Avner Geller

Scuba instructor

2012-01-11T22:16:00.001-08:00

Something New

2012-01-07T17:13:00.000-08:00

This one is going to be somewhat long and personal.

The other day I watched "Being Elmo" at the theater. it's a beautiful documentary about the life of puppeteer Kevin Clash .Since he was a kid Kevin dreamt of becoming a puppeteer and work with Jim Henson on the Muppet Show. The film tells the life story of this amazingly sensitive man, and how he created the character of Elmo who makes so many kids happy. highly recommended for everyone!

When I was about 10 years old, friends of my family came back to from the states to Israel for a visit. They brought me as gift a VHS tape of "The Nightmare Before Christmas". I always loved animation but I remember when seeing this film for the first time, it sparked something in me, and I knew that this is what I want to do for the rest of my life.

When I saw "Being Elmo" today, I was especially moved by Kevin's passion, since today I started a new journey myself. I am extremely honored to join the crew at Cinderbiter, where I'll be working on Henry Selick's (director of Nightmare Before Christmas) new film.

So on that note, a belated Happy New Year to all of you! thank you for following this blog, and may your wishes come true.

Avner

bay area folk

2011-12-18T13:22:00.000-08:00

Kids today...

2011-12-03T06:04:00.000-08:00

Saw this Pinata at Toys 'R' Us a little while ago... WHAT HAVE WE BECOME??!

The Great Peanut Mystery

2011-11-27T11:53:00.000-08:00

As some of you may know, I grew up and spent most of my life in Israel.

As a kid, One of my All-time Favorite snack was "American Peanuts".

They look like this.

When I went to College in Florida, my mom used to send me care packages every once in a while, with all my favorite snacks from home.

One day, in one of many "homework parties", I opened a package of those great American peanuts...

They are absolutely delicious, and have a perfect balance of sweet and salty!

As I was eating them, my friend look at me asking: "Hey, What is that thing you are eating over there??"

"What do you mean?" I said... "it's AMERICAN PEANUTS!"

He looked confused... From what he said, they never heard of those "American Peanuts" in America!!

I was left puzzled... "How is it possible.. That they Don't Have AMERICAN PEANUTS in AMERICA???"

I was very curious about this, and tried to investigate the origin of those crunchy-sweet-and-salty-delightful snacks. When I couldn't really find anything about it, I just forgot about it...

Years later, I went to a local 7/11 for a midnight snack.

At the corner of my eye, something familiar caught my attention.

I COULDN'T BELIEVE IT!!! IT WAS..... "AMERIC...."

"JAPANESE PEANUTS????"

I tried to not freak out. I remembered that back home they have two very similar kinds of those peanuts. One called "American Peanuts" and the other "Kabukim"

They look like this.

The two are very similar in taste but has some differences in shape and their crunchiness.

it made sense! Perhaps the "Kabukim" are originally from Japan?? and served as snacks at the traditional KABUKI Theater shows??

But then why would they call them American peanuts too?

While I still can't completely solve this America-Japan-Israel mystery, I'd like to believe that if I ever walk the streets of Japan, I'll see something like this:

2011-11-10T05:51:00.001-08:00

My trip to Colombia

2011-11-01T09:17:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago Stevie and I were very lucky to travel to Colombia. We were invited by our friend Juan to come and give a talk about our film at the local Siggraph Chapter.

I always wanted to travel to South America, and never got to it, so when this opportunity came, with an advice from a good friend, I knew I have to extend my stay and travel around for a while. So my five day trip got extended to 3 weeks, which were absolutely amazing. I thought I’ll share some of my experiences here. Enjoy!

Flying above Colombia upon arrival, I could already see that the scenario is going to be very different from anything I’ve ever seen. Miles of green jungles were spread beneath. It was beautiful.

When I got to the airport in Bogota, Hernando was waiting for me. I think it’s the first time in my life someone held up a sign with my name on it at the airport. I felt so special J

We made a quick introduction…

And it wasn’t too long before we were out and about, having some drinks.

