Clever Title Forthcoming Never

just a flying snail

2012-01-05T22:51:00.000-08:00

that is all.

48 Hour film!

2011-11-19T00:13:00.000-08:00

This is my CalArts 48 hour film (meaning that we made it in 48 hours) that I completed with my friend Toniko.

The theme for the year was cactus! Our film was actually pretty tame this year, compared to many. The weekend after everybody finishes their 48 films, we show them in a rowdy, debaucherous screening. This year we even had a legit tumbleweed, in honor of our theme. 48 hour films is easily my favorite character animation tradition.

We both animated (Toniko did a bit more than I) and figured out the story, I comped everything and edited the music to work with the piece, and Toniko did sound design. It was the most brutal crunch time ever for those three days. I was referred to as a 'slavedriver' on perhaps more than one occasion.

It was technically a 72 (75 maybe) hour film, but we nearly finished it in the first 48. Stupid sound design.

Some Animating

2011-10-31T10:06:00.001-07:00

You perhaps have already seen this! An assignment for CG animation.

animatin'

2011-10-12T03:02:00.000-07:00

I arbitrarily promised myself I'd post something today, after neglecting to for one month and 13 days. So here's an unfinished gangster walk (of a gangster) that I did at the beginning of the year.

And then a little thing I did today.

There's a CG test coming soon too! I suck at finishing stuff.

Animation Practice

2011-08-29T20:54:00.000-07:00

(Character copyrighted by Valve, obviously)

I found some awesome Team Fortress 2 rigs earlier, and I just got around to making my first little test with one of them. The rigs are really nice, too - with all the IK/FK switcheroos we nerds could ever dream of. And we do. A lot.

____________________________________________________________________________________

I woke up one morning to find all my desktop icons were cleared out, replaced by one mysterious video. I don't quite to know to make of it, but it's pretty spooky.

Work

2011-08-29T20:45:00.000-07:00

So this summer I managed to land myself a gig doing this banner for an 'insurance lead finding' company's website.

I have no idea what that means or even what they do - but thankfully, I'm just an artist so I don't have to understand, 'real world' things such as these. All I have to do is dick around in After Effects until my eyes bleed. Ah, bliss.

Sidenote: This thing really needs shoowshy sound effects. Please make them at your discretion.

Tahoe

2011-08-29T00:44:00.000-07:00

I went to Tahoe earlier their summer. It was rather majestic!

I don't really know how to paint or anything, so this will have to do. Click to embiggen!

I can bear this no longer

2011-07-23T01:26:00.000-07:00

The other day, my friend told me that she wanted to help me color a little animation I made. Of a bear.

I was thrilled!

I think she did a great job.

Thanks, friend. The artistic flame burns within you!

Dorks

2011-07-08T00:34:00.000-07:00

This week over on our CalArts group blog, Doodlepoops, we did each other. Caricatures, that is.

Like I said there, my friend Louise is a huge, freakin', ginormous nerd who watches too much Battlestar Galactica.

As am I. Here's to nerds.

Because nobody else will understand this reference at all.

Knee Cap and the Boy Who Loved Him

2011-06-27T19:40:00.000-07:00

Crosspost from doodlepoops. Way too much fun

Cats in Space

2011-05-16T09:27:00.000-07:00

Alternate title: How to Animate Without Actually Doing Anything

So here's some crappy (but maybe-sorta-polished looking?) animation I did for Fran's class. It's was an exquisite corpse project, where we had to transition into the next student's piece of animation. For me, it was just an exercise in puppet tool induced laziness, and learning how After Effect can make something that's essentially terrible look slightly less terrible.

Take the first space fight scene: there are only has 3 drawings of the astronaut and 4 of the cat. I'm pretty sure there are only like 18 drawings in the whole film. That's exactly the type of thing you shouldn't be proud of, but I totally am. I feel dirty.

Sound effect credz to the Laura Berg.

Producers Show Intro!

2011-05-07T23:44:00.000-07:00

We got to animate a character jumping out of a box for the producers show opening. Here's my part, doctored up a little for the internet.

FILMS 'N MORE

2011-05-05T17:19:00.000-07:00

Hello everybody! You have probably seen it by now, but if not, please watch my fil-um:

Making this film (and any film in general) was an insanely brutal, soul devouring-but-hopefully-worthwhile endeavor.

At some future date (soon?) I intend to gather up all of the as much of my preproduction materials and try to map out the winding path this badboy took to completion. It's cool and all to see a final product, but I think it's much more fun if you get to see all the steps, experiments and failures it took to get to that point. I have a lot of those.

