DIMITRI FRAZAO'S BLOG

2011-04-15T10:21:00.001-07:00

Man... haven't updated this blog in ages. Too busy learning Maya.

Here are some char designs that I did.

BATMAN STORYBOARD ASSIGNMENT

2010-05-12T12:37:00.000-07:00

I did this test for my storyboard class. I had to board the opening of a Batman episode from the script. We had to print out a board layout that was very small and square. Really hard to draw in it. Some of the drawing are REALLY loose, but as long as it reads I guess it's okay.

I had to draw the characters from a model sheet. The guy that is running was suppose to be some superhero from the TV show. Doesn't look that much like the model sheet, hehe.

the drawing of the guy (after he gets hit by the Joker spray) is really weird. I kept the drawing anyways because I thought it was funny :)

DIVINE INTERVENTION

2010-04-25T10:12:00.001-07:00

Here's an assignment that I did almost a year ago for a storyboard class. It was suppose to be an earlier assignment about two characters interacting with something that falls from the sky, which I ended up doing another one (that's the two drunk guys post). So I did that one as my final assignment.

MY FILM'S MAIN CHARACTER

2010-04-09T12:06:00.000-07:00

Wow… I haven’t post in a while. I was too busy with midterms, spring break and my animatic. Here are a few doodles that I’ve collected from my sketchbook. My film’s main character is an uptight, old school, British guy on his late 50s. Wearing a gray suite with elbow patches, cardigan and brown oxford shoes. Bold, wearing thick glasses, pink white face with white mustaches. The typical British gentlemen stereotype that is all about being proper, elegant and well educated... indeed.

PAT'S DRAWING

2010-03-10T11:05:00.001-08:00

WOW…talking about coincidence, last night I went to a bar with my friends and I thought I knew one of the waitresses from somewhere. Turns out I did a drawing of her on my sketchbook about 6 month ago. Her name is Beth, but we call her Pat because that’s just cooler. I told her I did post the drawing, but I actually didn’t… so here’s the masterpiece in case she ends up looking at my blog.

I probably sound like a creepy guy that stalks and draws waitresses :)

SKETCHING AROUND SAN FRANCISCO

2010-03-07T15:29:00.001-08:00

Here are some sketches that I did since I moved to San Francisco.
Most of them were done at Cup-a-Joe, a coffee place near by my apartment.

From left to right: A typical AAU student being cool and hip. A dude wearing a gigantic tie that spoiled his nice suit. It looked like a billboard. A homeless guy asking for money… he’s color scheme , as I recall, was really sad and depressing.

Below are some interesting characters that I saw while drinking coffee at Cup-a-Joe.

While waiting for a bus I saw this old lady feeding a bunch of pigeons. I don’t know why, but I felt sad for her. I wonder if she even has a family.

I went to an Italian restaurant with a friend of mine, and this old man was seating by himself on a table behind us. He had this strange expression as if he couldn’t recall his memories. I just had a feeling that he wasn’t going to last long. Sad…

JACK CLIMBING THE PIPE BEATSTALK

2010-03-01T15:12:00.000-08:00

Here’s the last composition from my Vizdev class. It’s a shot from Jack climbing the pipe beanstalk. You can see the first thumbnail that started it all. I first had Jack staring at the bottom, but the teacher gave me a great advice to have him facing up. That helps the flow of the composition and makes the viewer wonder what’s up there.

I wish I had more time to tweak the drawing and the colors. That was the last piece and I was in a hurry to get it done on time. Oh well…

PREP & LANDING STORY IDEAS

2010-02-23T10:02:00.000-08:00

Here are some story ideas that I did for an assignment while at Disney. These are not from real production. They are just an assignment that my mentors gave to me based on the show. Not the greatest drawing, but I had fun doing it (specially the reindeer).

JACK BEING CHASED BY THE GIANT

2010-02-15T13:52:00.000-08:00

Here's the second composition from my vizdev class. You can see the thumbnail that originated the idea, the tone thumbnail, the color thumbnail and the final composition. I had this idea about Jack being chased by the Giant at a staircase. While Jack is trying to climb up the huge steps, the Giant is climbing up the floors with his long limbs, like a spider.

Jack is in the foreground with dark tones and thicker lines. The Giant is in the middle ground with normal colors. The background is more diluted and warmer to give a better sense of depth.

Here's the sketch that originated the idea.

PRINCESS AND THE FROG STORY IDEAS

2010-02-14T20:52:00.000-08:00

Here are some story idea sketches that I did while at Disney. These are not production work. They are just some assignments that my Mentor, who was working at the movie, asked me to do.
Those were about a love sequence on a boat or something.

JACK'S ROOM IN COLOR

2010-02-05T06:13:00.000-08:00

Here’s the color version of the room. I’ve painted entirely with the Dry Brush 36.
I did make some minor changes in the line work. It’s not the final version yet, just a rough pass.

COMPOSITION STUDIES & RESEARCH FOR JACK'S ROOM

2010-01-18T14:34:00.000-08:00

I did some research for Victorian furniture, toy and other stuff for Jack’s room. Most steampunk settings are based on the Victorian age, right? Most toys from that time are made of wood and metal. Not a good era for toys, I guess. I imagined Jack as a steam engineer prodigy, so I thought he would have a stove, wood, pipes and steam in his room.

Here’s a bunch of thumbnails that I did to play around with many different shapes in the composition. The top row is the wall shapes. The second row is the light source shape. The third row is the minor shapes form objects. The final row is the flow of the wall stripes.

JACK'S ROOM

2010-01-13T18:35:00.000-08:00

Here is the progress from thumbnail to final cleaned up drawing of Jack’s room.
While doing a bunch of thumbnails, as part of my class, I came up with a drawing of a small room where poor Jack would live in. Later I did some research of furniture, toys and other stuff that Jack would have in his room. Objects that a poor kid in a steam punk world would have.

Here’s the first thumbnail. Literally a thumbnail.

Then I redid the thumbnail a little bit bigger and with some blue pencil for tone.

As you’ve seen on the earlier post, the tone thumbnail.

The colored version.

Here’s a rough pass of the final room. Very symmetrical and uninteresting.

I did some tweaking until I got to this rough version.

Here’s the final cleaned up version.

Soon I’ll post the research drawing and the colored version of the room.
Happy 2010!

JACK & THE BEANSTALK COLOR THUMBNAILS

2010-01-05T10:35:00.000-08:00

Here are the color versions of the thumbnails. All I did was to colorize them and retouch some parts. Some of the contrast from the tone version ended up changing once I added color. I tried keeping it as close as possible to the tone version. Is there such a job to work doing thumbnails like that? I would love to work like that :)

JACK & THE BEANSTALK TONE THUMBNAILS

2009-12-28T12:36:00.000-08:00

For the final assignment at my Vizdev class I had to come up with 3 compositions about the story. I had to do 30 to 40 thumbnails (which I’ll post later) and pick 5 to 6 to do a tone thumbnail pass.

They all had to be at thumbnail size, black and white with about 5 or 6 grays inbetween and somewhat rough. I’ve used the dry brush 36 to block the most important shapes then I did some smaller detail. It’s a nice exercise to learn how to control brightness and contrast.

MAGGOTS & CORNFLAKE

2009-12-15T12:53:00.000-08:00

This past summer I took a storyboard class and this was one of the assignments. As I recall, the assignment was to storyboard a personal bad experience. One of my favorite bad experiences (that I think it’s funny and gross) was when I ate a bow of cereal while watching TV. Since I was staring at the TV I didn’t notice my cereal was infested with tiny maggots. I only realized it when I was almost done with the bowl.

It reads from left to right on each page.

I did this test on a small cintiq, which is really hard to get a nice line. The cintiq is awesome and very productive, but I can’t get a nice straight line on it. They all look like scribbles to me. If I had time I wish I could retouch the tone… it all looks very muddy, but deadlines are more important to meet.

JACK & GIANT GOUACHE PAINTING

2009-11-28T09:44:00.000-08:00

Here are my 2 very first gouache paintings. Other then the color wheel done during freshmen year at Calarts, this is my second attempt to use the medium. It was really hard, but a very fulfilling experience. It was nice getting some texture out of dry brushes and to see it all coming together. You can easily spot some accidents here and there, but that what makes it so much fun. I’m like a proud mother of my ugly duckling.

I was always avoiding dealing with colors and painting. I had many false starts and frustrating experiences for not being too patient. I did some watercolors sketches back in school, but they were all muted, muddy and ugly. I did my Junior and senior films in color, and watching my colors get ultra saturated and bleeding (because of the monitor different color gamut) was the last straw.

Not until recently I got re-interested in color. Read some books, did some Photoshop color passes and decided that I should try painting. The paintings are really small, as you can see it in the second photo. I did Jack first and then the Giant. The first painting I didn’t really get to separate Jack from the BG, but I learned my lesson and did a bright BG for the Giant. When I was almost done with the Giant, a tiny water drop from my brush landed on his right arm. I was so pissed! Anyways… painting is awesome.

THE JELL-O REVENGE

2009-11-24T10:19:00.000-08:00

I’m gonna try to post some of my childhood memories. Here is a drawing of my middle brother and I. He’s a year and a half older then me, blond with blue eyes and big teeth. I’m the one with dark hair, brown eyes and a beauty mark (yes, I had it since I was a kid). My brother was always quiet and well behaved, while I was the hyper and mischievous one.
Yesterday I did some thumbnails. I hope it reads well on your screen.

Quite often I would bother him (that was one of my favorite childhood pastimes) and as usual I would get beat up.

One day I decide to get revenge. Since I couldn’t fight back because he was bigger then me I had to come up with some clever plan. So I got the green Jell-O that my Mom made that afternoon and poured some green liquid soap on it.

Next I walked by my brother pretending that I was eating Jell-O. Yummy!

He ran to the kitchen to eat some of it. My plan was successful!

I jumped out of the hallway and started laughing. Telling him that I poured soap on his Jell-O.

According to my plan I would probably get beat up or locked in the bathroom, but then the unexpected happened. My brother started to panic and cry.

My Mom came by and learned about my evil plan. She got really mad and to teach me a lesson, she told me to never do pour stuff on people‘s food because they could die.

She was also freaking out and brought my brother to the doctor. I REALLY thought my brother was going to die, so I started crying and telling him “Don’t die, I love you”.

Nothing really happened to my brother and till this day he makes fun of me for saying that.

THUMBNAIL ASSIGNMENT

2009-11-22T21:53:00.000-08:00

I did this thumbnail storyboard assignment this past summer while I was in Brazil. I printed out 4 pages, each with 6 of those square boards. The story had to be about two characters interacting with something that falls from the sky. No dialog. It was complicated working with those small square boards. Square compositions are really hard to place characters around and to get a feeling of depth. I hope you can understand my story

JACK, STEAMY & GIANT SIZE COMPARISON

2009-11-20T19:16:00.000-08:00

Here are two drawing to compare the sizes of Jack, Steamy and the Giant. I also did a color pass on all of them. Didn’t quite get Steamy right, since he’s mostly bronze metal color (wouldn’t be a problem for an Art Center student). It looks okay on my monitor, but when I brought it to class it look really weird. I hope it’s not my monitor.

The Giant is just twice the size of a normal human. He’s big enough to be scary, but also small enough to have a castle where Jack can walk around without too much trouble. If Jack were to climb on of the Castle’s stairs, it would be around his waist.
I would not want that long limp Giant chasing me with rusty hooks.

SKETCHING AT A BAR

2009-11-20T13:50:00.001-08:00

Here’s a sketch that I did while drinking some hefeweizen at a local bar. Not the greatest drawing, but I was happy about it.

As I recall it, the upper left lady was wearing a puffy black sweater and she had very long curly black hair. From far away you could only see her round face surrounded by this big round black shape. She was really enjoying whatever she was eating.
The one in the right was a couple talking. I Guess the guy was very funny since he was always gesticulating with his hands and the girl was always laughing.
The bottom one was of a couple on their mid 30s. The lady was totally going for the bartender and her husband/boyfriend wasn’t happy about it.

