carlo cartun

Star Wars Uncut #349

2009-12-31T08:34:00.000-08:00

Esta es la escena que hicimos con Juan Manuel Urbina. Es parte de Star Wars Uncut, un proyecto abierto para recrear escena por escena la película.

This is the scene we made with Juan Manuel Urbina. Is part of Star Wars Uncut, which is an open project to remake the original picture scene by scene.

Reseña de "Gatín a Bordo" (Review on "Kitty on Board")

2008-08-28T12:05:00.000-07:00

La más importante revista de diseño de Colombia, Proyecto Diseño, hizo una reseña sobre el corto "Gatín a Bordo" y su actual participación en el concurso de mytoons . Para votar por el corto, pueden ir aquí.
The most important design magazine of Colombia, Proyecto Diseño, has made a review about the short-film "Gatín a Bordo" (Kitty on Board), and its current participation on the "Get With The Times" contest, from mytoons. You can go and vote here.

Sody Inked

2008-07-31T18:25:00.001-07:00

Jimmy Inked

2008-07-31T15:46:00.000-07:00

Night Mare

2008-06-09T18:55:00.000-07:00

This is the short-short film that I've made for the Monster Jam contest. The music, as usual is from my friend Alejandro Guarin.
For this time, I've tried something different, so I used a tool that was not made for animation, but I found it really helpful when it comes to expression. This tool is ArtRage.
I've used it already to paint the backgrounds of my other short film "Gatin A Bordo" (Kitty On Board), but this time I've used it to draw everything.
So what I did was, first I drew the pencil test to check the movement. Since ArtRage have no such thing as "frames" I drew a frame in a layer, then I created a new layer, and changed the alpha of the layer below, and so on. Then I exported it as .psd and then I imported it to Flash, as frames.
When I was happy with the result, I started to draw the final look.
Then I repeated the process again with the final drawings... exporting as .psd, importing to flash.
Finally, I exported every frame as .jpg, imported it on After Effects as footage, in order to have the best render settings.
Well, It was seems like a long technical process, but I'm happy with the result, and after all, it was only 10 seconds...
The quality is not good on youtube, but on mytoons it looks better.

Jimmy

2008-05-25T18:10:00.001-07:00

I´m like in a rut with George, so I began to draw jimmy, I guess its easier for me.

George Liquor Background

2008-05-25T18:05:00.000-07:00

This is my fisrt attempt with trees (I mean TREE).

George Liquor 2

2008-05-23T22:01:00.001-07:00

I was not satisfied with my aproach at George, so I decided to make more attempts. These ones are almost in chronological order, and show the evolution of my understanding on the construction.
I feel more comfortable now, since I´m more loose on my drawings.

George Liquor expressions

2008-05-05T08:36:00.000-07:00

Well, I focused mainly on the face, to understand the construction and the expressions.
Guess I'm improving, but gotta work harder.

George Liquor

2008-05-02T10:56:00.000-07:00

These are my George Liquor tests.

WARNING

2008-03-17T14:27:00.001-07:00

If you haven't seen my short film, then you can see it on good quality here, or read about why I made it and see it on a youtube-quality version here.

