Animation with a moustache

The animation with a .... je ne sais quoi!

Category: Painting

Sketchtravel shortfilm 1

Animation / Painting

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Sketchtravel shortfilm

Dice Tsutsumi is a machine!!!! Look at the pretty cool Sketchtravel short film he created while working full time and preparing for the Sketchtravel auction event.

I was able to see some real size reproductions of the pages at Pixar few days ago and it looks great. That Miyazaki’s double spread is pretty sweet I must say…

I have been told the book is sold out in France and I am not sure when it will arrive in the US and other countries. Who was lucky and already bought one?

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/30312312[/vimeo]

Here is some further discussion and infos on the Cartoon Brew blog.

Cartoon Brew Sketchtravel film

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Sketchtravel – Frederic Back
Dice Tsutsumi on the Chiu-stream
Lights and colours

Sketching with Jason Seiler 0

Animation / Character design / Drawings / Painting

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Sketching with Jason Seiler

The jury is still out there on the importance of being good at drawing for CG animation but to me, being able to quickly convey my ideas through rough sketches or a series of thumbnails is one more tool to a CG animator toolset therefore acquiring drawing skills should be one of our goals. It is also a great party trick! 😉

I lived in West Africa for a while and there were many circumstances where I couldn’t pull out my camera but no one minded when I fired up my pens and pencils. My skills weren’t that amazing at that time but once I have a bit more experience with watercolours or maybe gouache, I am hoping to travel again for a month and fill up an entire sketchbook.

This brings me to great video I just found on Schoolism.com:
“Sketching with Jason Seiler”.

There are thousands of free sketching videos on Youtube but they are always too short or not exactly what I am looking for so $25 for looking over Jason’s shoulder and listening to his process is a bargain. It is also a great introduction to the great training Schoolism is offering.

The video is a bit less that 2 hours long and you see him sketching in the street and at his desk, demonstrating the importance of breaking down the subject into simpler forms and shapes, thumbnailling, crosshatching, digitally painting on a TabletPC, ballpoint sketching and applying watercolours.

On a minor note, each artist has their own style and I prefer cleaner lines to the more fiddly Jason uses when sketching, in the watercolours section he didn’t really explain his thought process and how he selected his colours however, I would still highly recommend watching those videos if you are trying to develop your sketching abilities.

You will probably need to register to access the website but don’t worry it is really quick.

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My drawing category

Dice Tsutsumi on the Chiustream 2

Painting

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Dice Tsutsumi on the Chiustream

If you lost track of what is happening on the Chiustream, here is something you shouldn’t miss!

“Sketchtravel” co-creator, Totoro forest project co-initiator, Toy Story visual development artist Daisuke Tsutsumi (Dice) was very recently interviewed by Bobby Chiu on the Chiustream.

Dice is an incredible artist and I was amazed to hear that he also spend a lot of his free time painting and drawing from life. This makes a lot of sense as there is no other way to keep improving.

With Sharon Calahan, Bill Cone and the other “Early bird painters” they usually wake up around 5am to meet around 7 and go painting in the country side for a couple of hours before going to work.

Just as a reminder, Bobby Chiu also spend 2 to 4 hours every morning on very specific exercises in order to develop his skills.

As a bit of trivia, we learn that Dice is married to Ohayo Miyazaki’s niece which he met when they were 6 years old.

You might need to register to watch the video but you will also have access to Peter deSeve, Aaron Hartline and other top artist’s interviews.

By the way, I just came back from the Edinburgh Fringe festival in Scotland and did a bunch of sketches which I will post very soon. I still haven’t had time to learn watercolour so don’t expect anything too fancy yet.

Related post:
Light and colours