A Fire Llama's Animation Blog!

Link! Skyward Sword

2012-01-23T23:50:00.000-08:00

Death from above!

I've been playing Skyward Sword over the last few weeks. The game is like visual candy, there's a lot of neat textures and patterns throughout. I could walk around Faron Woods and stare at the ancient trees or the symbols on the temple walls for a long time while my heart meter drops to 0. Also, fighting like a crazed monkey seems to work out better than pretending to be a calculating samurai.

Happy New Years 2012!?!

2012-01-05T02:01:00.000-08:00

Happy 2012 Everyone! Year of the Dragon! My main resolution is to draw/paint something everyday + continue work on Applejacks. I'm hoping to have a few sketchbooks by the years end and not stressing out after Thanksgiving dinner.

Dog Canyon Exercise :P

2011-11-30T15:29:00.000-08:00

My storyboard teacher gave me a note to utilize the entire space to help my storyboards become more cinematic. Having the characters move toward/away from the screen is helping open up a lot more options for storytelling. Am pretty curious if using a long down shot of a barren desert underneath the dog's house would help to better sell that there's nothing to eat.

Plasma Arm Superheroine - Roxy

2011-11-22T02:01:00.000-08:00

Sketched her out to be a super heroine of sorts with an plasma arm that activates when in battle/protect civilians. I imagine her to be a swift as elves and somewhat a scout. I would love to see someone sketch out super heroes as friendly tags on allowable walls. This was inspired by the awesomeness of Avengers on Netflix.

Applejacks Exploration!

2011-11-05T17:45:00.000-07:00

Exploring the Mood/Emotion for Japanese Rock (Jrock!). Some bands are very dark and flashy (Malice Mizer), while others are high energy and inspiring (L'arc~en~Ciel). I'm taking some time to research some well known Japanese bands, which turns out into watching some amazing concerts :) It's pretty amazing how far these bands go to dress and stage, it's almost like a musical. This piece is a mixture of both kinds of moods.

Story Ideas for the Applejacks

2011-10-26T13:30:00.000-07:00

So, needed to play around with potential story ideas for the Applejacks for Story @ Concept Design Academy: (here's what I got)

1) established band on their first road trip tour.
2) fighting giant monsters with music (and elemental creatures) to protect their RV park home.
3) other band gets jealous of Applejack's awesomeness. They might sabotage them or just be a hurdle for every adventure they go on.

Character Exploration + The King's Speech Comp Studies

2011-10-17T16:56:00.000-07:00

I'm taking Story Development for Animation @ Concept Design Academy right now. Our assignment this week is to explore our characters a bit further. This is a vingette character exploration of the Applejacks (a band I made up). Mag, the robotic boy of the group has a talent for rebuilding himself as well as building other robots/machines. He does this in the basement of his parent's RV home. The RV community usually requests the strangest coffeemaker combination machines from him.

These studies, taken from The King's Speech, were mostly for the lighting effects on storyboards. Also practicing foreground/middle ground/background elements. There's quiet a bit of depth of field camera work with conversations between characters, and the blurry lines look pretty cool on storyboards.

Archaeologist Mickey

2011-08-24T02:22:00.000-07:00

A quick sketch in continuation of my lessons with Mickey Mouse. He's still a tough little fella and I feel that with great practice, makes him greatly difficult. Been having a few requests at work for a few Disney Characters, so I hope to be well practiced with them.

Mickey Mouse - Test Animation

2011-06-28T08:11:00.000-07:00

At Disney Consumer Products we've been shown how to draw Mickey and his friends once each week by Jeff Shelly. Mickey's surprisingly hard to draw because of the balance between design and draftsmenship needed. Most of which is achieved through a lot of drawing time with him. I've been tinkering around with this scene, finding different ways to make Mickey snooze, yet retain his likeliness. It's summer! so having a lazy summer laid back demeanor felt appropriate.

