"La Seine"

You NEED To Watch This, nuf said.

This is not the final background, but I used this to test the final rendering process for my animation. Everything seems to be working well together. I have roughly 12-15 seconds of animation still needing to be colored.

Pencil Test Depot

http://www.penciltestdepot.com/

I blame this website for the loss of all my free time. I just can never get enough of watching these. To know the finished product and then see the drawings; I suppose this is how astronomers feel when looking at nebulae. You know the beauty that is clear and present to everyone else, but you gain a totally different understanding of it when you see its birthmother.

VOGUE

My apologies for the Madonna reference. I really enjoyed working with a rig in Maya to throw down some emotion key poses. Feast Your Eyes!

SEXY

 SOPHISTICATED

 FASTIDIOUS

New Online Location

I'm putting together a website. Nothing special. Just a more cohesive place to put up my stuff online.
http://drmeloche.com/

Putting Things In Motion

Here are a few successful weight tests animated in Maya. I resolved the exporting issues I was having with playblast, yeah. Now all the videos are in a nice, consistent aspect ratio for easier viewing.

Bouncing Ball - Acting in MAYA

The following exercises are to communicate different forms of movement using the graph editor and key frame animation in MAYA. Sorry, the exercises are short and I'm still finding exporting from MAYA to be tricky.

Collaborative Animation: Progress Report

Last week I began pre-production with Amanda Freeman on a collaborative short animation involving our two characters, Madison & Rico.
Storyboards are all roughed out.

And here are some color tests for possible background color schemes.

Here's another pitch that was considered, but we ended up moving to another idea for the sake of time and wanting to bring the project to completion. There's continuity errors and screen direction flaws, but hey, it's a first pitch.

Maya: Reboot

Didn't want to you all to think I've completely given up on Maya. So, here's what I've produced over the past month in that fantastic (yet relentlessly challenging software).
Here are a few camera shots from the small set that I built (still in progress as far as I'm concerned)

I also have a video (below) of my first successful animation in MAYA. Excitement has begun, oh yes.

MAYA_Bouncing Ball from Douglas Meloche on Vimeo.

Character - Frederick "Rico" Alonso

Age: 26

Eyes: Deep Blue

Hometown: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Languages: English/Spanish

Describing Frederick Alonso is like describing the wind itself. You can know his name and see that he enjoys a simpler way of life, but only when you stop and really feel his music can you come to understand him.

Frederick, known to his friends as “Rico”, was born to a lower middle class family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He spent most of his high school days working as a photographer for the city newspaper and teaching guitar lessons in the school gymnasium. His father worked at the local foundry and often encouraged Rico to consider a trade school. Instead, Rico went on to pursue his musical career and studied classical music on a college scholarship.

Rico participated in a study abroad program that allowed him to spend a year in Barcelona, Spain. There he became heavily influenced by Flamenco. He spent several months, performing with a group of Spanish musicians and they recorded an album that gained some local popularity. He made lifelong friends in Barcelona and promised them he would one day return.

Like all good things, his time in Barcelona came to an end. His sister, Juli, had just been accepted into law school at Penn State University. Overjoyed by her success and at being able to see his family again, Rico returned to the states in good spirits. Juli’s induction ceremony to Penn Law would be an occasion forever marked by tragedy. While Rico was driving Juli home from her ceremony, they got into a terrible car accident that claimed Juli’s life. This threw Rico into a depression and he was overcome with grief and remorse.

The next few years were exceptionally difficult, his father’s health began to rapidly decline after Juli’s death and Rico’s father passed away in a few short months. Rico struggled to make ends met so that his mother could keep the house, but they eventually had to move into a poorer neighborhood. He was able to then find work as a bartender and he attempted to get back into music by joining one of the bands that performed each week. His time with them didn’t last long. He quickly discovered that hard rock called on him to express too many things he just didn’t feel.

Rico came to cope with the death of his sister and father through his music; which now reflects the guilt that he carries, but is brightened by the memories of loved ones and the hope that holds together what remains. Rico is not a man of any particular faith or creed, but as a spiritual person, he recognizes a higher power. He hopes that Juli’s spirit can forgive him and that they’ll see each other again in the next life.

