Lauren Kvalheim's Blog

Mascara lady

2012-02-14T01:53:00.001-08:00

Saw some extreme make-up application going on while walking back from tonight's workshop.

Fetch, dragon-style

2012-02-12T23:26:00.001-08:00

Felt like a doodle before switching to 3d for the night.

A small section from Photo Ops

2012-01-09T09:19:00.000-08:00

This is a small section from an end credit sequence Margot Cannon and I made for a 72 hour film festival film called 'Photo Ops' that was directed by Akin Bilgic and Guillermo Martinez a few months ago. When the entire film goes online, I'll be sure to post the link.

We primarily used Aftereffects for the compositing and animation as well as Illustrator to create some of the assets. Margot was fantastic to work with and super patient as I had a crash course in this type of use of AfterEffects.

Birthday postcards continued.

2012-01-09T08:59:00.001-08:00

This was for mi madre. I have to admit, even though the USPS is bankrupt and trying to figure itself out, I love our mailing system. We can pay less than 50 cents to have something sent across the country..... and less than $2 to have something sent around the world. That's just amazing to me.

The Noodles Challenge

2011-12-17T18:04:00.000-08:00

The Noodle Challenge is to take a theme and make
"...a piece of art that is done is 3 minutes or less! Like, how long it would
take you to cook a package of ramen noodles..."

Everyone is welcome to participate! and a special thank you to Fernando for setting this up.

The first theme was: What if you were one of Santa's elves?

Congratulations to the final review grads!

2011-12-14T12:13:00.000-08:00

This has been a pretty crazy semester with many adrenaline inducing hugs and intense last minute renders. Worth every heart-pounding minute of it.

Congrats to Eivind Andvig, Keeley Nolan, Reem Ali-Adeeb, Lynisha Perkins, Lysandra Silber and Amrinder Singh Jassar to name a few! Good luck in the coming months and can't wait to have an event to show the finished, polished works.

Below is a poster I helped Amrinder make for his film 'Sidekick'.

A couple birthday postcards

2011-11-21T19:27:00.001-08:00

Roughly colored gestures

2011-11-08T21:08:00.001-08:00

Sat in a figure drawing workshop. Tossed some color in, but am not sure how I feel about them. It was a nice mental break but now I need to get back to work on my thesis.

72 Hour National Film Challenge

2011-10-26T14:12:00.001-07:00

This weekend I had the pleasure of working with a great crew of people on an entry for the 72 Hour National Film Challenge.

My job on this project was to create an animated end-credit sequence. I completely lucked out and got to work and learn from an amazing artist named Margot Cannon.

It was a great experience with great people and I can't wait to do it again.
This is just a screen grab from our sequence and I'll post a link when the official film goes online.

Day 4 pose

2011-10-15T21:02:00.000-07:00

Tried a more illustrated pose today. I was strongly inspired by my friend, and amazing artist, Emily Barrera for the coloring and style. Granted, I could never really pull off her style. Check out her work here: http://www.emilybarrera.com/blog/

Day 3 pose

2011-10-14T14:51:00.001-07:00

Am thinking about trying this guy out with speed-walking. Looking at speed walkers, I had trouble telling an iconographic key frame because it seems the bizarre look comes from the action in motion. Mostly from the foot that comes down has no bend in the knee, popping the hip and curving the spine really fast. Anyway, this is Day 3.

Jubilant Van Helsing

2011-10-10T21:57:00.000-07:00

This is my first submission for Austin Madison's Chade Challenge. The theme was 'Jubilant Van Helsing'. You can check out his site here: http://munchanka.blogspot.com/

Day 2 pose

2011-10-10T15:44:00.000-07:00

Routines are tough. I forgot to do a pose yesterday so there are two characters in this one. Please let me know if you see any thing that can help me make the poses stronger.

Day 1 pose

2011-10-08T20:25:00.000-07:00

My roommate, Keeley, started doing a pose a day several days ago.
Check out her stuff here: http://keeleynolan.blogspot.com/

Inspired me to try as well. I'm not really sure how to do the lighting and whatnot, but I figure that's what learning is for. Here is Day 1. I'd love feedback on things that aren't working or suggestions on how to make the pose stronger.