Hernando was teaching me some basic (very basic) words in Spanish, as well as giving me some advice for the road, as I was about to be on my own the next morning. I made sure to write it all down in my little journal.

The next morning I arrived in Cartagena, on the northern shore of Colombia. The Bus station outside of the airport was HECTIC!!

When I finally found the bus to take me to the city center, the ticket collector was already yelling from inside the bus, telling me to hurry up.

I sat down quickly squeezing into a seat in the packed bus. There was no room to move, and it was steaming hot!!

I noticed that the ticket guy is starting to collect money.

At that point I realized I have no idea how much is the fare, and even worse, what kind of bills I have and how do you call each coin.

When he asked for the money I quickly handed over a bunch of bills which carried the lowest value of 50 (the rest were 10000, 20000, etc…)

What I didn’t know at the time is that the 50 was actually 50,000. The Ticket guy looked confused.

He had so much money in his hands now, and for a glimpse of a second he had that crazed look in his eyes.

As if he was thinking: “I could quit this damn job right now!!! The hell with this stupid bus!!”

Luckily his conscious was on its better side that day, and he corrected my mistake.

That was very nice of him as that was most of my money for the main part of my trip : going onto the Ciudad Perdida – The Lost City, a 5 day Trek into the jungle!

A little Wiki: Ciudad Perdida (Spanish for "Lost City") is the archaeological site of an ancient city in Sierra Nevada, Colombia. It is believed to have been founded about 800 AD, some 650 years earlier than Machu Picchu.

Ciudad Perdida was discovered in 1972, when a group of local treasure looters found a series of stone steps rising up the mountainside and followed them to an abandoned city. When gold figurines and ceramic urns from this city began to appear in the local black market, authorities revealed the site in 1975.

When I told family and friend I am going most of them were joking that I should try not to get kidnapped by the Guerrilla groups who used to be in this area in the past.

But to be honest, the thing that scared me the most, were the mosquitoes

You see, the day before I flew, I met with a friend at Daphne’s Café in LA.

He started to tell me all those stories about Bot flies which live in South America.

Bot flies are those nasty little flies who lay eggs underneath your skin. After a while a little larva hatch and… well you get the idea. Not cool.

As a kid I was terrified of flies. They used to bite me on the most annoying places… And I would blow up to massive proportions.

The next day at school was never fun.

So I did some research and figured out I should get some DEET.

DEET t is a chemical that was developed by the US Army back in WW2 when the soldiers were getting eaten alive by bugs while fighting in the jungles.

It’s really nasty stuff… I am pretty sure it’s the same thing that killed the joker at the end of the original batman….

The DEET did a pretty good job and I didn’t get too many bites… At least not as many as this guy:

THE ITALIAN was one of the guys who did the trek with me. After doing this trek a few times he gave up on chemicals to prevent getting bit. In exchange he was constantly inhaling some other chemicals that I bet helped to ease the pain J

His back looked like this.

On the first day of our trek it was POURING rain.

All the notes and tips I got from Hernando when I just landed in Colombia got washed away.

I started to think it was probably a better idea to go all Prison Break on it, and tattoo the notes on my body!!

The hike was breathtaking... In the most literal sense of the word.

It didn’t seem too bad to the two lovely European girls who traveled with me. They skipped up the hill like gazelles.

When I finally got to the top and had a moment to catch my breath…

The group was already ready to move on…

When we got to the "Lost City", I just couldn’t believe the view and all the ancient ruins . It was absolutely stunning.

On the way back we were absolutely dead, and got somewhat of a satisfaction seeing the new groups walking into the jungle, not knowing what is awaiting for them ;)

Finally, we all squished into the Jeep that that took us back, enjoyed the great smell of each other blowing in the wind, and were ready for a new adventure!

2011-10-14T16:58:00.000-07:00

Some more scans from the streets of San Francisco. Been on the road a lot lately, more stuff coming real soon!

SAN FRANCISCO!

2011-09-08T15:37:00.000-07:00

I LOVE SAN FRANCISCO!! This was such an amazing summer, and I can't wait to get back to this city. These are just a few sketches of some of the great characters I encounters.

tired people on the BART

Nicest lady in SF!!