As far as relationships are concerned, Rico finds it difficult to become deeply, emotionally involved with one person. He finds enjoyment in surrounding himself with larger groups of people. He’s drawn to the excitement of crowds and the exchange of ideas. He has formulated strong opinions about the world, and can at times appear cynical. He’s fascinated by new people and will happily spend hours just talking with complete strangers.

Despite his outgoing and welcoming nature, when he finds himself alone with another person he becomes uncomfortable and insecure. Internally, he wants to say the right things and keep the other person happy, but he also isn’t sure of what he wants out of a relationship and is not particularly confident after all that’s happened. This causes him to appear distant and uninterested.

His musical career is getting back on track now that he’s returned to teaching guitar lessons. He is trusted and respected by most of his neighbors, because his guitar lessons offer the younger school children a productive activity that keeps them out of the local gangs. He’s also working with a local recording artist to help share his songs of healing. It is a distant dream, but Rico plans to save enough money to move himself and his mother to Spain. He still keeps in touch with his fellow musicians in Barcelona, who assure him that there will always be a place for him should he manage to return.

Stylistic Inspiration:

The visual style of Alberto Giacometti has always intrigued me with it's kinetic appearance. It has a striking lifelike quality while ignoring any sense of photorealism. These images immediately have an emotional impact on me that feels tragic, and that drives me to empathize with the character.

Renoir and Max Beckmann both have this fantastic way of approaching the figure in a way that is gestural and yet also structural. Renoir is able to reference the figure by implying key features and hinting at the movement in the scene. Beckmann is very detail oriented and his figures take on a more geometric look, but the mass is clearly communicated. This particular image from Beckmann is a self portrait he did in 1918 before his mental collapse. Striving for these qualities in a animated character would bring out a more dramatic nature in the character and aid his story and overall situation.

Finally, I had to consider how an animated character with a more gestural appearance would move on screen. The most striking visuals I can recall with a consistent energetic movement are a few music videos that employ rotoscoping techniques to give the narrative of the song more depth and grit.

In the case of "Take On Me" by A-ha, the fact that the male and female characters are separated by two different worlds is emphasized by the more graphic appearance of the comic world the male lives in.

Linkin Park's "Breaking The Habit" uses a sketchy, harsh style to illustrate the fragile lives of the characters in the music video. The main character goes from a state of non-movement and actually reverses his death by a decision to change his fate. This moment is communicated through exaggerated camera moves and the movements of his body forcing the perspective of each shot.

Animatic- Mary Mary

Some of the timing needs to be tightened up. The beginning can move along a bit faster and the ending shot needs to resolve more quickly. Once fully colored and all that good stuff, then this will be pretty banging. I am totally feeling the "School House Rock" style digi-puppet caricature.

Daybreaks with After Effects

Daybreaks_edited lighting from Douglas Meloche on Vimeo.
Thank God For After Effects!! The lighting on the original file for this is absolutely awful. Color Correction and curves cured a lot of that. I know most of the shots are now too yellow, but hey, it was my first stop-motion short.

Collaboration Complete "Great Fugue ~excerpt"

This project has been a work in progress for roughly three weeks now, and I'm very pleased with what we came up with. I owe a good portion of the success to Kelly Major, a sophomore at the Kansas City Art Institute. I composed the after effects animated punctuation and did some of the pastels based on the animatic she generated. Kelly then put together a carefully timed slideshow of the pastels for the atmospheric feel in the background. The music is a twenty second excerpt from Beethoven's "Great Fugue". Enjoy

Look Who's Talking

You've probably been wondering what I've been up to for the past week or so...your life must be very uneventful if that's the case.

After interviewing a fellow student, with their consent, I've generated a character that will be lip-synced to their voice. Here's the animatic with some rough animation and timed key poses.


look at that sexy background image. Yeah, I made that.

Color Tests

Okay, I expanded on some of the motion tests and discovered "Colorize - Set Gradient" is a more effective way to give color to my pre-comp layers than "Colorama" Why? It gives me more control over how the color will look overall, it has an eye-dropper tool that can match any color onscreen, and it doesn't alter any opacity or masking layers.


Color Test 2 from Douglas Meloche on Vimeo.

EUREKA!

After many cups of coffee and a few days to build up my patience with MAYA, I discovered that the Normals on the cloth were being disrupted by intersecting polygon faces after having extruded it. I went into the Hypergraph: Connections and deleted the extrusion step. Now, I have a beautifully rendered still life with much more desirable shadows.

