Spacefaring Winnie the Pooh

I definitely love creating backgrounds. I haven't practiced it much, generally involved in people and characters more often. My favorites comics and cartoons are the really atmospheric ones, and I really enjoyed taking CATO's background class so that I could learn and practice backgrounds. The first assignment I show here is where we were assigned to draw our kitchen and turn it into a futuristic version of our choice of animated shows. I chose Winnie the Pooh. For the other one I have here, we had to take a script of Ali Baba and then create it in the style of another show of your choice. I chose to do a Warner Bros. style.

Photoshop Class

Photoshop class was one of my favorites. I had never really used adobe software before (besides using InDesign for the high-school yearbook) and I put a lot of effort into it. These are some samples of the work that I did; a background painting, an eye, a painting of Samus Aran (a Nintendo character, not my own, and one that I did the line art to in Paint Tool Sai) and a spacescape.

Bananas; Beastly or Benign?

Here are some of the digital animation assignments. I had a lot of fun with them, and I wish that the last frame of the first one was held a bit longer, I made this awesome face for the banana! Unfortunately it only shows up for one frame or it would ruin the timing. Oh, well...

I am terribly bad at blogging...

Well, I am pretty bad at blogging. I haven't posted any of the third quarter's assignments, so here are some! These are some really small practice assignments to get used to digital animation.

Morning Coffee, then Pirates

Personal Character Design

Aaaaaand... Action! (Analysis)

I have walked 500 miles... If I include replays!

Well, quite the large post today! Here are both the walk with personality, the walk with a heavy weight, and the weightlifter, as well as some character designs for that class. I really enjoyed these and had a lot of fun with them. So, here they are!

Dysfunctional Dam Storyboards

Well, this is my storyboard for the Dysfunctional Dam assignment that we did. I enjoyed it a lot, and probably spent too much time on it. So here it is. Enjoy!

Scenery, Backgrounds, Perspective, Oh My!

I do apologize, I have not been keeping up-to-date with my work. While I unfortunately fell behind in this quarter due to being sick, my DRAW 1010 assignments from last quarter to show, including my curving perspective! That was definitely my favorite. So anyways, I will begin to update more often with assignments from other classes as well. Enjoy!

Water Effects & Other Stuff

    It's been a while since I posted, and I still have a lot of assignments to put up, so here are my water effects, the double take and the drunken faint. (Though in my case he was simply tuckered out.)

Water FX:

This one is a skipping stone semi-slow motion seen from the side, half in, half out of the water. I got the idea from a slow motion video of a skipping stone.

Double Take:

 

This is my double take. I greatly enjoyed making the hands in this animation. Hands are something I like to draw. You can get so much expression out of them.

Faint:

Here is my faint. I had a lot of fun making the action read properly, and I think I did really well on this. I also added in a bit of feather-floating on the hands on the settle.

Sketches

Here are just some of the pencil sketches in my notebook that I did during classes or labs. It is pretty much my go-to when I'm bored or when I'm distracted. So, without much further ado, here are some of the better ones for your enjoyment!

 

 The bottom character sheets are specific characters of mine that I've planned for years now, and are something I draw when I have writer's cramp, or the artist's equivalent. These sketches are the best of the bunch, and sometimes do not have much else on the paper, as usually I like a picture and then decide not to clutter up the rest of the page. Hope you enjoy!

Walk Cycle and "heART" Picture

This past week was awesome! Mostly cause I finished and scanned a great picture. However, it is too big to put on here. (Why, blogger, why?) so here is a link.

http://sskablooie.deviantart.com/art/I-give-you-my-heART-499282507

Check it out. I think it's my best work yet.

Other than that, though, I drew and inked a Master Chief/Doom guy crossover. (Just coloring is left!) Which was a lot of fun.

For school I worked on various projects, most of which are still unfinished. So, I'll upload my walk cycle, because I haven't uploaded it yet and I should be uploading more things on here. So, yup, here it is.

Sense of Force

Hey there! Here are some of my assignments from the first quarter; the hand slap, hammer smash and the table slam! I'll be doing my best to post my work from this quarter on this blog, as I have a lot work from before to show. So, here we go. Enjoy!

The hand slap;

 

This one follows the criteria of the assignment pretty closely, though I added some effects when it hits the table.

