¡Feliz cumpleaños, guapetonet!

Hoy es un gran día: ¡Emilio cumple añitos! :D 28, uf, qué caña, dentro de poco ya me pasas... XD

Muchas gracias por ser una persona tan especial, por quererme y por querer estar conmigo aunque mi perspectiva de vida sea andar saltando de un sitio a otro. Gracias por tu generosidad, tu entusiasmo, tu bondad, tu ingenuidad, tu música y por tu sonrisa.

¡Muchas felicidades! :*

Portrait - Retrato

Este es uno de los últimos retratos que hice. Ya hacía tiempo que no dibujaba retratos, lo echaba de menos. Este es de hace unos tres meses. El retratado es mi novio, o Emilio, o Mars Attacks si se quiere, le vale todo. :D A él le ha gustado mucho.

Tengo ganas de volver a tocar un poco de óleo, acrílicos, pastel, sanguina... A la acuarela le tengo más respeto porque nunca he aprendido a usarla bien, pero a ver si algún día la cojo con ganas y le pierdo el miedo. :)

Ya veréis más cosas por aquí. ¡Besos a todos!

Animation Mentor: Poses

Animation Mentor es un curso de animación. Sin embargo, nuestra primera tarea no es animación. Nuestra primera tarea es esta:

Animation Mentor is an animation course. However, our first assignment is not animation. Our first assignment is this:

Nuestro primer personaje se llama Stu y es el que podéis ver en las imágenes. La primera tarea consiste en crear poses con él. Las de la imagen superior eran poses casuales, de un día en el parque; las de la segunda imagen, son poses de alegría y entusiasmo. Para ello, tenemos que hacer (y mostrar) bocetos como estos. Perdón por la calidad de las imágenes, no tengo escáner y tengo que vérmelas con la cámara del móvil:

Our first character is called Stu and he is the one you can see in the images above. The first assignment is about creating poses for him. The poses in the first image were casual poses, people sitting in the park or similar; in the second image you can find excitement poses. To do them, we need to do (and show) several sketches like these ones below. Sorry about the quality of the images, I don´t have a scanner and I have to deal with my mobile phone camera:



¿Por qué hacer poses? Porque nosotros, como animadores, hemos de ser creadores de emociones. Hemos de lograr expresar emociones con el cuerpo. Por eso es tan importante que Stu no tenga rasgos faciales. Cuando no entendemos el lenguaje del cuerpo tendemos a apoyarnos mucho en la expresión de la cara para entender cómo se siente una persona. Ahora estamos aprendiendo también a interpretar la posición del cuerpo: si el personaje está muy contento, casi todo el cuerpo estará tenso; si está muy triste, casi todo el cuerpo estará relajado... Cosas así. Nos inducen a exagerar mucho las poses, no tanto para animar en plan cartoon como para entender hasta dónde podemos llegar con ellas. Y es que animar se trata de transmitir emociones al espectador, hacer que sienta lo que siente el personaje. Para ello la pose ha de ser clara, legible y atractiva... Cosas no siempre fáciles de conseguir.

Why poses? Because we, as animators, have to create emotions. We have to express the emotions with the whole body. That is why it is so important that Stu doesn´t have any facial features. When we don´t understand body language, we tend to lean on the facial expression to understand what a person is feeling. Now we are learning as well how to read the body pose: if the character is very excited, the whole body will be tense; if he is devastated, the whole body will be relaxed... Things like that. They lead us to exaggerate the poses, not for us to animate cartoon, but to understand how much we can push them. Animation is about conveying emotions to the audience, make him feel what the character is feeling. To get that, the pose needs to be clear, readable and appealing... Things not always easy to achieve.

Enslaved

Os presento el juego en el que estoy colaborando. La siguiente información ha sido extraída de http://www.meristation.com/ (espero que esto sea legal... cof cof):

Ninja Theory y Namco presentan Enslaved

Esta aventura de acción en una América post-apocalíptica llegará a PS3 y Xbox 360.