Now that I've finished, I get to do other stuff. I think my body is really sensitive to stimulants, so sometimes I like to drink a bunch of coffee, get all cracked out, and then go to figuredrawing. Today was one of those days. I took my laptop and did some digital painting, which is something I haven't really done before. Here's a selection:

(The numbers are the length of the pose in minutes)

Anyway. Those were fun. I'll have some other stuff to post real soon so don't touch that dial.

animating as a break from animation

2011-03-21T18:15:00.000-07:00

'Midterm' in our animation class today.

3 hours, a model sheet, 40 frames, two random words.

My words were naughty and cough.

Didn't quite finish, but I hope to polish it up soon. Animating nonfilm stuff is great

sidenote: holySHIT animating in Flash feels so good. I chose to animate my film traditionally this year, and while it's forcing me to be more strategic and generally to think more about animation before I do it, it's way harder, I'm way crappier at it, and and it's a hell of a lot less fun. Next year, digital baby

[insert cryptic film post here]

2011-03-09T22:10:00.000-08:00

To all of my dear friends wondering just where the HELL I've been cowardly hiding -

I appreciate the concern. But there has been no hiding - only the ceaseless, soul grinding march towards April 19th.

Films.

And maybe perhaps a little of the hiding.

NINJAPOCALYPSE

2011-02-24T23:41:00.000-08:00

Blog, it's been a little while. Sorry, I've been working on my film and stuff. You know.

Here's an unrelated little CG test to keep myself from going crazy. Motion blur sort of broke him when I rendered it, and at first I was like 'aww' - but then I was like 'aww YEAH.'

Sometimes when Maya breaks it makes things cooler.

Ninja Test in Maya from Michael Piazza on Vimeo.

OH GOD HOW DID I GET HERE?

2011-01-26T00:07:00.000-08:00

I am not good with computer.

(Best viewed in conjunction with this guy and this other guy too.)

CalArts gallery show. ~ 7 feet tall of weird.

SPACE

2011-01-24T12:47:00.000-08:00

Film layout?

Perhaps I have said too much.

Silhouette Insanity

2010-12-14T13:52:00.000-08:00

what is this i don't even

For those here from Facebook wondering what the hell this is, it's actually five sheets of black paper, taped together. Each spot of white I cut out with an x-acto knife. I photographed the whole thing on white paper and made it all pretty in photoshop. I still don't think I've completely recovered my sanity.

Walk of the Lonely Spaceman

2010-12-11T17:54:00.000-08:00

Spaceman Walk Test from Michael Piazza on Vimeo.

This was my latest assignment for 2D animation. We had to animate another walk cycle, this time with arms. I really hate inbetweening my animations, but it always amazes me how much more character and life those extra frames bring. It's the difference between something reading as an animation test, and something that seems to live and move under it's own volition. And that's what we all trive to make, right?

As a side note, my goal for the film this year is to hit this caliber of refined animation as much as possible. It's going to be made traditionally in pencil, but I'm going to plan everything out in Flash first, to hopefully speed up my process. It's totally a crutch, but I can live with that if it'll help me get my shit done!

Arthur the Lonely Spaceman

2010-12-06T22:22:00.000-08:00

My phone can take cool pictures (with a little help from my friend photoshop)!

This is a semi-finished design for the main character of my film. I will say no more.

He is not to be confused with Dr Spaceman.

Panda Walk Test

2010-12-04T02:41:00.000-08:00

Latest assignment for 2d animation, from an unposted character design for Maki's class.

Buddhist Panda walk test from Michael Piazza on Vimeo.

Animated on fours because I am lazy!

2D Animation Ridiculousness

2010-11-21T21:41:00.000-08:00

As always, this week I chose to spend a really really long time doing my 2D animation homework, at the expense of all my other classes (just kidding, any teachers that might be reading this).

Flour Sack Dos from Michael Piazza on Vimeo.

Traditional Animation + Photoshop + Flash + After Effects = My ever increasing need to sleep.

Long Technical Rant: Going into this assignment, I wanted to focus less on the animation (sorry Scott - most of it's on 3s and 4s) so I could spend my time figuring out the insanity that is After Effects. I animated everything traditionally (note to self, ColorErase doesn't scan in nicely), scanned it all in, batch processed it in Photoshop to get it on cels, and then timed it all out in After Effects. From there, I switched all my layers to 3D mode (:O), and separated out my ground planes to different depths. After that, I could move my 3D camera around, and the animation would show convincing parallax (things in front move more than things in back). The only downside is that shit takes FOREVER to render with a 3D camera. Creds for this go to the magical Tahnee Gehm.

