Chapter 56 Ultimate Christmas Gift

2011-12-23T02:23:00.004+01:00

A sketch that I did for Travisty's Beard.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year everyone!

Learn To Pop with Invent

2011-12-21T17:45:00.001+01:00

Hey there! I'm really sorry for the lack of updates. I've been busy with life and a new project at work that I didn't have time to dopersonal work for a while. But I promise I'll be back soon. Meanwhile I want to show you guys a small side project I did. My friend/dance instructor just launched his site www.learntopop.com. He is offering instructional dance videos for the dance style popping at a very low price. All I can say is that I've been learning from him for a while and he's an amazing instructor. Knows how to break things down. So if you're interested in the dance style popping make sure to check out his videos. He also teaches at City Dance Studios in SF www.citydance.org.

I did all the filming for the demo video below and the lessons too.
Filmed with:
Nikon D7000
24mm f1.4

Moonshine Documentary

2011-09-29T20:08:00.000+02:00

Sorry about the lack of updates. Work and Life have been keeping me busy lately. Hope I can start posting some new personal artwork soon.

The Fellow artists from DreamworksAnimation in LA produced a short documentary about some of the artists behind the Moonshine project. Check it out!

Moonshine : Artists after dark from alexis wanneroy on Vimeo.

I Love LA - Photography Exhibit

2011-08-11T19:31:00.002+02:00

A bit of a different post today. I didn't paint but I pretended to be a photography model
bwahahaha ^^;
My friend Sven Dreesbach took this photo of me when I visited him in LA. The most amazing thing is that it got accepted by the I Love LA photography exhibit! And there was a post on the LA Times website and the Huffington Post featuring this image! Haha I can't believe it. Make sure to check out the Gallery if you live in LA.

I won't be able to make it to the Opening reception tonight but if you are in the area,

I Love LA
Gallery Reception and Book Signing

Thursday, August 11 · 7:00pm - 9:00pm

Wilshire Grand Hotel

930 Wilshire Blvd

Los Angeles, CA

If you can't make the opening reception for the artists, the show installs at Duncan Miller Gallery, 10959Venice Blvd in West LA on Saturday August 13 and runs through September17. There will be another reception on Saturday, Aug 13, 7-10 pm in thegallery.

In 30 Days Around the World

2011-06-29T16:33:00.003+02:00

Three Travisty's Beard pieces I did. Character Design by Lindsey Olivares.

Update:
I also used this as an opportunity to learn mudbox. So this is a few hours of Maya, Mudbox and Photoshop...Needs more work but I'm too lazy to finish it :P

Mega Smiley Unit & Space Invaders...

2011-06-27T02:16:00.001+02:00

Clouds over PDI

2011-06-24T09:13:00.000+02:00

I recently upgraded my cam from the Nikon D70 to the D7000. It was about time.
The D7000 has an integrated intervall timer and I decided to shoot some time lapses.
These are all shot from the DreamWorks rooftop. More to come...

Light Painting over the Golden Gate Bridge

2011-06-22T08:46:00.000+02:00

My friends visited SF this past weekend. I had a chance to do some light paintings with them above the Golden Gate Bridge.

Nikon D7000
18-105mm f16
30 sec exposure
iPhone Flashlight

B-Girl

2011-06-22T04:02:00.000+02:00

Forgot to post this one...

16 Year Old Genius

2011-06-16T19:17:00.001+02:00

My friend/co-worker Stevie sent me a link this morning which left me speechless. It's the blog of 16 year old DeVon Stubblefield. He's currently interning at Disney. I instantly became a fan! This kid is ridiculous. Just check out his work and you'll know what I mean. Remember he's still in high school...

Check out his blog

Raw Talent....

Doodling

2011-06-07T20:52:00.001+02:00

This is an iPad workshop I did a while ago for the imagineFX magazine.
All painted with "brushes" for iPad.

Horse Race Lady

2011-06-05T08:40:00.000+02:00

Through the Alley

2011-05-16T23:47:00.000+02:00

CRYKIT

2011-05-14T09:47:00.001+02:00

This is awesome B-Girl "Crykit"! I only got to take her class twice but she's great! I think I'm going to do more of those stylized versions of my friends in the future. It's was super fun!

Just a Penguin

2011-05-13T20:01:00.000+02:00

Photoshop Battle!

2011-05-09T20:01:00.001+02:00

About two months ago I started doing daily paintings with my buddy Stephan again. The other week I was complaining to him that he should use more colors in his pieces since his recent paintings where all monochromatic.

He replied with this image:

But now I complained about the lack of lighting and threw this painting back at him.