Namco Bandai Games Europa ha anunciado hoy (29 de septiembre) el nuevo proyecto de Ninja Theory Ltd. Se trata de la aventura de acción Enslaved, que saldrá a la venta en 2010 para PS3 y Xbox 360. Los dos protagonistas poseen personalidades opuestas, pero deberán colaborar para recorrer una América post-apocalíptica y muy peligrosa. El título mezclará combates, estrategia y el aprovechamiento de los escenarios.

Dentro de más de 150 años, en el mundo sólo quedan unos pocos humanos y robots despiadados. En este entorno, los protagonistas Monkey, un hombre fuerte y solitario, y Trip, una joven experta en tecnología pero de procedencia pacífica, acabarán encerrados en una nave de esclavos. Trip se da cuenta de que Monkey es su única esperanza de escapar, y por eso hackea una cinta de esclavos para quedar unidos. Así, el jugador deberá aprovechar las habilidades de ambos para sobrevivir.

El estudio Ninja Theory ha vuelto a recurrir al actor Andy Serkis, que ya participó en Heavenly Sword, y esta vez dará vida a Monkey. Para la banda sonora, el estudio ha elegido a Nitin Sawhney. Completa la lista de estrellas el escritor y guionista Alex Garland, que ejercerá de coguionista.

Animation Mentor Student!

Pues eso, que ahora soy:
So, now I am an:

Animation Mentor is about to start!

After all this time, Animation Mentor is here! It has not been easy. I paid in August and they didn´t receive my payment, so I waited until they asked me for my receipt. I sent it, but they didn´t find my money anyway. And finally, looking into my account again, I found out that the money was back into my account! But 162€ seemed to get lost during that period and I don´t think I will recover them.

I don´t know if it is Animation Mentor's fault, because they changed the account number and they didn´t let me know about that change; maybe they told me and it was my fault because I didn´t find the information about the new account number anywhere; maybe it was the bank's fault, because as soon as they see some money passing by, they take some of it for themselves; maybe it is nobody's fault and it is only that the dollar costs more now. No idea. But I have lost a lot of money, and I am not happy with that.

Anyway. My boyfriend (thanks a lot, darling) made the transfer again (I couldn´t do it without the online banking that I still don´t have) and this time it worked! So I am going to start Animation Mentor. That MAKES me happy, so let's look at the brighter side of our lives. :)

Life drawing classes

The other day I was told that there were life drawing classes not far from the company. Some colleagues were going to take them, so I immediately decided I would go as well.

I only took life drawing classes once in my life. It was for a period of 15 days in Gijón, in a summer course that I enjoyed a lot. In that case, the model was a quite handsome man who posed for us for one and a half hours every time. It must have been terrible for him to keep the same pose for such a long time (with little breaks inbetween).

This time the model was a young woman, quite thin and with very english facial features.

It is nice to go to life drawing classes. When you see the model naked, you don´t see a person naked; you see a potencial piece of art in your empty paper. It is a very nice feeling. I don´t know about the rest of the people, but when I saw her, all I could see was light, shadows and shapes. The room was in complete silence while everybody was drawing her. The concentration was amazing, I loved that. You could hear the sound of pencil, the more agressive sound of charcoal, an esporadic rubber somewhere, a chair changing place to get a better point of view... I loved those little sounds. I loved silence. I loved the concentration. It was like being for two hours in another world. The cost of this trip was 5 pounds.

In this occasion, the poses changed. At the beginning, they changed every three minutes. There was a man there, drawing as well, who told the woman "ok, it is fine" when the time had past. Probably it was this man who decided to practise life drawing and decided to let other people participate to help with the payment due to the model. That is not a bad idea at all.

As I said, the poses changed every three minutes at the beginning, every ten or so later, and the final pose lasted for twenty minutes. So you could practise everything: with the shortest ones, capturing the pose and line of action; with the longest, pose, light and shadows and even the relationship with the environment.

I would upload the drawings I did, but I don´t have any scanner. So that will be another time.

The bad news is that these classes will last only for another week more. Then, they will be interrupted because they have to look for another place: the big room they were using is going to be engaged for something else. What a pity!