Winter break!!

a much needed break indeed. The last week was pretty brutal but in the end I'm generally happy with my final projects. Anyway here's all three of those animation exercises we did.
http://webspace.ringling.edu/~rblitz/access/CG220/rblitz_jwt.mov

I have an animatic for our next big animation next semester but I'm planning on tweaking it over break.

Simple Character Jump

Here's the completed jump.
http://webspace.ringling.edu/~rblitz/access/CG220/rblitz_jump_2.mov
It's the second version because we had a few hours to make small revisions after the final submission.

Simple Poly Character

Here's my simple polygon character that we had to design, model, and rig. We will be using this to animate a jump, walk, and turn around. I'm actually just finishing up the jump and will probably be posting that soon.

Bah! lip sync fail

pretty happy with how the motion turned out but the lip sync....yikes, don't look!. Probably underestimated the time it takes to get those lip shapes looking good.
http://webspace.ringling.edu/~rblitz/access/CG220/rblitz_lip_sync.mov

2d animation!

Well, I'm starting my first lip sync in traditional animation class and I must say I'm happy with my progress. I kind of struggled with traditional last year and the beginning of this year so I'm really trying to end on a good note.
Here is a still of it so far.

Polygon modelling assignment

check it out
http://webspace.ringling.edu/~rblitz/access/CG220/rblitz_penguin_2.mov

Primitive Theater

As a whole I feel I could of done more with this project but I'm happy with a few smaller aspects of it. IE: The pencil cup secondary action, haha.



http://webspace.ringling.edu/~rblitz/access/CG220/rblitz_primitive_theater.mov

Ball Bounce Animation!

First CA assignment finished!

http://webspace.ringling.edu/~rblitz/access/CG220/bbounce_rblitz.mov

Digital Painting Class...Complete!

Sweet! Here's my final assignment. As always drawing credits go to Bobby Chiu. I'm definitely looking forward to my drawing for animation class next semester now.

Back to School!!

Alright only 4 more days 'till I'm back at school. Sophomore year baby!
Here's my schedule

Traditional Animation II
Mon/Thurs / 12:30 PM - 03:15 PM
Mr. Gary Schumer

Computer Animation I
Tues/Fri / 12:30 PM - 03:15 PM
Mr. Jamie DeRuyter

Concept Development I
Tues/Thurs / 03:30 PM - 06:15 PM
Mr. Robert Cooksey

Film Language & Visual Storytelling
Mon/Wed / 07:00 PM - 09:45 PM
Mr. Bob Melville

Studies in the Holocaust
Thursday / 08:30 AM - 11:15 AM
Mr. Neil Marinovich

Art Stuff

some storyboard stuff from a possible thesis idea, lol. FYI shots aren't in chronological order.

crappy speed paint from photo ref

Two assignments from my digital painting class. Drawings by Bobby Chiu.

WALL•E!!!

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/wall_e/news/1737449/critics_consensus_wall_e_is_one_of_the_best_reviewed_films_of_2008
"It's rare that a picture earns comparisons with Chaplin's City Lights and Kubrick's 2001. It's rarer still that said picture is also praised as intelligent, visually remarkable, darkly funny, and ultimately, heartwarming family fare. However, critics say the good folks at Pixar have done just that with WALL-E, perhaps the studio's most audacious film yet. Set in a dystopian future, WALL-E is the tale of a garbage-collecting robot navigating an unpopulated Earth. Soon he's joined by EVE, a female bot searching for vegetation, and falls head-over-treads in love. Critics have been heaping praise on Pixar for years, but there's a reason for that: The studio re-invents the rules of CG animation each time out. The pundits say WALL-E deftly blends slapstick, political satire, heartbreaking romance, and masterful storytelling into a one-of-a-kind movie experience. At 97 percent on the Tomatometer, WALL-E is not just Certified Fresh. It's not just one of the best-reviewed films of the year. It's one of the best-reviewed films in Pixar's history."

...yeah im excited.

Internship Update #2

So unfortunately I had to end my internship a bit early but my boss Doug just emailed me the pilot of his series "10 Seconds of Hell" that I worked on for a bit. Check it out.
http://www.galaxy61.com/TenSeconds/TenSeconds_Pilot.mov

Digital Painting with Bobby Chiu

So I started taking an online digital painting class with the awesome Bobby Chiu over at schoolism.com It lasts 9 weeks and every week we get a new assignment. This guy is crazy talented though, I don't feel worthy learning from him, haha. If you didn't click his name above, check out his work here
http://digital-bobert.cgsociety.org/gallery

Internship Update

Yeah so I've just finished 2 weeks at Galaxy 61. It's really nice and laid back, especially since its currently just Doug and another intern. I've just been helping Doug with some simple modeling and animation. But the part that I find the most interesting is hearing what the CG industry was like 20 years ago. Pretty crazy talking to a guy who worked with Maya 1.0, haha. But anyway...I got to get some more art up here. Although heres some Maya related stuff I did. Pretty simple stuff but it's something.

wow that was fast

Holy moly! my first year at Ringling flew by extremely fast. It's kind of weird because I don't have much work to show for it, haha. I mean I still feel I learned a lot, especially in color class, but I feel like I should have more to show in 9 months time. Well it's summer now and I'm hoping work a lot on my art. I'm also really excited to delve into Maya some more at my internship which I should be starting May 19th.