Pride Parade

Detective's office

2011-08-12T00:15:00.000-07:00

Some Development work for Detective Druffo's office

RATS!

2011-07-26T19:56:00.001-07:00

Butchers!

2011-07-12T23:38:00.000-07:00

These are a couple of the ideas I had for the butcher character in the film. We ended up going for something much simpler and graphic, but it was fun to explore the essence of this guy.

Detectives!

2011-07-04T11:45:00.000-07:00

a couple of early ideas for the detective character in "Defective Detective".

Defective Detective Visual Development

2011-06-27T00:16:00.000-07:00

One of the most fun parts of making the film was to explore the world and the environments that the characters live in. We did a lot of research and collected so many images of old apartments, and old kitchenware to try and capture the spirit of the granny's apartment and the detective's office.

The image above is an early painting I did to try and visualize what this story moment might feel like. The final look of this frame (that could be viewed in the previous post) was quite different as we defined the color scheme and style more and more as production progressed. The essence of the feeling of this moment stayed pretty similar I think.

More development Art coming soon!

Back!

2011-06-19T15:50:00.000-07:00

It's really about time I would dust off this blog. I am embarrassed to see when was my last update, but I promise it was all for a good cause :)

Last month I graduated from Ringling College of Art and design. it's been an amazing 4 years, and I spent the last year working day and night on a short film (no excuses, but hence the lack of updates...) . I teamed up with my good friend and super talented artist Stevie Lewis, and together we made our first film Defective Detective.

it's been an amazing experience working on the film, and we couldn't expect in out wildest dreams what this film will lead us to. A month ago we were notified that we have won the Student Academy Award for an animated short. We were so honoured to be selected, and had an amazing experience in LA meeting all the talented film makers! I might write more on this experience later on.

With John Musker at the award ceremony. Such a huge honour to meet him, and check out his awesome Genie tie!!!

Defective Detective will be available on-line in a while, but I will update here as soon as it is up. Meanwhile, above is a teaser image, and I'll start posting more of the visual development work for the film soon!

And now, off to a new chapter in my animated adventures! I started to intern at PIXAR a few weeks ago! These is are very exciting times and I am so happy to join such a creative environment and word aside so many talented people.

first day, with my Ringling buddies Uri Lotan and Justin Farris and a new friend, Jeff Leinenveber

Thanks for visiting!

JFK>TLV

2010-12-25T17:43:00.000-08:00

2010-11-30T06:59:00.000-08:00

Did this one as an ad idea for wine company a while ago.

winter break is around the corner! working full throttle on our film, stay tuned!

Lab Rats

2010-10-19T10:38:00.000-07:00

Senior year!! I really can't believe this is already the last year hear at Ringling... time sure flew by. Really busy these days working on our film. It's a really exciting time and I can't wait to see it complete!

Not much time to draw though :( here are some sketches from those late nights in the labs

bobby chiu and kei acedera Came to visit our school!

Matisyahu Concert and last days in Salt Lake

2010-08-13T22:36:00.001-07:00

The party is over

2010-08-13T17:00:00.000-07:00

I made this one for the Troll challenge on the Avalanche blog.

and some sketches from meetings and such.

I had a blast being here this summer, but it's time to go back to school now.

Time to make a film!!!

How did summer pass so fast??

2010-07-31T20:24:00.000-07:00

Another delayed flight... As I'm cleaning up the drive I found these designs I did a while ago and thought I'll post them.
more airport sketches and Siggraph stories soon :)

Jazz at the Gateway and Beirut concert

2010-07-23T15:13:00.000-07:00

staying loose :)

Heading to Siggraph for a week! have fun and keep drawing.

The Ringling 100

2010-07-20T09:43:00.000-07:00

Hello!

A few months ago a bunch of Ringling Grads came up with an idea to put together an art book featuring 100 pieces by Ringling students. These is truly an awesome initiative, and even better, the money earned is geared towards scholarships for Ringling students, so make sure to check it out and support this great cause.

