Bad Kids Go to Hell Comic Book Review

I have to say few things before anything else:

First. I've never read a comics book in my life. Secondly I was reading this one in the train and..well,  I've missed my stop :D  I guess that sais something about the comic book :D

Thank you Matthew Spradlin for this gift and Alan for , I guess, having to abandon all the good stuff you could've taken in the limited flight baggage, in order to get these gifts to us  :D

Bad Kids go to Hell tells a story of 6 teenagers who are left  for detention at a newly built school's library.

Much Like in film  The Breakfast club (Hughes, John; 1985) kids are all different personalities with different anxietys, wich subsequently  lead them to different result. The  comic definitely has a flavor that of The Breakfast club. But differently to the film, the reader is introduced with the supernatural - the library was built on Indian cemetery. To name other differences it also was  more sarcastic, lot sexier and lots lots more violent than the film. 

I personally enjoyed how the story twisted unexpectedly from the very first pages. For instance, the comic starts with construction workers building the library and one of them in the excavator when  all of sudden he fall sin the hole in in the heart right to the hart of the smoky burial-ground. Few moments later he's taken out but now unrecognizably raddled himself... 

Till the very and (and especially at the very end!) such unexpected turns in story occur, what makes the comic's brilliant page-turning experience. 

Also I enjoyed each and every panel for they were highly expressive, visually strong and drawn in appealing style.

I'm thrilled to see the film know :)

Lost in Lamancha (2002)

Its a documentary of the preproduction and the production, or failed production of the film The man who killed Don Quixote. It tells a story of the hard work the team, and especially the director Terry Gilliam were putting to make the film or just event to keep it being made.

Having started as a typical documentary of the film creation it than reveals the chain of disastrous events that happened during the whole production of the film. The documentary is a '' must see'' if one wants to get a better understanding of what it takes to be a filmmaker , what challenges are always waiting ahead and how never smooth everything is.

the idea that a man can't control everything was clearly pronounced, since even if the team put all the efforts to keep the production going, the problems came from what a human being couldn't control: stormy weather, actors getting ill etc. Personally than I though its such an amazing thing that dealing with CG you're a  lot more in control, because of you don''t have to put in account a  range of real life circumstances the traditional filmmakers do.

In over all it was interesting to see the behind-the-scenes and how the process is actually happening

Exploring B-movies

The Narrative unit introduced us with a new term to define a certain group of films, and that is  B-movies. Not just only to familiarize but to make a b-movie type short film there's a need to get a clear understanding of what it is. 

While researching the topic there was an opportunity to actually watch a good example of B-movie. And it was The Fly (Neumann, Kurt; 1958).  The film tells a story of a scientist and his wife experiencing horrible chain of consequences because of curiosity overpowering reason. The scientist creates the most miraculous invention - the substance transporter. But instead of researching if it works as it’s supposed by gathering data from transportation experiments with animals, he examines the invention by transporting himself. The uplifting tone of the film is suddenly changed when we see the scientist half-turned into a fly. 

But to get back to the conception of what is a B-movie...

As B-movie central site ( http://www.bmoviecentral.com/bmc/bmc-articles/37-bmc-articles/145-what-exactly-is-a-b-movie.html) defines: " b-movie was the second movie on a double bill. It was typically a low budget formula type film, which fell somewhere in the suspense, horror, sci-fi, western, exploitation or gangster genres"

Likewise The Fly sits in mystery, horror and sci-fi genres

Today its often to hear that B movies are cheesy sci-fi movies from the 50's. The films are filled with cheesiest dialogues and acting. 

As perhaps one could notice watching The Fly, it doesn’t lack of cheesy acting, the feeling an action is "acted" (it’s not convincing or believable, you are constantly aware of the fact that this is only a film, not reality). Or reactions look over exaggerated and almost always leaves this feeling as if actor was just about few frames late to actually react.

Watching the film also I've marked , there's a feeling of "out of place" . Probably because of the difference of contexts in in which the film was created and in wich its now perceived by uc, viewers.  It looks sometimes the reaction or a detail or a peace of dialogue isn't used in a good way. for example: the scene where policeman and victims brother comes to speak with an anxious murderer- the wife of the victim, she suddenly after an emotional confession of killing her husband under the press  offers a cup of coffee or tea to gentlemens in a completely different emotional state  ect...

To summarize the impression formed so far it looks like a B-movie's use all the conventions of ,say horror genre to supposedly create  a scary film, but there's  more ( cheesyness,  wooden acting, campy feel) what makes it funny and amuzing.  


But all  works in its own way, for it creates a unique class of films with its unique set of "rules"

Introduction to Character Design

Today we were given a brief about Character Design unit. It asks to produce a three fully resolved character designs of a hero, villain and the sidekick in a particular set of random genres. The pro second part of submission is to produce a Character design  & Animation Bible which contains the three designs, synopsis of the story, turnarounds, expression sheets and completed tasks of weekly character design lectures .

So my set of genres is:

Monsters and Aliens

Having further discussed with Justin Wyatt, an experienced Disney's character designer, who's lecturing us for this unit, the first thing to do is to come up with a story, what will direct the further research, development and production of the designs. 

But before we engage with the project, today we had first lecture on Caracter Design in which we were asked to come up with designs for random  characters;

The first character I got was : Peaceloving cheerleader

The second was Insectoid football hooligan

New Part Time Job

I guess it had to happen one day, I mean saying good by to those cleaning and grape packing jobs. Well,  at least for a while.. :D

This summer I did one simple work for a guy ( The dorje turnaround I wrote before) and he was so pleased with what he got, He spread the word and in the middle of summer I got a call from a sculptor from Rochester asking if I could do some work for her as well.