The hammer swing;

 

This one I enjoyed, using roughly the same body/character type as the next one, the table slam. I added the barrel later afterwards, though, so I guess the hammer is a rubber hammer, as I think the barrel would be the one to squash, instead of the hammer. Still, I like it!



The table smash;

 

This one I like the most out of these three, and is also the first one I did. I mostly did it as a reaction to seeing absolutely none of the previous work by former students do this action with very much force. Thus, I exaggerated the highest point, and added in the table squash, to give it that extra "oomph." I also think I did really good on the hands and body as well, still having the breaking of the joints, but doing it realistically, with the motion of the hand. I think this one is the best out of the three.

Morph

    This week has been rather hard, but also very good. Last week Wednesday I finished a huge curving perspective pan, and after coming down from off that high I sort of burnt out a bit, compounded by complications to my animations. Sunday gave me a new personal responsibility , and on Tuesday this week my Grandmother passed on, which also depressed me further. That lack of energy outstayed its welcome a bit, but even with that I managed to get my assignments finished, as God helped me and gave me courage and strength. So yeah, this week I was lethargic, but I got the things I needed to do done through it all. And I am looking forward to a productive weekend, now that I have a bit more of my concentration back.

    I have a lot of assignments to post on here, as we have done a lot in the past two months. (It really doesn't feel like only two months have passed. It feels like way more.) So I will start with this morph project, the first creative assignment we did, and one of the most fun. It was also one of my longest, using up a ton of animation paper (at least it felt that heavy) and clocking in total at over 40 seconds by the class. My part was the teddy bear with the laser cannon at the beginning. I really enjoyed doing that.

Yeti Farm Creative

    Last Friday our class was visited by Ashley Ramsay of Yeti Farm Creative, an animation studio in town. She came in to talk to us about what to expect from the industry that we're entering, and to correct any misconceptions or fantasies we had about it. It was extremely enjoyable, and was rather enlightening.

    I had sort of guessed at the long work hours and effort put into this industry. During my research about the comics industry it was the thing that most creators poked fun at, besides their procrastination, so I was expecting the things she had said. I also expected the admonitions about expectations and entitlement, and the qualifications of dedication and work ethic as well, as they are always necessary for being successful in work.

    I really appreciated her comments about how hard it is to actually produce your own stories in this industry. I had known that it would be extremely hard, nigh impossible, and it has not changed my desire to create my own works, but the reminder was very useful. Especially for bringing me down to earth more often, as my head seems to have a permanent residence in the clouds.

    What I found most intriguing was the explanation she gave of the workflow of a project. I was not aware of just how many positions need to be filled at any given time for a single project. Looking back on it, it is something I should have expected, but still. The lecture was very enlightening in that regard. Getting a picture of the workflow allows me to think ahead and focus my studies to what I will need to be prepared for.

    What Yeti Farm creative was doing on their own, branching off of their contract work was really interesting, and it was very nice to see the industry here expanding. I can't really see myself living anywhere other than here or near my extended family, so it is really nice that for the foreseeable future I can stay with family and with a job I enjoy.

   I really liked the presentation by Mrs. Ramsay. It was informative and enjoyable. I do wish that we had seen the schedule of a single person, and their schedule over a bunch of projects, and not just the flow of a single project. Otherwise, though, it was a very informative and useful lecture. Many thanks to Ashley Ramsay and Yeti Farm Creative!

Introduction

    Hi there. I'm Samuel Streit. I am a student at the Center for Arts and Technology, taking a course in traditional animation. I aspire to be a comic and graphic novel author/artist, and also to be an animator. I enjoy storytelling in general, and you will often see even the basic assignments of mine that I post on this blog have a bit extra that I put in so that they can tell a story.

    This blog is to showcase my progress during my animation course at the Center for Arts and Technology. It is my aim to post my work throughout each term, and to give myself the personal habit of operating on a weekly schedule. It is also a way for me to begin to journal my activities and thoughts, both of my finished pieces and the process it took to get there. It is also a way for me to look back on my work in the future, and to remember "Why on earth did I do that?" 'Cause that can often use remembering.

    I hope whoever will read this will enjoy my showcase and my thoughts. See you!