The Incredible Exploratory Art Of Jin Kim For Moana
On each animated feature, whether computer animated or hand drawn, Disney has skilled artists explore the character designs and the expressions of the characters.
Jin Kim, the artist who made the drawings featured here, has been the go to guy at Disney for some time. Kim originally worked under Glen Keane when he first came to Disney. As Keane went on to work on other things at Disney, and eventually left, Kim took over most of the responsibility of character exploration through drawing.
Kim did many drawings for Frozen, Wreck-It Ralph, and Tangled. Other artists at Disney will do 2D animation tests so that the CG animators have something to visualize when they start animating. Tests of movement, expressions, character design, and different angles of the characters are all tested through drawings since it takes a lot less time to test a character in drawings before he is modeled and animated in CG.
That’s where artists like Jin Kim come in, who is one of a team of artists who help “put together the movie,” before they put together the movie.
Check out much more staggeringly inspirational art from Jin Kim on his blog.
Loving Vincent Oil Painting Animation Trailer
Loving Vincent boasts a film about Van Gogh’s life, featuring animation in the art style he inspired. The hype for this film is loudly touting the impressive fact that Loving Vincent features animation in the form of 12 oil paintings per second.
This is no small feat, considering the feature length, and more than 100 painters involved in the production. I don’t know that a project of this scale and style has ever been taken on before.
The film is still in production by BreakThru Films and Trademark Films in Gdansk, Poland, but also accepts work from volunteers on their website! Yes, you can be involved in the making of Loving Vincent yourself.
The film has been in production for a while now, but there is no proposed landing date. We’ll have to hold on tight to the edges of our collective seats for this one.
Victoria Ying and Mike Yamada discuss art and growing in the craft. Some inspiring stuff here as well as good advice. Love their work too.
Victoria Ying is a visual development artist at Disney and Mike Yamada is a production designer at Disney. Their incite on working professionally and collaborating on their art is motivating.
Check out more on their blog.
If You’re Not Following @Sketch_Dailies You’re Missing Out
Isaac Orloff, “Black Beard”
Created by Isaac Orloff, who is himself a great artist, Sketch_Dailies is a twitter account designed to inspire artists with daily challenges. Each day at 11:00AM PST, a new challenge is posted. Thousands of artists try their hand at the challenges, and when they @reply to Sketch_Dailies and hashtag the name of the challenge, their pieces can be retweeted by Sketch_Dailies.
Lissy Marlin, @LazyFish11 on twitter; “Bonnie and Clyde”
The twitter account is generating quite the following, promoting community among artists and fans of art alike. The amount of work, and the quality is staggering. It’s amazing to see what a hub of art this has created on the internet, and with the ability of quick communication through twitter, it’s really egging artists on to grow as individuals, and also to inspire each other.
Pernille Ørum, @pernilleoe on twitter; “Jessica Rabbit”
This week is “Outlaw Week” on Sketch_Dailies. You can check out the stellar art pieces already contributed by going to the account, and there’s still time to participate in this week’s challenges! Many artists contribute a day or two late and still get a retweet by Sketch_Dailies, so don’t be shy. And for those of you who just love inspiring, colorful, and textured art, be sure to take a look!
Matthew Beakes, @MatthewBeakes on twitter; “Black Beard”
I myself am very inspired by the work on Sketch_Dailies and plan to participate soon, if not sometime this week!
Amanda MacFarlane, @lifeanimated on twitter; “Maleficent”
I’m really looking forward to seeing more and becoming involved! I’ll be watching Sketch_Dailies…daily.
If You Blinked, You Missed It! Lovely: Girls of Animation, an exciting new project from a group of six talented female artists of animation, went up for funding on Kickstarter Thursday, and reached its goal in about 2 hours.
The artists are Claire Keane, Lorelay Bove, Victoria Ying, Helen Mingjue Chen, Brittney Lee, and Lisa Keene. They are some of the greatest visual development artists from feature animation, and their art combined into one book makes for a remarkable collaboration and collector’s item. I personally would love to have this book. I’m ecstatic it received its funding, and so quickly! But I’m sad I didn’t get to contribute. I’ll have to hope I get a copy when the book is published!
-Chris
The Disney Animation Research Library holds all of Disney’s old artwork and drawings. It’s affectionately called “the morgue” by the people at Disney. It’s incredibly impressive and inspiring. There’s no place like it at any other company.
The artists, animators, and writers, often go down to “the morgue” for research and inspiration when working on new projects, or trying to come up with new ones.
I’d love to go there someday.
-Chris
Brave
With a lot of 3D computer animated films it is very helpful to the modelers/animators to have a 3D sculpted figure of what they are modeling. Walt Disney Animation Studios has employed traditional 3D artists for years, and for nearly every animated film they had 3D models made of the characters for the animators to be able to look at them from all angles.
Today Pixar models a lot of their characters as well. Jerome Ranft has been employed by Pixar since 1997 and has been integral to the character design process with the 3D models he sculpts by hand. He explains the process in this featurette on Pixar’s website.
-Chris
(via marcanimation)