Posters

So I thought I would share some of the posters I have done over my years through the Art Institute. They will be in order from the most current to my first attempts! And I will give brief statements for some so you can see what the heck I was thinking!

I will show some of my concepts and progress for a few of them and will be blacking out part of a name along with the number included.

Summer 07 poster:


Here is where I started from, I sometimes just start drawing and messing around in PS to get some rough ideas:
Idea 1:

Idea 2:

Idea 3:


Discovery Days 07:
This was for a poster to promote upcoming events that the school would hold to bring in professionals to speak to the students.



Spring 07 poster:

For spring and summer I started to play around with the more grungy/urban type feel and look.

Winter 07 poster:


Here was one of my more refined sketches for this concept, I had drawn about 2 pages of different designs and looks for the leprechaun. As you can see from the sketch I was trying to make sure I got that foot to look right.


Fall 06:


Here is the spam can in the process of being textured, I thought it would be fun to create the "Internship" as the hero VS'ing the Spam can listing off there qualities.


Spring 06: Well for some reason I can't seem to find the rest of the poster for this one, but from the layout of the 3D I'm sure you can guess how it went.


Summer 06:
I thought this was fitting for the Internship Fair... early bird gets the worm message.


Winter 06
This poster was fun to create because it was the first time I used my 3D skills to help make the poster. But as you can see, my typography and layout skills were really bad.


Fall 05:
This one was fun for me except for the fact that I had to pust so much information on it. As you can tell from the later posters I think the message could get across with out so much type. This was the first of 3 poster with the "flying pig" It become the mascot as you could say for CS.

LATE!

Wowzers I'm way behind on keeping this updated!

So its week 9 already over at AM!!! how crazy is that! I'm learning so much it feels like I'm starting to ooze out the ears with info! Not only that but I can easliy get caught up in the site looking at others work or blogs or whatever!

Aside from AM work I've been super busy with side projects and freelance!
Here are a couple of different pieces. The bodybuilding one is for an up and coming professional, Dylan Armbrust. I'm also working on one for his wife, Heather Armbrust as well.

And the Roller girl one is for a friend on a league here in Colorado her team name is Ho J Simpson, which is a fun name and I was able to play around a bit with the design elements. I have her sitting on that same white bronco and shes holding a knife and wearing those gloves and yes these ones do fit lol.


I will post up some of my latest work from AM very soon!!

AM

Well well...

I did not! May I repeat DID NOT expect to feel like this ever again! My experience at Gobelins was a once in a life time experience and I ate it up every second. And the people I attended that school with... well scared the crap out of me. Because they were so talented and so amazing at what they did. Not only were they all great artists but all had great hearts and I got along with them all!

So I was very intimidated by them and felt in like I was way behind them all, which was a great thing for me, because it motivated me to work even harder than before.

Since joining AM I have felt the exact same as I did in France. Once again I am not only surrounded by the best of the best, but the energy and motivation is out of this world. I am again surrounded by people from all over this planet, and it feels great! I'm not here to be the best or be number one to show them all up. Because quite honestly that could never happen! I'm here to learn from the best and I'm surrounded by the best who are just as hungry as I am to learn!

I am already so thankful for the Mentor I have and my classmates are the best classmates I could ever ask for! If I honestly ever have a bad day again... all I have to do is sign on to the campus and just start talking to my classmates. This vibe... this core energy... this is the up most, absolute, synergy of positivity and its untouchable and this is what I'm all about! And no one can take that away from us!

Here are a few of my sketches, we had to go out and draw from life and pick a pose and re-create it with Stu..

1.
2.
3.

And here is the Stu pose: **small fixes thanks to my critique from my Mentor


Also check out some of my friends blogs/ sites from AM on the right! All up and coming animation stars !!

Demo Reel

**if for some reason this wont play, scroll down I have another reel setup as well as links

Student of the Year

Wow so time has really flown by! On Thursday Sept 13th, 07 I was awarded "Student of the Year for Art & Design.

The Ceremony took place on the 13Th of September and it was awesome! I still am kicking myself from not meeting all the winners! Although I had great support from friends and family!! and we took lots of pictures like the paparazzi o_0 haha.

Here is a photo of the article in the Denver Post on Sunday the 23rd.


I was lucky enough to get into contact with the other "Art & Design" SotY, her name is Kayla Schwisow, she is extremely talented and a force to reckon with when it comes to design. Check out her site spinkstudio.com

I would like to thank Career Services for coming out and supporting me along with nominating me!



Thank you to my family to make it and support me along with Mr. Youngmann, Mr. Dunsmoore, Anh & Diane






aside from the ugly bathroom tile in the bkg of the photos I thank everyone! AND! I am still upset I didn't get to meet anyone else! Best of luck to everyone that won and keep kicking butt!

Resume & Demo Reel

Please click on resume to see larger


Demo Reel:

Larger format go here: Demo reel (much easier to see)
or try: Demoreel


**All 2D colored animation was done in just a week. Orginally I was going to leave them as pencil tests. But since attending Gobelins I thank my lucky stars because I believe they are much stronger now.

