my thesis is finally online!

Sorry it's been a month since my last post. It's been pretty crazy what with graduating, family visiting, and moving that I haven't had any time to do any actual drawing. I need to get back in the swing of things now.

But until then, my thesis film, The Terrible Thing of Alpha-9! is now on Cartoon Brew for hopefully everyone to see! Hope you enjoy.

In the spirit of the thesis that's totally over, here are the beginning designs and super rough ideas of backgrounds before I started laying out and animating. They don't even look like the same characters to me now after they've changed through animating. Thanks to everyone who's seen it so far!

brand new demo reel

this is my time while at SVA. enjoy!

Jake Armstrong Demo Reel May 2009 from jake armstrong on Vimeo.

breakdown

Clip 1 (:04) —“The Terrible Thing of Alpha-9!” Thesis Film; Flash, After Effects; 2009
Clip 2 (:08) —Second year film-SVA; Hand drawn, Photoshop, After Effects; 2007
Clip 3 (:11) —“The Terrible Thing of Alpha-9!” Thesis Film; Flash, After Effects; 2009
Clip 4 (:20) —School project-SVA; Hand drawn, Photoshop, After Effects; 2008
Clip 5 (:27) —“The Terrible Thing of Alpha-9!” Thesis Film; Flash, After Effects; 2009
Clip 6 (:34) —School project-SVA; Hand drawn, Photoshop, After Effects; 2007
Clip 7 (:38) —“The Terrible Thing of Alpha-9!” Thesis Film; Flash, After Effects; 2009
Clip 8 (:42) —School project-SVA; Hand drawn, After Effects; 2008
Clip 9 (:49) —“The Terrible Thing of Alpha-9!” Thesis Film; Flash, After Effects; 2009
Clip 10 (:54) —School project-SVA; Hand drawn, After Effects; 2007
Clip 11 (:57) —“The Terrible Thing of Alpha-9!” Thesis Film; Flash, After Effects; 2009
Clip 12 (:59) —Second year film-SVA; Hand drawn, Photoshop, After Effects; 2007
Clip 13 (1:02) —School project-SVA; Hand drawn, After Effects; 2008
Clip 14 (1:08) —School project-SVA; Hand drawn, After Effects; 2008
Clip 15 (1:17) —Second year film-SVA; Hand drawn, Photoshop, After Effects; 2007
Clip 16 (1:20) —School project-SVA; Flash; 2008
Clip 17 (1:23) —Personal test; Flash; 2008
Clip 18 (1:25) —“The Terrible Thing of Alpha-9!” Thesis Film; Flash, After Effects; 2009
Clip 19 (1:27) —School project-SVA; Hand drawn, After Effects; 2008
Clip 20 (1:28) —Second year film-SVA; Hand drawn, Photoshop, After Effects; 2007
Clip 21 (1:30) —“The Terrible Thing of Alpha-9!” Thesis Film; Flash, After Effects; 2009
Clip 22 (1:35) — School project-SVA; Hand drawn, After Effects; 2007
Clip 23 (1:39) —“The Terrible Thing of Alpha-9!” Thesis Film; Flash, After Effects; 2009
Clip 24 (1:40) —“Superjail!” Internship (cleanup and inbetween); Flash; Augenblick Studios 20008
Clip 25 (1:58) —“The Terrible Thing of Alpha-9!” Thesis Film; Flash, After Effects; 2009
Clip 26 (2:00) —Second year film-SVA; Hand drawn, Photoshop, After Effects; 2007
Clip 27 (2:06) —School project-SVA; Hand drawn, After Effects; 2008
Clip 28 (2:11) —“The Terrible Thing of Alpha-9!” Thesis Film; Flash, After Effects; 2009
Clip 29 (2:16) — Second year film-SVA; Hand drawn, Photoshop, After Effects; 2007

SVA DUSTY film festival

just to let anyone know that may be in new york this week, the SVA animation thesis screenings are this thursday the 7th, with my thesis playing roughly nine-ish. it's at the sva theatre, playing from 7pm-11pm. that's 4 hours of cartoons for free. pretty amazing if you ask me. hope to see you there.

the sva theatre
333 w 23rd st,
ny ny 10011

The Terrible Thing of Alpha-9!

almost done! it's weird when 8 months of straight work and worry all slowly wind to a stop. it's kind of a pre-post-partum thing, where you stop thinking "all i need is rest" and start thinking, "okay, what next?"

until i can figure that out, i made some postcards for my thesis (of which the screening is may 7th i think). i'm really a child when things come in the mail for me, especially something printed. i'm so eagerly waiting that i just keep hitting refresh on the ups page, even though i know when it'll arrive.

if you want one, find me in the Digi lab, comment, or email, and i'll be sure to get one to you, no matter how far. i got 500 so i want to get them out, i can't stand to see unused printed things!

Thesizing the demons

this is right before the monster gets hit in the face with a laser. kind of like a dog chasing an oncoming car.

luckily, i can't really draw

here are some screenshots for my thesis. i'm putting these particular images up because these were some of the most unmistakably bad inbetweens in the current section of my thesis in production. regardless of how unreadable they are as for what's actually going on, they all made me very happy that they made it into my film. bad drawings really are so much more ambiguous and fun than good drawings ever could be.

(as a sidenote, the fourth drawing isn't even mine, it's by the wonderfully talented kat, who's doing her own brand of great bad drawings in my thesis. with her helping, it's going to be sooooo good. i'm way excited.)

mini failures and mini successes

So here's a couple pictures relating to the prior post about making a sign for a comics section that was supposed to wrap around a wall. In the end, I did get to make the sign, which I thought turned out pretty well, aside from the easter-egg colors that ended up coming out when I tried to paint with wet acrylics on foam core. I felt that it didn't work, so posted with it is what I would have done had I planned better. Next time!

On the upside, I got to ink it with a sumi brush. That stuff is so much fun to play with!

screenshot

Here's what I'm choosing as the screen shot for the Dusty's book, thought this might be a good time to finally start putting some thesis stuff up. I think this is final color, but I'll probably use some textures. This still feels too bare for me.

I've done about 6 months on my thesis so far, and have a frightening two months left. It's time for some prayers...

Hope you like!

Phoenix airport

If you can't tell, I'm really trying to post a lot more lately to keep myself working on different things. That's why I'm trying to work with color and textures in more recent pictures, which I'll try to post more of soon. I'm somewhat new to textures these days, so if this is too much, let me know! This one was when I was waiting for a plane in the Phoenix airport for 3 hours, because of inclement weather in Denver. Seems like every time I travel I get stuck somewhere, but I'm getting used to pulling out my sketchbook at these times, and kind of starting to enjoy this forced people-drawing time.

finally back to work

after three weeks of not being able to work on thesis (plus a really good excuse to be lazy and catch up on my smash brothers), i finally went back to work this week and now get to devote all of my time to thesis. don't get me wrong, i love working on this stuff, but this was me on monday: totally exhausted because i woke before 11am.

air travel

this made 6 hours stuck in the airport worth it.



and to stay with the air theme, this was on a plane to london. woohoo!

kill a man for a good book

here's a new post with a drawing i did last month. it was supposed to be a giant sign for my library, but got denied for possibly a few small reasons. i cleaned it up before presenting it, but i'm overall really happy with how it turned out as an illustration, so i don't really mind it doesn't get to be 4 feet tall. enjoy!