His answer was simple ^^

Now Basti, another fellow artist took this to the next level and made this:

How cruel XD!! I couldn't sit still and came up with this:

But Stephan finished it up beautifully by doing this:

"Schnauze" is German and means "shut up" ^^

This one gave me a good laugh XD

I just love those spontaneous battles. Good times!

Breeding

2011-05-08T19:55:00.000+02:00

Character Design Blog Interview

2011-05-05T18:28:00.001+02:00

I have been a reader of the Character Design Blog for a while now and I feel honored to be featured with an interview. Yay! Check it out at here.

The Mask

2011-05-04T08:47:00.000+02:00

Gorilla artbook vol.1

2011-05-03T00:49:00.000+02:00

I'm honored to be in a group of amazing artists called Gorilla Artfare. Today we came out with our first art book!
Big huge mega thanks to Clo and everyone who was working so hard to make this possible! (I only provided a few paintings^^) I'm excited and looking forward to the book!

Now go and get it! ;)

Gorilla Art Book Vol.1!

Welcome Back

2011-04-29T22:07:00.001+02:00

A remake of an older painting of mine.

Shooting Star

2011-04-27T05:41:00.001+02:00

Spotlight on Autodesk

2011-04-25T23:21:00.001+02:00

A short article about me on the Autodesk Sketchbook news. My paintings were used as splash screens for Sketchbook Pro (for iPad) for almost a year now. I think they're going to get replaced soon...Check it out.

Spring Fever

2011-04-24T21:59:00.000+02:00

This month's entry for Travisty's Beard. Topic was "Spring Fever".

Frozen In Time

2011-04-24T05:22:00.015+02:00

I recently stumbled upon this amazing photographer who does animated gif images. I've seen similar approaches before but this totally blew my mind. So beautiful! Make sure to check out this link. I gave it a try myself today. This is my friend at a cafe. I'm certainly gonna do more of those.

update:
I did two more of those today. Gotta find a way to keep the file sizes a bit smaller. The jumping pic was impossible to keep small cause the whole background was moving. So it ended up being over 1MB. It's super fun creating those pics. It requires a lot of thinking.

Light Painting Madness

2011-04-23T11:39:00.000+02:00

It's been a while since I painted with light.
I went to Death Valley with my friends this past weekend. It was an overwhelming trip. After watching a beautiful sunset I decided to do some light paintings. Most of them are 30 seconds exposure and painted with the iphone 4 flash light. I explained my technique in one of the earlier posts. It was super fun. (Shot with Nikon D7000 18-105mm 3.5-5.6)

This one is done with a different technique. The letters are extruded with the iPad screen. There is an app called holographium. You type in a word and the app cuts the word into slices and plays back the individual slices over time. Now if you use a long exposure in your camera and move the iPad slowly you can extrude your text in space. Pretty amazing.

And last but not least this is something I did with my co-worker. It's the same technique like above but in this case it's a real human body that was cut into slices. You can find the video and the process here.

This is a lot of fun and I want to experiment more with it. (Canon 5D Mark II with 24mm 1.4 25sec exposure)

Inexperienced Hateful Magical Boy

2011-04-21T21:37:00.000+02:00

My friend send me a random character generator. It's generates some pretty cool character descriptions. This one was an "Inexperienced Hateful Magical Boy"

Lecture at SJSU April 8th 2011

2011-04-11T05:59:00.001+02:00

Last Friday I went to the San Jose State University to hold a presentation for the Shrunken Head Man Club. About 200 students showed up. After a lot of talking from my side I did 3 painting demos. The first one was a simple setting to show the basic concept of lighting and to explain what is going on in my head before I start painting. The second demo was a more complicated setting using the same technique. I refined the first demo a little bit once I got home since it was too rough and my macbook screen was not calibrated well.

The image on the left is a night scene with the desk lamp as the main light source and a little bit of moonlight coming through a window on the right side causing the rim light. The image on the right is a daylight scene. The main light is coming through the window on the right side.

The second demo was the image on the bottom left. This demo also included how I organize my layers when I paint at work to be able to address changes quickly.

I painted the scene on the right side beforehand to show how lighting can be changed easily.

SJSU people thanks for the warm welcome and being such a great audience. I had a lot of fun presenting! I hope I could inspire some of you guys to do daily speed paintings and to set some "unreachable" goals :D

This is the thread of the sijun forum I used to post at back in the days.

Best of luck everyone!

March 11th 2011

2011-03-23T18:48:00.001+01:00

The Disaster doesn't seem to come to an end yet...