This image below is my entry. As always it could use some work but since it made it into the book, and I never posted it before, I figured I might as well.

THE RINGLING 100 by Greg Hettinger, Scott Zitta & Jorge Garcia | Make Your Own Book

2010-07-14T00:49:00.000-07:00

Geocaching

2010-06-28T14:07:00.000-07:00

Good times :)

The small things

2010-06-20T19:43:00.000-07:00

I really want to try and find little things in every day that makes it special. Having the worse memory ever it also helps me remember those fun little experiences.

This cute little girl didn't expect the water to be so cold.

This guy was having a blast singing to his music until he notice I'm looking at him when we were standing at the stop light.

on the bus.

Roommies :)

New Adventures

2010-06-14T22:34:00.002-07:00

Hi! Sorry for not posting much lately but I was staying away from the computer a little, after another intense year at Ringling. Woohho! Senior year here we come!

a couple of days after school ended I headed back home to Israel to visit my family and friends. This trip wasfull of events but really short. My Friends and I went camping, as a bachlors trip for my friend Uri who just got married a few days ago! (Mazal tov bro!)

Unfortunatlay, I had to miss the big day but from very happy reasons. only 3 weeks after getting back home, I went back on the plane headed to salt lake city. I was very fortunate to get accepted as a visual development intern at Disney interactive/Avalanche. I can't say enough about how honored I am to get to work with some amazing Artists I've been following for a long while now.

The 3 weeks of Break at home were fantastic! I was traveling all over the place met a lot of good friends and recharged on some great food. I was talking to my friend Liron the night before we both headed back to the states. we always say how it's such a weird feeling, having part of you want to stay at home, and half of you can't wate to go travel back across the big lake. kind of like you have this double life all the time. This sketch is just a funny metaphore we came up with :)

Thank you all for stopping by, and to all my friends who are spread across the states and heading to new artistic adventures, best of luck!

Avner

2010-04-23T12:14:00.001-07:00

Vinnie

2010-03-22T22:40:00.000-07:00

hello! it's been a while.. another year at Ringling is getting closer and closer to an end... this time o the year is usually pretty crazy around here. These days I am busy working with Stevie on the pre-production for our short film ( more details on that later :)

Also working on a bunch of other projects, so stay tuned for that! meanwhile here is Vinnie, a character I created for a push/pull animation assignment earlier this semester... I'll post that soon with mt new reel.

Thanks for stopping by, and I hope all of you Ringlingers are hanging in there! summer is around the corner!

2010-01-09T23:09:00.000-08:00

a bit older, but why not....

2009-12-12T15:20:00.000-08:00

unbelievable, but another semester has ended... it's surprises me every time. it's been a crazy journey so far :) now it time to get some rest, recharge and mostly think... we are starting to work on a short film next semester, and I am really excited for that.

happy holidays everyone!

haircut day

2009-12-06T21:42:00.000-08:00

At the busiest of times, Russell was kind enough to cut the hair of all the dudes in 306, so we won't look like cavemen... it can happen easily when we get caught up with work here :)

one week till winter break! Pre-Pro here we come....

2009-12-01T22:55:00.000-08:00

costume day :)

and few boards from a story I was developing earlier this semester...

2009-11-23T20:39:00.000-08:00

winter break is almost here :) having some fun in figure class

and trying to stay loose with some quick sketches....

2009-11-18T23:28:00.001-08:00

sleepy CAs

2009-11-02T13:29:00.000-08:00

busy days at Ringling.... no time to scan new stuff :(... hopefully soon!
here is something from a while ago...

2009-10-27T22:45:00.000-07:00

playing with styles...

2009-09-17T21:40:00.000-07:00

more friends, and a rhino...

2009-09-07T23:34:00.000-07:00

friends :)

2009-08-28T23:26:00.000-07:00

My house was under attack over the summer and my father was fighting them against all odds.

2009-08-22T21:49:00.000-07:00

More Peter ...

2009-08-16T23:32:00.001-07:00

kayaking!

some environments...