MAYA Troubles

Maya has this habit of making me feel really good and then taking a cyber dump on my self-esteem.
Here's my pretty little still life that I modeled and created the materials for. Heck I even lit the thing.

After all the time I put into it, I was feeling really good about the whole ordeal. I was chilling in class, watching the tutorial thiking, "See what happens when you really apply yourself..." Unfortunately, the answer to that question came all too soon.

What on earth happened?! The right side of the composition looks great. The middle can be improved. The cloth decided to take all the shadows and add a dose of stupid. I checked all my light and render settings. They're fine. I even conformed all the cloth's Normals once I made sure they're facing outward like they're supposed to be.

If there's any Maya gurus out there, I'm all ears.

Internship: Paul Mesner Puppet Studio

This internship is going great so far. It's exactly what I was looking for. It's laid back and teaches me valuable skills I can use. Not to mention that the scheduling is flexible. 

I am learning to use a sewing machine. The stitching and pattern for the hands of cloth puppets is tricky. Plus, I was using their "training material". It's rougher to work with, but it's a cheap muslin. So, I can afford to make mistakes. Pipe Cleaners are placed in the fingers after turning the hands. When turning, always turn the fingers inside out BEFORE the whole hand. This saves you the trouble of fishing them out later.

Below, are two forty year old marionettes that I'm helping repair. I whipped up a few replacement ankle joints by taking a bandsaw to a sturdy plastic bin.

ROSTO'S ROCKIN

This news article I came across has only heightened my sorrow that "Monster of Nix" from Studio Rosto A.D will not be released in the USA, BUT this is all very exciting just the same.

This article does a special effects breakdown of how "Willy" the lead role of Rosto's latest production was brought onto the screen. Rosto's style of computer animation has always baffled me. I keep asking, "Was there stop motion mixed in that shot?" or "I would swear that's live footage". Turns out that a few members of "U N R E A L" (the Netherlands special effects studio that is working on "The Hobbit") participated in the process of modeling a 3D scan of a LIVE ACTION actor playing Willy, in costume. Modern motion capture software just wasn't matching the level of detail needed for this film. So a scaled replica is scanned and rendered into the software and then motion capture is able to step in.
THIS IS GOOD STUFF - http://nextengine.blogsite.org/?p=56

Oh, and just so you have an idea of the finished product...The official trailer!

Maya Interface Guide

I put together some personal reference material to help me navigate Maya. I felt I shouldn't keep it to myself. Enjoy

A. Menu Bar 

B. Module Pull-Down

C. Status Line

D.History

E. Rendering

F. Shelf (Tabs / Keys)

G. Tool Box

H. View Panels (Orthographic)

I. ChannelBox

J. View Buttons

K. Layers

L. Time Slider / Playback Controls

M. Help Line

Cartesian Coordinate Plane: how we navigate 3D Space by use of a grid and X, Y, Z axis.

The Four Functions of Maya: Animation, Modeling, Dynamics, Rendering!

Three Modes of Operation: Hierarchy, Object, Component To Access the “Outliner”, itʼs located under “Window” along the Menu Bar.

What It's All About

Normally, I'm not one to promote student work of competing schools (especially when it's school that deems Computer Animation to superior to all other forms of the art), but this is something I felt really sums up everything that I feel makes a powerful story. One Character and one message that's conveyed by every aspect of the film. It's a challenge, for me, to simplify an idea and get right to the heart of it

DoozerStick

DoozerStick from Douglas Meloche on Vimeo.

 After constructing a 30 second sound track, we (Richard Konradt and I) swapped sound tracks with another group (Erica Wester and Amanda Freeman) and created an animation based on their track. This is the animation we produced using the other group's soundtrack. The sand animation is masked out of its original setting and is layered over a photograph montage animation. I'm very pleased with the final product, and I plan to use the movements we studied to further develop my sand animations and evolve this idea into a complete film.

Abstraction in Motion #3 - Soccer (Fußball)

Overall, I'm happy with what I was able to produce using the tools I did. I was hoping to get the camera to follow the ball so the scene wouldn't be so static. I also couldn't get the "echo"tool to animate. That's what I originally tried to apply to the ball once it was kicked.

Goal!! from Douglas Meloche on Vimeo.

This wasn't what inspired the exercise, but I found this at 4am when I finished the animation.