It turned out she needs an ongoing ..sort of partner or.. just someone who could constantly work with the development of her ideas and its 3d representation . So this is what I'm doing now instead of cleaning - working something more related to the study field.

These are basic representations of the variety of ideas,  some examples of what sort of work I've done so far;

But one thing  really came as a huge surprise to me. Even though I'm not fully prepared or skilled enough for this sort of job (and I did tell that in advance to the sculptor) it was the connection what got me the job.

Of course these past two month was and still acts as a trial period but so far I'm only picking experience and already learned a lot. And I guess we'll see what happens next ..

Fallen Art by Tomek Baginski

Fallen Art is an animated short by Tomek Baginski, polish director. His previous works include The Cathedral (2002).

The action takes place in the military base, where soldiers who lost their minds or are no longer wanted by the Army are sent to be expended. There Sergent Al,  Photographer Dr. Friedriech and mentaly lost general A atempts to create wholy different art.





The highly stilised world of animation plays as yet another tool to tell the story : anomalous and grotesque style is like a reflection of the story being told. But at the same time its soft and rich blue-brown colour pallete and smoky warm  lighting adds to the appeal.  As reviewers of World Wide Cinema Festival notices, it is like the director took two illustrators Dave McKean's and Bill Sienkiewicz's  style and brought a new one in this film.

Illustration examples of Dave McKean:

Illustrations of Bill Sienkiewicz's:

But there would be many other aspects at wich the animation stands out, to give an example, character design, camera moves and editting or the main idea behind it. In over all this short film, to my mind, is one of the best examples of such kind and is worth analysing.

The Art of Ivan the Bird

Yesterday I've ordered a book  The art of Ivan the Bird to be made using Bob Books  services. At the beginning I didn't know  what to start from , but the website offered to download a program wich helped to organize the layout and other details of the book.

I do understand its not gonna be perfect since this was my very first book evber published :D But  I've concentrated on forming an argument ant highlighting the main points of  the creative jorney I've taken in this project. So hopefully the book will clearly express it, but no doubts, there are things to be critisized . . :D

I won't upload th pages since it's much like what's here on the blog. Only one thing missing though,  the 3 side view of the finished Bird model. 

Presenting Ivan

I wrote before that I want to present Ivan as if he is captured in animation and its not just him in bland background, but in his environment. Also the picture serves as a peace of concept art for future development.

The idea for the environment isn't new. A month or so ago I've posted some sketches, one of wich captured the proportions, composition and shapes for the environment depicted here. But what happens in the place is what really directed the design. Initially this  it is where ship models are built and  tested in the lake. So we can see shelters made out of sails, or half of the ship deck used as arbour and so on. 

First Glimpses at Ivan

Today I layed all the textures and set up base materials and really got the chance for the first time to see how Ivan, the bird made out of various unused model parts, looks.
I am happy that the outcome is so much like the concept drawing. Again I got to realise how a good resolution of design in the  stage of preproduction  saves time/energy/sanity throughout all other stages.

There's still some tweaking left to do, for example to add bump and specular maps. Maya..  also started complicating things.. I think the problems are caused by the load of textures.

Texturing in progress

Sorry for the delay yesterday :) won't do it again guys :D

Texturing Ivan

The week befor I was busy with UV layout, this week I started texturing and hopefully the Bird, (which has a name now :D , Ivan) will be finished.

Examples of UV layouts

I took Phil's advice to paint the textures in a traditional way so there would be a feeling that the Bird is actually hand made. So after having layed out the UV's I printed out all the maps and used aqua paints, pencils to create base textures.

Example of painted base textures

But still I'm importing it all to photoshop to tweak some bits and add some more detail.

Example of Bird textures

I'm not rushing the process,also it is going slow because I can't help myself enjoying the summer :D All those trips to have and friends to visit are really taking some time, but I'm quit optimistic to see Ivan finished and book released before the deadline of this  summer project   :)

Modeling is finished!

Today I've finished modeling the bird. At the very end I made sure the outcome is as close to the original drawings as it could be, since I really enjoyed the feeling and proportions captured in concept drawings. No its time for all the rest that's waiting.

Work in Progress: Bird's Model

Bird's Model Sheet

This is what I have so far.  Few things like bird's wings and.. well nothing else really, is left to model and I'm good to go for UV mapping. Since I haven't layed them as I was modeling. I left myself the freedom to change things without thinking to readjust the UV map.

I think/hope/pray  this week UV's will be layed out and the texturing also done :D  And I'll be ready to work with  book layout wonders as well as final images of bird presentation. I hope to draw the environment, put the bird in it and present it as a fully resolved still image of a supposed animation.

SO far I'm really happy I have taken this task seriously because I had the luxury to take all the time I needed to solve modeling problems, watch tutorials etc. I'll be so much more confident this year.

Well.. less talking then :)

Bird's Design: Blocking out Essential Shapes

It's bin a while since I've posted, I have to repeat myself here again. But finally things have sorted out and I could work with my summer project...again.

Blocking out Essential Shapes

I started sculpting the bird, trying to follow the guidelines of my 2d drawings thoroughly. And so far I see these designs were the most detailed ones I made so far. I can see the benefits immediately. instead of having to solve technical problems I would need to make creative decisions constantly. I don't know if it could slow up the process more, than the lack of technical skills already've done it...

But I have to say the borrowed DVD of Gnomon Workshop tutorials really helped.
I watched through Kevin Hudson's automotive modeling tutorial. Hopefully it's going to help as I imagine :D

Really really hope to do some amazing things with my Bird in near time.. :/

When I'm sad

A peace of brilliantly stylised animation. I particularly enjoy the repetitions, the colour palette but mostly how smart the state of a sad person is portrayed.