House of Cats

Many of my fellow graduates and friends from CalArts worked on this. It turned out really well. Congratulations to everyone involved.

I remember when my friend Sean Jimenez told me that Court Lomax had invited him to go to Austria and France for a few months to help develop a commercial for Swarovski, I thought it sounded like an awesome opportunity and would be a great experience. When Sean came back and showed me some of the story boards and animatics he had done with the ideas that he and Court had come up with for it, I was really impressed. They were for the first cat Emily.

House of Cats from Courtland Lomax on Vimeo.

Credits:

Co-Created by Courtland Lomax and Sean Jimenez
Directed by Courtland Lomax
Music by Brian Young
Compositing by Ethan Metzger
Backgrounds and Designs by Brigette Barrager
Storyboards and Layouts by Sean Jimenez

Animation:
Adam Muto
Jules Soto
Shiyoon Kim
Bert Youn
Matthias Bauer
Erik Fountain
Courtland Lomax
Leo Matsuda
Matt Pugnetti
Jennifer Hager
David Nam

Cleanup:
Sean Jimenez
Esther Shin
Jinyoung Park
Juliana Park
Kelli Kuest
Matt Pugnetti

I attached links to everyone's name that I could. Please check them out.

CalArts Part 2: Teachers and Trusting Yourself

I don't know who I'm really writing this for exactly. I guess it would be for art students.
But it's something I feel like I need to talk about because of some of the discussion that's been going on lately.

I had some great teachers and some not-so-great teachers at school. There were also some teachers that I didn't take advantage of enough, because I didn't know what questions to ask them yet. Some teachers that a lot of people loved and thought were awesome, I personally didn't get as much out of, go figure. The following is a continuation of that unpublished post I wrote a while back, and it is about teachers:

A teacher can only take you so far, and some will be better than others. A teacher can share their knowledge and what they think is important, as well as give out assignments they believe will help their students to learn and improve, but the responsibility mostly lies upon the student as an artist to do the work, run into problems, critically self-evaluate it, and then come back with questions to the teacher. The student must also make the effort to find their own answers elsewhere through research and study outside of the classroom to supplement their education.

Why wouldn't you be researching things if you are truly interested in the subject?
I think this is an important question.

I had an instance at school where I asked a teacher a question about the movement of the character’s head in a walk cycle that I was really struggling to animate. The advice that teacher gave me directly contradicted information that I looked up later in the Richard Williams book. At that point it was up to me to decide what to do, who to trust, and figure out what appealed to me. I went with what the Williams book said, because I decided that I’d rather take the advice from an author who had worked with Ken Harris and learned from Milt Kahl, over a teacher that hadn’t. There was also another route I could have taken as well, which would have been to actually frame through some animation to figure it out, or better yet, frame through some live-action reference. The point being that I had many other ways to figure it out and learn beyond the teacher’s advice in the classroom.

Sometimes what a teacher likes might not be in line with what you like, and then there's no right or wrong answer. It's completely subjective at that point, and you have to be brave enough to make your own choice, trust yourself, and choose your own direction. Some teachers might even try to dominate you or make you dependent on them. They might try to scare you into thinking you will never be as good as them or that you will always make a bad decision without their help, putting you in constant doubt of yourself and what you like as an artist. At which point they often become more of a hindrance than a help, because you are not thinking for yourself anymore.

As I stated earlier, I had some issues with my education at school for sure, especially the Basic Design instruction. That's one reason why I've gone so much into researching Chouinard, Donald Graham, and other things that I've talked about here. But as frustrated as I got at school sometimes, I never stopped reading, watching lectures, and trying to figure things out on my own or with friends. Some people are so naturally talented that they didn't have to do things like that, but I had to work at it and research things. Still do.

Okay, I'm done pontificating for now. I'll post more artwork next.

CalArts Part 1: Schools have Libraries for a Reason

So there's been a lot of discussion on various websites recently about the pros and cons of going to the Character Animation program I attended at CalArts. For some reason there's always some big controversy going on with it.