Abstraction in Motion #2 - Autobahn

My second abstraction in After Effects was inspired by my childhood memories of driving through the underground tunnels of the Berlin highways (Autobahn). Since I was always in the passengers seat, I remember seeing the reflections of the overhead lights move along the windows. I'm not totally satisfied with results. I was hoping to push the three-dimensional qualities of the work by having the tunnel bend as if the vehicle is making a turn.

Tunnel Abstraction from Douglas Meloche on Vimeo.

This is the best reference video I could find to support my childhood memories. Realizing how many passengers don't know how to hold a camera correctly made me feel better about my digital work. (Schadenfreude) 

Abstraction In Motion #1 - Pendulum

Through early explorations of 3D-Layers in After Effects I've recreated the old Pendulum exercise.

Abstraction #1 from Douglas Meloche on Vimeo.

Inspired by U2's music video "I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight".

The Makings of Maya Modeling

Digging into Maya CG modeling. This seems a lot trickier than necessary; mostly because of my perfectionist tendencies. Like all animation, I have to first get past the idea of getting it to look perfect. That only costs me time and sanity. That effect increases exponentially in Maya. Enough gab...Here's some screen captures of my progress so far.

Reconstruction of Perspective Drawing in Three-Dimensional Space

Currently Reconstructing a Still-Life Photograph (I'm looking forward to the cloth)

No More Mr.Sadman

I could hardly believe it. It was only my second week back at KCAI and I had already threw myself into a phunk. I had all these drawings finished at the end of the summer and thought I'd have them colored by now. I was letting it get me down. I was bumming because I also hadn't found any time to dig back into hand drawn animation.

Then amidst my self-induced suffering, a savior spoke these words, "Loosen Up Man". Studio truly is the greatest place on earth. I figured I had to take the time to draw, because I just wasn't enjoying my 3D-Modeling stuff.

VIOLA!! I let my pencil fly and something wonderful happened. I began drawing rough sketches that had more life to them then my neat and clean illustrations. You'll be seeing a lot more of these speedy "fun" drawings. I think I finally found my niche with drawing.

About time I beat that bad attitude. I'm no fun to be around when I get sulky.

Stop Motion Break Through

Daybreaks from Douglas Meloche on Vimeo.

Alright! I have had some considerable progression with animation. While there are a lot of things happening here that I'm proud of there's still room for obvious improvement:
1) LIGHTING!! (apparently it doesn't help if all your light sources are behind the camera.)
2) After Effects Post Comp
3) Camera Moves (probably can't do a smooth one without some kind of stable rigging)


Here is the complete video after all our films were edited together. CHEERS!!

Exquisite Corpse from Matthew Lloyd on Vimeo.

2010-11 Demo Reel

Just realized I hadn't posted my Demo Reel from last semester. This collectively allows me to assess my strengths, weaknesses, and which pieces have the potential to become portfolio grade quality.

Getting My Feet Wet

Okay, I've begun playing around with Illustrator, and . . . I LOVE IT! Oh Vectors, how you amaze and perplex me. This portrait is part of a small series of a few of my friends back home.

Issues I'm still working on:

Figuring out the Layering System

Brush & Pen Tools

Exporting an image to a specific size and file type

Roger Evans, So Totally The Man

I know he's already taken Cartoon Brew by storm, but I just HAD to share the latest about his epic "Quest".

Being a fan of the Hanna Barbara animated series, "Johnny Quest", Roger Evans has set out to reproduce the show's popular intro sequence in Stop-Motion. His puppets are incredible and he offers valuable post-production tips.

Check out his website (do it, DO IT NOW!) http://www.rogerevans.tv/jq_page2.html

Big Plans

Alright! After a week of recharging my batteries and regrouping with the family (good times, WOOT).
I am digging back into my final and prepping it for Ottawa 2011. I have a few adjustments I'd like to make and I already submitted all my entry form paperwork. Here's a link to the festival site.
http://www.animationfestival.ca/index.php

I also have restarted my deviantart account, some little goodies there: http://drmeloche.deviantart.com/

These are the concept sketches for my elemental character I am hoping to get some tests animated for within the next month.

Finally, I am also working on a music video for the Stone Throw Records "Code Emphasis" competition. http://codeemphasis.blogspot.com/

"Dive In' Spring 2011 Final

Dive In from Douglas Meloche on Vimeo.