Artists Help Japan raised $54,077 so far. But also, don't overlook corporate matching.

Let's hope that they can get the reactors under control...

Artistst Help Japan

2011-03-14T09:56:00.000+01:00

I don't have words for the disaster that's happening right now and it doesn't seem to stop. I got a hold of my family and they are fine so far. My fellow artist Dice Tsutsumi set up an emergency fund to help the people in japan. I'm going to repost his post.

Hello everyone
I hope you and your loved ones are safe in the catastrophic disaster in Japan.
The earthquake was the most powerful in the history and the outcome is devastating without showing any sign of calming down.
It took me and my wife to get in touch with our families in Japan. Some of our relatives are still out of reach in the hard hit areas.
Aside from it’s my home country, I would simply want to ask for your help.
As you may know, artists have done numerous charity projects such as Totoro Forest Project, Art Block for Ghana, Picture Book Project, and Sketchtravel.
Artists once again can get together to bring our inspiration together to respond to the immediate needs from far east.
Working with Give2Asia who we worked with for Totoro Forest Project to help preserve Sayama Forest back in 2008, we set up a simple fund called Artists Help Japan.
Artists Help Japan Earthquake & Tsunami Fund is responding to the immediate needs of survivors as well as short-term to long-term recovery projects undertaken by the affected communities.
Give2Asia has a local team based in Tokyo to assess the current situation and to obtain more information on the needs of survivors. Give2Asia helped Totoro Forest Project efficiently send fund to Japan and has a great reputation when it comes to humanitarian efforts in Asia as a part of Asian Foundation.
Having worked with them, I can trust the fund will be used wisely and efficiently to help people in Japan.
This may be just a small help we can only provide from far away but I hope our prayers will reach people in Japan.

>>>>DONATE NOW!
You might have already helped through other venues? Then please help spread the words on your blog and facebook!
***Give2Asia is a US 501 (c) (3) public charity, to which contributions are tax deductible (Federal Employer Identification #94-3373670).

Sincerely yours Dice Tsutsumi

Stone Age Housewife

2011-02-12T00:28:00.000+01:00

Sorry about the few updates lately. Have been busy with a bunch of stuff ^^
Here's a painting I did this morning.

Obese Pet

2011-01-16T07:31:00.001+01:00

Cat: Nope...too much work

Setting goals!

2011-01-14T08:10:00.000+01:00

All my life I kept on setting goals. Some of them I never reached (dunking a basketball...or completing my star wars trading card set ^^) but the ones I "really" wanted I somehow managed to reach with a lot of hard work and I learned that unreachable goals become reachable over time.
So never be scared of setting big goals. Of course you won't get it for free but motivation,dedication and hard work will get you there. One of my favorite quotes is from Carnegie Melon Professor Randy Pausch. (October 23, 1960 – July 25, 2008)

"The best of the gold's at the bottom of barrels of crap"

You can apply that to everything you want to accomplish.
At the end of last year I reached another small goal I set for myself. Nothing major but it made me feel good! ^^
And believe me it was a huge pile of barrels full of crap I had to dig through.

Maybe some of you guys remember this little animation I made a year ago. One of my passions is breakdancing...I'm not really good at it but it's really fun! My new year's resolution for 2010 was to master the windmill.

I started practicing really hard 5 days a week almost throughout the entire year. I didn't quite get to mastering the windmill yet but at least I got close....give it a couple more months and I think I get it. I'm satisfied for now and will keep polishing it this year.

What next you say?
I'll try to be able to do no-handed windmills by the end of the year. I hope I can post a video again.

Lunar Eclipse

2010-12-21T18:11:00.000+01:00

Amazing Lunar Eclipse yesterday night. Here are some shots I took from my friends balcony.

Katzenjammer

2010-12-11T06:52:00.002+01:00

Animation Demo Reel 2010

2010-12-01T08:56:00.000+01:00

Since a bit more than two years I've been doing visual development and I'm loving it. I'm not animating anymore but I thought it might be good to update my animation demo reel anyway. I always like to keep a backdoor open for other opportunities so in case I will ever go back to animation, I have my demo reel ready. Let me know what you think.

The shot breakdown is available here.

Autumn

2010-11-07T09:05:00.002+01:00

Megamind in Theaters Now!

2010-11-05T23:36:00.002+01:00

Megamind is in theaters now! It was a long journey. Here is some of the work I've done in the past year working on the film. Make sure to check out my website for more Megamind artwork I've done. Working on this movie was a blast. And now quick, to the movie theaters! ;)

Color Keys

Character Designs

The Sky Has Opened Up

2010-10-04T09:19:00.000+02:00

Another Rainy Day

2010-09-12T11:22:00.000+02:00

Moonshine Book Signing

2010-09-02T22:22:00.001+02:00

I'll be signing at the Gallery Nucleus (210 East Main St, Alhambra CA 91801 )
tomorrow, September 3rd from 7-10pm.Check out this link for the attending artists.

