Tangled up and Espadas

So, I saw "Tangled" the other day. Nothing truly ground-breaking to be completely honest. I can't really say a whole lot about it without giving away story and plot elements and the quality in which I viewed it was not all that great so I'm sure I missed out on quite a few visually enticing elements. Also, I was watching it while doing some interning work at Bunko Animation Studios (cool studio with cool people that I intern at now, not a paying job but a foot in the door nonetheless), which really means I spentmost of my time listening to the movie rather than actually watching it. The story was well developed but the songs within the movie seemed to me to be waaaaaay too forced. I kid you not, almost every 5 to 10 minutes in the movie some character would break out into song for almost no reason at all. Now, if this had been a Broadway musical (not Broadway musical turned movie, just Broadway musical set on the stage) I would have totally believed the entire production because it seemed like it would have fit more as a Broadway musical.

Understand that I am aware the Disney made a killing in making musical films back in their glory days but it was not in the same manner as Broadway musicals are done. There was a fair bit of dialogue and exposition into the story and characters before the next musical number was done and was almost always a build up of tension and emotion before doing so. In Tangled, it just seemed like they decided songs would go wherever the hell they wanted regardless of the fact that whatever was occurring could easily have been described within simple dialogue.

All in all, it was alright, but in my opinion "The Frog Princess" (yes, I'm calling it its original freaking title, deal with it) kicked its ass.

In other news, one of my friends asked me to design a tattoo for him and one of his friends (as a surprise) based on the Espada from the anime "Bleach". The goal of the tattoo is to incorporate the number, mask and some third element to aid in identifying the Espada in question. The one that I finished was for my friend's friend and I am still figuring out the kinks in my friend's tattoo. Now, the friend's friend was so impressed by what I made for him, he decided that each person in his group of friends should have one done in accordance with which Espada they most resemble. So, it is my task to now design 10 more tattoos (including my friend's and an extra one for an original Espada character) as awesome as the one featured below. Gods help me.

Espada 6, Grimmjow

Thesis Aid and warm-up sketches

Hey look! I made art! Or sketches anyway. One of my friends who is currently undergoing his thesis year dropped by my place last night in order to give me some files to work on for his super awesome thesis of amazing story fun time. Super secret too. So, sorry, but can't tell you what its about. But, before I started work on it I decided to do some warm up sketches in photoshop with my wacom just to see how rusty I am with it. I also decided I was going to watch Scott Pilgrim vs. the World as I worked on coloring and cleaning up some frames of his animation. So, obviously, I ended up doing some sketches of characters in the movie. And by that I only mean Ramona and Knives and Matthew Patel's very angry eyes before being completely drawn into the movie and beginning to actually work on my friend's stuff.

I am very proud of the way Ramona turned out in particular :)

Too Damn Cold

Hey all,

I was in Puerto Rico for Christmas and New Years to celebrate with the family which I hadn't done in a while so it was kind of refreshing. It was nice to see my grandparents again and my dogs and realize just how old Im getting since now my little cousins are about the same size as I am and in some cases actually taller. It really is quite frightening how time can fly.

I also forgot how freaking cold it is up here. All the wonderful moisture that my skin had taken in from being in the tropical climate in PR is gone now. I can literally hear my skin beginning to crack in certain places and my lips are so freaking dry now they hurt and will probably be bleeding by the time I wake up tomo- well, techincally today.

The flight wasn't so bad, least bumpy flight I've actually been on in a good long while.

And now if you would turn your attention to the right over here, this is one of the character designs for the main character in my Thesis Film "Belief". It is the one design that I liked the most and was planning on refining in order to make it more animation friendly during the clean-up process.

Her wardrobe was inspired by the wardrobe of the angel Gabriel in the movie Constantine. SPOILER ALERT FOR ANYONE WHO HAS NOT SEEN THE MOVIE!!!!!!!

...

Ok, hopefully whoever hasn't seen the movie isn't reading this. I really really REALLY liked how they put Gabriel in the garb of a mental patient with multiple identification tags, each listing the seven deadly sins on one arm and ugh, I can't remember what they are called, it's the opposite of the sins though, of that I am certain. But I just loved that entire idea of just being able to show how far off Gabriel had gone and how twisted the outfit was in general. It wasn't a traditional set of mental patient clothes but more like a pile of them Gabriel pulled out and decided to mix and match and in some cases sew together.

Well, that's all for now. I'm going to go ahead and try to get some sleep at least, hopefully wake up at a moderately decent hour in order to clean the apartment further and commence my day of running around like a chicken with its head cut off (much more amusing saying when my Abuela [grandmother] says it in spanish).

Cheers.