Hooray, it's...not quite done yet.
There are a few actions I need to add/improve. I plan to have everything polished in time for the Ottawa Film Festival.

Progress Report (3 weeks work)

Alright! First 30 seconds complete. and it only took me about a month. Yeah, I'm totally not where I wanted to be with this. Now I have roughly 1 1/2 weeks to animate the rest of the film.

Normally I save credits and titles for last, but since I had some tricky transitions, I wanted to work straight through.

Things I need to fix:
1) I need a single image (not frame) to size to the cliff edge when introducing the character.

2) The breathing holds need more frames.

3) Work Faster!!


Progress Report from Douglas Meloche on Vimeo.

Fun With Fractals

I will be adding to this post over the course of the week, because I am limited on my uploading capabilities (thanks vimeo, grr). I always try to have a specific visual in mind when creating a fractal. It's important to keep that goal in mind when pushing the software to achieve a certain look.

These fractals are layered so that the final visual cannot simply be generated with a single effect layer. I have always disliked digital work that can be boiled down a single effect. It is almost a trademark of amateur photoshop work when you can see that the final piece is nothing more than a photograph with a single effect from the filter gallery.


Fractal Fire from Douglas Meloche on Vimeo.


Fractal water from Douglas Meloche on Vimeo.


Fractal Coffee from Douglas Meloche on Vimeo.

Ocean Surface Waves Test

The overall idea with this effect is to create the close range wave effect that occurs when a camera is positioned directly above the surface of the water. There is a faint background cue to show how the final scene will look. I am so glad that I am scanning thee images in photoshop and finishing the animation in there, beause I am STILL having issues with cropping the video source in iMovie. Grr.

Ocean surface layer from Douglas Meloche on Vimeo.

Motion Painting #1

This is an exercise in motion painting with acrylic on canvas. I plan to revisit this concept. I most strongly responded to the sweeps of dots and playing with the idea of evolving negative space. I have an alternative edit to this piece which plays in reverse on a loop.

Motion Painting #1 from Douglas Meloche on Vimeo.

Speed Zoom Tests

I think you can get the idea easily enough. This animation simulates a camera move of zooming in on the cliff peak. I play it twice because I swapped out a few drawing between the two tests. The second test has one less drawing (that's how much animators obsess on detail).



I apologize for the use of youtube (grr), but vimeo said this file was too small to upload. Who would've thought?

Bird Flight Test #1

First Flight Test from Douglas Meloche on Vimeo.

Some of the animation is a little rough. I'll be sure to clean up those frames. The biggest problem is the camera's alignment when I shot the animation. The bird shouldn't drop out of the bottom of the frame the way it does. Enjoy it just the same.

Opening Titles for Spring`11 Final

Opening Titles for Spring`11 Final from Douglas Meloche on Vimeo.

This weekend has been a series of breakthroughs. I've had my first real success with character animation, and now after effects has brought something together.

Spring Final Character Test#1

Seeing as he's an extreme sports athlete who enjoys base jumping, I find "Cliff" to be an appropriate name. Cliff Michaels, extreme sports enthusiast and Australian Olympic Swimmer. Well, anyway, here's the animation *drum roll*


Cliff Peek from Douglas Meloche on Vimeo.

In this scene he's checking out the edge of the cliffside before gathering the courage to make the jump.

Splash Test #1

This is the first test of the underwater splashdown at the end of the animation. I want this to be the strongest part of the film. Which means I'll need about three times as many bubbles, more movement variety in the follow through, and the splash needs to cover a wider area of the screen.

Plus, water doesn't close in on itself as quickly as shown here. I need the very beginning of the splash to "jellyfish" and slowly to rush into fill the space.
I do have the timing of things down pretty well, though.

Splash Test #1 from Douglas Meloche on Vimeo.

Spring`11 Final Project Proposal

Yeah, an animatic that took me less than 4 hours to produce. Finally progress can be measured in less than days!

The frames don't match up exactly, but hey, I drew this all out on notecards. Let me know what you like/dislike. Especially inform me of any point(s) where the flow of the story becomes unclear.

The animation begins full force tomorrow at Noon SHARP!! Wish me luck.

Spring`11 Final Project Proposal from Douglas Meloche on Vimeo.

DEMO REEL: Spring 2011

Breakdown: This is a collection of my studies in the principles of animation
I handle all the hand drawn animation, coloring, puppet construction, and stop-motion.

