I went home for Christmas

I went home for Christmas. Then I got sick again. I must be allergic to not animating. I'm always getting sick when I'm not working!

More New Jersey sketches

Speakeasy FX

The other day was the was the 75th anniversary of the 18th amendment that legalized alcohol and unofficially closed all the speakeasy in the country. But Speakeasy FX is still going strong. Check it out. They even list little old me!

http://www.screenmag.tv/feature.aspx?fid=2816

Back from the Dead . . . maybe

I'm finally getting situated here in New Jersey. Animating for Speakeasy FX is great. We have a great team and there is only one guy there I really don't get along with. That guy happens to be me so there's nothing I can do about it. I haven't been doing too much outside of work, but I've been trying to keep up my "draw everyday" credo. Not having the time I would like to do my animated doodle comics, I've started doing sketching out quick drawings of my day-to-day experiences. Here's an assortment of those sketches.

Chowder!

Animated Doodles

Sorry for the poor reproduction quality but my scanner's in another state and all' I have is my little point and shoot camera.

It's Been A Busy Month

I've been busy at work and trying to finish up an animation for the Animation Mentor Alumni project so my blogging and my comicing have fallen behind a bit. Sorry. Here's an update of what I've been doing . . .

A couple of weeks ago the animation team at DXD went on a pilgrimage to Laugh-O-Grams studio. This was Walt Disney's last animation venture before he moved to LA. Over a half century ago, years before Mickey Mouse was thought up, Walt was slaving away in Kansas City.

From right to left: Steve, Lee, JP, me, Tim, David, Chris M, and Chris S (big thanks to Carson and Tim for the pic)

Animated Doodles

Sandbagging It

Being a freelance animator does have it's challenges. Like when your living in another state for a short period of time, how do you get a good workout in? I've be doing Crossfit for the past 6 months as way to supplement my mountain bike training. But here in Kansas I don't have access to my brothers Crossfit gym. I tried to do equipment less workouts for awhile and that was fun, but you can only do so many push ups, sit ups and squats before your mind starts to wander. So Joe sent me a link about working out with sandbags. It only cost me about $60 for 200lbs of sandbag fun. Here's a picture of some of what I used to create my sandbag.




The sandbag definitely adds another element to working out. Keeping proper form is a bit more challenging. On lifts that start on the ground you have to get down way further than with a bar. Grip is a big issue. Not only is it more tiring my first approach lead to bloody knuckles. I've got that figured out now. Grip does slow you down a bit because every time you drop the bag picking it back up takes a bit longer as you have to go through a little process. That process might be avoided if my outer sandbag fit the inner sandbags better. I have to watch out for the metal clip that secures the top of the duffel bag. It really surprises you when in hits you in the mouth. Also it can be harder to "rest" with the weight. Say you're doing a thruster, it is difficult to hold the weight on your shoulders because the weight is constantly wanting to shift around. But honestly it is a lot of fun. I think everyone who does crossfit should give it a try to throw in an extra variable into the mix and help you from getting stale.

Yosemite!

I've been animating in Kansas City at DXD for about three weeks now. But before I left for the home of Superman and Dorthy I went backpacking in Yosemite. Here's some pictures.

Driving into Yosemite Park.

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5:00AM on our way up to the top of Half Dome.

The Poop Mules! (see below)

Backpacking and Batman

I'm going backpacking this weekend and so I'm going to miss the opening of Batman.

DXD Here I Come!

The reason behind my lack of posting lately is because I've been super busy getting ready to start a new job. Bright and early Tuesday morning I'm flying out to Kansas City, Missouri. I'll be taking on a freelance gig at DXD. I'll be working on their series called Rainbow Valley Fire Department, an education series that teaches preschoolers about fire safety. I'm super excited and ready to animate!

Unfortunately that means Louie is going on a bit of a hiatus while I devote my energy to animating. Comics are super fun but my first love and the job that pays the bills is animation. Hopefully I'll finish up Louie in 2009.

Pardon Me While I Bare My Soul

I have to admit that these last two blog posts came from Joe Carroll's blog.