2009-07-13T13:16:00.000-07:00

some more of the designs I am doing for my adaptation of shockheaded peter

sketchbook dump

2009-06-10T13:40:00.001-07:00

woooha... summer is flying, and I am busy at work most of the time.... so hopefully I'll have some new stuff to post soon... meanwhile I scanned some sketchbook pages, from the last days of school and some airport adventures.... thanks for stopping by!

2009-05-07T00:11:00.000-07:00

wrapping up

2009-05-01T23:33:00.000-07:00

That's it! 2 more classes and we're off for the summer! It has been an amazing year, but I am definitely ready to go home for a bit and recharge :)
This will probably be the last post for the semester (we'll see...) but I have lots of plans for the summer, and I'll try to post as much as I can. These images, are part of a project I've been working on for my concept development class.
Thanks for stopping by and have a great summer everyone!!!

-Avner

shockheaded peter

2009-04-24T23:51:00.000-07:00

trying to squeeze some personal work between school assignments :) these new character designs I'm working on, trying to redesign the world of this great old children book.

2009-04-18T08:51:00.000-07:00

2009-04-12T14:59:00.000-07:00

The year is almost over!!
Just finished our major animation assignment for the semester (with Marcelo, the dude from the previous post)... tweaking some stuff and will upload soon.
meanwhile, some random sketchbook pages :)
Thanks for visiting!

Marcelo

2009-03-24T23:40:00.000-07:00

Hey guys

here, is Marcelo, my character for our final animation project for the semester.

satyrs and nymphs

2009-03-02T09:38:00.000-08:00

What goes around comes around

2009-01-20T21:10:00.000-08:00

So I really didn't intend to post this at first. This Linux penguin was our first modeling assignment last semester here at Ringling. Since everyone had to model the exact same thing, I didn't think it will be too interesting to share.

but then I recalled this one project I did back in the good old high school days. As part of an environmental art project I cast 100 plaster penguins. every day I would move all of them around campus, forming different arrays. It;s funny how our life circles interweave, since now, almost 7 years later I'm back to dealing with penguins (not only that; when I looked at the pictures again I noticed that the girl in one of them has the Linux penguin popping out of her bag! what are the odds??)

Anyway, hope you'' enjoy this, something a bit different than usual, while I'm working on some new projects that' hopefully I'll be able to share soon.

Take care,

Avner

P.s - The title screen for my 3D penguin is of course an homage to the brilliant film "surf's up" if you haven't seen it, it's a must!

LipSync

2009-01-03T18:17:00.000-08:00

This is a lip sync test I did for my traditional animation class this semester. There are so may things I wish I had time to fix, and maybe I will in the future.. who knows....
It was a lot of fun to work on and I definitely learned a lot from it. so... here it is!
the sound clip, is Gandalf from Lord of the Rings of course :)

Click here for HiRes version

2008-12-24T20:25:00.000-08:00

some of the designs I did for a 3D animation project I'll be working on next semester

2008-12-19T15:32:00.000-08:00

So Ringling is closed, and there are no scanners available :(
Untill I'll find a place to scan, I'll be posting some stuff I have on my computer from this semester.

Meet Kambiz

2008-12-15T22:16:00.000-08:00

Hey everybody. Quite hard to believe, but the first semester of school has passed! These last couple of month were pretty intense, but I had so much fun, and truly feel like I learned a lot. that being said I'm really happy winter break is here! have a lot of plans for this one, so hopefully I'll have a lot of new stuff to show by the end of it.

The dude above is Kambiz. He is a character I designed for our foirst character animation assignment (which was a few excercises in body mechanics, with a character who doesn't have hands). click on the link below to check it out... the file is about 30mb so you might want to right Click and "save target as..."

CLICK ME

hope you all have a great break and happy holidays

Avner

sketchin....

2008-11-29T20:59:00.000-08:00

just some sketches I did recently...
More Animation soon!

More Animation!

2008-11-05T08:29:00.001-08:00

Here are two cycles I did in traditional animation class this semester.
We suppose to start a 3D walk cycle soon, so stay tuned for that as well :)

CLICK HERE for a Hi Res version.