I am starting on an independent short film for this summer.

Demo Reel Spring 2011 from Douglas Meloche on Vimeo.

Stop Motion Puppet

This was my first test with Dragon. I desperately wanted to get some time with my puppet and and the new Canon Rebel's Doug got us. The set's all torn down and packed up, but here's the product of roughly five hours work. Glad I'm not shooting my final under florescent lights. So much flickering!
The puppet's not finished, but I wanted to get a feel for how the paint job looked while it's in motion.

Stop-Motion Puppet from Douglas Meloche on Vimeo.

After Effects Digital Puppets

The adventure of creating puppets in the digital world was somewhat different from last week's endeavor.

After Effects Puppet from Douglas Meloche on Vimeo.

While there were minor successes, for the most part, this project was a train wreck. I meant to have multiple layers to make a near interesting background. Several objects are poorly rendered due to time constraints.

THE BIGGEST PROBLEM - I managed all the movement keys for the puppet in a separate composition thinking I could simply export it with a transparent background and put it into the scene. I ended up having to key color remove the background (that's what caused her to be transparent), AND the movement does not match at all with the pace of the background.

Much revision is needed.

Here you can see the isolated walk cycle and the puppet's actions in the scene.

After Effects Puppet from Douglas Meloche on Vimeo.

I used the lime green background to try and place the character directly into the scene, but the process also removed green hues from the puppet which I hadn't accounted for.

Learning Experience

Good news. Bad News. I have progressed rather nicely with the construction of my puppets. They are ready for paint detailing, clothing, hair, etc. The basic set is also complete. Unfortunately, there is not going to be any space available for me to shoot the actual stop-motion animation with a set this size. So, this project will have to be put on hold until the summer. This certainly wasn't a wasted effort, but it's unfavorable that I now need to take the time to develop a different idea for my final this semester.

Animatic - alter ego (pilot)

Animatic from Douglas Meloche on Vimeo.

There's still some timing issues that need to be addressed. I also plan to hash out more detail and perspective from the backgrounds. I want to thank my voice actors for taking this seriously and producing some enjoyable dialogue for these characters.

PLEASE - feel free to comment (critique) camera angles, facial expressions, gesture poses, plot structure, etc. I appreciate the feedback.

Puppet Progress #1

The head of the first puppet is near completion for my next film. I want t touch up the lips and I may end up making eyes separately. After that, this guy's going into the oven so I can paint it.

 

Stop-Motion Studies

Some exercises I did for stop-motion animation...

PICK UP DAT PHONE, FOO!! from Douglas Meloche on Vimeo.

Claymation Study from Douglas Meloche on Vimeo.

Freeform

Freeform from Douglas Meloche on Vimeo.
This project was nothing but fun times (as is all animation). Here I expanded on a project I started for Valentine's Day (there IS sound). I also threw in some nifty transitions and just had fun with it. Sorry, no title though. I've had some difficulty coming up with those lately.

Digitally Painted Energy Cycle

Digital Paint Energy Cycle from Douglas Meloche on Vimeo.

This is still VERY MUCH a work in progress. A few frames are not fully colored, I need to add blurs, glows, and shading, AND there's a secondary animation that be placed as a background element. It'll be good stuff once it's done. You'll have to settle for this right now.  (-;

Super Sculpy Baking Instructions

Alright, might come in handy to have this up online. This is the baking instructions for super sculpy. If you use a different sculpy, then the instructions ARE DIFFERENT. Do not mix different scuply together. They have different consistencies of synthetics that will bake at different temperatures.

Model Sheet

One aspect that I put a great deal of thought into was the color scheme. At first, I wanted to emphasis rich dramatic colors to emphasize my characters interests in hunting and spirituality in nature. After I created my first image in that style, it seemed to too stern and didn’t visually match my character’s description. I then shifted my focus towards the family dynamic that’s created by Clarimonde, Claire, taking care of her younger siblings. I looked at German advertisements for children and illustrations for German children’s books and felt it would be more appropriate to use a pastel color palette. To enhance this pastel style, I also adjusted the leveling on the original scannings of my drawings to give them a scratchy chalk appearance. I am happy with the final design that reflects the uplifting attitude of this character.

ENERGY

Eureka! Here is the completed B&W pencil animation for my interpretation of energy. The music was my inspiration for the visual design. The music is copyrighted to Dragonforce titled "Operation Ground and Pound". I claim no rights to the music. Next objective is to get the frames colored and polish in some effects.

