Mourou

3.27.2011

MOUROU HAS MOVED

I have moved to Please follow me there to get all my frequent updates! (Click the title of this post to be redirected)

12.06.2010

What do you think of it colored? Well, this semester has been rough. There's hardly anything going on, art wise. These gen-eds are killing me and just feel like a distraction. My hopes are high, however. I've registered for Spring and my classes look great. Stop-Motion, Advanced 2D Animation II, Senior Project, Senior Portfolio, and Figure Drawing. I'm excited. I'll also probably be taking a class on advanced storyboarding as well. On top of this, my prof might make a TA position for me for his Toon-Boom class since I've been using it more than anyone else in the school (internship). That would be nice...

Anyways, here's a new drawing of Kat I worked on this weekend:

10.11.2010

Drawing Again

Well, it looks like I've finally got myself back to drawing again. Thanks to someone...who shall not be named, I have decided to go back and take yet another look at my sci-fi epic. Perhaps more pieces will be done in relation to it. But for now, I am concentrating on an animatic for my senior animation project. I am going back and finishing "Nowhere to Go" - the vector illustration animation set to "Teach Me How to Fight" by the Junior Boys. Take a look at the latest of the production boards by clicking on the image below. It includes the color key for the film. Starting with a dark violet/indigo, progressing to an evil red at the height of the song, and finally ending on a happy, warm note. Boards are read in columns, top-down, left-right. Let me know what you think!

As for Mourou, I still haven't received word from anyone on joining the group, but then again I haven't been exactly advertising it. I bet maybe ten people tops have even glanced at it so I'm not really worried right now. It's been put on the side for the time being. I will say, though, it is nice to have my own domain!

9.09.2010

Work's out...school's in?

Let me start off by apologizing for the lack of updates over the summer. I know it seems silly that an artist's blog isn't updated as often as his other ...online endeavors, however it can only make sense if you give me a chance. So, the summer is over and today marks nearly the end of my second week of this semester. Classes are...iffy, however, that's only because of my lack of involvement in any animation classes. I have senior project and that's all - the rest are silly gen-eds like Chemistry, Economics, etc. But overall, it's going well. I will say Economics has me worried simply because of how aloof the class itself is. There's nothing really to...grasp - it's mostly theories and concepts rather than practical knowledge to bank.

Aside from that, I will get to the more important topic of discussion. Mourou started out as a team between four men and has since dwindled to myself. Being the founder of the group, I am not going to let it die. I have a new vision for a storytelling team that I surely hope will come into view very soon. I am looking for animators and storytellers with a similar...vision (sorry for the redundancy) as myself who can come together with specific roles and actually put out a production. I have been talking with a few friends to see what they think about it and hopefully we can make something of it. It shall not die, but live on! I've invested into this by purchasing our own domain. So! With that said, you may now find your way to this blog by simply searching mourou.net. Pretty fancy, eh?

To go back to what exactly happened this summer, I will say that I spent 13 weeks out of town. 1 week of that was simply on the road in the midst of travel. The 12 weeks I spent at my internship were used on a single production that I single-handedly animated in Toon-Boom Animate 2. It was quite a task, especially since 4 of the 12 weeks were spent on storyboarding, research, ideation, etc. Anyways, by the end of it all, I certainly had a piece worth taking a look at. I am currently waiting on word of whether or not I can post the animation on my blog here, but once I get the "ok-to-go", I'll be sure to share it. For now, perhaps I can interest you with a few little test animations that didn't make it into the final piece:

Choppy, yes. But fun. The internship was a fantastic opportunity. The sad thing is that I've been instantly thrown back into school without so much as a day or two to reminisce on what exactly I did this summer. I haven't been too good on meditating on my memories, recently, as life has been moving so fast. I need it to slow down and actually digest what happened to me this summer.

Lastly, I want to say that my recent interests have been in Scott Pilgrim and Bayonetta. I picked up both games last week, as well as the books, and actually took a sweet young lady to see the movie as well. It's definitely started to influence me, mentally. I have a feeling it will alter my art style a little bit. But there's nothing wrong with that! It has inspired me and I can't seem to get either out of my head. As for influences, I figured I would do the popular deviantART Influence Map meme. You can see mine below. Click for a larger image!

If you would like to see my description for what each influence is, click the title of this blog post to be redirected! And if you are at all curious what the other two images are of at the top of this post, they are of my two characters, Harbie (the fish guy, short for Harbinger) and Pincho (the guy that looks like me with a severed unicorn head attached over his own head). More on them later! Tootles!

5.24.2010

More Aikaterine Drawin'

Pencils...it's refreshing for a change.

5.17.2010

School's out, work is in!

Hey everyone. Long time no show. Well, here it is at the end of the semester and I have some goodies to post, like every year after finals. So, here it goes. What you see above is our final Toon-Boom class project. Chad Bierdeman and Matt Weener worked on it with me using nothing but Toon-Boom AnimatePro. I was the acting art director and lead animator, doing the keys for Matt. Chad worked heavily on the backgrounds and did the animation for the walks and final shot. Matt did all the clean-up work, a lot of in-betweens on certain shots, some animation and was the lead colorist. We all put in a lot of hours on this. In the end, Matt and I were able to finish after spending 14 hours straight in the lab during finals week. Good stuff.

As for the end of the year, we had our yearly animation showcase where students were awarded for their work. It was really exciting as I won 2 best-of-class awards. My music video, (which progress can be seen on it if you click the title of this blog post), won Best Motion Graphics piece of the year, which made me super stoked as I for once stepped ahead of my fellow students in both of the sections. It felt really great to finally win something with my art.

For the summer, I am planning on interning at Kinetic Concepts, Inc. in San Antonio, TX as a Concept Management intern. This will be a full R&D job from initial concept to final animation for the client, so it should be pretty sweet. I hope I can pull it together, so wish me luck! I'm also starting to work on one of my first animation commissions to do an intro logo-animation for Matthew Robinson's Red Flag Productions. Should be fun!

Below is my lip-sync assignment, finally colored in Toon-Boom AnimatePro. I had to scan everything in and color it for it to be accepted into the showcase. It was when I was done and actually ended up winning an award for the Best Hand Drawn Animation of the year, senior projects aside. Woot!