"Blue" Pencil Test

2008-03-17T09:18:00.000-07:00

I think that this phase of the project was the most demanding, exhaustive and hard, but also it was the one that I've learned the most from. From the use of the peg bar and punched paper, to taking decisions about if I should or shouldn't buy an animation disk; from learning to use the left hand to check and control the time and motion, to maintaining the proportions and look of the character.
Well, I think this post is gonna be a long one :)
I read in "The Animation Book" by Kit Laybourne the importance of having a production book or log, so that you can keep track of your advances, your doubts, and even catalyse your anger, discouragements, etc. I think it was some of the best advice this book offered, at least to me. So I started mine for this project. And this part of the process was the time I wrote the most. I think I'm gonna post later some of those notes, but right now I wanna point out that writing my goals in the book was really important. Sometimes I felt lost and when I read again the notes about my objectives with my project, it set me back on track.
One of the first notes (actually, the first one) was about the importance of being familiar with the characters, the movements, and so on. When I did the pencil tests of the 1st and 2nd scenes, I thought it was a waste of time, but at this point I realized how useful it was. I have to confess that I'm still not satisfied with the female cat. I can tell now that I never drew her enough before the final animation, so some parts, mostly the face, are kinda strange to me.
At this part of the project, I've suffered many depressions.
In order to meet the deadline, I made a formula to see how many frames I should draw per hour, and how many hours per day should I work. I even made a schedule detailing task to be completed daily or weekly. In the middle of it, I was delayed. That was stressful, but I tried to continue to make it happen.
There were days when I couldn't draw more than 5 or 6 frames cause they were really complex for me, and I felt like I had many empty spots in my animation knowledge and skills. But I tried hard and harder to get through, and I've learned one of my greatest lessons: the best way to learn how to do animation is by MAKING it. It sounds pretty simple, but it's not. I've read a lot, I've seen many cartoons, even frame by frame, I've read many blogs, etc. But it's only when you face yourself with the paper, with the problems, and when you feel that you have no idea how to do something that you start to learn for real. When you do your own project you face problems that no book or film has encountered, so you have to figure it out.
This can be really stressful. I read one of my notes that says : "I can't animate, I'm not good for this". It was a hard day and I almost gave up, I lost the will to keep working, and I wondered if it was a good idea to leave my job to do this, and that I would never be able to make a good animation. Boy, this stuff is really demanding and can mess with your head, hehe.
When I realized that I couldn't finish it for my birthday (13th October, just in case any of you wanna send me gifts hehe), I promised myself that at least I would finish the pencil animation by then.
The prior week was really hard, and my hand was so sore that at night it was numb and sometimes cold. I was kinda afraid, but I didn't pay much attention and I kept working. On my b-day I had like 50 or 80 frames to draw. I started to draw at 6 am (or I went to bed at 4 am, I really can't remember). In the morning, my girlfriend came to my place and ask me what I wanted to do. I answered "I have to finish this, this is my own gift". And I started to draw again. But then I realized that there was no use spending my own day doing this when instead I could go out knowing that I really was good at this, and that my goal was in some way accomplished. So I celebrated.

Storyboard 2

2008-03-15T02:08:00.001-07:00

After I almost gave up, and before I made any further animation, I knew I had to fix the story. This required me to make difficult but necessary decisions.
First, if I really wanted to finish the project then it should be shorter, cause doing animation on your own is very demanding, so I made it last one minute. It also was a "commercial" decision, cause this way I could send it to shortfims AND filminute festivals.
Then I got rid of the second passenger-cat. It was a tough decision cause I was kinda in love with him, but I realized that his part took precious seconds and was a distraction from the main story.
I wasn't really happy with the first ending - here the cat gets into the bathroom, and when he sits back, the other cat accidentally splashes his trousers, so the stewardess thinks he peed his trousers. If the fat cat was gone, the only way make it possible was that the cat asked for another drink and splashed himself, but if this happened, the stewardess was there and she knew that it was an accident... the story was getting longer and more complicated. So I decided that he never entered the bathroom.
As I started to make the animation, I kept taking out some situations that are shown in this version but never make it to the final version. Anyway, this was almost the final story.
When I saw this test or animatic, I was happy cause the story was clearer and hadn’t lost its humor.
The next step: making the production, I mean, the final animation... a hard task, indeed!

Scene 2 Pencil Test

2008-03-15T02:05:00.000-07:00

After the first test, I kept my idea of making these pencil/motion tests. This time I had a block that was a little bigger (thanks to Diana), but I kept drawing and not paying much attention to the details. At this point, I started to have doubts upon the direction of my film - I didn't know if it was the right one. I mean, I got a little discouraged when I saw both of those tests. I thought that the story of the short was missing and that it didn't made sense. So I showed it to No, Ángelo and María to see what they thought and, well, they had mixed opinions. All of them loved the movement, but Ángelo told me that I had already accomplished my mission: to prove that I could make pencil animation. María told me that I couldn’t complete the project only in pencil; "People will ask you, 'When are you gonna finish it?' trust me". And No said "Finish it, you have started, go ahead, fix it and finish it". Those were hard times for me, I felt discouraged, like a failure, and I almost gave up. However, I talked with Diana and it cleared my mind, so I made the decision to finish it.
María told me that I shouldn't keep making the pencil tests. Pencil tests can help if you have many people making the film, but as I was the only animator, director, messenger (hehe), etc., she said I should stop, as I would be drawing the film twice - once for the test and once for the actual animation on the actual paper size. I had my doubts, but her arguments made sense, so I started to make the final animation.