As you can tell the staging is a little weird....I initially started out with the ground giving Mickey a good ground shake.

The Earth literally picking him up.

It would frighten him, causing him to investigate and be on alert. He'd hold onto his suspicions until the last second when the ground launches him into the air.

So close...

The entire stage would have been used to get the idea across. Good staging lets characters roam freely across while still providing breathing room.

A Mother's Day Rooster + Experimentation

2011-06-27T01:07:00.000-07:00

So every Mother's Day I typically like to custom-make my mother's card. It would be a pretty half-folded bristol card with a beautiful rooster drawing on the front and very meaningful writing inside. Previous years have been a pastel, impressionistic rooster, a watercolor version, and comic-looking drawings with frightened dogs. This year I realized I had an extra frame and was really inspired by the graphic japanese drawings that my Mom likes too. Lo and behold, I drew this for her :)

TADA!

Explored some different ideas with thumbnails. The Japanese style sorta came as an accident when wanting to make the rooster dynamic. Getting rid of the farm and background really helped par the idea down.

60% completion : Was sorta debating on watercoloring, but still strong as black/white

This is an experimentation for a animated piece that would have been a lot of fun to complete. The idea was to have the video feel like a comic book while still having decent animation and looking sorta modern. I have permission to show this is a self-promotion and this content belongs to it's respective owner. Enjoy!

Gift to FedEx friends!

2011-04-27T01:06:00.000-07:00

Every day during my time as a costumer service and FedEx shipment handler, the same FedEx tag team duo would show up. As it was the last stop for them with FedEx being right across the street, sometimes they liked hanging out while I had panic attacks from learning to do my job. These two were particularly dynamic has you'd have a tall muscly Gaston-like guy followed by a tiny spunky fellow that loves to joke around. Half the time, I wasn't exactly sure where he was. I always appreciated their company and they heckled me to draw something for them before starting at DCP.

Each of them got a FedEx Truck variation!

Star Fox Rough Animation

2011-03-21T08:01:00.000-07:00

Star Fox Rough Animation Scenes from Jesse Soto on Vimeo.

So during my internship at Titmouse, I would occasionally have some time to rough out animation here and there to become more familiar with Flash and the techniques practiced there. Symbols, scene organization, tweening, etc. Eventually production for TV shows became more demanding so scenes were carried out at home, on my spare-time. The idea was suppose to turn out as Star Fox crash landing and being tracked down by a persistent, yet animalistic machine that burdens atmospheric entry and mechanical failures. Fox would have the sharper instincts and fight back with his calm and cool foxyness.

On the road to Storyboard Boot Camp

2011-03-07T02:59:00.000-08:00

Keep in mind, it's made-up.

I always went with my best friend to the movies throughout my teenage-hood. If I had an itchin' for "Over 9000 Zombees", she would always be with me. And usually, this was on a Tuesday night. Films like "Teamwork in the Spotlight" and "Hidden Secrets" was packed with enough pathos to have us watch it more than once.

"We may have stitched arms and limped movements, but we can't be

ripped apart when united. Hands in, everyone!"

"Grandma carried that box through everything. And we needs

what's inside. Please stay focused for once."

While my best friend re-experienced the movie, I kinda started noticing patterns in the shapes during certain shots. Some shapes almost looking like a huge NFL-lineback next to a smaller track-and-fielder, even though they were of the same height and weight. Sometimes I felt a bit of apprehension, and sometimes I understood the moment a lot easier. At the time, it didn't occur to me why the filmmaker would do this, he must have been crazy.

But it drove me crazy to not know it when I was in storyboard boot camp many years later. While it wasn't the most important thing. It was damn important enough to seek everyone's advice, where the multitude of possible compositions confused me even more.

With a hodgepodge of logical compositions selected, I loaded my boards and made way to the presentation room. Nighttime assured quiet "able-to-freak-out-as-I-thumbtack-my-boards" time. If I didn't select the right compositions, would I be caught red-handed?