A little nature study

2011-08-25T01:37:00.000-07:00

Literally a few things I tossed onto my scanner because photos just weren't capturing their awesomeness. So cool!

Summer 2011 Character Animation Reel

2011-08-09T02:01:00.000-07:00

Heading to Siggraph!

2011-08-04T14:20:00.000-07:00

In the next couple days I'll be heading to Vancouver for Siggraph 2011. I'm really excited and grateful to be able to help out as a student volunteer this year and can't wait to get started. For anyone that happens to be there or in the area, let me know, I'd love to meet up.
~love and cheers~ Lauren

Bits from the spring

2011-08-04T14:10:00.000-07:00

The first animation is a (work in progress) character study I started in the spring, back when the main character for my short film, Sleepless, was a bit younger. The way the character enters a nondescript scene, interacts with a nondescript object, and exits forces you to make decisions about the character's personality.

The second animation is a similar idea but in reverse. How do you give a nondescript character personality through movement and a simple environment.

Seedlings

2011-07-25T04:45:00.000-07:00

Plants are incredible. There's so much satisfaction seeing a seed sprout into something gorgeous. I have the same feelings when it comes to productions. Though certainly not a green thumb, but (like learning animation) if you're persistent enough it's inevitable you'll figure some things out.

A couple years ago my sister sent me some sunflower seeds and this year I finally got the gumption to plant them. After planting the sprouts outside, I got a first hand education about the hazards of slugs. When I get a chance, I'll sketch a visual depiction of what I deem to be the "Slug Army Invasion of the Sunflower Babes". The elevator pitch of this epic slaughter boils down to: In the 24 hours I planted the sprouts outside, 50% got mauled, stampeded, and goo'd to oblivion... O_o

In the mean time, below is a section from the Jade Cocoon intro that I feel embodies the spirit of the battle.

So yea, slugs and I don't get along anymore.... jerks.

Anywho, I'm happy to say the survivors have finally bloomed. I've also begun learning about the WIDE range of bugs that urban gardens seems to have as well as counter measures. Thanks to Mum for the advice in that arena.

Also, I've never been much of a cactus person, but I planted some cactus seeds to see what would happen. Thankfully they sprouted and I haven't killed them yet, so we'll just have to wait and see what happens. These guys are pretty tiny, but I thinks it's adorable to see their spines coming in.

Sleepless color studies #1

2011-07-24T03:20:00.000-07:00

Took my first pass at trying out some color schemes for the short film I'm working on called 'Sleepless'. Keeley Nolan jumpstarted me thinking about color with many color and tonal thumbnails as inspiration and Joao Ribeiro has given wonderful feedback and suggestions.

In the next pass I'm going to try combining the aspects of the first and fourth schemes. :) Since I've spent very little time with color, it's pretty interesting trying things out.

2011-04-21T13:02:00.000-07:00

A while back I was playing with an idea about a couple shisa dogs and started this maquette. Unfortunately the characters didn't relate to any thesis, collaborative, or class work so the idea has been shelved. I never fully finished this maquette, but baked him anyway.

I have a box of ideas where I put the concepts that need to be worked on so I'm sure the shisa pair will come back one day.

Tiny Tackle

2011-04-12T09:50:00.000-07:00

Thank you to everyone for the feedback throughout the process on this one.

A special thank you to Amrinder who was kind enough to texture, light, and composite this shot. He is an absolute joy to work with.

Check out his work at http://www.frameanimator.com/

Puddle Jumping

2011-03-27T03:13:00.001-07:00

Golashes 2.0 (After a bunch of tweaks and some great feedback)

Golashes (the original)

Keeley Nolan is amazing and she made golashes for my puddle jumper! ^___^

I love her work which can be found on her blog: HERE.

Cleaned-up gestures

2011-03-14T03:42:00.000-07:00

These are a few gestures drawings that I cleaned up and tried to push the poses a little more on. Tried to get the story and/or emotion to read a little better.

From doing this I learned that it's incredibly difficult to maintain the energy of the initial drawing. Something to definitely look out for while in the clean-up phase.

Character drawing from Fall

2011-03-04T09:05:00.001-08:00

This character I developed in a class last semester. She was inspired by my wonderfully tenacious grandmother. The type of person that may be a little difficult to be around at times, yet there's lots of love all the same.From class as well, this is Hugo the pigeon. Tried to draw him in three different styles.

The first was Dr. Suess, the second was supposed to be something heroic like a comic book character (with mixed results), and the third was supposed to feel like a character from Secret of Kells.

Animation for fun's sake

2011-03-04T03:02:00.000-08:00

Took a little time tonight and simply animated the first thing that came to mind with no intention of cleaning-up or further use.

In this scenario, it happened to be a goldfish. ^__^

2011 Demo Reel

2011-02-28T04:23:00.000-08:00

The Shot Breakdown can be found HERE

I'm hoping to be able to update this in about a week. Stay tuned!

First rough maquette of Layla

2010-12-18T00:30:00.000-08:00

For my character design class we needed to make a maquette. The instructor was nice enough to let me take a first stab at my main character Layla. Given the time limitations, she came out ok albeit insanely rough, but I'd like to make another attempt at a maquette of her over the break between semesters. Especially put more thought and work into the face as well as clean and tidy-up the legs. The armature underneath the sculpy (bake-able clay).... taken with my cell phone at a ridiculous hour in the morning.

Chill in the lab...

2010-12-17T12:57:00.000-08:00

A sweet find by Daria 'the Tenacious!'
Found here: click...

2010-12-08T15:38:00.000-08:00

Some quick gesture drawings of Layla, one of my thesis characters. Exploring the personality a bit at the moment.

Pose Test -> Animation

2010-12-05T20:56:00.001-08:00

In my character design class, our instructor has asked the figure model to do 2-3 minutes poses in a sequence to use as reference and then for us to animate later on. Below is one of the tests I roughed out and added a bit of character to. Very different approach, but useful and interesting none the less.

2010-12-02T18:47:00.000-08:00

Today I've been working on some of the character design for my long-lost thesis. Below is just a side shot of the main character, Layla, as of now standing straight up and down. Boring, but helpful for when I need to measure the wire when I begin the maquette.

Shooting reference

2010-12-01T17:57:00.000-08:00

Slightly altered this comic strip from XKCD to fit animators' needs.
original strip found at: http://xkcd.com/303/

CTN Animation Expo 2010

2010-11-22T22:34:00.001-08:00

Got back from CTN Animation Expo 2010 early Monday morning/Sunday night.
Overall, another fantastic experience. In summary CTN to animation is what Siggraph is to computer graphics.

So... a concentrated conference all about animation (be it traditional, cg, visual development, etc...) with an emphasis on communication, networking, and recruiting.

All good things. Was able to ask loads of questions and got a lot of in-depth feedback about animation in general as well as nuances within the production pipeline such as suggestions for keeping teams motivated, what would be involved in a chalk-talk for a CG character production, suggestions on how to avoid knee pops in walks... *sigh* it was refreshing in an intense kinda way.

Sherrie Sinclair and students from the AAU Animation club organized two shuttle buses to drive down to Burbank and back for a very reasonable price. Below is a snap shot of several of the bus brethren the morning we arrived after a much needed Denny's breakfast run.

Overall, incredibly interesting, a bit overwhelming, yet I can't seem to get enough. Can't wait until next year!

Oakland Zoo-ness!

2010-11-18T17:49:00.000-08:00

Yay, the trip to the moving targets! *cough* ehem, the Oakland Zoo...
There were camels, a petting zoo, and monkeys galore! A hummingbird even sat to pose for a bit. ^__^

Panel sketches

2010-11-18T17:45:00.000-08:00

While a panel was going on, a class I was in sketched the speakers, the translators, the students with questions.... just about anyone we could.

