered it a PG-13 rating. And while it was strange at first to see it in what I had assumed was a raucous boy's adventure series, it gave the world Conan inhabited an extra degree of reality and truthfulness. As with most great animation, this wasn't just aimed at the kids.

Obviously, the next aspect that struck me was the abundance of threatening the main child characters with serious physical harm. In a sense it harkens back to Jonny Quest, except Conan never shoots back, opting to instead use his immense strength and agility to get out of situations.

Jimsy, drunk.

And then, of course, there is the brutal beating scene on the boat Conan and his friend Jimsy stow away on:

Brutal!


Another beating for a different incident

The running theme that stuck with me most was the fact that people were still being cruel to one another even after coming to the brink of total destruction. Conan's grandfather despairs at possibly being one of the last two human on the planet, but is relieved when Lana tells him otherwise.

That is, until the Industrians come looking for her.

The look on his face at the end was always on my mind whenever harm came to the children from the adults later in the show.

Lepka: Asshole

They're watching you.

There's a real sense of the realities of death and a serious consideration of the consequences.


Of course, this is a joke.

Lana freaks out in the "virtual park" built in Industria to simulate a normal world.

Conclusion:

The Future Boy Conan has a timeless quality to it. The struggle to live in peace, to live harmoniously with the Earth, and to learn from the mistakes of our past are all essential values, and Conan presents them in a way that isn't preachy or overly sentimental. It makes them seem as if we couldn't live any other way, literally.
Compared to the time it was made, Conan is truly ambitious. Through today's eyes, the closest recent comparison would be to Avatar: The Last Airbender, which I also love. But Conan is more raw, uncensored, and frank in its portrayal of character, violence, and suffering. But it's also sweet, innocent, and honest. It's funny, exciting, beautiful, and a bunch of other adjectives. The Future Boy Conan should rank as one of the best examples of what a long-form animated story can give. And for this wonderful experience I thank you, Miyazaki.

Photoshop sketch

2011-04-22T19:07:00.000-07:00

I'm still not entirely pleased with drawing in Photoshop on a tablet. I have a hunch that drawing on a tablet with a screen on it would be easier to get what I have in mind on the computer.

Class Sketches

2011-04-13T01:04:00.000-07:00

Notepad sketches

2011-04-06T01:07:00.000-07:00

The Heckling Hare

2011-03-23T01:31:00.000-07:00

This is one of my favorite frames from any cartoon. "I... I crushed him..."

Flash project

2011-03-20T23:40:00.000-07:00

I've been working on a project for my Flash class the past couple weeks. Here are some screen shots: