Ponyo contest

About a month ago, I entered this poster contest on DeviantArt that asked us to design a poster for the DVD/Blu-Ray release of Hayao Miyazaki's Ponyo. They said we needed to use any medium we wanted for the poster, and they gave us still-images of the film that we could work off of as inspiration. At the time, I was just getting a hand on coloring and layering in Photoshop, so I decided to paint and illustrate my poster through a hand-drawn image I'd made of Ponyo.

This was the entry I turned in:


(I ended up not winning, but personally, I think this is one of the best works I've done in multimedia as of right now. Things can only progress from here!)

Reaching Out

(I've been trying to master coloring techniques in Photoshop, and I now understand why people love working with gradients! This is really cool, but there's a reason for the title, I swear...)

Sorry that it's been a while, but I spent the whole month of December working like a madwoman on my Animation final (see previous entry) and it was all worthwhile; I got an "A" in the class! =D I was so proud of that thing, and it was even more amazing for me to actually show my work to friends and family, and explaining to them how I did everything from scratch! The class was a wonderful experience, and I love the "Fireflies" project so much... I'm hoping to animate the whole song on my own. Someday soon.

During Winter Break, I had the opportunity to visit my sister in France and travel around through the Eurail, and I was listening to so much Owl City to let the time pass by... (I don't care if it's a shameless plug, but I'm such a fan!) so much that I started putting together a cute animated video idea for his song "the Saltwater Room." This'll be my first attempt to use Flash and AfterEffects with my drawing artwork to make an animated music video, but I think it would be an awesome final product! It's all about gaining the experience.

Being in Paris, France brings so much inspiration for animation for me -- and it's not just because The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Ratatouille took place there, haha -- but because it's the city I've always considered the artistic/imaginative capital of the world. There's this summer Character Animation program at one of the best multimedia schools in France called Les Gobelins that I would really love to go to someday. We visited the school while we were in the city (!!!!) and my giddy self was too taken aback at the professional, sophisticated students in black coats who came out of that building. I looked like a five-year-old compared to these people, and it got even more intimidating when I spoke to the director of the summer program. I told him that I'd only taken one animation class focused on computer graphics and simple visual effects, and he said that this summer program is mainly for animation professionals to learn to create better movement and emotional expression for different types of characters they animate. It's not really about graphics at all. 0_o. I felt like such an idiot talking to this guy, but overall I left the school still very intrigued.

The point that I'm getting at is I know I have a lot to learn, still, if I want to make it in this industry, but it's those conversations and those nerve-wracking moments I have with real animation professionals that make me wonder if I'm really cut out for it. I mean... I still feel like I'm learning the basics, and there are tons of people out there who master animation software like no-one's business and still be creative under pressure! As much as it was discouraging at times in the class, feeling like I was one of the slow-learners... there is still that part of me who wants to keep going... who wants to "reach out" and take hold of all this new media and use her creative, story-telling self to build a career out of it.

Yeah, I still have so much to learn, but at least I understand that I can't just accomplish things half-heartedly. I need to give every class and every project I take on my whole self if I really want to grow as an animator.

... Which leads me to what I'm taking this semester. Graphic Design I... and let me clarify that I only have slight experience with Adobe Illustrator and a self-taught background in Photoshop... is kicking my butt. One simple logo design for a company involves so much miniscule detail, I'm having migraines just thinking if I placed the right pixel size on each document I make. It's a pain half the time when I need to explain why I chose one shade of blue over another, or search through the numerous text options to see which one would really sell the company's name on the logo. Jeez, and this is something that I'll be presenting on business cards, letterheads and envelopes in a mock-up style. Honestly, I kept wondering why a college classmate of mine always complained about graphic design... and I think I'm getting it. At the end of the day, your creative juices get sorta stashed away out from the tedious workload. But... I'm gaining skillz.

In other news, the Academy Awards are happening in a month... and Pixar's "UP" has been nominated for "Best Picture!" That's only ocurred once before, when Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" got nominated in 1992. And with all the other great animated films getting recognized this year at the Awards -- Coraline, The Princess and the Frog, The Fantastic Mr. Fox (which I haven't seen yet but am totally rooting for it's Stop-Mo brilliance), Ponyo -- I'm sincerely proud of being a animation nerd. Honestly, it's a wonderful feeling when you know that the artistic medium you love is not dying out, but actually growing and continuing to inspire young people to have an imagination and go for their dreams.



I want in.