Just wanted to give a quick update. I finally started at Bethesda Game Studios, but I have yet to set up my apt. I think I will finally be able to spend more time on my own work and post more often. It was a key factor for me coming here and I think it will hold true. On the other hand, Mother Nature made sure that I couldn’t move my furniture last week. I should have my workspace at home setup up soon and postings to follow.
Peace!
I was holding off until I had official confirmation, but I wanted to announce that I have just accepted a full-time position at Bethesda Softworks as a character artist. My primary job will be animation, but I will be doing other aspects of production like rigging.
For those who aren’t as familiar with game studios, Bethesda is the amazing studio responsible for game of the year (2008) Fallout 3 and of course one of my all time favorite games of the year (2006) OBLIVION!!! Anyone who knows me well, knows my addiction to video games. To be able to work for one of the studios I admire is an amazing opportunity. I am also grateful for the chance to contribute to a studio with such great history.
I have met a ton of great artist here in NYC (links are on the sidebar), but I am ready to move on from commercials. I originally studied computer art at the SVA with the dream of working in video games but was sidetracked coming out of school. This new position and career track change is great because it is going to allow me more time to pursue my personal work and enjoy time with my family.
Commercials have been grueling and I can’t say I will miss it, but I did learn a lot from the intense nature of the business. Once I settle in at my new home and job, I hope to really start posting (no jokes) new work a couple of times a month.
Peace!
First of all, Happy Holidays to everyone!
I am finally able to post a link to the trailer for Spec Ops: The Line which premiered at this years Video Game Awards. It was a great project to work on with a very talented crew. I walked away with some great friends as a result and that’s always a positive. The trailer was created at Tronic Studios here in New York City and we have had to keep it tight lipped for over a year now. The animation was a combination of mocap and hand key shots. Some mocap was useful, but some shots were completely hand keyed. Well without further delay:
Change is coming. That is literally my attitude right now with my work. After animating my latest test animation “Eat”, I was felt burned out and unsatisfied. I learned a lot on the shot, but I learned something more from the frustration. I want to share this little story because maybe you share a similar situation to mine and this posting can let you know that you aren’t the only one.
Anyone close to me knows my love for animation and the arts in general. I am obsessed. My wife knows this better than anyone. I have been working after hours to try to build a portfolio to land myself a staff job at a studio where I can animate high quality shots all the time. Commercials rarely allow that kind of schedule, so in order to improve, I animate after hours. What does “after hours” mean? Well, I get out of work on average at 8pm – 10pm. I get home an hour later, and spend at least an hour with my family until they go to sleep. This is my “after hours” time. When its about 11pm or later I try to do some sort of work. Either animation, illustration or just learn something new to help at work. I can only put in two hours or so because I have to wake up at 7am or so. My weekends end up becoming work days. I have basically given up my social life for a long time to pursue this desire I have for visual storytelling.
Back to the story…My wife, being the amazing person that she is, noticed that I was feeling particularly down after finishing the test shot. We spoke about it and tackled the root of the problem. (Enter moment of clarity). For years now, I have been making work that is geared to appeal to a very specific audience. I spent my entire time trying to figure out the perfect performance, the perfect audio, the perfect design, etc to appeal to some unknown artists who decides my fate. Take it from me, this is the wrong way to go about it. I realize this now, and I wish I would have seen this earlier. I watch schools like Goeblins and I am blown away by their ability to create such fresh and new styles year to year. Nothing that looks even close in style to the cg style we have come to see from each feature film studio. This animation business is competitive and the pressure to produce constantly is overwhelming. This is multiplied in commercials, where the expectations are extremely high but the deadlines are unbelievably short (this is another posting all together). It was only natural that trying to appeal to others would leave me unsatisfied and not confident in my work.
This lead me to my new outlook. Last week, I decided to start from scratch. I started doing the work I like to do. Trusting my perspective on what I find entertaining and interesting. If the people respond to it, awesome! If they don’t, that’s ok too! How many times have you LOVED something you saw and yet your best friend HATED it? That’s what makes art so great! Your experience and interpretation is unique. It’s yours. So this is the beginning of something new for me. I have literally started with animating a bouncing ball in 2D. I am also going back to learning about values in the traditional 2D, so I can take my illustrations to a new level. Back to basics. I hope this new attitude and perspective will shine through on what I work on from now on. I already feel liberated and my obsession has hit a new high.
