Environment Stills

Here are some B&W renders of my environment for the movie. Trying to convey a certain feeling to the place. One of the more interesting things was to organize all his stuff in the room. I really wanted to create a home for my character and not just a set for a movie. Probably most of the detail will be lost in the movie, but I owe it to my character. In these stills I was trying to make pleasing compositions, based mostly on basic shapes such as triangles.

Thesis Time

As usual I haven't updated in a while. This summer was really crazy and a lot of fun. I had amazing time over at Sony Imageworks in their animation internship program, and I met a lot of really cool and talented people.

But no time to rest, cause its thesis time! I'm super excited about thesis, I've been wanted to do my own short film ever since I saw the 'Monk and the fish' by Michael Dudoc De Wit years ago in an animation festival. It has been such a big inspiration for me all these years.

Here is concept art from last semester. I really like the way this painting came out. Something about it really got the feeling I was going for. Now the real trick will be to translate it to 3d.



Its a village somewhere in the middle east, without any kind of communication with the rest of the world. I'll post some images of my main character Oshan in the next couple of days as I finish him for out school crit.

Here are some color studies for the interior. Was really trying to loosen up with these strokes and just get a color scheme I like.

Gestures

I can't believe I finished my junior year here at Ringling already. Summer break just started, and soon I will be a senior... yiykes

Here are some figure gesture drawings from the last semester.

I really enjoy gesture drawing. There's something really amazing with the idea of capturing the essence of an action rather than the likeness of the model. Makes you really look inside the forms, and find the rhythm and the action of the figure.

Lip Sync

Here is my Lip Sync Animation assignment. Just finished it last night and finally can post new animation.

In this animation I really tried not to get caught up by the lips but to get the emotion and thought process with gestures, eyes and brows.
I really wanted to get some real emotions, so I kept sketching different poses that will communicate what I wanted and really tried to push harder for the thought process.

Hope you dig it




And a higher res version in Quick Time (50 mb)

Expressions

Here are some expressions I did before starting the lip sync project I'm currently working on. I really tried to push these shapes to the extreme while still keeping him on model. I love looking at animation sequences in still format. You can really see the motion between the frames. I remember that was my favorite thing as a kid, watching all those great animation sequences in the Illusion of Life and imagine the motion.. I know... very geeky of me.






And a full body

Push n' Pull - Cartoony version

This is an animation from last semester, that i haven't posted. I have a lot of things I wanted to fix but not really time to do that. So, for all the people that gave me feedback, I do intend to fix it, just not sure when :)

Overall I like it, got some nice timing and . I feel I really got loose with this animation, really allowed myself to do what I want and not to use what I have. On the other hand I have some weight issues I need to fix. But most important, I had a lot of fun! We really didn't have a lot of time on this project, and I would like to go back and work some more on it, when I have a chance.

The assignment required a very exaggerated version of my previous push pull, and I really wanted to take that to the extreme. Pushing the limits and really have fun with poses / timing.

I Tried to vary the timing on things, stylize it a bit and really make something fun to watch. I will probably combine the two push pull animation to one longer piece since they are in continuation. This is my first take on cartoony animation, and this is definitely something I would like to try again.

Thanks Ido, for helping so much with the sound work and for all the people who gave me feedback.

Self Caricature

Here are some WIP of my new character who is.. me :)


And a turn around in color, textures still not final. Click to play...




I wanted to thank the brilliant Joe Bluhm for showing me what to push with his amazing caricature he made of me, it was so helpful. Designing myself was really hard because I couldn't see anything to exaggerate, in my own eyes I was the most ordinary guy.
Looking back at Widget and Ramone, my two previous characters, I can see in each of them resemblance to my caricature. I guess its true, we always put something of ourselves in our characters, I wasn't even aware how much like me they were, before working on this project. So be sure to check joe's blog and web site.. great stuff. Thanks Joe :D

Some Oldies...

Its been a while since I updated. Some animations are coming really soon. But in the mean time i thought to post some older works.