Trip to the Academy of Sciences

2010-11-18T17:35:00.001-08:00

So it appears I'll be posting a slew of drawings before I post the new animations... On a happy note, we've been going on field trips in character design class. This post is about the Academy of Sciences here in SF. There's an aquarium in the basement with live critters, but most of the mammals such as giraffes are stuffed. The more lively moving target animals are another field trip where we go to the Oakland zoo.

Playing video off an image plane in Maya

2010-11-02T10:44:00.000-07:00

Earlier this summer I posted this brief tutorial for a production blog that I've been helping out with lately. Only people with access to the project could see it, so a friend asked if I'd put it onto my site to make it easy to find for others to reference. Good luck with the animation.

I know there must be hundred ways to do the same thing in Maya, but figured I'd post how I make a video the background to my camera to use as reference. In this case, I use the image plane of the camera. If you guys do it another way, please tell me or post it. Yay for options!

First off, the video I want to use has already been exported from AfterEffects or some such program as individual frames saved in sequence as either jpegs or tiffs. I used the naming convention: phantomJuggler.[###].jpg
Then in Maya, I select which ever camera I'm planning on using as my final camera. In the Attributes Editor, select the 'cameraShape' tab.
Down the list of different options (such as 'mental ray', 'Depth of Field', 'Output Settings', etc...) expand the 'Environment' option.
In 'Environment' click the Image Plane button that says 'Create'

Once the Image Plane has been created for the camera, then select the 'imagePlane1' tab back up at the top.To tell the image plane what video to play, within 'Image Plane Attributes' locate the 'Image name' attribute then select the folder icon and locate the first frame of your video sequence. Make sure the 'Use Image Sequence' option is checked.

That about wraps it up. Hope I didn't leave anything out. If anyone knows of other ways to view reference video while animating, please post. ~cheers~ L

2010-10-18T00:05:00.001-07:00

In case you were wondering what shinanigans I've been up to, this weekend we had a table under the name Leftovers Lounge at the Alternative Press Expo here in San Francisco. There we sold copies of, surprise, Leftovers Lounge as well as work by Guillermo Martinez, Keeley Nolan, Eivind Andvig, Emily Barrera and Adam Blaine Dix. Not much better than spending a weekend with fantastic friends in the middle of the controlled chaos of artists across a spectrum of interests. Hopefully my next post will be rather animation specific.

Figure drawing stack...

2010-10-17T23:33:00.001-07:00

Totally haven't been posting a figure drawing a week, so here's a whole stack to make up for it. :)

2010-09-16T09:49:00.001-07:00

Had my first character design class (which is mostly figure drawing and theory at the moment, glorious). I'm going to try to post at least one figure drawing per week because it would be nice to see if they get better... As well as a reminder to make it to the additional figure drawing workshops.

I love the instructor's feedback to the figure drawing. She really pushes the ideas and focus of Walt Stanchfield's approach about character driven gestures and world development. In recent experiences, the primary focus was on anatomy (which I still need loads of work on, yay workshops!) so looking at the figure more as a springboard for life and emotion is incredibly refreshing.

My shots from Turkeynauts

2010-07-27T08:22:00.000-07:00

AAU 2009 Fall Animation Festival intro, Collaborative

Flight of the Turkeynauts

Fall Animation Festival Shot Breakdown from Lauren Kvalheim on Vimeo.

2010-07-12T09:30:00.000-07:00

While emailing a friend about moving another project forward, a family of wild turkeys (including several large chicks) rolled up our yard. ^___^
Turkeys!!!! After 'Flight of the Turkeynauts' I'll never be able to look at those birds the same way again.

Butterflies in the sky, I can fly twice as high....

2010-07-11T23:10:00.000-07:00

This is a work in progress shot from a group project that gave me the go-ahead to post onto my blog.

The thing to keep in mind is that in the final, paper will fold as it swoops into the scene and become an origami butterfly. The animation officially starts just as the paper finishes it's transformation. (thus the lack of flapping at the beginning)

Can't wait to see this project when everything comes together.

