"Secrets"

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"-The greats weren’t great because at birth they could paint, the greats were great because they paint a lot.”
-Macklemore

"Danny whats the secret, Danny I thought you were going to go deep into cool tricks, Danny you told me things I already new, I was looking for something that would help me out, Danny this stuff blows."

       The first line above says it all. The lines following the first quote show ignorance in its full glory. Many times I'll come across people learning to draw/animate/storyboard and I always have some students coaxing me to reveal secrets on how artist become so good. I'll say this again and again: There are no secrets, there is no gene that make people better artist than others, there is no epiphany one must have and from that moment they are gods.

        How does one get better at catching a baseball, How does one get better at making rice, how does one get better at playing video games, how does one person get better at creating art? 

YOU DO IT A LOT.        Done, there you go, that is apparently 'the big' secret :) bc nobody knows this. Practicing and repetition will make you better and faster. Completing one student film or 2 assignments in a semester will not cut it. Sure, some people can pick up the trade faster than other students but that does not mean becoming a great artist is out of anyones grasp. There are people at Disney and Pixar who are not natural artists. With their hard work and determination they BECAME great artists.  

Thats my little rant of the day. :D

       Oh and if you are looking for opportunities to learn, I will share you two links for two online Lectures/workshops I gave a while back. I think the site is still charging for them but once you pay you keep all the material FOR LIFE. True Story.

The first link is: The Art of Visual Storytelling 
http://skl.sh/16i3Ze9
This lecture/workshop goes over the fundamentals of visual storytelling and breaks that down to its most basic elements. And by breaking visual storytelling down you gain more insight on how a visual can communicate an emotion. This one if definitely safe for those with no art background. 

The second link is: Constructing a Story: advance visual story telling
http://skl.sh/19yLtmt

       In this lecture/workshop I go in depth, and go as basic as I possibly can to break down what story really is and what makes good stories into great stories. Even though this has the word advance in the title it really is accessible for all ages and skill levels. After this class I guarantee you will never look at another movie or read a book the same way again. 


Enjoy and thanks a lot

WRECK IT RALPH: sketches

WRECK IT RALPH

     I hope you all have gone and seen the movie! It was a lot of fun helping create such a fun film. I thought I 'd share some sketches I did while on the film. They are just little doodles and chicken scratches on post it notes and toss away pieces of paper.

ONE of my first sketches of ralph... when I actually had time to draw

'BUT DANNY TELL US SOMETHING INTERESTING?!'
     Hmm, Well working on the film feels like you and your co-workers are on a giant boat. Everyone has their job to do and something to help out with. You learn and become close with your 'crew' bc you end up seeing them more than anyone else, even your family and loved ones. So they in some sense.. a sort of family to you as well.
     And just like a real boat there are rough times and easy times. During the harsh times, there is no sleep, everyone is hard at work, we are all stressed, and it feels like there is no end in sight. Smooth times always come early on in the making of the film. It'll ramp up and get busy until a climatic few weeks of overtime and hell... and then.. its done. Then you have to remember how to live life again and find out what were your old hobbies, and remember that people exist outside of your work life. And you have to be social! (unless you can not remember how to be social by this point)
    Watching the world react to the film through Facebook and reading the reviews in all the magazines is a pretty crazy feeling. It's kind of having a venerable sort of feeling in your gut as you read what people say about the movie. Last but not least, seeing your name in the credits.. makes a landmark checkpoint of emotion that causes me to reflect and see how far I've come and to be excited about the future. I have a lot of life to live and my road is just getting started.

      There was always something to do! It left very little time for drawing, but the sticky notes above I did while animating those characters. Drawing on post it notes is a very good way to become detached to your drawing and let loose. You find yourself drawing very fast with out being precious about each little line you do. And even though that line isn't perfect, there is some energy captured in it that no amount of fiddling and perfection would repeat.

      Animating Vanelope was very fun. I was intimidated by her a lot until I was given a few shots with her.  Vanelope has a very cartoony 2D appeal to her that we always had to be aware of. Not as much as king candy but still a decent amount.

Sometimes when I'm stuck I figure out my problems with drawings

     I spent most of my time animating in Sugar Rush as you might figure out if you look at the ratio of candy racer drawings to everything else. I also animated a lot of characters in the Game Central Station, the Felix party in the beginning of the movie and at the climax of the movie. I do have a lot more sketches but I'll save them for another post. I hope you all enjoyed the movie and make sure to watch it a second time to find all the hidden things in the back ground (hint: look at the graffiti on the walls in game central station)

Cars 2: What I've been Working on...

So I've been busy.   ..busy animating a movie...

         -Pixar redecorated it's walls in preparation of the hoard of journalist that are about to flood the studio..

      

        Working on my first production has been CRAZY. You get to see the 'machine' in action. The whole studio buzzing, everyone with a job to do and guess what, they ALL do their job damn fucking good. 

         My animation job at Pixar can be called no less than basically 'Quality Control'. There are 12 of us that are on this 'quality control' team. We are the last animators to touch the film, and once it leaves us, it better be mistake free bc there is no one after us to catch it. Talk about putting on the pressure right? 

         So what kind of things come up that we have to check and fix? Well they can be little mistakes, like a blink or some intersections... but we also get heavy fixes such as; having to reanimate a lot of dialogue, and sometimes they even tell us to just redo the whole shot. There are a variety of fixes that come our way that we encounter, so our knowledge of animation (technical and aesthetically) has to be always fresh, we have to be on top of our game every day.

         Between us 12 fixers (thats what they call us) we easily hit more than a hundred completed fixes a week. like nothing. because we're bosses like that. (winning) It's been a real hell of an experience sitting within 20 feet of John Lasseter and the other animation leads as they direct and over watch the making of this film...

         Well I'm not here to geek out and gloat about this experience but I do want to say that this movie WILL be entertaining. It will hit it's target audience like a hurricane. I'm sorry you older people but you guys are gnna have just take it bc this movie is not for you, it's for the 4-10 year olds that for some reason LOVE, with a capital L, Cars to death. They made it a little people phenomenon bc Cars has made easily over 8 billion dollars world wide JUST on merchandise. Little boys like cars.. who knew? haha. here's the trailer (UK version bc i do think this one is better than the US version) I do hope you check it out and be on the look out for my name in the credits! 

Cars 2 Trailer 'Extended Version'

I know this is CARS.. but I've seen the movie... and I'm STILL excited to see this movie. All I'm saying that you better go to a movie theatre with a bad ass sound system...


Stay classy,
-Daniel Gonzales