Lucky for me everyone complemented on the pretty boards (YES!) and could mostly tell what was going on. I survived the pitch, and with hopes of less insanity in the boarding phase next week.

Xerox'ing storyboard drawings was the next step towards becoming a full fledged storyboard artist. The machine ambushed me with paper storm the night before the next pitch. Why must you be so hard!?!

Feng Shui - Pagoda with Tree of Life

2011-01-27T18:41:00.000-08:00

(Click to enlarge)

According to the Feng Shui books by Lillian Too, 2011's Rabbit year is suppose to not be so lucky for people with rabbit and rooster signs (I was totally looking forward to a good year too!) all in the name of unlucky stars flying into those year's charts. Turns out that will some imagination and will power you can turn that luck around! These Pagoda items (usually a solid gold miniature) with a combination of a growing tree, a community of birds, and gems are a good symbol of prosperity to counter the negativity. My Mom follows Feng Shui pretty deeply and our house will go through it's yearly re-arrangement with the addition of this image in various places.

This took me a while to make through digital cut out/photo-manipulation. Abundance and wholesome-ness was the target theme, and was hoping you feel refreshed or something like that. Everything in here is 100% recycled google images :P! Enjoy!

Happy 2011!!

2011-01-11T15:49:00.000-08:00

Happy 2011 everyone! Year of the rabbit commences as of Feburary. It was a difficult and challenging year this one past, and although rabbits are softer, this year will probably be the most challenging as I get settled in and get my butt into gear. Hope you all enjoy this small piece :)

Troll Head Portrait!

2010-12-26T14:46:00.000-08:00

So over the past few weeks I've been drawing heads for this 1,000 head challenge as a means to help improve my overall drawing. So after some absence I wanted to get back into with a head portrait (sort of) of my lvl 59 troll warrior in WoW at the end of his quests in Silithus. Trolls generally have very large volumetric nose, shallow eye pockets, and a really rounded forehead. Playing with colors and large strokes makes it easier to see forms at times. In any case, Merry Christmas to all and Happy New Years!

2010-12-17T18:35:00.000-08:00

Here are various sketches made for the Titmouse blog, TitBlog. Each week had a new theme to excite everyone. My internship with them ended yesterday, and now I search for work.

2010-11-11T11:16:00.000-08:00

(Image Removed)

Hey everyone! I can't really talk about this project because of a signed NDA. I am, however, allowed to promote any artwork I've made for it. This is a sample model sheet of the characters in the graphic novel that I'm making for musician Alia Ella Henderson. The art styling is pretty close to how it may turn out, but I need to experiment a bit more. This is a collaspable model sheet, meaning the bug folks are grouped in layers behind layers with other bug groups, so I can reference them while comic-making. So it's bed bugs, ants, and termite families in the front, main characters in the center, and giant muscle bugs in the back (including Master Hand). Enjoy :P

(Update, I've removed the image at my freelance employer's request)

2010-09-01T02:19:00.000-07:00

I am currently interning at Titmouse Studios! Woooooooooooo! There is a lot of talent there and am learning something new each day, even things outside of art *gasp* I've made a friend or two, and have annoyed many people. It's a fantastic opportunity thus far and am cleaning up animation currently amongst other intern-y things. This is as unexpected to my life, as I am grateful for it. I can't mention many things about what's going on until after the release of current projects, sorry :(

For now, I offer you a pre-production quicky piece from the Star Fox film I'm undertaking. Enjoy! I will post more experience things soon! (Yay for 2:30 am broken thoughts!)

2010-05-09T01:36:00.000-07:00

Go watch Iron Man 2! Robert Downey Jr. returns a crazy fool that nearly destroys himself and the world because he can't get past his narcissistic crazies @_@! Overall it was pretty good, some sharp writing, good casting, and nicely motivated action scenes. Side note, Happy Mother's Day everyone!