Funny

Lack of updates

Sorry for the lack of updates folks. Regular posting should resume shortly. Don't worry I got some cool stuff up my sleeve. Here's a quick scribble I did of my favorite X-Man to hold you over.

More Goodies

I've been busy working away updating my demo reel, adding more traditional art and drawings to my website, and working on a short Flash animation. You can check out my updated demo reel over at my website here . . .

http://www.jakekalsbeek.com/index.html

You can see some of my new drawings here (although if you've been following my blog most of these won't be new to you) . . .

http://www.jakekalsbeek.com/images/sketches.html

Hopefully I'll post the Flash short up here soon and I'll talk more about it then.

Aardman Goodness

This has been around for awhile but it is still amazingly good animation.

louie 31 - 32 - 33

The next exciting chapter in Louie's adventure!


Read the story so far here.

Jump Exercise 3

I got him in spline mode now. I need to start polishing the more subtle things now. I posted it up on the AM alumni forum and I'm sure I'll get some awesome feed back to help me take this to the next level.

Louie 28-29-30

Another busy week. I didn't finish my third panel until Sunday. Sorry for the late posting.

KING KONG!

I just rented Peter Jackson's King Kong from Netflix. The entire T-Rex sequence is simply amazing. What could be better than a giant monkey wrestling three Tyrannosaurus-Rexs? Not once during that sequence do I thinking hey this sequence is probably 75% computer generated. Awesome. Possibly the best computer generated movie sequence of all time. Ok maybe that's an exaggeration or maybe it's not. Either way it is crazy good animation.

Jump Exercise 2

Here's another pass of the jump exercise I'm working on. I'm still in the blocking stage and it's almost all on 4s. I next up I'll block out the face.





----update 6-11 I got the first pass on the face in there now.----

Louie 25-26-27

I can always use more time for comics. There just isn't enough time in the day for them. You can really see what I was talking about in my last Louie post represented here in panels 26 and 27. I got the proportions right in panel 25 but check out the size of Louie's head in 26 and 27. BeeGee's head is supposed to be slightly bigger than Louie's head. The way it is drawn now it looks like BeeGee is standing slightly behind Louie. Live and learn. I'm correcting a lot of these sort of mistakes latter on. Louie is an experiment for me and I'm learning tons. It is amazing what I'm learning right now about the power of spotting blacks and texture!


Read the story so far here.

Jump Exercise

I haven't been able to post any animation up here for awhile so I'm kind of excited to get back to animating for myself. I got a couple of little projects in the works so you can look forward to seeing more in the near future. Here's the first blocking pass for my latest animation exercise.

Louie 22-23-24

My youngest brother was in town this week and then I got sick over the weekend. I missed my mountain bike race but I still managed to get three pages done. Louie's story is starting to get interesting!


Read the story so far here.

Louie 19-20-21

One thing I've already learned from Louie is that I should have familiarized myself with my main characters more. The Louie of these early panels jumps off model a lot. It isn't super obvious but it sticks out to me. I've thought about going back and doing some redrawing but I decided against it. I've learned that lesson and I'll move on from here.


Read the story so far here.

Art Dump

I've created a number of different "doodles" in my spare time that I never posted. So here's a catch up post.
This was done for AM sketch club. The topic was Lost. I went with my favorite character Hurley. I colored Hurley differently than Iron Man for the last sketch club topic.


A graffiti inspired acrylic painting.


More morning sketches. The good and the ugly all for you to see.

Louie 16-17-18

I made good progress on Louie this week. Some weeks just whiz by and other weeks it seems like I'm working on one panel all week. I got a long way to go with my hand lettering. There hasn't been much lettering to do but I really struggle with it when it comes up. So for now I'm cheating. When someone speaks for now on I'm gonna use webletter BB a font I downloaded from Blambot.com. For now I'll keep on hand lettering the sound effects.

I went to my first comic book convention today. The Super Con held in San Jose was a really cool experience. I'll post more about it soon.



You can read the whole story here.