I fear this program.

But less now.

At this point, I realized I had forgotten to animate the trailing ears and feet on the sack - so this also became a test of integrating flash and traditional animation. I don't think it looks particularly great, but at least I know how to do it now - and it's something that might appear in my film.

Overall, even though this all took a stupid amount of time (mostly because I'm so new to it), I feel just that much more prepared to do some crazy stuff when film season comes around second semester. Space Babe, watch out.

In Lieu of Posting ACTUAL Work-

2010-11-19T17:11:00.000-08:00

Here's a drawing I did of badass extraordinaire Jorge Gutierrez at his recent CalArts lecture. He totally dug it and signed it below. This made me happy.

DEATH TO ALL FLOURSACKS! [animation]

2010-11-13T00:31:00.000-08:00

Floursacks of Danger from Michael Piazza on Vimeo.

Latest assignment for Scott Wright's Animation class. I really went all out on this one, but I'm happy with how it turned out!

DANCING Birds!

2010-11-08T14:29:00.000-08:00

Today, we learned how to use the Puppet Tool in AfterEffects.

This is going to change my life.

(For those who don't know/are curious: the Puppet Tool lets you take an existing image you've made, add "joints", and animate them moving. My birds, for example, have joints in the hips, knees, necks, and body. Once you've drawn a cool picture, it's incredibly easy to rig it up with these joints and make a simple animation. This animation probably only took me about 20 minutes, as opposed to many hours if I hand drew it each frame, which is the standard practice.. )

CG balls, so bouncy.

2010-11-01T11:19:00.000-07:00

For CG Animation

Yeah, so it's not the most interesting thing ever - but I have a huge backlog of art to post! Soon soon soon.

In the meantime, here's my desktop background at school:

That way, I always stay productive! It's also my background in Maya:

LOOK AT ALL THESE FREAKIN' BIRDS!

2010-10-25T11:27:00.000-07:00

For Character Design.

Usually I turn in just 3 or 4 drawings a week for class; this week I'm turning in 33.

Sexy Babes and the Villains They Love

2010-10-18T00:09:00.000-07:00

Colored in photoshop just for kicks!

"YOUUUUU ARE MINEE"

She stole my weekend. And my heart.

Mice 'n Shit

2010-10-06T20:47:00.000-07:00

These were for Week 2 of Character Design.

Next up, balls!

For CG Animation.

My New Life at CalArts

2010-10-04T23:20:00.000-07:00

I've been here almost an entire month and all I've done is draw on a fucking banana with some stupid kid.

Just kidding. We work like crazy here.

Here's my most recent Character Design assignment. Old folks and young folks:
Preferred method of locomotion.

Not today, my sweet one.

Anything to make you smile!

I work and live in a small enclosure. I share it with a large animal named Charley.

I mostly draw apples (because I am hungry always).

Tons more stuff coming once I scan!

Four and a Half Days

2010-09-01T01:36:00.000-07:00

An epic stop motion adventure of sex, love, and Kung Fu treachery. Made in four and a half days. Out of boredom.

Four and a Half Days from Michael Piazza on Vimeo.

Man, this turned into an intense way to spend my last week of summer. So much for getting out and seeing (more than one of) my friends!

So close!

2010-08-28T01:21:00.000-07:00

To something awesome. Something animated!

Stay Tuned.

Animation Practice

2010-08-19T14:04:00.000-07:00

For my work, I got to animate a short scene of a car blowing up. I spent a disproportional amount of time on it.

NYC + DC Moleskine

2010-08-14T14:58:00.000-07:00

Just got back from an awesome two week trip to the east coast. It's hot as shit over there, but still quite enjoyable (especially NYC, where I hadn't been before).

Airporters @ SFO- The beginning of my journey!

People in NYC look different from anywhere I've ever been. Everybody there is a caricature, I swear. You get a sense that everybody is 'somebody' (even the thuggier residents).

Faces on the metro. One man was selling his book of anthologized Facebook updates, entitled "Don't Beat Your Children or They'll End Up Like Me."

What.

Mawfuckah had staples in his head. 'Nuff said.

I saw a sleeping Jabba The Hutt on the train.

Unfinished sketch of the view from our apt in east village.

Security guard and hip girl chilling @ Museum of Natural History.

I love drawing street artists. Found this guy in Times Square.

I actually paid this fellow $5 to draw my portrait, because his drawings looked decent (turned out they weren't). He was mightily confused when I whipped out my pencil and started drawing him back!

Adorable little kid feeding pigeons in some random park.