Landscape Painting

Here's my one of my last projects from color class. I'm pretty happy with it considering it's my first real landscape painting. I got an A- on it by the way, my teacher liked it but said it wasn't finished.

Ive been Vallejo-fied

Check out this awesome caricature Ringling illustration senior Francis Vallejo did of me at admitted students day this past Saturday.

Summer Internship

Well heres some great news, I got a summer internship working for the animation and design studio Galaxy 61 in Brooklyn. They've done some great work and I'm really looking forward to working there. http://www.galaxy61.com/

Pixar Presentation!

Around this time of the year Ringling has recruiters come in and do presentations, review portfolios and possibly call back a few people for interviews. Today was Pixar's presentation with Ringling alums Jaime Landes and Gaston Ugarte. Jaime was an animation intern before getting hired. Check out this little blurb about her intern experience on Pixar's site here. Gaston is a modeling technical director who just finished modeling the Pizza Planet Truck for Pixar's 2009 movie Up...so yes the tradition will continue, lol. Unfortunately there were no sneak peaks of WALL•E but they did show a bunch of pre-production animation tests and rig tests from Ratatouille which were awesome. Everybody also got a kick out of them showing some hidden references to their other movies in Ratatouille. A few I knew but was totally shocked to see they put "Nemo Brand Caviar" in Ratatouille, see if you can find it! Also the shadow of a barking dog that scares Remy away is a character from Up. Ok, thats all for now, Blue Sky comes on Monday.

Horton Hears A Who!

wow! awesome movie. Saw it opening night and was not expecting it to be as good as it was. Definitely check it out! It's 79% on rottentomatoes.com, better then all the other new movies it opened with.
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/horton_hears_a_who/
I still think that little blue guy is just Seth Rogen reincarnated as a little fury blue creature and not as a character who I totally believe is real. But anyway thats just my little beef with the voice acting.

artwork

ok so these two are digital paintings I did from photo ref.




These next two are quick 15 minute painting studies done from life in color class. There not that good but I definitely thought more about color and value in these then I have in other paintings.




These are 30 minute studies done using the same complimentary colors of violet and yellow in the ones above.

Jon Foster podcast

If you're a fan of Jon Foster, check out this podcast.
Part 1
Part 2
He gives some insight on his techniques and talks about digital painting versus traditional.

digital drawings

It seems with all my artwork I go from hating it to liking it and then slowly back down to hating it again. Oh well at least I see some improvement from my last digital stuff.

disappointed in myself...

In a dramatic turn of events, my ball bounce assignment received an "F". The class was all told that our ball bounce .avi files should be placed in the teachers web share by the beginning of class, NO EXCEPTIONS! (the due date was moved up to Jan. 25) I stupidly decided to wait to the morning before class to drag and drop the files into her folder because I was also planning on fixing one frame in the morning and thought I would just do both all at the same time. BUT OF COURSE today is FIRST day since starting college, my alarm decides to not work and I over sleep. Waking up half an hour after class started I put my files in her folder and run to class at the speed of lightning. Once getting to class I see she has her web share open critiquing everybody's work. Anyway she realizes I put my files in the web share at 8:59:49 AM, past the 8:45 AM deadline but the thing is I froze when asked what time I put them in and reluctantly said last night. I didn't know she realized I lied until she e-mailed me after class. I honestly felt queasy reading that email, really devastating for one of the first assignments in this class. Well, it's in the past now and the only thing I could do now is learn from my mistakes DON'T LIE...seems simple enough but I was caught off guard waking up 3 minutes ago. And you could also say don't leave anything for the last minute, but the small lie is what seems to have really gotten to her. Also I was really determined to work hard on this project and not wait until the last minute, I even skipped out on friends birthday in Orlando this past weekend. Ok so I was hoping to present these animations with a little more enthusiasm but after this (and seeing fellow student Avner Geller's animations, see link on the right. lol) I'll sadly say, here they are.

Light Re-Direct from rblitz7 on Vimeo.

Heavy In & Out from rblitz7 on Vimeo.

Light In & Out from rblitz7 on Vimeo.

Ball Bounce from rblitz7 on Vimeo.
I'm in middle of re-working and adding a tail to these animations.

sketchbook stuff

Happy New Year!

So it's a new year and that means I've got a clean slate, a fresh start. No more half finished drawings lying around, no more lack of confidence and inspiration, this year is going to be different! HOORAH! I got a new Wacom Intuos tablet for me back at school thats just waiting to be used. 2 DAYS 'TILL I'M BACK!