Butterfly animation onto live action plates from Lauren Kvalheim on Vimeo.

2010-07-03T22:24:00.000-07:00

These are a couple bronze fish I made for me mum back in undergrad during the same class I did the steel wolf in. Now in Maine, I think this is the first time I've actually taken any legit pictures.
If you ever want an interesting gesture drawing exercise, try drawing fish with large fins. They never stop moving and swim on x, y, & z axis.
Sculpting into any form of metal is fantastic. Everyone should try it. The durability is refreshing. :)

Witch design

2010-05-20T22:18:00.000-07:00

Witch in search of romance designs... Some design inspirations were: Triplets of Bellville, The Lady and the Reaper, as well as some aspects of the Fates from Hercules and the witch from Bugs Bunny.

Call me old-fashioned.... w.i.p.

2010-05-20T11:04:00.000-07:00

This is the beginning of a lip-synch for my traditional animation class. She still needs a lot of work, but it's been a lot of fun so far.

2010-04-11T03:21:00.001-07:00

Figured I'd check in. Things around here have been incredibly busy in the best possible ways. The release of Leftovers Lounge at WonderCon went really well this past weekend and it looks like we'll be able to do an international print-run soon. Thank you to everyone: friends, family, directors of departments, friends who worked on this project...

It has been a fantastic, and educational, experience. *deep breath* And we'll be doing it again officially starting around the end of May for our next title. Pretty crazy, but if it's insanity or genious, the world may never know.

In addition to Leftovers Lounge, we decided to start a small press company to act as the residual hub for all of our future anthologies and projects. The company is called:

Sugar Free Revenge Press

which can be found here:
www.SugarFreeRevenge.com

The next few days in particular will be rather hectic. In the upcoming weeks I'll be animating in CG a butterfly matchmove piece, blocking in a CG raptor matchmoved into a parking garage, a traditionally animated little troll getting out of a washing machine... and applying for various internships in an attempt to improve my skills and convince someone as to why letting me anywhere near their project is good for them.

All in all, this blog is past due for some animated pieces, which I will gladly post as soon as they're available. Thank you for reading, and so long and thanks for all the fish. ~good night~

Leftovers Lounge Trailer!

2010-03-31T23:47:00.000-07:00

Check out the trailer that Guillermo Martinez made for the release!
The music is M83, 'Unrecorded'.

~Enjoy~

Leftovers Lounge trailer

2010-03-20T14:13:00.000-07:00

So finally here's the official announcement of Leftovers Lounge!
We'll be premiering the book at WonderCon at table D6.
Stop by and say hi!
In case you're wondering where D6 is, here's a map:

If you'd like to take a gander at the lineup of artists, pop over to the Leftovers Lounge Blog. There you'll find the first couple pages of each story.

Also, Fabian Molina, one of the artists who worked on this project,
will have his own artist table at D12.
Akin Bilgic, also in the book, will be giving ZBrush demonstrations at Pixalogic's Booth #933.

All pretty exciting. But now it's spring break, and you know what that means: Catch up on work!..... and a bit of sleep ;)

Leftovers Lounge at WonderCon

2010-03-08T21:19:00.000-08:00

Hello world! It's been pretty busy on this end.
Back at the tail-end of the 'Turkeynaut ' project, many of the artists were still energized by the powerful sense of creative community. Instead of doing another animated short, we opted to do an anthology of illustrated stories that would showcase our own personal styles and interests as well as develop a base for keeping in contact with each other.
Low and behold, we've pulled it off in the form of the beautiful title: Leftovers Lounge.
Below is the first page of the story, I contributed:

Raccoon Rendezvous.

The official release date of the book coincides with San Francisco's WonderCon, April 2nd to the 4th. More to be posted soon!

2009-12-17T04:18:00.000-08:00

Totally grabbed this pic off of facebook. I've been mostly picking Drew Williams brain on the step-by-step process of maquette building. The reference drawings are in a previous post. This is the closest I have to an actual photo of it. When there are some decent pictures of the maquette itself, they'll be posted immediately.

