Saturday, February 26, 2011

Movies

I watched last week.

Howl's Moving Castle (2004)


Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
Written by Hayao Miyazaki
Edited by Takshi Seyama

True Grit (2010)


Directed by Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Screenplay by Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Edited by Ethan Coen, Joel Coen (as Roderick Jaynes)

Bambi (1942)


Directed by James Algar, Samuel Armstrong, David Hand, Graham Heid, Bill Roberts, Paul Satterfield & Norman Wright
Written by Felix Salten, Perce Pearce, Larry Morey, Vernon Stallings, Melvin Shaw, Carl Fallberg, Chuck Couch, Ralph Wright


Idiots & Angels (2008)


Directed by Bill Plympton
Screenplay by Bill Plympton

Listening to: I Am Kloot.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Inspiration

Movies

I watched last week.

James and the Giant Peach (1996)


Directed by Henry Selick
Written by Roald Dahl (book)
Screenplay by Karey Kirkpatrick, Jonathan Roberts, Steve Bloom
Edited by Stan Webb

My Neighbour Totoro (1988)


Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
Written by Hayao Miyazaki
Edited by Takeshi Seyama

Casablanca (1942)


Directed by Michael Curtiz
Screenplay by Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, Howard Koch
Edited by Owen Marks

Listening to: Slick Rick.

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Construction

I am doing this daily excercise on construction since the 1st of January this year.
Why?
Well, because I want to make a conscious change in my process of drawing.

I noticed a while ago, that when I'm drawing I tend to get lazy, fall into habits and drawing tricks I conditioned myself in the past years and lose focus because I'm not fully conscious of what I'm doing while drawing. Resulting in skipping between all kinds of steps that are essential in creating a succesfull one-story-drawing. It's so hard to stay focussed on what's most important in the many steps of making a drawing, that I find myself to be distracted and focus more often on achieving an endresult then on what I should focus on, telling the story you want your drawing to tell your audience.
It is not there for you to feel all good about yourself that you finished another drawing. No, the drawing is there for your audience, to entertain them. Don't forget your audience. You allready know the story you wanted to tell. Now it's time to tell it to your audience.

So to ask myself a simple question, what is a drawing for me?
A drawing for me is a way to tell a story visually.
A succesfull one-story-drawing for me is one that tells your audience exactly the story you want it to tell. That is always the main goal. There are many ways to achieve this. Here is where I think it starts.

I belief that a succesfull one-story-drawing starts with knowing the story you want to tell. Second is a good understanding of your subjects construction. If you know your story,then you also know your subject(s). When you have a good understanding of your subjects construction, then you can focus on achieving the strongest pose and emotion for your subject that will tell your story the best.

So by doing this excersise I hope to influence my thought process while drawing, making construction a conscious step in my process of telling a story with visuals on paper, aka a drawing.

First step: Know the story you want to tell.
Second step: Understand your subject's construction.

There are many more steps in the proces, to name a few: emotion, line of action and dimension, but for me now, construction is my main focus. When I notice that it is part of my process, then I will turn the next step into a new excercise for myself and this way build on a more consciuos drawing proces.

Here's two pages from my sketchbook, focussing on construction. Simply copying stuff,it's about construction, not about designing new characters. This is from Preston Blair's book Cartoon Animation.

One A3 page a day, keeps becoming lazy away?




Listening to: Quarteto Em Cy

Movies

I watched last week.

The Bridges of Madison County (1995)


Directed by Clint Eastwood
Screenplay by Richard LaGravenese
Edited by Joel Cox

1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992)


Directed by Ridley Scott
Screenplay by Rose Bosch
Edited by William M. Anderson, Francoise Bonnot, Les Healey, Armen Minasian & Deborah Zeitman

The Reader (2008)


Directed by Stephen Daldry
Screenplay by David Hare Book by Bernhard Schlink
Edited by Claire Simpson

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and love the Bomb. (1964)


Directed by Stanley Cubrick
Screenplay by Stanley Kubrick, Terry Southern & Peter George
Edited by Anthony Harvey

Happiness (1995)


Directed by Todd Solonz
Written by Todd Solonz
Edited by Alan Oxman

Black Swan (2010)


Directed by Darren Aronofsky
Screenplay by Mark Heyman, Andres Heinz & John J. Mclaughlin. Story by Andres Heinz
Edited by Andrew Weisblum

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Inspiration

Shorts

I studied last week.

Oktapodi (2007)


Directed by Julien Bocabeille, Francois-Xavier Chanioux, Olivier Delabarre, Thierry Marchand, Quentin Marmier & Emud Mokhberi

My notes about Oktapodi


Maestro (2005)


Directed by Geza M. Toth
Written by Geza M. Toth

My notes about Maestro


Meme les Pigeons vont au Paradis(2007)


Directed by Samuel Tourneux
Written by Karine Binaux, Olivier Gilbert & Samuel Tourneux

My notes about Meme les Pigeons vont au Paradis


Tsumiki no ie(2008)


Directed by Kunio Kato
Written by Kunio Kato

My notes about Tsumiki no ie


Listening to: Blue Note Trip

Saturday, February 5, 2011

February Goals

Looking back at January, I have spent the month writing down and searching for about 6 story ideas per day for my Animated Short project.

This month, February, I will spent filtering through all those ideas. Goal is to filter out 3. On each of those 3 ideas I'm gonna spent about a week exploring the idea, develop it into (a) possible story outline(s).
So by the end of the month I should have 3 story outlines to choose from. One of those I will further develop into a story which I will be using for my Short.

Second thing I'm still focussing on is construction when I'm drawing. I've been filling up my A3 sketchbook with construction drawings. One A3 page a day, that's the goal. I will continue to do this in February.

To sum things up, my February Goals are:
1. Filter out 3 story ideas for my Animated Short project.
2. Continue to study construction in drawing.

Besides these two goals I'm watching and studying films and shorts. It is not about the quantity, but quality is more important at the moment. Writing down and analyzing the story structure of succesfull short films is also fun and interesting to do. It is not part of my goals, but it's fun, so I will continue doing that anyway.
I've also picked up some more interesting books about story. I will be reading those the coming months for sure.
"Not reading is the same as not being able to read."

Listening to: James Blake, Blue Note Trip.

Movies

I watched last week.

Casino (1995)


Directed by Martin Scorsese
Screenplay by Nicholas Pileggi & Martin Scorsese
Edited by Thelma Schoonmaker

American Beauty (1999)


Directed by Sam Mendes
Screenplay by Alan Ball
Edited by Tariq Anwar & Cristopher Greenbury

El Mariachi (1992)


Directed by Robert Rodriguez
Screenplay by Robert Rodriguez
Edited by Robert Rodriguez

Desperado (1995)


Directed by Robert Rodriguez
Screenplay by Robert Rodriguez
Edited by Robert Rodriguez

High Fidelity (2000)


Directed by Stephen Frears
Screenplay by Nick Hornby (book), D.V DeVincentis, Steve Pink, John Cusack & Scott Rosenberg
Edited by Thelma Schoonmaker

Quiz Show (2000)


Directed by Robert Redford
Screenplay by Paul Anttanasio, Richard N. Goodwin (book)
Edited by Stu Linder

Adaptation (2002)


Directed by Spike Jonze
Screenplay by Charlie Kaufman & Donald Kaufman, book by Susan Orlean
Edited by Eric Zumbrunnen

Natural Born Killers (1994)


Directed by Oliver Stone
Story by Quentin tarantino
Screenplay by David Veloz, Richard Rutowski & Oliver Stone
Edited by Brian Berdan & Hank Corwin