2010-03-07T03:18:00.000-08:00

I'm about Mid-way through film production. My film story is rock solid and I'm getting the hang of adding personality and caricature when I animate. The challenge would be to finish with full color :) This is how I feel right now, kinda funny when you consider that I'm usually happy-go-lucky about things. I'm resting my eyes and mind this weekend. I'll get off the computer now. I'm still alive so I'll update soon, enjoy!

2010-01-19T07:42:00.000-08:00

This get well card will get passed around the department for comments and good wishes for our beloved teacher and friend, Corny "lov'em and leav'em" Cole the 3rd. He has gone through a lot in the last year and has been resting at home for a few months now. If you've known Corny for some time or have been one of his students, send him some mail through CalARTs Character Animation.

2009-12-13T02:10:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately, fall semester is reaching it's final week of the semester. There's so much left to learn. Man, I feel like this is the hardest I've work to really understand whatever it is I'm doing. Though, every year I work sufficiently hard, this year feels like I've really worked my mind. Animation has been super rewarding with Ted Ty, I've gotten the hang of how to do a story under the Skellies (with a solid animatic to boot), and Masha has enriched all my skill sets with getting me to make animation outside of my norms in her enrichment class. To whomever is reading this blog, please take her class if you want to be a fantastic artist, she'll break your creative shell!

I'm super pumped for next semester and my film. My current animatic is around 5 minute 14 seconds, and I think a few more seconds will be tacked on by next week. I'm really looking forward to the film workshop going on for the 3rd and 4th years, so that we can simplify our class time to animate more :) and also be shown a lot of post-production stuff along the way, which is where I struggle the most. I'll need all the time I can get. I'm aiming to improve my acting skills and vitality in my animation for this film. So study and loads of practice.

Above is a pre-test for my animation assignment on after effects. The lighting and particles are similar to what I'm looking for in my assignment.

2009-11-14T01:40:00.000-08:00

Some fun stuff for everyone! Must draw more 0_0!

2009-07-22T15:45:00.000-07:00

Second illustration in this Desert Series. It feels like a comic book illustration with all the bright colors, but it feels energetic which was my point. It's based on the Aries astrology symbol which encompasses youth, excitement, and a mountain climber. Time to get back to my film.

2009-07-17T00:21:00.000-07:00

Spur of the moment drawings and paintings. I really like how some other students design their shapes and compositions, like Dylan, Kris, and Glen (Calartians will know :D). They keep things simple with few colors and stroke types, and in the end it's easy to get. I tend to throw extra colors, mess around with having extra people, and add intricate lil things with lighting. More than halfway through it: I get lost myself and forget to connect everything together, so things are not so easy to get. :/ I hope y'all enjoy!

I'm really diggin' the customizations you can do with your brushes on CS4. It's like you have 9 or so brushes in one!

2009-03-18T22:27:00.000-07:00

Trying out a few things before getting to work on ma film :P I would like to start playing around with different brushes on photoshop and working them with textures.

2009-03-16T05:04:00.000-07:00

Fun sketching while listening to Tibet: The story of a tragedy on youtube. If there was a Tibetan basketball all star team, this fellow would definitely be kicking ass with them, and, they would also be using these colors for their uniform. Man, I really miss painting :D

Funky Camel Character Designs - Rik Maki Assignment

2008-10-06T00:24:00.000-07:00

Character designs for Maki's class. Time to go to sleep :)

2008-09-30T02:13:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I last posted! Umm...it's about 3 weeks into my 3rd year here at CalARTS. I'm kept busy by a lot of drawing classes and homeworks. I'm having a hard time balancing everything and still having time to work on my film >< I feel a lot of pressure this year because I'll be applying for Internships around April/May. I'm starting to play around with textures and color. I'm also starting to like Storytelling a lot :) Enjoy!

2008-05-15T22:32:00.000-07:00

A preview of my 3rd year film.