Back in business

2008-10-26T23:36:00.000-07:00

Hello! wow... I can't believe it's been so long since I last posted... Thanks for all of you who keep checking this page :)
I started my sophomore year at Ringling this August, been super busy... So far everything is going great and I'm really enjoying my animation classes (both traditional and computer animation). Other than that, I've been working on some other projects that hopefully I'll be able to show some results soon.

meanwhile here are two animation shorts from this year

Primitive theater: we had to tell a short story with a character or two, that are basically no more than a mprimitive shape the emotes.

CLICK HERE for a Hi Res version.

The ball bounce was our first assignment in Computer animation:

CLICK HERE for a high res version

So that's it for now... a lot more to come soon.

work...

2008-07-18T14:57:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody... I just got back home from a week in Sinai, Egypt... It's an amazing place and has been a great vacation from a busy summer, and I now feel very ready to go back to school... in 19 days I'll be heading back to Sarasota, and I have so much to do before that... I have a lot of work in progress that I hope to get done before school starts... meanwhile, this is a piece I did last week as birthday gift for friends of my parents ... I'm quite happy with it, although I now think I could accent the shadows some more, and in general work on defining the light some more... but, this is just another step in the ladder I guess... I'll be posting some more work really soon.. I hope... thanks!

Lola

2008-06-29T15:16:00.000-07:00

My dog is getting old and is enjoying the luxury of sleeping 18 hours a day :)

2008-06-27T11:07:00.000-07:00

I've bee busy working on some different projects lately, so meanwhile I guess I'll be posting some sketchbook stuff...

Mantis

2008-06-18T17:53:00.000-07:00

This is an illustration I started a while ago and never had a chance to finish... So I took some time last night to tighten it up, and this is what I ended up with. It started as part of a random prompt challenge on a local website, under the title: "Mom! look what I found in the back yard..."

Chris

2008-06-12T05:15:00.001-07:00

some color

2008-05-25T02:32:00.000-07:00

These are two color sketches following a Japanese drummers show I've seen a few months ago... I'm trying to explore different ways to approach digital painting, so this is an attempt of a more rough expressive look, that I kinda like...

Summer time

2008-05-19T06:51:00.000-07:00

Hello! Well, unbelievably my first year at Ringling has passed. Looking back it went so fast, but it was a great year. The last couple of month were really intense, so it's great to be back home and recharge. I haven't updated for quite a while, but now that I have some extra time I'll try to post new stuff quite often. I have a lot of plans for this summer so stay tuned... as for now, here are a few caricatures of my fellow Ringlingers. I love doing these, so this was a nice way warm up and start my summer. hopefully these are recognizable (for the Ringling students among you)... if not, well, I guess it means more practice ;)
Have a great summer everybody!

Kazoo

2008-03-29T10:16:00.000-07:00

I can't beleive I havn't posted anything for such a long time... It's the last month of school and schedule is tight, but it's all good. I am just about to start my final project for Animation class for this semester - Bi Pad motion. I'm really excited about this one and hopefully it will come out the way I see it in my mind. Stay tuned for the actual animation in a month from today. I'll try to keep u posted on other stuff in the meanwhile.

Anyway, for now here is my character - Kazoo the Skunk!

Figure Drawing

2008-02-04T14:49:00.000-08:00

Hi! so, a lot is going on lately... I am super busy with school mostly... Traditional Animation is awesome so far and hopefully soon enough I'll have something cool to show. Meanwhile I'm working on other projects, but it will take a while till I can post anything, so I guess in the next few weeks I'll keep posting some older stuff to keep this blog alive :)
These are some life drawings from last semester. They vary between 1-2 minute gestures, 20 minute poses to an hour long one. Enjoy!

Style exploration part 2

2008-01-24T12:03:00.000-08:00

Hi everybody! long time no update... well, my second semester in school has started a month ago and it's been busy. I Finally started my Traditional Animation studies and so far it is really amazing. I can't even describe how much my appreciation to the creators of all those memorable 2D films has grew after animating a few bouncing balls. They are true artists and I really want to believe that we will see those incredible drawings back on the big screen soon. I really hope that Disney's upcoming "Princess and the frog" will be a success.