Wallie:

Slugger:

Fboy run:

Waterski:


Well I'm finally finished at the Art Institute! I would like to quickly thank some people that helped me out:

Mom & Dad thanks for letting me doodle all the time and not listening to the teachers telling you guys I will not have no career in art.

Dom Thanks for letting me abuse your computers in a time of need ha ha, along with all of your other help.

Ethan If it was not for you man, I wouldn't be where I'm at, thanks for always letting me come over at random times at night to work on my stuff till sunrise. Also would like to thank your parents for being cool with me coming over at those random times!

Lindsey Not sure what I would done without you as well, thanks for listening and pushing me to work! ;) haha.

Anh Thank you for hanging in there and sticking by me through all this chaos.

More thank yous will follow!! And I will have a higher quality demo on this blog as well as my new website!

"Student of the Year"!!!!

O MAN!!!

I cannot, cannot believe I was selected as one of the students of the year! I feel so honored and privileged to even have won this! I'm freaking grinning ear to ear, and haven't stopped since I opened the letter from the mail!

My letter says:

Dear Toby:

Congratulations! You have been selected to receive the 2007 Colorado Private School Association's "Student of the Year" award in the category of "Art & Design".

And goes on and on, there were different categories for different students all over Colorado. The Ceremony is September 13th 07!! I will post some photos up from the ceremony when it comes. I really can't stop smiling for some reason right now, and am so excited to meet the other students as well!

**EDIT**: (Small update here)
Location: The Denver Newspaper Agency, 101 W. Colfax Avenue, Denver, Co
When: 9:15 AM

if there are any questions please email me.

Siggraph 07

This year I decided to go to L.A. first and maybe visit a few studios before we went down to San Diego. Anh and Samson went with, we showed up in LA on Sunday, and we drove out, the drive wasn't to bad. Since Samson and Anh and never been to LA we went and walked around Hollywood area, and they got to see the Chinese Theatre. We also went into Ripley's Believe it or not museum, which was a lot of fun.




Well another year of Siggraph has come and gone, this year it went by WAY to fast!

Just last year I learned a great deal about animation I wasn't being taught at my school and ended up going back to my school and starting a revolution and opening peoples eyes to really start getting out in the CG community and learn!

Out of the two of my good friends I decided to stay and finish, but I've been enrolled to Animation Mentor now for a while and will be starting in Oct. So I can't even wait! I was able to talk to Bobby Beck again, and Shawn Kelly for a bit, I can't even explain how great the AM community is.

(oh and here is a pic of Spike tackling me!! )

Anyway back to Siggraph, this year was a lot of fun and very busy, I hardly walked the main floor, I was mostly in classes or watching the theatres this year. While I was on the floor I stopped by the Animation Mentor Cafe which was very impressive. I enjoyed the Disney Interactive and played the new Turok coming out, played with a touch screen that's like on Minority Report

Besides running around at the convention center the parties I did attend were fun and made some new contacts and friends.

On Thursday, the show was pretty much wrapped up for the most part and my friends and I went on a VIP tour of the Animal Park, that was extremely fun! we took lots of reference photos and videos, we learned about some different animals and even did some sketching.

I didn't take this photo but Autodesk held a party on here and it was pretty awesome

Here is one of all of us that made it to the party

Gobelin Summer School!!!

OMG....


I honestly have a difficult time just trying to explain how amazing this experience was. Everything from the food to the people to the new friends and instructors was incredible. I was surrounded by soooo many talented AND motivated artists it was disgusting! (but in a good way of course)

My knowledge for animation has just grown by the barrels and my head is still hurting from all the information. I was suppose to post a new blog for each day while I was over in France, but that didn't happen...well because I was too BUSY!

My camera kinda went bad on me and over half of my photos went bad, so when I can I will post the ones I can.

One the first day of the 2D Animation "Basics" I was being blown away from Fred Nagorny, and how he was so passionate about animation. On how he explained animation, things just started clicking and other things I didn't even learn or realize before were smacking in the face and was all becoming very intimidating.

My animation "school" training has honestly come from everything I've read, or have done on my own. To see a instructor actually know what he was talking about was incredible. It was great to see him relate the 2D animation to 3D and the break down to the curve editor making it look like CAKE!

No one can even explain or knows why the curves do what they do where I go!! "Just make it all smooth" they say.... JEEZE. I learned more about animation in that short time then the last 4 years at school. Granted my school isn't just all "character animation" they should AT least know what the hell they are talking about when they do teach the classes, but sadly they have no clue.

That's okay though, going to Gobelin was worth every penny and I graduate soon, and will be on my way to Animation Mentor. Seeing AM in relation to Gobelin is the only real comparison I can give on the school knows what they are talking about. Only downside to AM is not having the hands on interaction with the instructors. At Gobelin we did and its no wonder why the students are the best.

Gobelin is also one of the toughest schools to get enrolled to, and they only allow in the BEST of the Best. They don't take any schmuck off the street.

Oh also KEEP your eyes peeled for the graduating class from Gobelin's. These short films are seriously some of the best films I have ever seen! They make some studio work look silly.

