Neri vs. Skiff: Master Thief

Neri vs. Skiff: Master Thief from Vince Mascoli on Vimeo.

My final from my character animation independent study class. I had to take two characters, one has something the other wants, the other attempts to get it. I went back to my blue-footed boobies because they're easy for me to draw. I like the result personally.

Car Ride - DDLM

DDLM -car ride from Vince Mascoli on Vimeo.

"DDLM" - Progress Report

I've been working hard on Dear Dad, Love Maria trying to get the visuals to work. So far so good, everything is starting to come together. The animatic is almost entirely done, with several scenes completely ready to go into full animation. I have to make up a new shot schedule once the visuals are completely laid out. I'll have to go crazy to work on it, but I'll get it done. Next week and, if I feel up to it, this week I'll begin to animate the final shot, which has to be very meticulously timed out so it matches the music that will be playing at the end of the film.

I have two shots finalized, one of which I needed to have done for my end of semester crit to give my teachers an idea of where the film was going. I meant to post it to Vimeo and then embed it on here to give a little teaser for DDLM, but I forgot to bring home my traveling hard drive, but I'll do it later today. The crit I had went exceptionally well, with all the teachers there really liking the film and where it's going. I took the time after I was done being critted to show it to Mike Enright, to get his opinion on the film and he really liked it as well, calling it "festival worthy" which made me extremely excited about seeing this film live on beyond its opening showing at the senior thesis show.

I took a lot of notes from the crits and plan on implementing them after review. I really think that I have something worth note in the works and I'm really excited. In the end, I just want people to like my film and find it hits them inside them. If one person comes up and says that, I will be satisfied. I'll post the shot on here later and maybe a sketch or two. Gotta get that harddrive home safe first.

The Superb Pilot

This is the comic that seeded the idea for my upcoming webcomic Superb! I made this for my friend Tina in an art trade for a tattoo on my chest. She's awesome. Check out her work at grenade-in-mouth.deviantart.com.

Fat Lady Jumping Rope Pencil Test

I did this bit of animation for my Character Animation independent study at UArts. I was assigned to animate a fat lady jumping rope as the title indicates. I think it turned out pretty well.

Sketch Post

I haven't updated in awhile so here's some new sketches/character designs/whatever from my sketchbook.


Leopold Viking, future Superb! villian.


Your guess is as good as mine as to the hamster, I was working on Maria's design a little while also just drawing a random girl.


My friend Sara sent me a picture to draw from, very pin-up like, I really like my line quality in this one.


Maria's girlfriend Gina.


Random inked sketches.


Concepts for two new scenes in Dear Dad, Love Maria.


Speaks for itself. I like birds.


No clue. Awkward drawings.

Update complete!

Webcomic Abound! School Immanent!

I haven't updated here in awhile. Turns out I finally found an idea for a webcomic, so expect that to come January 6, 2009. Superb! is about a group of superheroes who don't really have that great of powers. I have 10 comics written so far, going to start drawing them intermittantly throughout the coming semester, as a break from my senior thesis and other animation work.

Tomorrow I start with Sound Design and Writing for Film. Then Friday is Hand-Drawn Character Animation with Chris Magee. Expect to see a few of those things here. I have yet to complete my storyboards for my senior thesis, after I get unstuck mentally I should be fine. That's coming in May of next year. I like my story, I just hate storyboarding. And the way its written, it's hard to get visuals to go with the image and have it be interesting as well as related. Though I did just get an idea that sparked in my head in this very moment. Hopefully that's the idea that removes the cork from the dam that is my mental block for my senior thesis. I decided to not shoot it on 16mm film anymore, just because its expensive and I learned a bunch of new things from Videocopilot.net. So now I know After Effects well enough to go ahead and use it for my final and not feel like I'm trying to climb a steep mountain of shifty gravel.

I'll post some more artwork on here when I feel more in the mood. For now I think its time to go to bed and get ready for school tomorrow.

New Art and A Freelance Job

I just got asked to do a freelance job for this portfolio company called Foldio. The person in charge saw my work on Deviant Art and emailed me offering the job to do five illustrations for them. I gave them a quote and accepted. Hopefully they like the quote and we'll move into doing other stages of the project. This came right after posting the final version of my picture for Mary. I also have a character design for Maria's dad finished, as well as some studies for Maria's facial expressions. After some more work I'll move into storyboarding the film. I'll put some samples of that on here as well.

The final picture for Mary.

I'm using the first design of Maria, I have yet to really work on her body though.

Facial expression studies.

More facial expression studies.

This is a study for the final design of the dad.

And this is the final design. Yeah I know his one leg is longer than the other. I draw some things wrong sometimes. Well, a lot. But usually those don't end up here.

Let me know what you think. I'm eager to read your comments.

Internship

I've begun working at my internship with Motion Heads. Currently we're working on animating puppies for a film for the Ronald McDonald House, a trailer and ad for the Film-A-Thon and Project 21 Film Fest, and tomorrow will get a brunch with Fresh Artists non-profit, so we can put a psa together for them. We also are pitching some ideas to WHYY (PBS). Keeping busy, been doing some character designing for Dear Dad, Love Maria, but only on Maria so far. Working on facial expressions mostly. I also did a drawing for my friend Mary that I liked. We're beating up a boy that pissed her off.