On a different note, I am still doing some character concepts inspired by African masks (what can I say? it's really fun). During my exploration I bumped into an image that amazed me:

mask picture from: "Masks of Black Africa" by Ladislas Segy

Is it only me or the resemblance is amazing? The shape of the head, the hair the brows the nose the mouth... I found this to be really interesting. Once again it has shown me how those simple shapes can have so much appeal.I am really curious if the designers at Pixar have seen this image. Anyway, this really gave me a great incentive to keep going with these so here is another round of sketches.. some I like better some less, and hopefully I'll find a time to color a couple of them soon.

Style exploration

2007-12-24T12:40:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been a while since my last update... As I was trying to continue to develop the Paleolithic Characters I designed a while ago, I came across a couple of books about African masks. My mom used to have a lot of these books and I remember that as a child I always thought: "Hmmm...why can't she have 'real' Art books..."
It's funny how things change. Browsing through these books today, I find the different designs and textures those artists used fascinating. The simple geometric structure of those masks is so different from anything else and I find it a great source of inspiration.
Anyway, here are a couple of designs I did, inspired by these masks. I tried a more graphic approach on this one, with a heavy use of textures, which I find interesting...

sketchbook

2007-12-04T21:19:00.000-08:00

a couple of recent sketchbook pages....

messing around with Mother Nature

2007-11-23T13:37:00.000-08:00

Hi everybody! Here are some more hybrid designs, this time a turtle and a hippo. I am trying to work on my digital painting skills, and find a technique and style that I like, I'm trying to work on using values rather than "filling the lines"... still a long way to go. Anyway, while coloring, these two hippo-turtles moved somehow from my cartoony kingdom to the darker side of concept design, looking a bit to monstrous to me, but... oh well, it's all part of the process.

friends...

2007-11-17T22:16:00.000-08:00

just a couple of caricatures I did recently.... I really appreciate people who can capture the character of someone in a good caricature, and it is something I am trying to get better at... so these are a couple of attempts, messing around with different styles...

Girabbits

2007-11-11T22:51:00.000-08:00

Hi everybody! I can probably continue doing this for hours... Designing weird and stylized animals is definitely one of my favorite things. So here they are, the kids of papa Rabbit and mama Giraffe... hope you don't find this too disturbing ;)

STAMP'ede

2007-11-02T15:29:00.000-07:00

Our last assignment in 3D design class was to design a toy. My partner and I came up with "STAMP'ede". It's an activity game where the kid can play with different farm animals that have interchangeable parts (heads, feet...). On the bottom of the feet there are rubber stamps that print the shape of each animal's foot. Educational and fun!.
Here is the the package design I did for the game, as well as the actual figures.

go figure...

2007-10-29T19:53:00.000-07:00

Here are some gesture drawings and a couple of longer poses from the last couple of weeks... more to come!

Pink!

2007-10-25T20:28:00.000-07:00

a stylized flamingo.

Paleolithic Design

2007-10-24T10:27:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been doing a series of character designs inspired by cave paintings and sculptures from the paleolithic era. I find it fascinating how men have depicted those characters in such simplicity and innocence, thinking only about the most basic shapes needed to convey their ideas. Anyway, here are some of my interpretations to these sculptures... I will probably continue messing around with this theme for a while...

first!

2007-10-22T20:11:00.000-07:00

occasionally I will leave the first page of my sketchbook blank... just in case. unfortunately I can't do this here, so here it is, my first post. those two are drawings from my sketchbook...
more to come soon!

Welcome!

2007-10-22T19:28:00.000-07:00

well, I am wondering what have taken me so long, but this is it! my new blog is up and running!
I am now halfway through my first semester here at Ringling College of Art and Design, and man! it has been very exciting so far. So many talanted and inspiring people... it is truly great.
On this blog I am going to post basically everything I am doing... sketches, illustrations and as soon as I start my animation classes, well...Animation. can't wait!
I will do my best to update this page as often as I can :)
So thanks for stopping bye, and Enjoy!