Liron Topaz

Skadoosh...

2011-05-06T00:08:00.000-07:00

So.. its been almost a year since I last posted. BUT i had a very good reason. I've been super busy with the most amazing project I could hope for. The first Kung Fu Panda was a huge inspiration of mine while I was still at school, and I was so honored to be part of the second one. This has been an amazing experience, and I have learned so much. Mostly from the super talented Dan Wagner and Rodolphe Guenoden who have been great mentors. All the supervisors and the entire crew were really awesome.

So don't miss it in the theaters... May 26th

Some more sketchbook stuff

2010-09-10T19:46:00.001-07:00

Some Random Sketchbook Stuff..

2010-04-25T20:17:00.000-07:00

Big Lebowski was on TV the other day. I love the Cohen brothers, they really create such memorable characters and really caricature them to the extreme.

And some older stuff I haven't had a chance to scan.

Go watch how to train your dragon! :)

2010-03-28T03:33:00.000-07:00

Yet again, its been a while since I last posted. I actually have been very busy lately. I recently started working at Dreamworks Animation on Kung Fu Panda 2. Woohoo :D I'm extremely excited as the first Panda was one of my biggest inspiration during school. To be able to join the crew and work on the second one is really a dream.

But, even more important.. go watch How to Train Your Dragon! I know.. I'm biased now, but with all honestly, you're in for a real treat. This movie is unlike anything I've ever seen. It is the most charming, exciting and Fun movie. And very very inspiring. Congratulation to all the crew that worked on that, really one of my favorite movies of all time.

A new chapter

2009-11-03T23:58:00.000-08:00

Yes, yes, I'm still alive.. hard to believe but graduation was almost 6 months ago, and it flew by so fast since my last post. Thank you very much for all the people who wrote me about the film. The exposure the film received online was really overwhelming, and seem to really reach the most remote places though this crazy thing called internet. I guess in a way, that was part of what my film is about.

Its been a long long journey, and it was worth every minute spend. In the past few months, since graduation, I have been working on the film 'Alice in Wonderland'. It is a huge honor to be working on the film. Tim Burton has been a great inspiration for me for many years, and I feel extremely fortunate to be part of this production.

This Side Up - My first short film

2009-05-02T07:21:00.000-07:00

Finally its done. My finished short film This Side Up.

Click here for a high res QT version

This was the most challenging and rewarding project I've worked on so far :) At Ringling we are in charge of every aspect of the film, from concept to Animation..
I still have a few things I want to fix and will probably post a fixed version in the future, but for now, Enjoy!

Special thanks to Keith Osborn - my faculty advisor on the film, Billy Merritt my pre-production instructor and Jim McCampbell head of the computer animation department.

Music by Erez Koskas, Sound edit by Ido Levran, and extra help by Matt Killian.

This Side Up - Coming soon....

2009-04-12T20:30:00.001-07:00

Can't believe its almost over, it seems like just a week ago I started working on this film.

So here are some shots from my film "This Side Up". hopefully I didn't spoil too much of the story and its enough to make you want to wait for the finished movie :)

click to play

The music was composed by the Super Talented Erez Koskas. Really did a great job! And thanks Matt Killian for the awesome microphone :)

Animation Magazine

2009-03-31T15:27:00.000-07:00

This is the cooolest thing ever.. I wanted to post this a while ago. I was so honored and excited to see my art printed in Animation Magazine. I've been subscribed to the magazine since I was a kid and never thought I would actually see my work presented in it. The article is about my internship at Sony Pictures Imageworks in the past summer. I was selected by the Academy of Motion Pictures as an animation intern. It was an amazing experience and I learned so much from it and met so many cool artists and film makers.

Thanks for Animation Magazine for publishing my artwork and for allowing me to post this in here.

Color....

2009-02-23T02:24:00.001-08:00

So, I decided to show a little of what I've been working on in the past couple of months. Here are some lighting shots from my thesis film. This is so much fun to see it full color. Soon Oshan will actually move, breath and hopefully think :)
I think I was really trying to capture the atmosphere in his house as I envisioned it. Trying to get the hot Mediterranean sun look.

Thanks Daniel for teaching me how to composite these togather. Be sure to check his site - daniel-rauch.com, really cool stuff. I really enjoyed this process, of connecting everything together. Just need to polish the animation and out for print.

I will post some animation soon, not too much to spoil the movie.. no worries.

T'ipusim

2009-02-14T23:53:00.000-08:00

So, I haven't updated my blog in a looong time. But that's kinda good cause it means I'm super busy. And I am. really..

Our senior films are starting to get some color as we are working on our lighting. Its really exciting to start finish shots, really starting to bring life to my character. I'm really enjoying this process so much, and the organic process of making a film. This is really the best year of school and I can't wait to see the finished film. I will post some lighting shots I have in the next few days and some animation as well. I will, seriously.. you'll see.

Anyway, I also noticed i haven't posted too many drawings so here are some sketches I did of random t'ipusim. T'ipusim is characters in hebrew, but characters with spice. Hope you like them.

This one is a bit older, but I like it so i thought to post it anyway. I like the melancholic expression she had, and tried to really capture that.

Oshan

2008-10-18T19:42:00.000-07:00

Meet Oshan, my long lost cousin...

Oshan is my new character for my senior thesis short film. He lives somewhere in the middle east in his village, and dreams to someday get online.

This is an expression test i just finished. This is not final animation but more an expression test and needs a lot more work on it. One thing i'm happy with, is the control I made for his face. Can't wait to really start animating him, make him think and move around.. so much fun! I can really start thinking of him as a real person, and see how he reacts in different situations. Super Cool.

Having fun with some facial expressions :) trying different extremes

Model Turn Around-

The shorts are homage to Alex Marino :) and Atari of course..

Environment Stills

2008-09-13T22:07:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-09T22:41:00.001-07:00

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

2008-05-13T02:00:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-29T18:21:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-27T15:46:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-03T20:01:00.000-08:00

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

2008-01-29T15:57:00.000-08:00

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...

2007-12-31T18:10:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-28T19:18:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-19T20:18:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-03T23:57:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-30T19:08:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-10T06:21:00.000-07:00

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.

Some Anatomy Studies

2007-10-02T18:15:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-30T22:19:00.000-07:00

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...

2007-09-29T08:27:00.000-07:00

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