Hope to see you there!

Join me on Facebook

2010-08-22T05:27:00.002+02:00

Another Sunny Day

2010-08-16T03:52:00.000+02:00

back to good old Photoshop! I recently got Photoshop CS5 and I played around with it this weekend. They finally implemented a keyboard shortcut for the color picker. If you hit control+option+command (on the Mac) you get a floating color picker window. It's still not the best solution but better than having to do three mouse clicks to get to your desired color. If you hit control and option, you can quickly change the brush size which is similar to the function in Painter. The content aware fill function is pretty amazing. Looking forward to find out more about CS5.

Doodling

2010-08-04T06:53:00.005+02:00

This is the painting of the workshop I did for ImagineFX. It's painted entirely with the "Pogo Sketch Stylus" on the iPad using the "Brushes" application and color corrected in "Photogene".

And here as promised the progress video.

Update: Sorry I had to take the video down for now.

ImagineFX workshop

2010-08-03T20:36:00.000+02:00

I did an iPad painting workshop for the September issue of Imagine FX. I used "Brushes" and "Photogene" for the painting. I also made a progress video but I couldn't finish it in time because of the tight deadline so it's not included on the DVD but I'll post it here later together with the finished painting. Hope you'll enjoy!

Meanwhile a little preview...

28th SketchCrawl

2010-08-01T23:59:00.003+02:00

Yesterday was the 28th SketchCrawl. The SF starting point was Crissy Field. I was sitting on the pier and painted this piece with water colors + moleskine water color sketchbook. There were strong winds and it was very cold.

I needed a warmer place so I stayed a while in the warming hut right next to the pier. This time I tried something new. I drew a sketch in my sketchbook, I took a picture of the sketch with my iphone and imported the photo into the brushes app. Then I started painting over it with my finger. It worked really great and I will certainly do that again. So here is the sketch I did traditionally.

and this is what I painted on my phone.

Here is the progress video:

And finally another water color piece at the palace of fine arts which was our afternoon meeting point. It was a great crawl!

Moonshine Blog

2010-07-30T20:51:00.002+02:00

Be sure to check out the Moonshine blog!
The Blog is featuring artwork not included in the book and artist interviews.

I'm planning to be at the Gallery Nucleus on september 3rd for the book signing. Hope to see you there!

Moonshine

2010-07-20T08:32:00.004+02:00

These are two paintings I did for Moonshine. A book of DreamWorks artists personal artwork coming soon. There will be also a Moonshine Gallery Show starting in 4 Weeks at the Gallery Nucleus in LA. Read below for more informations.

My two paintings below will be available for sale during that time. I don't know if I can make it to the show since I'm up here in the Bay Area but hope to see you guys there in case I'll go.

Gallery Nucleus Presents
Moonshine
August 14, 2010 - September 6, 2010
Opening Reception: Saturday, August 14th, 2010 (7 pm - 11 pm)
Closing Reception/Book Signing: Friday, September 3rd, 2010 (7 pm - 11 pm)

Alhambra, CA – Gallery Nucleus is pleased to present MOONSHINE, an exhibit highlighting work from over 45 enormously talented and prolific Dreamworks Studio art directors, character and production designers, and visual development artists.

Moonshine features art made during the precious little times of day when these artists are not busily working on stunning animated films. These Dreamworks artists have contributed their respective talents to upcoming films, such as Shrek Forever After, Puss in Boots, The Croods, Kung Fu Panda: The Kaboom of Doom, MegaMind, The Guardians of Childhood, Scared Shrekless, and Kung Fu Panda Holiday.

Monsters Under The Bed

2010-07-19T08:57:00.005+02:00

After a long break I tackled traditional media again. Painted with acrylics on wood panel.

These two paintings will be available for sale at the Moonshine Gallery Show in August. I'll post more informations about it later.

Kitty

2010-06-23T08:46:00.001+02:00

Back to the roots. I painted this on my iphone on my way to Hawaii using "brushes".
All painted with the finger since I didn't have the pogo stylus with me.
I did punch the colors a bit with photoshop afterwards since the colors of the iphone didn't match with the colors on my computer monitor. I'll post the process video later.

update:

here is the process video

KOMS-B

2010-06-02T10:01:00.000+02:00

This was one of my favorite toys. I still have it but it needs to be repaired...

Ladybird

2010-05-28T09:37:00.003+02:00

Winding Road

2010-05-26T05:52:00.000+02:00

This is my entry for Travisty's Beard. This month's topic was a song title of your choice. Painted in Photoshop.

"Winding Road" by Bonnie Somerville

27th World Wide SketchCrawl

2010-05-16T07:55:00.002+02:00

I went to the 27th World Wide SketchCrawl today. It started a the Ferry Building and ended at Union Square. It was a beautiful day, though a bit cold. I was painting on my iPad with "brushes" and the "pogo stylus" today. I had to be in the shade since the glare on the screen was too strong in the bright sunlight. Here are the results from today. I also prepared a progress video of the last painting.

Market Street

2010-04-25T06:21:00.002+02:00

I downloaded the brushes app update today and it rocks! Especially the layer transform option! Way better and faster than the one in sketchbook pro! Good job Steve! He also added a bunch of new brushes and I realized that he even has the layer modes: Multiply, Screen, Overlay and Color. That's friggin' awesome!

Again all on the iPad ^^v

And here is the painting process.

First life drawing session with the iPad

2010-04-23T09:21:00.001+02:00

I did a 1h 30min life drawing session today. It felt very natural to draw.
iPad just keeps getting better! Can't wait for the new updates for both "brushes" and "sketchbook pro"
This one was painted in sketchbook.

Rain

2010-04-22T08:58:00.001+02:00

It's still raining a lot....
iPad+sketchbook pro+pogo stylus

more iPad doodles

2010-04-22T07:05:00.003+02:00

I painted this one in "brushes"

This one is "sketchbook pro" again.

Little Friend

2010-04-16T08:00:00.000+02:00

Wohoo my pogo stylus arrived and now it's even more fun to paint in Sketchbook Pro + iPad!
This one took a bit longer...around 3hours but super fun!

iPad finally a portable Cintiq?

2010-04-12T06:54:00.001+02:00

So I was playing around with my friends iPad for a while and I have to say it's a lot better than I thought it would be. I kind of expected that I might like it once I use it but I didn't expect to love it. In fact, I bought it last Saturday. This toy is simply amazing in many ways.
After doing some doodles in Autodesk Sketchbook Pro for iPad, I new this is the next step into the future. My stylus for the iphone broke so I had to paint with the finger but I was surprised how accurate you can draw even without a stylus. Of course the pressure sensitivity is still missing but changing the opacity manually is not too bad. Sketchbook provides layers and even layer transformations, meaning you can translate/rotate/scale a layer all at the same time using two fingers....it's pretty insane since Photoshop can't even do that. Besides painting....I can watch my netflix queue instantly on this thing and reading comic books or looking at photos is a pure pleasure. Basically it's a giant iPhone which makes this toy so amazing :D

Here is my first painting done in Sketchbook Pro for iPad. I guess I finally found a portable Cintiq!!!
More to come! Btw...my stylus is broken so this is all fingerpainting ^^

Lunch

2010-04-07T08:04:00.006+02:00

This is another painting I did for Travisty's Beard. As you can see this month's topic has a format limitation. I had a lot of fun painting this!

Chilling in the Speicherstadt

2010-04-05T02:00:00.002+02:00

E-Bunny

2010-04-05T00:15:00.001+02:00

An easter bot

Venice Beach

2010-04-04T11:56:00.005+02:00

Experimenting with a different style....

Rainy San Francisco

2010-03-31T06:43:00.000+02:00

It's going to rain all week....meaning snow in Tahoe! Yay!
Tonight's little doodle.

How To Train Your Dragon

2010-03-24T06:56:00.004+01:00

I went to a screening of How To Train Your Dragon on Sunday... after hearing rumors that the movie is gonna be great I had very high expectations. Man! This Movie blew me away. This is the best 3D animated movie I've ever seen. I watched it twice already and I just can't get enough. I wish I have worked on this movie. Chris Sanders & the Dragons team....you rock!
It's coming out this Friday! Go watch it. You don't wanna miss this one!!!

The Making of Descendants

2010-03-19T12:42:00.001+01:00

The Making of Descendants, enjoy! ^^v

Descendants

2010-03-05T00:29:00.005+01:00

„Descendants“ is a short I worked on, about the wish of attaining the unattainable and about the fact that something good can evolve from something evil.

The two main characters are flowers (voiced by Whoopi Goldberg and Christy Scott Cashman) who grow on the edge of a clearing next to one another. One is old and jaded by a mysterious history - the other one still young, vivid and curious. Destiny has brought these two together and it seems as if they would exist without possibility for change, until one day a visitor to the clearing brings something unexpected to their lives.

