The Chase.

For a school assignment I was free to pursue any goal
and make whatever I felt important to add to my portfolio.
As long as it was animation.

So I thought of an animation with a character being chased
by the camera and thus the viewer.

The first fourteen-or-so seconds are okay I guess,
but after that I just wanted to finish it,
or rather my teacher wanted it finished.
I rushed and it's obvious I did.

I'm sorry dear hopefuls, I'm sorry to disappoint.
I know how you feel, I really do:
clicking your way through all these 0's & 1's...
And for what? For this shitstain-wallpaper?
Is this for real? Is it all just one big joke?

No, I know what it is:
It's just a miserable waste of potential,
a shattered dream, a big, bad, bullshit bag of
nothing but nothingness itself.

But what did you expect?
I'm a mere spoof in a half-recycled world
that is both creator and consumer of nothing.
Of course I'm joking, but I'm not.
There's quite some superficial obviousness in there,
but some more or less interesting ideas as well.
We could actually talk about it sometime,
over a glass of wine and on a night of long lasting.

Sketchbook Pt. VI, arguably VII.

Dear hopefuls,

Today seems to be good enough a day to share some
more of my sketches in the old sketchbook.
So please do sit back relaxed,
or on the edge of your seat for that matter.
Or just don't, I mean, I don't want to be oppressive,
you can do as you please, for it's the internet!
You have absolute free will and as for me:
who might I be to tell you to do anything anyway?!
Can you believe it?
The nerve...


Doesn't he just look like
some sex offender?

















This one —I figure—
speaks very much
for itself.

Don't you agree?

No, it's just a stream
of consciousness,
happy go lucky
sketching as I go along.








This one reads:
”DIRIGENTJE VENTJE”,
roughly meaning:
'conductor lad'.
Though more cute.















Aren't they
adorable?

















Menthol Belinda's,
seriously: just Google
if you don't know.

Sketchbook Pt. V (or VI, if you will).

If things go as planned, internet and me will be reunited once more.
Until then I'll keep it as brief as I can be.

“I mean.”

“Yes.”

Moving On.

It's been a long time since my last post, and I'm not going to apologize for it. Now if you insist on receiving an apology you could of course drop me a line. Not that it'll make much of a difference, but at least it generates interactivity. The last couple of weeks I spent my time moving to another house and now I'm waiting for Internet to be installed. Which apparently takes the pre-B.C. period of 4 to 5 weeks. Paying this small visit to the web I'd like to add some more sketches. Personally I like the last one best... This scene I imagine to be colored softly and somewhat de-saturated. It's all extreme slo-mo and we hear some melancholy piano tranquillity. No foley. Stay hopeful.

The Big Make-Over.

Dear hopefuls,

This time I'd better come through with the good stuff,
as promised before. And you know what? I just might.

This animation is painted on paper and made for a school assignment
called the Remake, which was exactly that, expecting us
—hungry students— to remake (and —no pun intended— reanimate)
the work of an artist who's work we admired.

My pick was Georg Baselitz, for more reasons than I am willing to type
about right now. Since my work tends to be quite fragile I'm always
looking for ways to be more bold in my expressions and Baselitz
seemed to me the appropriate vehicle to get there.
Apart from that I'm always looking for ways to make my characters
more stylized, without them becoming too cartoonish or childish.
In my opinion Baselitz is really great at this.

Naturally I couldn't leave it at that, so I added several other studies:

To not scale anything digitally, but just draw and paint it smaller if
needed. Personally, I hate outlines that become thicker or thinner when
anything animated moves closer or further away respectively.

To animate a transition from one scene to another and make it a part
of the narrative (instead of just using a standard cut/wipe/dissolve).
When I scanned the animation and put it on a timeline it turned out
the narrative part didn't work out as well as I had meant it to be:
I had two scenes, one indoors with a man in the foreground and a
jacket in the background which the man puts on. Plus one outdoors
at night with a house set against a minimal background.

A door opens, lighting the landscape, but the door is on the side of
the house we don't see, leaving us to just see the light coming out of it.
But since the painted animation makes for such a strong moving hold,
one doesn't notice this light at all and what we see is a man putting on
a jacket whilst morphing to another image.

It's sad, isn't it? But at least we can learn something from these terrible
flaws, don't we, hopefuls?
Enjoy. And laugh at me laying bare my pity attempts at making
something that legitimizes my existence.
But know that while you're laughing, I'm learning,
and one day all these lessons will fall into place.
Then I might make something you want to see, but I won't let you,
because you laughed. Sweet revenge.

Walkcycle!

Okay, so this is fairly old.
It's done on paper (!), which I like, and again this could have been
better, but there was just not enough room for improvement.
Lame excuse, I know, but next time I'll remember these flaws and
do it better. I promise.

I should make more walkcycles I guess, it's good practice.

My notes on this one:

• The head needs some more attention, period;
• The upper half of his torso needs some more anticipation;
• His hands need to turn more;
• His right arm has one frame of inconsistent length, making it morph.

Apart from it being on paper, it's on triples as well,
whereas I mostly animate on doubles, thus revealing the economic me.

That's it for now, next post I'll add my painted animation.

Sour Milk.

Now I can't go to bed and not upload my animation of the cat I mentioned in my previous post. The assignment was to find or make a 10 second audio fragment to animate upon. I chose a piece of dialogue from Lock, Stock and animated these bad-ass wiseguy cats. It's lipsync was the main goal, but my personal agenda was especially drawn to the possibilities 2D offers that 3D can't and the problems that present themselves animating these lines that do not bow before realism.

Sketchbook Pt. IV

After this one I'll post some animation again,
mainly because these sketches contains a reincarnation of a cat I animated.


















Conchita drew a quick line for this one, and I had to finish and make something out of it.












This little birdy here just begs for improvement, and I will, but not yet. I like the idea and want to animate it when ready.
































So, here it is:
The cat that — like Cordell Barker's — just keeps on coming back. Nine lives would be nice I guess, though the nine deaths that inherently come paired with them would kill me.
Pun intended. Sorry for that. It's in my genes. Or my upbringing. Or both.

Sketchbook Pt. III

As the spoiler of a title already suggested:
Here are some more sketches.

















“The gynecologist had to hold back when he stared into the deepest of the bent-over construction worker's gash.”









































“At least you
understand me!”

Sketchbook Pt. II

I still have quite some scanning to do,
but here is the second installment in what is intended as an ongoing series.

This one reads: “Jonah came without a toothpick”

Oh boy,

if only I had a boat...