Scene 1 Pencil Test

2008-03-15T02:04:00.000-07:00

After making the story, I started to make the layout... but it turned out to be more sort of a pencil or motion test. I drew this on a pad block, because I wanted to focus on the general movement, not on details. This was my first scene, and even when I found that my idea wasn't clear, I was so happy to see my characters moving in such a fluid way.

Storyboard 1

2008-03-15T02:03:00.000-07:00

I believe that the creative process can be (and most of the time is) chaotic. I mean, sometimes a great idea appears the moment that you are paying the account at the supermarket, and you can, and should, use the receipt to write or draw what you just thought, because maybe if you wait until later, it will lose its magic, or worse, you could forget it.
Also, I find it easier to make doodles, so I can focus on the idea instead of worrying about the aesthetics, form, proportions, etc.
This story was made on the other side of a xeroxed Softimage XSI manual. That's funny cause it kinda made a stand about my current interest in animation. I drew the story of my first hand-drawn short film on the manual of a 3d application :)
As you can see, its very loose and hard to figure for anyone besides me, but that was the idea - to let it be as organic, fluid and spontaneous as possible, so that later I could make it more concrete. To let the right side of the brain do the magic and then the left one make the adjustments.

PREMIERE

2008-03-13T13:59:00.000-07:00

This was the INVITATION I've sent to my friends the day of the premiere.

Gatín A Bordo -Better Quality (4 megas)

2008-02-08T14:35:00.000-08:00

Gatín A Bordo (frames pt. 9)

2008-02-08T13:56:00.001-08:00

Gatín A Bordo (frames pt. 8)

2008-02-08T13:55:00.000-08:00

Gatín A Bordo (frames pt. 7)

2008-02-08T13:52:00.000-08:00

Gatín A Bordo (frames pt. 6)

2008-02-08T13:49:00.000-08:00

Gatín A Bordo (frames pt. 5)

2008-02-08T13:48:00.001-08:00

Gatín A Bordo (frames pt. 4)

2008-02-08T13:43:00.001-08:00

Gatín A Bordo (frames pt. 3)

2008-02-08T13:43:00.000-08:00

Gatín A Bordo (frames pt. 2)

2008-02-08T13:42:00.000-08:00

Gatín A Bordo (frames pt. 1)

2008-02-08T13:39:00.000-08:00

Gatín A Bordo (Kitty on board)

2008-02-07T15:18:00.000-08:00

This is an important day to me.

About a year ago I decided to start a new phase in my life, as I started to think about making an animated short film. I've been into animation since many years ago, but I felt I was in debt with myself.

About 2 years ago I started to think that the animation nowadays was missing something. I felt as if all the characters in the animation were played by the same "actors". Then, I read at draw.ca that animator John Kricfalusi was starting a blog. So I started reading it. One day, to my surprise, he wrote about the things I was thinking. Obviously he have more concepts and expeerience, but it was a bout the same. All animation character were acting the same. Stock animation, was his term. Then I began to read his bolg on daily basis.

At the same time, I was thinking about going to an Animation University (if such a thing exists, hehe) in U.S. or Europe, since here in COlombia we don't have anything like that. I was consider Animation Mentor, or Art Institune on-line, but they were expensive and more focused on 3d. So I didn't know what else to do. At that time, I remember that in the site of ASIFA (www.animationarchive.org) it was the Preston Blair book. So I decided to read it.

But then, suddenly, John K. started to make a FREE ONLINE COURSE!!! I couldn't believe my luck!!!

I started to make the exercises, and reading each and everyday his blog. I bought classic warner cartoons DVDs, and watch them over and over again, frame by frame (that was a great way to learn animation that I discover years ago).

Well, time passes and just as I started this post, about a year I decided to quit my job and begin making an animation short film.

I decided to make it old-school, I mean, hand-drawn, paper, pencil. My guide was all the tricks that John K. put on his sites, i make the layouts, the storys, etc.

Well, it took more time than I imagined. It took more things than I imagined, it took even tears, despair, thoughts of quitting, etc. But it also takes me to another level.