Core Team:
Heiko van der Scherm: Writer, Director, Design, Modelling
Bernhard Haux: Character TD flower main actors
Goro Fujita: Supervising Animator
Felix Graf: Animator
Holger Schönberger: Pipeline, Shading, Lighting, Compositing

Length: 14 minutes
Format: HD, 2:35/1
Production: Time Frame: (First script to final film) 3 Years
Work time: Full time, 6 days a week ,1.5 Years per core person

For more information:
www.descendants-the-movie.com

We are thinking of writing an making of, so stay tuned..
Hope you like it!

Butterflies

2010-02-26T18:42:00.002+01:00

Out of a random shape

2010-02-12T08:05:00.004+01:00

Again a piece for Travisty's Beard. This month the artists have to start a painting/drawing out of a random shape.

This was the shape.

And this is what I came up with.

my painting "Sparks" on Apple Keynote!

2010-01-27T22:09:00.019+01:00

I was reading the live feed from the apple keynote on engadget this morning. Steve Sprang was presenting his application Brushes. And guess what, he was using my painting "Sparks" for the demo on the new iPad! Wohoo! That made my day :D

David F. Gallagher/The New York Times

Watch the full Keynote on the Apple website

and the credit ^^v

engadget.com

Nail Biter Cowboy

2010-01-26T07:28:00.001+01:00

My January entry for Travisty's Beard. The topic is "Extraordinary Heroes".

We filled one pot with random adjectives and one pot with nouns. Every artist picks one out of each pot and has to create a hero out of whatever he picked.

I picked "Nail Biter" and "Cowboy" out of the pots. Et voilà!

Nail Biter Cowboy

December entry for Travisty's Beard

2009-12-13T22:34:00.003+01:00

Here is my December entry for Travisty's Beard. The topic for this is "New Year's Resolution".
Done in DigiCel Flipbook and After Effects.

Downtown

2009-12-04T03:04:00.002+01:00

Travisty's Beard Launched!

2009-12-03T00:05:00.005+01:00

A couple of months ago I had a conversation with Kendal Cronkhite (Production Designer for Madagascar 1&2) and Shannon Jeffries (Art Director for Madagascar 1&2) about how we can share and improve our artistic skills outside of work. So we came up with an idea to create a collaborative blog with all artists from the Art Department here at PDI/DreamWorks to draw and paint to a certain topic that would be picked every month.

The Blog is called "Travisty's Beard"
Topic for november was "What's in Travisty's Beard"

Now follow the blog and spread the news! :)

This is my contribution
What's in Travisty's Beard?

A bunch of art addicted lice....

Motion Farm - vimeo channel

2009-11-24T02:20:00.002+01:00

I created a vimeo channel with my favorite films I've found on the net.
I'll be updating it frequently so feel free to subscribe. If you wanna suggest something cool just post the link in the shout box in the right hand column of the site. Click on the banner to watch my channel.

25th World Wide SketchCrawl

2009-11-22T07:03:00.003+01:00

Today was the 5th anniversary of SketchCrawl. A beautiful day in San Francisco. Lots of people, awesome location, great crawl.

We sketched a little bit at the meeting point at Buena Yerba in front of the SF MOMA before we went to check out the Maurice Sendak exhibit at the Contemporary Jewish Museum.
After that we went back to the Buena Yerba Gardens until the end of the crawl. Congrats Enrico for the 5th year anniversary!

These are my sketches from today.

You can check out the San Francisco results here.

Merry Madagascar

2009-11-18T23:44:00.007+01:00

"Merry Madagascar" was aired yesterday at 8pm on NBC. It was the first project I worked on at PDI/DreamWorks. I updated the Gallery on my website with some of the work I've done for the show. It was a great pleasure to work with production designer James Wilson.

Two color keys that I painted for the show. Visit my website for more.

Bird Watcher

2009-10-24T04:30:00.002+02:00

I went to "APE" last Saturday. It was great to meet fellow bloggers in person.
I bought an awesome snow owl paper sculpt from Brittney Lee. I'm glad that it was still there since I was aiming for it the day before.

Here is an after work doodle...

The Village

2009-10-16T03:05:00.001+02:00

Continuing my series of paintings I started a while ago...

Landscape Painting with Huihan Liu

2009-10-13T20:19:00.003+02:00

I went to a landscape painting workshop of Huihan Liu with my colleagues from work last Saturday. It was actually my first time doing landscape painting and my second time using oils.
It was a bit windy and cold but I had tons of fun and I'm looking forward to do it again sometime!