It was sweet and sad actually. Sweet because it was such an innocent scene, sad because I'm pretty sure those pigeons were his only friends.

I wish I had spent more time trying to capture his expressions of terror and wonder as small children chased his flock of pigeons around the park.

Even the dirtiest of hobos wear hip, sexy red shoes in NYC.

One of said pigeon-chasers.

It's true what they say about people from New Jersey.

In D.C. there was less to draw. Our tour of the monuments and whatnot was pretty fast, and I didn't have time to really plop down and draw them. So instead I regressed to just drawing random people from my head.

My relatives had an adorable little dog named Jessie. It would play fetch all over the house, and you'd have to try to wrestle 'boney' out of her mouth by shaking her back and forth. I'm pretty sure I gave this poor dog brain damage.

Calm down girl in red, I wasn't checking you out. I was just drawing your expressive mug. BWI airport.

In general, I felt much safer drawing strangers on the East coast. As in, I would occasionally receive puzzled or dirty looks, but I rarely got the 'YOU ARE ABOUT TO BE STABBED' eyes that are seen in Oakland so often.

Hope you guys enjoyed looking!

3 WEEKS TILL CALARTS :OOO

Studies 'O Color

2010-07-28T01:11:00.000-07:00

I've set a goal for myself to do a color study every day. I try not to get bogged down in detail, and fail consistently, but I'm failing less and less!

In other news, I'm off to the east coast in two days - so to my eleven (11!) followers, I'm afraid you guys will just have to find some other way to spend your time besides constantly refreshing my blog every five seconds. I know, I know. It will be rough for both of us.

[/sarcasm]

And finally, I've been busting my ass of animating a short film for this crazy Bio-Med company that I'm working for this summer. I can't show anything in it's entirety yet, but check some concept art:

That's right. Exploding cars.

I'm so gonna get fired.

Animashuns

2010-07-25T20:26:00.000-07:00

All part of a larger but still very small project- eventually, these will be composited in After Effects with some liveaction footage for hopefully humorous result. Oh and yeah, that sound was recorded by yours truly. Audacity is sweet!

GET ME OOOOUT OF HERE

2010-07-22T20:07:00.000-07:00

I had the privilege of going on a tour at Pixar this morning. As always, the place is a paradise. It's especially striking compared to Dreamworks/PDI, which I was lucky enough to see last week - Pixar is sunny and the faces are cheery, while Dreamworks was a bit darker, more corporate, and everybody looked like they were cold.

While the art at both studios was obviously amazing, I couldn't help but gawk at the Toy Story 3 color keys by Daisuke Tsutsumi.

The cafeteria at Dreamworks beats Pixar's handily. Seriously - my tour was only like 20 minutes, and I spent a good hour eating the cafeteria, and I have no regrets.

All in all, both looked like ridiculously fun places to work. Although, SURPRISE CONCLUSION: Pixar is totally awesome.

Figuredrawings + Photoshoop

2010-07-05T20:16:00.000-07:00

A week ago I was sitting around and I had this crazy thought:
"OH MY GOD I HAVEN'T BEEN TO FIGUREDRAWING IN SEVEN MONTHS"
So last week, I went! They have awesome cats there. Next time I go, I'm going to pay my twelve bucks just to draw those damn cats.

Astronauts and Moon-Bitches: The Stencil

2010-06-24T21:07:00.000-07:00

So yesterday I was with my friend, and he's like:

"LET'S GO TAGGING!"

So I said okay, and plopped down in his room and spent the next four or so hours making this stencil. You can't really tell from the picture, but it's quite large; that's six sheets of printer page taped together. Yeah, they're playing vollyball. By the time it was ready to go out, neither of us really wanted to go.

But we did. Pictures of shitty results coming soon!

Meet The Hipster

2010-06-16T18:45:00.000-07:00

Team Fortress 2 Class Design: Hipster

Presented here is the hipster class. Emblazoned on his chest is the logo of the American Spirit cigarette, his only lasting ally. His only direct attacks are second hand smoke and cough, which damage those in his vicinity throughout the course of the match. Due to his firm belief in the virtues of apathy, he has no physical attacks.

He can, however, leave packs of cigarettes around the map. If picked up by an opposing team mate, the teammate has a chance of losing the will to fight and becoming a hipster himself. With this method, an entire game may end up consisting of only Hipsters. In this case, everybody loses and no points are awarded.

He can escape from danger on his fixed gear bicycle, which also obstructs the flow of traffic on the map. In this way, the Hipster is able to turn the tide of battle, if only indirectly.