Bonjour!!

O man! I can't believe its really happening. For those of you that didn't know or don't even know me, I was accepted to Gobelins Animation School in Paris, France!!!!

Gobelins puts out hands down some of the best animation I have ever watched from students! I was 1 of 30 professionals and students from around the world to go! There are only 3 from the United States going. One is a professional animator and her name is Christine, I've had the pleasure of talking with her over email and shes phenomenal at 2D animation and quite scary at character design as well. Check >Christine's site out.


Here is a link to Gobelins

I will be updating this blog as much as I can while I'm over in Paris! I leave June 30th and will be staying til July 15th. I can't wait, jeez I better practice some animation so I don't pathetic out their!

Virginia Tech Fundraiser

I decided to create a fundraiser, benefiting the victims of the Virginia Tech tragedy. I pitched my idea to my school, The Art Institute and they wanted to help out.

Here is what some of the flyer's looked like:



We had talented artists from the school and around the Denver community come out and help draw or paint all day!! One of the biggest hits was the face painting. The 9th Annual Denver Arts Festival was gracious enough to let us set up a booth and take part in the event.

Here is the T-Shirt I Designed:


Donations are going towards the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund:VT

I will update more with photos of the event along with the final amount of money donated.

Thank you again for everyone making this happen and for the support.

Quick Painting

This is a fun little site, art.com has a painting section, you can have save to their gallery and once your finished you can watch your work from start to finish.

For some reason I could not get my work to save!?? But I did capture it on my webcam and I speeded it up 3x more than the orginally speed up. Go here and check it out!http://artpad.art.com/?undefined

Here is my piece.

2d animation tests

Here is some of the 2d I worked on this quarter. Still needs polished.

Apperence:

Kid run- still needs fixed
Water Ski- kid jumps of a dock into the water, just gets his thumb up in time to say ready and the boat takes off!
Ready for Lunch- kid whips out his lunch and someone throws a snowball and knocks it out of his hands, still needs some tweaking
Dragon: I had a few other fly tests, but I didn't get time to capture them, but this is one.
V.1 still in early stages! lol It will be a walrus! he jumps up out of the ocean onto some ice, thats why he slides. V.1 from the slide over to screen right, all sucks i lost all my arcs and the animation looks bad.

So i started on V.2 oh! also this one is shot on 2's so its faster and missing a lot of inbetweens. Also I had an idea for this one, that someone was actually recording "the life of a Walrus" or something, and he does a double take and he stares at the camera, and thats why he gets up close and sniffs and what not. Not sure how to end it, maybe have him either go back into the water, or eat the people lol. Or I was thinking making him in 3d and with the extreme close up, transition into the 3d model and world so when he would go back out it would be in 3d. I dunno!

Last a lil kid baseball, I'm going to have him walk up to the plate and pick his heavy bat up, and I'm going to also make this like a home video, and have the crowd cheering and have the mom be like "oh my" when the bat comes at the screen, then have it go static and fade back into him spinning.

Thats some of the ideas, but I am open to suggestions and critiques!!! Now if my school would only let me use some of this in my reel >:(

Maya Animation

My Maya animation class Fall Quarter 05, we had to do at least 15 secs of animation and had to be blocked. The aerobics class one was just to test the rig.


I actually started with the Flour sack on the box, he was going to try and get down. Then the rig became all screwed up and the mesh went down the hole with it. So then I moved on to just testing it out, trying different things with the rig. It all needs a lot of work.

Project for 3D Engineering architecture

yuck. lol old stuff 05-06

1st gig!!

Not too long after I started my company Big Grin was officially hired to complete a job for the City and County of Denver. We must complete 4, 30-second animations for their 18th National Youth Crime Prevention Conference and International Forum (NYCPC)March 21-24, 2007.

Here is a link to their site: http://safecitydenver.com/

The animation is being completed in Flash. I will post the animations soon. Here is a still from the first animation. The Jock, Tree Hugger, and Nerd were all created, and set up by me. The animation for the Jock and Tree Hugger was done by Anthony Hamilton.

Jock and Tree Hugger

The Nerd

Big Grin in the making...

So back in early Nov. of 06 I created my own company called Big Grin Productions, LLC. I am currently working on the logo with Anh Phan, an extraordinary Graphic Designer. Here is the descriptor describing the Logo she has worked on for me.
Big Grin wanted a logo to convey to their clients not to underestimate them
because they are a small company of four animators. Big results comes
from small packages. An energy drink captures that idea while still
being abstract enough to distinguish itself from its competition. The
paint marks makes the logo a bit chaotic, but it is restrained at the
same time, much like Big Grin. Gender-neutral colors were chosen to
appeal to all of Big Grin's client and express the studio's
personality at the same time.


The logo is still a work in progress at the moment, nothing is final yet.



Here are some mock ups for a 3D verison I am working on.
The can won't be green, I just made it green to see how it would look.



Ultimately I'll want a character as my logo. The idea of the pow! and energy captured in this canister/ can is what we bring but I'm not keen on the idea of it as much as a character.