Here are the two paintings I painted that day.

Video Team Master Award!

2009-10-09T15:53:00.006+02:00

Big news! It's a follow up on the post below.
We actually won the Video Team Master Award in the Secret Agent Challenge at CGTalk with our entry "Agent Omicron"!
Yay! We are super excited!

Check out the winning entries here.

Agent Omicron

2009-09-25T19:49:00.007+02:00

I was working with two co-workers Nico Sanghrajka, Kory Heinzen and my bro on the secret agent team animation challenge over at cgtalk.

Kory Heinzen
Modeling
Texturing
Editing
Compositing

Goro Fujita
Character Design
Animation
Shading
Lighting & Rendering
Credits

Nico Sanghrajka
Pipeline Development
Rigging TD
Additional Modeling

Ryosuke Fujita
Original Soundtrack

I had a great time to work in such a strong team!
This is the result:

Agent Omicron

Aging International Superstar Steve Camembert stars in the 80's classic Japanese spy show "Agent Omicron"
While not popular outside Japan at the time, the show has gained cult status in the United States and Germany.
The Fans or "Cronys", as they call themselves are drawn to its campy fun and exploration of almost precient Sci-fi concepts. The ethics of cloning, genetic manipulation, nanotechnology and robot/human hybrid rights were common themes featured on the show.
An other star of the show was Japanese American actress Aiko Givewell. She played Omicrons Techy sidekick and had quite a following among the younger male audience. in the second last season her character in the series greatest twists, turned sides and became the main antagonist.
After the cancellation of Agent Omicron Ms. Givewell stared in a very short lived spinoff.
The last stand out cast member was Thud Thompson. He was a Worlds Strongest Man Champion from Sweden. He dreamed of being the Swedish Arnold Schwarzenegger. Agent Omicron was his only acting job.

One other contributing factor of the alure of the show was the mystery surrounding the death of its star. Steve Camembert killed while filming a spectacular stunt for the series final episode.
An early edit of the show was said to have put together but it was never aired. For the "Cronys" finding this episode is the holy grail.
In early 2008 it was rumored that Michael Bay was in talks to tale Agent Omicron to the big screen. He was quoted saying that he wasn't interested in making another stupid Japanese movie for kids. So for now Agent Omicron and his crew of super spies will only live on in decaying VHS tapes and Youtube...

The Making Of....

When The challenge first started we were all full of enthusiasm.
Our idea was to create an intro sequence for a fake TV series that we called "Agent Omicron".
In that sequence we would show a bunch of scenes out of the Agent Omicron Episodes. You can see in our color keys, what kind of shots we had in mind. Soon we realized that modeling and rendering whole environments with effects like rain would be too much work since we all have a full time job and could only work in the evenings and weekends. So we decided to use simple shapes and motion graphics for most of the backgrounds instead. While Kory was starting working on the animatic in After Effects I was doing test animations with Nico's rig. As soon as we had the first 15 seconds of the animatic, I sent it to my brother with a bunch of notes about what kind of music we had in mind.
When I finished animating a run cycle and the jumping action sequence of the spy, Kory's After Effects file got corrupt and he lost a huge chunk of his work.

We were doomed....the whole enthusiasm was gone and it was hard for us to keep going. For the longest time the only one that was working on the project was my brother in Japan. He finished his part fairly quickly and we got the final soundtrack a couple of weeks ago. Nico was not available for 6 weeks and the hope of being able to finish was almost gone.
A week before the deadline I talked to Kory if he is still planning to finish it and he said "YES". So we took advantage of the labor day weekend and started working hardcore. At that time our third character "Thud Thompson" wasn't even modeled yet. That's how hopeless the situation was. 70% of what you are going to see was done within 3 fairly long days. We basically skipped the animatic stage and went straight to final. I animated, lit, and rendered 48 seconds that weekend while Nico was updating the rigs on the fly, fixing skinning problems, modeling and rigging the car etc. Kory was modeling "Thud" and working with the rendered footage I provided. The intro sequence was done by thursday and luckily the deadline got extended so we had enough time to work on the 30sec Trailer and the making of. My brother arranged his soundtrack and created a jazzy version for the making of part. We had tons of fun creating this project and we are also very pleased with the result!
Hope you like it!

24th Worldwide SketchCrawl

2009-09-21T19:49:00.002+02:00

Last Saturday was the 24th SketchCrawl. We started at Portsmouth Square in China Town and walked towards the Washington Square Park to the Italian Festival. It was a beautiful day.