I'm working on the color version and Juno is doing a color version too, so he can work on his coloring. I'm excited. You should be too.

Story Finalized!

Dear Dad, Love Maria is finished the writing phase. I've moved into character designs and soon storyboarding. After I get some drawings done you'll see them here. Not all of them, but some. I should work on sketching stuff from life again. I could use the practice.

Motion Heads starts on Monday. I'm pretty excited.

Random Maria Sketch

I decided to draw up a quick sketch for how I want Maria to look. I wanted to make the pose fun and non-story related.

No Longer 35mm, Some Story Stuff, and A Short Manifesto

I decided that due to costliness I'm switching from 35mm to 16mm. It's going to still cost a lot but not as much. I went into the fourth draft of maria and something about it didn't feel right with me, and so I sent it to Andy and he noticed that it feels overworked. He told me to step back from it for a few days and try to get more into her shoes and write it again from scratch. So I'm going to take that advice. In the meantime I think I'll read over it a few times just to see what I can glean from it. This piece needs to be as good as I can get it. This is my last short as a student and my first as an independent animator. I want it to be worthy for people to see it in a festival and hopefully take the story and feel it for themselves. So for that I have to feel it for myself, and then once I do, put all the work I can into it. I don't just want a piece that is funny or if I make it a comedy is funny just to be funny, I want them to be rooted in something in me, so if its funny its funny because I've been there and maybe the audience too. I want to make pieces that mean something to me. That's all I really want to do with my life, make pieces that mean something to me and make people laugh, cry, and feel it along with me.

Fourth Draft Complete

I finished the fourth draft of maria. I like it, but still am not sure I'm getting everything across I want to. After Andy gets back to me, even if he says I'm good, which I doubt, I want to write another draft. Something isn't totally clicking with me yet. I don't have enough of my first version in the fluidity of the second version for me to be satisfied storywise. I don't know something just bugs me about it.

New Title?

I've been writing out a new piece of the maria story, and, as suggested to me by Andy, I wrote a letter as maria to her father. I like where its going and I'm thinking about the possibility of , though I fear that people will inevitably see the connection between this piece and A Letter to Colleen. As for now the working title is maria, but it may change to Dear Dad, Love maria. As you probably have noticed, maria doesn't capitalize her name. In character its because she's overwhelmed by capitalization and doesn't want to apply it to herself. Truthfully, I just like the way it looks aesthetically. People may think that the lower-case is a mistake, but oh well, they'll see the absence of capitalization when they see the piece. Though I may do the who title like that for the animation. I'm rambling now, I think this post has gone on long enough.

Budgety Things

I figured out a basic budget for maria today. I researched a few things and now should be all squared away for when I start accumulating things for it. I also talked to Andy today and got his email address so I can continue to send him my stories as they come. He's excited about the piece and that in turn helps me to be excited about it. I have a draft of something but I want to do more work on it before sending it to him.

From Life Portrait 4/28

This was my best drawing from the last figure drawing session I was at. I was quite pleased with the result.

Best of My DeviantArt

Back to Writing

Andy just gave me my crit and I'm excited about the whole thing, I just need to go back and study Maria as a character, inside her character. I want this film to be the best film I can make, so I'm going to continue to have Andy crit me on it until it is the best film on my subject. He really likes the idea but Maria needs to be more active in the story, and in the moment. So, keep moving forward.

My Senior Thesis Film

maria my senior thesis film has semi-officially begun preproduction. The story is in its second draft and pending a good review from Andy London today, if he has the time step away from his class and give me a little crit, will move into storyboarding within the next two weeks or so. I really want to get this piece all fleshed out ASAP. I'm really excited about it and can't waste any time since its going to be shot in 35mm. I was researching Blu-Ray Disc burners today and found one i'm going to buy with my budget, which got me excited for the piece and got me to put the story into its first draft form today instead of just the notes that existed in a file on my computer. I talked it over with my friend Jess. She and I worked one rearranging the story so it flowed, made sense, and was understandable. I'm getting some visual ideas for each segment as well, which is nice. so keep on the lookout for maria. I'll be giving updates on it more frequently as production goes underway and the short takes over my life. All frustrated rants will be on my other blog, leaving this for status updates and minor mentioning of the frustration that I'm sure will occur while using the Oxberry camera.

Professional

I'm trying to make this site feel more professional, but I don't think I'll fully manage that until I have my own webspace.

Storyboarding Final

The basic idea behind this project was to create two character designs based on one of the two possible character pairings and then create a story where they go on a journey and come back. The characters I chose were 2129 the Mailbox and Larry the Fireplug. The story I created is called Moving Up. Larry and 2129's corner is being moved to outerspace, where they discover that it's an elaborate plan to take over the world. They have to defeat the Moon Movers company and return their block to Earth. The story part of the project was to take seven key scenes and illustrate them. We were to imagine ourselves as working at Pixar or some other company and creating these as storyguides to pitch to the higher ups.

Official Animation Bloggery

Well, I needed to create a different blog to host official animation related things, seeing as vinceroni.blogspot.com turned into a personal blog. Consult that blog for my personal issues and current events. This one will be related to my current projects and art posts.