Team Fortress 2 Design

2010-06-10T21:52:00.000-07:00

It's the Scout's Sister. She's spastic and loud, like one of those tiny dogs that barks all the time, and she has so many freckles that they've converged into one giant Monster-Freckle that you can't even see.

The Wild Wild West of Gay Fanny-Packing Cowboys

2010-06-03T01:05:00.000-07:00

Two versions of this guy. I think I like the simpler one more. The foreground is less distracting from the central point of the image to me.

Caveman Redux

2010-05-30T15:19:00.000-07:00

BP should hire this family

2010-05-25T22:09:00.000-07:00

getting back to the swing of things

2010-05-25T21:59:00.001-07:00

Dialog Test!

2010-04-18T22:30:00.001-07:00

Stupid Vimeo isn't converting my files properly, so here's the SWF:

http://megaswf.com/view/d9e43babe1e6d0bc29b8bad1b1d7e639.html

It ended up exactly 2 seconds! Weird.
If anybody is interested, here's the rough animation I did for this (with the rest of the dialog):

http://megaswf.com/view/3d7651f7f3270bd60af233ad393fa571.html

Can anybody guess where my sound clip is from?

First 3D :O

2010-04-03T19:10:00.000-07:00

http://www.vimeo.com/10661790

BAM. Note: I didn't model/rig the character, I only animated him. Maya is a weird combination of so much easier and impossibly frustrating.

Chatroulette Drawin!

2010-03-18T23:57:00.001-07:00

I met this awesome Mexican dude on Chatroulette and drew him while he held up his dog. Which coincidentally was also awesome.

Old Man Timberwoller: The Film

2010-01-03T23:20:00.001-08:00

Here's a still from the film I've been working on (click it, it looks way cooler unshrunk)! I'm like about 7 months in, and the end is nowhere in sight. Sigh

moar

2009-12-23T23:18:00.001-08:00

Badass luchador-ing babe motherfucker, motherfucker.

METEORGATE!

2009-12-11T17:39:00.000-08:00

Mockery of this whole 'climategate' fiasco, for the school paper.

Self Portraits!

2009-12-07T16:06:00.000-08:00

Figuredrawings!

2009-11-30T21:55:00.001-08:00

the time draws nigh!

Some shtuff

2009-09-30T18:15:00.001-07:00

I made a whole bunch of designs for my school lately because they're all spirit whores and they paaaid me.

For our class:
Note that it says 2010 and #1 in an incredibly witty design that looks NOTHING like it has a penis for a nose, despite what Jonathan Chia may say.

And I have no idea why our 'slogan' is "Domination".

And then we have this little guy here, my school wanted a design for some parent even. Yeah, my school is actually called College Prep.

Some sophomores comissioned me to make shirts for their class at our 'spirit ralley', which I'm pretty sure constitutes grand treason and a betrayal against my fellow classmates. But hey, I don't care!
These were fun because due to money constraints, they told me I could only use two colors + yellow background. I figured since it was 2012, I'd go all disaster theme. Sorta reminds me of Killbill.
And I have metric butttons of figuredrawings and sketchbook wankery to upload, but that's not gonna happen for a while.

oh yeah and i drew some MMA dudes a while ago:

Anderson Silva and GSP, in case anybody else enjoys mindlessly wasting time with this stuff.

this instead of homework

2008-10-17T22:42:00.000-07:00

made this design for my class sweatpants (which I won't buy, because I don't wear sweatpants).

start wearing purple

2008-10-14T19:04:00.001-07:00

wait, what?

2008-09-10T18:23:00.001-07:00

Zoom in to see the horror. Anybody care to explain?

gangstar

2008-09-09T20:24:00.000-07:00

i'm such a boy.

animashun time

2008-09-07T23:36:00.000-07:00

how do you animate an alien walking on his two nasty tentacles?

http://megaswf.com/view/5325bcd224dc3bb7cb5e419bc3affd9d.html

with great challenge.

I'd be just like

2008-09-04T19:16:00.000-07:00

Is this that hairdo from streetfighter or WHAT?

art dump

2008-09-04T17:15:00.001-07:00

god only knows how i'm supposed to format this.

Preston Tucker. Brandon Hargrave.
OG Gangsters.

so this is internet

2008-09-03T21:24:00.000-07:00

hi all.
i made an animation: http://megaswf.com/view/a263e3b60e9283a8113d0694a6232461.html

you can tell i'm very cool because i don't use proper capitalization

i need to get my scanner up and running!

craptastical opencanvas quickie here:

hi guys

2008-09-03T21:23:00.001-07:00