Doing this side-project I've come to realize just how important maquette sculpting is to character design. Due to this process, I found out that the original character design was completely useless as an animated creature. When I go and model this guy again in 3D, I'll use the proportions from this.

Really excited to start the maquette for me primary thesis character.... Just have to finish this one first. :D

2009-12-10T09:28:00.001-08:00

Check out the intro for the Academy of Arts'

Fall Animation Festival:
"Flight of the Turkeynauts"

This is an animated short that a group of students/friends collaborated on for a little less than a year. I assisted with animation, clean up, and 2D vfx. At the festival, it was awarded the 'People's Choice Award' which we are all grateful to have received and are happy others enjoyed it as well.
It was a long haul, but completely worth all the sweat, blood, and tears.... Thank you everyone!

Enjoy!

Flight of the Turkeynauts

2009-11-30T22:29:00.000-08:00

At a group drawing session, the theme that was suggested was "Christmas Pageant". Not really sure what that was, the first thing that came to mind was that Santa's elves, with all their expertise and creativity most likely also create weaponry... The one day of extreme gift giving is the charitable event they do once a year to cover-up their real income source.

A homeless guy playing a banjo was another suggestion from somewhere. Thought it would be more interesting playing a saw. The pseudo-santa look was unexpected.

2009-11-30T22:25:00.000-08:00

A few drawings from a "quick-studies" workshop last week. I believe most of these were a couple to a few minute poses. Testing out how I feel with ebony pencils and pen-brushes.

2009-10-26T23:37:00.000-07:00

I don't have any pictures of the maquette yet even though I have the base, armature, and started applying the sculpey but below is my first attempt at orthographic drawings of a posed character. Had to drastically change the proportions, but I like the direction this is going much better. I have a story developing in mind with this guy and his sibling, though it's far from anything substantial currently.

Shisa Dogs

2009-10-26T22:58:00.001-07:00

I created this character off of a set of shisa dogs my sister gave me from her trip to Okinawa. I've started making an actual maquette and realized that the proportions used in this design were not helpful in creating dynamic poses for later in animation. So I'll likely color this one because it's required in one of my classes, but I intend to remodel the character if I decide to animate a short with it.

Rabbits

2009-09-22T09:54:00.001-07:00

Figure Studies

2009-09-22T09:51:00.000-07:00

Apple Tree

2009-09-22T09:48:00.000-07:00

2009-09-22T09:47:00.001-07:00

2009-09-22T09:41:00.000-07:00

2009-08-05T03:39:00.001-07:00

Lauren Kvalheim ~ Summer 2009 Demo Reel from Lauren Kvalheim on Vimeo.

Feral

2009-06-23T22:49:00.001-07:00

Recently I took some new photos of a sculpture I did during my senior year in undergrad. This fella's name is Feral. He's made of welded steel (sheets and rods). I left him in the rain for a couple days to give him a more rugged look.

Close up on Feral's head.

Brownie sketches

2009-06-23T21:18:00.000-07:00

Here are a few sketches that have been sitting in my book for a while. The above were camels I stylized off of a few characters from the Okami Art book. Beautiful book, if you haven't seen it, check it out.
Below are from a visit to the San Francisco zoo back in the day. Where's the closest zoo to Princeton New Jersey I wonder...

Enter: the FlourSack!

2008-12-21T23:06:00.001-08:00

more traditional....

2008-12-21T23:04:00.000-08:00

first walk cycle. :)

2008-12-21T23:02:00.000-08:00

*whispering* ...sneak.....

Weight toss + momentum assignment

2008-12-21T22:59:00.000-08:00

The character was going to be tossing a computer monitor out a window.... sadly it was not to be.

Traditional Animation I! ... specifically a leaf falling...

2008-12-21T22:54:00.000-08:00

Clothed Figure Drawing

2008-12-21T22:07:00.000-08:00

The following are several of my more successful drawings from my Clothed Figure Drawing class. One of the most important lessons garnered from this semester is how much I truly need to learn. :)