I've learned a lot, and I just wanna thanks to all the people that helped me, specially my friends Angelo Contreras, María Arteaga and No (my bro), also Carlos Moncada (who helped my with the coloring phase). The music is made by my talented friend Alejandro Guarín. And LAST BUT NOT LEAST, I wanna thank my girlfriend Diana Aristizábal, for her patience, her help, her encouraging words in time of despair, her help in the coloring phase, her advices and many many many things that would take a whole blog to tell.

Well, finally, this short film is dedicated to Jonh K, and it's my gift and my way to say THANKS A LOT for all the things that you do for animation around the world. I decided to finish it today as a gift for your Winsor McKay (on of my heroes) award. Thanks again, and I hope you like it.

NIKO

2007-06-15T09:59:00.000-07:00

Nicolás Ulloa es un joven talento Colombiano; reconocido Artista gráfico e Ilustrador .
Vale la pena mencionar sus ultimas ilustraciones de la exposición en la Galería Colombiana De Diseño, con la temática de Alicia En El País De Las Maravillas donde participan nuevos talentos en ilustración, al igual que diseñadores e ilustradores con gran trayectoria profesional haciendo homenaje a Lewis Carroll.
Me gusta su estilo particular y único, aunque me recuerda mucho al ilustrador estadounidense Edward Gorey, macabro y con líneas finas a tinta negra. Técnicamente resalto la soltura con la que ilustra, ya que no hace boceto e ilustra directamente en tinta, sin usar ningún medio digital.
Muchas veces la intervención digital embellece ilustraciones que no son realmente buenas, así que ver el trabajo de Nicolás tal cual sale de su mano nos dice mucho de su calidad.
De su serie me gustó particularmente su interpretación de los personajes clásicos de el libro de Carroll, destacando los animales con un giro de bestias surrealistas entre lo gótico y lo fantastico.

10

2006-08-09T19:30:00.000-07:00

Flash, uno de mis grandes amigos, cumple 10 años :)

Tarea de don Kricfalusi

2006-05-12T00:22:00.000-07:00

En su blog, John K ha decidido que si el público quiere seguir aprendiendo de sus lecciones, pues deben demostrar que están haciendo lo que se indica. Así que me puse manos a la obra e hice estas 3 hojitas. Lo más complicado para mí fue tratar de amoldarme a otro estilo, y el uso de las líneas centrales, que de cierta manera aborrezco.

tarea 1

tarea 2

tarea 3

Escena Clásica

2006-05-06T18:32:00.000-07:00

Encontré este tesoro en un blog dedicado a identificar los animadores de la época dorada de la animación. Esta escena fue realizada por Tex Avery y Preston Blair.

RETROCEDER NUNCA RENDIRSE JAMÁS

2006-05-04T23:45:00.000-07:00

Anoche al llegar a mi casa, tenía el sinsabor de no haber puesto en el blog nada positivo, así que puse un DVD de bugs bunny que me prestó xpectro y me puse a dibujar cuadro a cuadro una escena fascinante donde Bugs le pega a la gaita de un escocés. Seguí el consejo de Paula y dibujé en esfero. Me compré un kilométrico, que es el más barato y de "mala calidad", pero que funciona a las mil maravillas. Acá esta lo que dibuje. Es impresionante lo que uno aprende viendo esto, como dice mr Kricfalusi en su blog, que leo a diario.

desordenada hoja 1

desordenada hoja 2

desordenada hoja 3

Sentido del Tiempo

2006-05-03T17:42:00.000-07:00

Uno de los principios de animación es el sentido del tiempo (timing) y realmente es uno de los que más dificultad me cuestan en manejar. Es decir, no tengo sentido del tiempo y a veces pierdo muuuucho tiempo haciendo bobadas como chatear, navegar, en lugar de producir. Tengo que esforzarme por manejarlo mejor.

Diario

2006-05-02T22:19:00.000-07:00

Bueno, mi propósito ahora es mostrar algún progreso a diario sobre mis inquietudes de animación y en especial, sobre mi propio corto, que más adelante les iré contando. Por ahora les muestro tres intentos mios por hacer a un maradona corriendo, uno a lápiz, otro a lápiz, y finalmente otro a color.

Primeros Pasos

2006-04-22T16:36:00.000-07:00

Hola a todos. Después de haber pensado y pensado mucho sobre mis intereses en animación, sobre mis proyectos y demás, decidí poner manos al lápiz y al papel y empezar a mostrar mis intentos, mis aciertos y algunos (no todos jiji) mis fracasos.