I have to say that I'm glad I went there for the most part, especially at the age that I did. I started my first year when I was 25 years old, so I knew how seriously I wanted to take the school and what I really wanted to get out of it. I also really appreciated the opportunity that I had in those 4 years to really try to learn and grow. It was great to be able to pretty much completely focus on what I wanted to do creatively, and have the uninterrupted time and facilities to do it as well. I worked really hard during my time there, and I'd like to think it was as hard as I could have. I have some regrets on some choices I made there, just like a lot of students probably do, but after all is said and done I think that I grew and improved a lot. Most importantly, I was able to do what I wanted to do--even to my own detriment.

I originally wrote some of the following as a response to a discussion on a website, but decided not to post it there. Mostly because I thought it would fall on deaf ears and the discussion got too negative, to the point of being non-constructive. Some people on my personal art blog expressed some interest in some of my book recommendations though, and since that was the main thrust of my post I'm going to share it here:

The following questions are for the students of Cal Arts; past, present, and future:

Have you read, and please ask yourself if you really understand the information in, the following books?

"The Animator's Survival Kit" by Richard Williams
"The Illusion of Life" by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston
"Composing Pictures" by Donald Graham
"The Human Figure" by J. Vanderpoel
"Human Anatomy for the Artist" by John Raynes
"On the Art of Drawing" by Robert Fawcett
"Composition of Outdoor Painting" by Edgar Payne
"Cartoon Animation" by Preston Blair
"Timing for Animation" by Whitaker and Halas
"The Visual Story" by Bruce Block
"Dream Worlds" by Hans Bacher
"The Practice and Science of Drawing" by Harold Speed
"Forty Illustrators and How They Work" by Ernest Watson
"The Merchant of Dennis the Menace" by Hank Ketcham
"Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative" by Will Eisner
"How to Create Animation" by Cawley and Korkis
"Bridgman's Complete Guide to Drawing from Life" by George Bridgman
"How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way" by Stan Lee and John Buscema
"A Complete Guide to Drawing, Illustration, Cartooning, and Painting" by Gene Byrnes

These are just a few of the books that I could think of off the top of my head that I've found it helpful to sit down and read.There are hundreds of other books I could mention, that have a wealth of great information about film making/animation, or that have great drawings/paintings in them, and contain very clearly, detailed information in the text about the thinking, philosophy, study, and required abilities that went into creating them. Many of these books essentially explain HOW it's done, what the artist was thinking, or what influenced the creation of the art itself.

Now I don't claim to have read all of these books, or to completely understand them all, but many of them are on my book shelf, and I've at least read parts of them and have drawn/studied from quite a few of them. Most of these books are also available to read at the CalArts Library, and I read quite a few of them there while I attended the school. Some of them I read more than once, in order to try and fully comprehend the information.

Some of the aforementioned books are also available online as .pdfs now, for those who really wish to read something that these great artists felt was importantenough to write about. For example I just recently found "The Eye of the Painter and the Elements of Beauty” by Andrew Loomis through a Google search which lead to a .pdf of the entire book posted on a concept art forum. Just type in the book title and author into Google along with the word ".pdf " and you are sure to find some, and if you can't find them online, you can either purchase them, or check them out at a library. Once you start actually reading and studying the information in these books, you will usually be led to other books and artists that the authors write about in the texts. One thing leads to another, and before you know it, you'll see how deep the well of knowledge and inspiration actually goes.

I know some people might get angry that I've given away a lot of "secret" information on what are considered to be some really good books (some of them took a lot of effort, reading and researching, to find), but the more people that know about them, the better as far as I'm concerned. Most people probably won't even read this post or the books I mentioned anyway either. I certainly haven't gotten to reading them all myself yet, and just like most people I like to look at the pretty pictures and completely ignore what's written in the books sometimes too. But the text is often really worth reading, even if it's written in an archaic way. I'll probably end up mentioning these same books again later in subsequent postings, so please forgive me if I seem too repetitive.

In my next post, I'll continue with what I wrote about CalArts as it pertains to teachers.