Peace
-Rick
Here is my latest test shot called “Eat”. It has been a long time since my last personal test. I highly recommend it. I think it’s a great opportunity for growth and experimentation. I try to approach each shot with a goal in mind. My goal might be to improve on a principle of animation like timing. For this shot, my goal was entertainment value. Hopefully you watch it and laugh (I’ll even take a smile).
My favorite lecture while attending AnimationMentor has to be Doug Sweetland’s talk on “Entertainment”. He didn’t sit and animate (not that I didn’t love those lectures too!), he spent the majority of the time just talking about how important it is to make your work entertaining. I can’t sit here and type out all my notes, but watching that lecture literally changed my entire perspective on animating. My new approach is to focus on entertainment and then work to make sure everything else supports it. With each new shot, I hope you can see improvement in my work. This is a never ending journey to get good at this craft. Hope you enjoy and forgive the bad lighting/rendering!
Hello All!
Sorry for the lack of posting! Especially following my last posting proclaiming that I would try to post more often. Things have been hectic. I have been hard at work trying to work on my portfolio. I am pushing hard to get a staff job in feature film.
That being said, I just finished animating a new test shot and I wanted to share some of the process. I was looking for an audio clip with some punch to it. My wife and I are secretly obsessed with the movie “Just Friends” (yes, you read that correctly). Every time the movie is on TV, we are glued and laughing away. I ended up buying the DVD and looking for a clip I found entertaining. I then started to just listen. Over and over.
I can’t stress the importance of planning. It was something that I learned at AnimationMentor. It was stressed so much and the more I animate, the more I understand why they pushed the idea so much. I don’t recommend doing your first animatic in 3D. It’s too time consuming to see if it’s going to work. Grab a pencil and paper (or in my case a Cintiq and Sketchbook Pro), and just thumbnail it out. Nothing special. Draw stick figures! You just want to make sure the idea has potential before investing tons of time posing out characters and dealing with cameras, etc. And without further adieu…my poorly drawn animatic:
Hey everyone,
I am attempting to post more often on this blog than my original blog. Right now I am juggling a bunch of new work that I am not allowed to share with you, but I will post as often as I can. I’m extremely excited to see new people passing by and leaving comments. Keep them coming! In an effort to control spam on, I approve comments before they get posted. Spammers keep sending me vague comments from odd web addresses. I want people to keep checking up on the site and seeing what I am up to.
Here is an older sketch that I did a few months back. I have a lot of sketches I want to color (like this one), but my coloring skills are pretty weak at the moment. I’m actually trying to learn how to color better which has delayed the final Naruto drawing. Hope you like this sketch in the meantime.
Random Sketch 001
Hello party people!
I was able to squeeze some time into this Naruto drawing again. I had to make some adjustments to the pose and proportions. I think it’s much better. I had a demo version of Sketchbook Pro 2010 and I gave it a full day of just inking and learning how it works. So far I really like it and I’m planning to buy it at Siggraph this year. Anyway, on to the drawings. I’m still not done with this. I really want to put some love into the color. The base color is just me placing general color fills for now. Expect an update. Hope you like it so far…if not let me know!
Naruto fan art inks
Naruto fan art base color
I am extremely excited to remind everyone that Ice Age Dawn of the Dinosaurs is coming next week on July 1st! I had the pleasure of working with the extremely talented crew over at Blue Sky Studios for almost 6 months. It was grueling but I learned so much from everyone there. Please head out next week and support the amazing crew for all our hard work! Here is a poster for the movie in case you haven’t seen it yet. Click it to head on over to the site:
Ice Age Dawn of the Dinosaurs
Anyone who hangs out with me enough, knows I am a Naruto fanatic. It’s probably my favorite animated tv series of ALL time. I could write for hours on why it’s incredible, but I won’t. Anyway, this was a sketch that I started on the subway on my way home. I brought it into a trial version of the new Sketchbook Pro 2010 and added to the sketch and restructured some stuff. I also added some of the details that I couldn’t remember while on the train. Feel free to leave me any comments about any feelings on the drawing. I am going to post my progression on this piece, so stayed tooned for inks and coloring iterations.
Peace!
Rick
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