2007-06-03T21:36:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time since I last posted. I've completed my second year at the Character Animation Program here at CalARTs. It was an amazing and equally difficult year just trying to survive the cirriculum while completing my second year film. My objectives for this year were to really improve with my Storytelling and Personality Animation. To be honest, I am not a strong story person even though I really enjoy making stories. The same goes for my acting, outside of my own personality. I felt this year was a good step forward, because now I know I want to become a full, hardcore, traditional animator. The time and milage I put into my film up to this point helped me to start becoming a stronger animator, now I need to just finish the Fire Llama film.

I was never classically trained when I was young. During high school I kinda skipped that phase, because of my cocky attitude then. And now I really need to buckle down on that in order to continue improving my animation. When I was animating this year I had a hard time getting some of my animation across because I lacked the draughtsmenship needed to make my point; I reanimated 90% of my scenes 2-5 times.

I also need to simplify my thoughts, so that what I say can also come across clearly. This summer is dedicated to drawing as much as I can for a few hours a day, while studying anatomy. I would really appreciate any help I can get; I am aware that my drawing ability, composition, and simplifcation skillsets are not up to par. If anyone needs any help, do not be afraid to ask. I'll do the best I can :)

I'll be posting as much as I can, because I really want to improve. I've made two other blogs that house my Animation and Sketchbook. Check them out whenever you get the chance. I remember when I first came to Blogger I was inspired by all the artists I came across. I was fortunate to have come across very talented people that rekindled my spark to draw. I hope to do the same for another person in return for the source of inspiration. Another Blog will be created soon to house the stories I made in Scriptwriting class, hopefully that will spark ideas in another person's mind.

Here are some of the figure drawings and digital paintings I did throughout the year. They're very experimental, but I feel that they are very truthful of what I say.

The drawing above is a bullfight story called Masters. The drawing itself is about 5-6 feet each way and took about twenty minutes to an hour for each character. I remember I really wanted to impress a girl next to me in figure drawing class that day, because it would be the first time I would have met her. It was a really fun day to draw even though I could never connect with that girl.

Below are digital paintings I did for Layout class and thumbnail compositions for myself. I usually had a national geographic and an artist book next to me when I did the thumbnails, hoping to find new color palettes. I use to spend thirty minutes each night painting these before I went home. Eventually, my need to work on my film was greater than working on thumbnails. Once my wacom pen gets shipped home, I can do more of these digitally. For the summer, I think it would be wise to stick to my watercolor pack and paper. Critques or any suggestions are really welcomed.

On a side note, going out and sketching from real life gave me a vitality with my personality. After sketching a long day I feel very passionate and happy. Whenever I would just sketch and paint in the computer labs, both myself and my work feels synthetic. I do enjoy it, but it feels kinda dead from my eyes. Does anyone else have this issue?

Here is a sample color test for my film, Fire "Lov'em and Leaf'em" Llama. I am going to plan out my film for color and seee how it feels. Enjoy :D

2006-08-27T11:49:00.000-07:00

Hello, my name is Jesse Soto.
I'll be entering my second year of art school soon at CalARTs as a character animation major and I would like to use this blog as a form of reflection and a reason for me to continue to sketch and have fun at the same time. A choice I made throughout my last two years stopped me from sketching as freely as I use to do as well as remove the shine of my eyes, in short I lost a lot of my ethusiasm and happiness as a result.

After being exposed to a lot of really talented artists within the boards of many websites and blogs. I became more aware of what happened. So, now is the time to put my best foot foward and go back onto the road of shine! Now it is a time to be as free as I can without any restrictions and this blog as a reflection and map on my course throughout the rest of this trip! Let's begin again!

Also these two sections are from my sketchbook I did around November of 2005, but since then I had been consumed by my first year animated film and made choices to explore other hobbies and eventually lost sketching for a while. I hope to put a lot more on this blog and see where this goes :D Hopefully onto another path...I dunno yet. Time to go sketch, aidos.