ENERGY from Douglas Meloche on Vimeo.

Clarimonde Gottschalk - 1st Conceptual Design

Alright! My first dig-paint from a scanned image! Yes, I realize that her rifle looks amazing. That is because I used an imported imported image of a Mauser Karabiner 98. As if there's any better bolt action rifle in the world. I am very happy with how the clothing and hair turned out.

Turns out that our next assignment is to complete a character model for the biography. Although I'm ahead of the game, I would like to go back and look at how I can alter the design to better fit the bio and incorporate more visual interest.

Energy Test

This is a test of various forms flaring from the origin point at different speeds. The assignment is to create a 30 drawing cycle that communicates energy.

Energy Test from Douglas Meloche on Vimeo.

Character Design

Here is a sample design for Clarimonde Gottschalk. I'll have a digi-painted version complete soon.

Character Biography - Sample

Well, after some overhaul revisions, I produced at a character biography that I am totally satisfied with.

Life on Germany’s Rhine River is full of beauty and splendor. Clarimonde Gottschalk is descended from medieval lords who built a small fort along the Rhine so they could tax those who passed through their land. Although those days have long passed, Clarimonde’s family has lived there for many generations. Clarimonde’s parents married rather late in their years, and provided her with a classical education. Surrounded by her family’s proud heritage, she quickly developed a love for history and architecture. During her studies to become an architect, her figure often attracted the attention of her male classmates. Being far too occupied with her studies, she doesn’t notice. Her strikingly deep blue eyes do far more than complete a pretty face. Behind her rectangular-frame glasses and untidy, brown hair are the eyes of an accomplished marksman. Clarimonde and her father often go on hunting trips, and discovered her to be naturally skilled with a rifle at a young age.

Being the eldest of her siblings and since her parents are in their late fifties, Clarimonde takes on most of the responsibilities in the home. Some of her favorite pastimes are reading books while reclining on the ruins nearby her home and preparing family meals. Her greatest pleasure is fixing up and maintaining her Trabant, the classic automobile of East Germany and her most prized possession. After completing her architectural apprenticeships, she was commissioned to design and oversee the construction of a new cathedral in Koblenz. This project made her a well respected member of her trade, but gave her little time to socialize. Being somewhat of a workaholic makes her a less social person.

Clarimonde does not have many friends, but she is loyal and reliable to the bitter end. She feels responsible for those close to her and has no problem lecturing them against making foolish decisions. She is a capable and focused individual who rarely loses her temper and avoids sticking her nose into other people’s business. Clarimonde is the most unlikely person to interrupt or speak out of turn. Since she enjoys the outdoors and is often working outside, she prefers to wear comfortable, non-restrictive clothing. She is patient with others but has no tolerance for selfishness or quarreling. This motherly attitude is attributed to caring for her younger siblings. Clarimonde currently has no love interests. She does not feel the need to have a man in her life, because she is content with caring for her family. Since she is twenty-two years old and has never been in a serious relationship, let alone had her first kiss, she is naive at times. She is often pressured by her mother to take dating more seriously. Her mother’s concern is mainly because she knows that her and her husband are getting older and will one day be gone.

While she is happy with life and knows how blessed she is to have a successful career, Clarimonde can not help wondering what lies beyond her home. Clarimonde is surrounded by enchanting scenery and lives in a very old part of Germany. There is a romanticism and mystical quality to these lands, and she is acutely in tune with her surroundings. When hunting in the forests, she can hear the rustling trees speaking to her. She can feel the ancient energy and humbling presence of the Rhine River. When visiting the castle ruins of times long passed, she can almost see the spirits of those who once lived there. Clarimonde is aware that there are things in this world that cannot be explained, and sometimes fantasizes about mysterious far away lands. Perhaps, one day she will explore distant wonders, but for now, Clarimonde is satisfied and pleased with how her life has turned out. The future is best left to fate after all.

DISCOVERY!!

I found some experimental graffiti animations "Urbanimations" by an artist who calls himself Blu.
These are rather impressive and many sequences are done quite seamlessly. Each was shot over several days. Personally, I'd love to get permission from the school and designate a place where some animation students could do this regularly and on a smaller scale.
Here's a link to Blu's site = http://www.blublu.org