Ice Cubes

My first 3d character animation here at Ringling :) Trying to tell a story in 10 sec is hard. The idea was to convey emotions through very simple shapes, like cubes. Looking back there are many things I would change, but I guess this is part of the learning process. I still enjoy watching it. Fun




NURBS Buggy

This was so tidies to model, but it was worth it. Its all rigged and ready for animation. I did some rig tests but haven't had the time to really take it for a spin. I plan on animating something fun with it when I have some spare time. All NURBS....




Zink

Zink is a character I developed with Avner, a while ago. It'll be a while before we can breath some life into him. But we will, one day. Seriously... we will.

Figure Drawings

Some figure drawings from today. Almost done with my anatomy class this semester, and its great to step back and take a broader look at the figure as a whole. Everything makes so much more sense, knowing what's going on underneath all that skin :) Not trying to describe too much of the muscles definitions, but rather focus on the forms and gestures, fun stuff.

Push n' Pull

The idea for this assignment is to convey weight, but I think more than anything I wanted to explore what my character felt about it. This semester, my main goal is to really get to know the characters I'm animating. Try to think and feel like them. Putting him in this crazy scenario really helped me to get to know him much better.
Creating convincing weight is hard, but so much fun. There are still many small things to tweak, but overall I'm pretty happy with it. Hope you guys enjoy, and 'to be continued' really soon :)

I also wanted to thank Ido Levran and Matt Killian for helping me a lot with the sound. You guys did a great job.

The Milky Way

My first digital painting... hopefully more to come.

The main idea for this painting was to have a character in its environment. I took one of the character's design I recently posted, and made him into a milkman. Since he was riding a unicycle, it only made sense :) Thanks Ron, for this cool idea.

I love these European alleys. The best thing about them is the light, which mainly contain reflected light that bounces between the walls. This is such a nice atmosphere to capture. I based most of the environment design on a neighborhood I really like from back home "Neve Tzedek", such a nice area.

My In Out Animation

I'm finally posting some animation. This project was a lot of fun, trying to convey specific emotions and states of mind was my main focus here. There are many issues that still bother me, many thing to polish and clean, but overall I like the final result.
I think for the first time, I was really starting to feel the illusion of life within the animation. It is such a hard task to master, since every tiny little fault you make exposes the illusion. Trying to make Widget move, think, react and not being a puppet who's controller by me was the real challenge.
I will probably go back to this animation over the winter break and clean it up, push it further.
Hope you guys enjoy.

Some character sketches

These are some character sketches I did recently in Drawing for Animators class.


I liked this guy's snobbish look, so I thought it would be interesting to contrast that with his clothes.

These guys are insane

Sony Bravia is known for its amazing, ultra elaborated commercials, but this beats it all. These are real stop motion bunnies, jumping around frame by frame. I just love the look that stop motion has over live action scenario. Reminds me of the fantastic David Anderson's shorts. Anyway, enjoy the clip.




Just to understand the madness, check this out

Some Anatomy Studies

Here are some anatomy studies from the past two weeks. We use live models, and try to visualize the muscles. It can be tedious, but I think you learn a lot by understanding it. These studies are from nifty Aaron Board's class here at Ringling.






This one is kinda oldy, But I still like it. I just love the way figure drawings look on toned paper. I will try to experiment with it more throughout this semester.

Widget

This is my new cool lookin' character... at least I hope so... Cool lookin' that is :)
Just finished modeling and rigging and will be soon start animating, Can't wait. That's where it all happened.
After much thought, I decided to go with his initial name - Widget. just because its such a fun word to say. Widget... I think its cool. I got a lot of really cool suggestion from a lot of people, especially Itamar, I really liked the story you told me.

I tried to make the best translation I can from the drawings. Most of the time we get so much of the character's appeal lost in the translation to 3D process. So I tried as much as possible to stay with all the drawing decisions I made.
Also, Thanks so much to Avner, for helping me with the idea, developing him and in general being such a good friend.

Here we go...

Okay.... so I finally decided to join the party and make my own Art blog. Its actually kinda exciting. I think my goal is to make a blog more about animation, and to show the process as I go along. Animation is never really done, so I would really appreciate your crit, feel free to write your thoughts.
I'm just starting my Junior year at Ringling school, and its a lot of fun.

Hope you enjoy

Liron