business card

I decided it's time that I sit down and design a new business card... I still need to get a domain name and a proper email, so I left some space in the bottom for that.
I wanted to base the design on the mexican lottery cards, with a 50's pin-up version of me. So far, I quite like it :)

poster

for better or worse, the design has been finalized :)

Lover # 2

any phallic resemblance is purely coincidental.

Room development

I found a composer to work on the film with me..! I put together a little package for him to help him understand the atmosphere and "feel" for each of the rooms. I included some keywords that came to mind went thinking about the character and space, as well as a brief description of the scene. I won't include the one I did for Room #6 (the star wars kid) yet, since the scene is still missing a lot of development in comparison to the others. Some of the room designs are more finalized than others, but I figured it would help him anyway. After I did this I figured it would have helped to do something similar in the earlier stages of planning for the film :p

le magic boom!

sneak preview of a little magic happening :)

gertrude's room

some changes in the design of the lady's room..
don't mind the fact that she doesn't have any legs, she will I promise! :)

looks update

Well, Some of the designs and animations are starting to come alive so I figured I could put them together with at least a snapshot of the characters in the rooms. More changes underway soon :)

Inspirations

The following are some amazing pieces that I admire greatly and have in one way or another influenced my work (here's to someday making something this good!)

Skhizein from echo on Vimeo.

The Triplets of Belleville graduate work Skrbovic Ognjen from Škrbović Ognjen on Vimeo.

08 Imaginantes: El psicoanálisis del futuro, Roger Zelazny from Ardentía on Vimeo.

never like the first time from Paavo Turczynowicz on Vimeo.

Mexican re-visit

some touch ups and changes on the mexican character. As much as I like the square zarapes (ponchos), I think this design allows for more flexibility when animating. Also, it's more integrated with the altogether-pencilness of the body, I hope.

la gordis

getting to know this character a little better, her anatomy is a bit of a mystery to me still.. I'm not sure if she'll be purple, I kind of like it though!

Production Stills

Some concept art and stills

Production Schedule (spring)

Storeys Production Schedule Spring

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10554300/Ceci_velasco_prod_spring.doc

The Why's in the Work

November 29, 2010



Ever since I started studying animation, I fell in love with the idea that people could actually experience feelings for characters that never existed and stories that had never taken place. My entering the animation world was somewhat backwards than most of us taking the program at ECU. I was trained in 3D and post-production software before I really knew what to use them for. Afterwards, I worked for a short period of time in a small studio where I did title sequences and, to be quite honest, pretty boring animations showcasing products for TV and "making of" videos. In my time there, not only did I realize how little I actually knew –technically and professionally- but I also began to realize that more often than not, I never really knew the reason of the choices I was making when I worked. Whether aesthetic, compositional or thematic decisions, I made them because it ‘felt right’. I worked by instinct. This of course made it very difficult to justify my work to my boss. Perhaps even more frustrating, it made it impossible to explain to him why he was wrong when he was. I felt a gaping conceptual hole and the urgent need to become knowledgeable in whatever it is that could inform my decisions more so than mere instinct.
My mind has always been drawn to the why that motivates people to make the work they do ever since. Why a medium? Why a colour? Why a stylistic choice? The answers were always part logical and part unexplainable, sometimes there’s an evident purpose or point, while others it just works at an emotional level that you can’t quite put into words. All of these puzzles began to form in my head and feed into my work. In her essay “Encountering the Interface”, Aylish Wood also states that the interfaces of moving image technologies present a particular kind of temporal experience to a viewer (96). So I began to wonder if I had an idea for a short, for example, why would it be better in flats than in 3d? How could it add another dimension to the point I’m trying to make? How will the technology that I use mediate the message I'm trying to convey? What message am I trying to convey? How will the viewer relate to the technique? I came to the conclusion that the relationship between the viewer and the work is imperative to be considered, especially with narrative pieces in which you want to give the viewer agency to relate. Perhaps there isn’t always a specific answer for the questions I pose, but the quest itself intrigues me greatly, and thus drives me into a deeper level of thinking about my work.
I guess one of the eye openers I can remember was an animated short I constantly think back to which is “The Dimensions of Dialogue”. Although I have never worked with clay and most of the things I do look nothing like the piece itself, the first time I saw the “Passionate Encounters” section in the film I was blown away. The use of clay to tell the story of two lovers that literally ‘became one’ was, not only masterfully done, but also so much more communicative than any other medium they could have used towards the same purpose. Every aspect of its technique helped the next concept to be grasped. Then I saw pieces like Caroline Leaf’s “The Street” and Jonas Odell’s “Never Like The First Time”, and my mind started going in all different kinds of directions in terms of story telling, mediums and technologies.
Then the time came to make my film, my WHY.
Originally, I had all kinds of crazy surrealist ideas for my film. As I worked through them I realized it was hard for me to tell a story I have never really envisioned in life before. I decided that for this first film, I want to speak to my experiences and observations, to recall my own fantasies and pose my own questions. I want to make a vivid mosaic of life through different techniques and stories put together in a cohesive blend. Furthermore, I want to tell a story that goes beyond the animated medium and reaches out to varying types of people through its humour and situations.
The filmic space provides a shelter that allows us to get much closer to people and places we would usually keep a safe distance from in real life, and that fascinates me. When watching (or maybe I should say experiencing a film) we become immersed and a certain “embodiment” happens. It is this property of our engagement with the film that allows us to make it meaningful in our heads (Van Sijll 71). Also, I must confess I have always had a personal liking for films about quirky characters (Mary and Max, The Triplets of Belleville, Amelie). It’s not the black and white in people that draws my attention, but the gray scale that makes our palette just slightly different from everybody else’s. I hope my film will speak to those differences while truly addressing the shared experiences that allow us to empathize with one another. Of course I would like to do something astonishingly innovative, touching, groundbreaking and introspective, but I can settle if I can cook up something that is just good.




Bibliography


Van Sijll, Jennifer. Cinematic Storytelling. Studio City: Michael Wiese Productions, 2005.

Wood, Aylish. “Encountering the Interface”. Digital Encounters. London: Routledge, 2007.