Website Updated

2009-08-13T07:21:00.005+02:00

I finally found time to update my website. All videos (demoreel/animations/tutorials) are hosted on vimeo. You can now stream the movies directly from my website in very good quality. I also uploaded some projects I haven't put online before.

Animations / Films

Demo Reel

Tutorials

Check it out ^^

A walk through the Clouds

2009-08-08T06:30:00.001+02:00

I painted on my iphone in "brushes" again (using the pogo stylus). I just love this little app!

SFMOMA

2009-08-04T02:36:00.004+02:00

Yesterday I went to the SFMOMA to check out the exhibitions from Richard Avedon, Georgia O'Keeffe and Ansel Adams. It was a beautiful day in the City and I really enjoyed Avedon's work.
Here are some sketches I did while waiting for my friends.

I recently bought this really awesome watercolor set "Cotman Watercolor Field Set Plus by Winsor & Newton". It's very handy and extremely cool for sketching outside. Combine this with a small moleskine watercolor sketchbook and you're all set!
So you can expect more traditional stuff from now on. ^^

Workout with my peps!

2009-08-04T02:27:00.003+02:00

So I've been doing a tough workout five days a week early in the morning with a couple of my colleagues. One day our Trainer told us to do pull-ups and every time we come down he would punch us in the abs and we can't let go of the pull-up bar. He studied 15 years of karate and really knows how to punch :(
I was bruised for a week lol....I hope this punching doesn't become a regular thing ^^

Robotown

2009-07-25T10:17:00.002+02:00

Spirits

2009-07-20T23:03:00.003+02:00

Sorry for the slow updates. I have been busy working for another cg challenge over at cgsociety. Hard to find time to paint.
This time I was experimenting with a more graphic approach.

23rd World Wide SketchCrawl

2009-07-13T06:15:00.004+02:00

Saturday was the 23rd World Wide SketchCrawl. The San Francisco crawl took place in the Presidio. It was a bit windy but still a great crawl. Lookin forward to the next one.

Photo by Nancy Lorenz

My Sketches from the crawl:

Talented co-worker Lindsey Olivares did a sketch of me on Saturday's SketchCrawl. I think she captured my "drawing in the sun face" pretty well ^^
Thanks Lindsey!!!

Cave Monster

2009-07-01T05:54:00.004+02:00

It's been a while since I painted on my iPhone the last time.
So here goes another "brushes" sketch. God I love that little app!
A must have if you own an iPhone.

Strangers

2009-06-05T23:26:00.004+02:00

Sorry for not updating my blog lately....life is keeping me busy ^^
But here you go. Was about time to paint some rabbits agan.

Amazing short film "Gary"

2009-05-13T19:51:00.004+02:00

I didn't have time to do any personal work lately.
But I wanted to feature a short film I stumbled upon few days ago. It's from students of the Supinfocom school in France. Pretty amazing!

Gary from Gary on Vimeo.

22nd SketchCrawl Video

2009-04-13T16:34:00.003+02:00

Here is the video of Saturdays crawl.

22nd SketchCrawl San Francisco from Goro on Vimeo.

22nd SketchCrawl

2009-04-13T07:30:00.003+02:00

So yesterday was the 22nd world wide SketchCrawl. We met up at the Portsmouth Square in China Town for sketching. The weather was great, a bit weired cause it was very cold in the shadow and super hot in the sun. I'm glad that I brought enough layers ^^.
It was an awesome crawl! I also took some video footage. I'll post it soon so stay tuned!
My pages from yesterday:

Something...

2009-04-01T19:11:00.002+02:00

quick doodle...just playing around with colors...

The Beauty Of Life on IMDb

2009-03-27T04:27:00.004+01:00

The Beauty Of Life can be watched on IMDb now! This is still one of the projects I'm most proud of.
I posted a making off a while ago which you can read here.

Squaw Valley

2009-03-24T05:38:00.003+01:00

So I went Snowboarding in Squaw Valley in Tahoe a week ago with a bunch of buddies from work. I took my Sanyo HD1010 camcorder with me to shoot some footage. I spent quiet some time last week to edit and compose this video. Besides a bunch of technical difficulties it was hell a lot of fun to create this. Enjoy! ^^

Squaw Valley March 14th 2009 from Goro on Vimeo.

My Bro's Blog

2009-03-23T18:18:00.006+01:00

My brother recently started a blog. I was jealous and still am for his musicality...That's probably one of the reasons why I moved into art and not music lol

His blog is about his own works, talks about music-related gear (instruments, recording equipment, etc.)

Check out his arrangement on "When you wish upon a star" from Disney's Pinocchio.