INTERACTION OF COLOR

2009-11-20T11:20:00.000-08:00

I’m reading a great book called “Interaction of Color” by Josef Albers. Albers was an artist mostly known for his work “Homage to the square”. He studied and taught at Bauhaus in Germany, but moved to the US during World War. He then taught at Yale and there he wrote this book. The book is about how color can deceive our eyes and how colors can affect each other.

In the examples above the two little squares are the same color, but it’s really hard to see them that way. They look different to me. You can find many awesome examples on the web or you can buy the book for $3 on eBay. I’ll never look at colors the same way :)

FINAL GIANTS & SOME OLD JACKS

2009-11-19T11:55:00.000-08:00

Here are some final sketches of the Giant. He’s a Victorian gentleman who likes to study and collect art. Even though he looks proper, he’s driven by madness. The Giant wears a Top hat, Victorian white shirt with pointy collars, a properly knotted tie, a double breasted burgundy velvet vest, a dark purple cape, gray suite and oxford shoes. His favorite tool for ripping people’s guts is a rusty hook (normally used to carry meat).

Below are some old Jack drawings that I forgot to post earlier. The fist on the left I was trying some markers and color pencils. Markers are soooo hard to use. I know it look s like he’s holding a flute, but it’s actually a pipe. Jack’s hobby is to build steam engines and toys, as you can see on the right drawing.

SNAIL RIDER FROM NEVER ENDING STORY

2009-11-16T13:12:00.000-08:00

I was watching “The Never-ending Story” while doing my homework at the beginning of the semester. I just felt like taking a break to sketch something out of the movie, so I did the snail rider. Later I went over with a graphite pencil. I kind like the drawing, so I added some colors. I took some liberty to change a few things here and there. I gave him a dark bluish green hair to make the red around it more brilliant. Also the shirt is slightly bluish to contrast with the overall red.

I’ve been trying to learn more about color. I was checking the values and contrast to get a nice variation, so I’m adding a B&W version as well.
If there’s something you don’t like, please write me a comment. I’m trying to learn as much as I can and getting some feedback would help me a lot!

OLD GIANT DESIGNS AS A ROBOT

2009-11-12T17:24:00.000-08:00

Before I started designing a “Jack the ripper” Giant, I was designing him as a Victorian steam punk giant robot. Here are some drawings before I moved to the human version. I was already playing with some Victorian costumes and ideas, right before I dropped the robot version.

Like I said before, I originally wanted the giant to look like Nemo’s submarine with some ornaments and detailed etchings. His shape is pretty much a triangle torso with some inverted triangular arms. I've also tried the one eye camera cliché.

Here are some exploration drawings and a silhouette thumbnail sheet. I was trying some different shapes and possibilities. My Very first idea was to have a Locomotive head for the Giant. I always thought that Locomotives looked evil. Their front part looks like a mean triangular smile. I also tried to have some balloons lifting his heavy and long metal limps, but it just made him look fragile.

Here’s the final thumbnails and doodles that made me decide to change his design to a human “Jack the Ripper” type of character. I did them while watching Coppola’s version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

FINAL JACK, COLOR AND 2 STEAMYS

2009-11-09T11:08:00.000-08:00

Here’s the closest drawing to the final version. I’m not trying to make a model sheet, but at least I kept some ideas in all drawings. Jack is going to wear a drivers cap, a large backpack with mechanical tools, gloves, suspenders that hold both his pants and backpack, a beat up extra large pant, a sleeveless sweater (don’t know the name of those, cardigan???), a white shirt and tie. Like I mention before, he’s barefoot.

I’m still playing with his colors, but I want them to be mostly browns, tans, warm grays and oranges. Jack is all warm colors, while the Giant will be cooler (can’t get more cliché then that). He got a pastel blue shirt because I like that color against brown (chocolate mint) a dirty yellow ochre sweater and a red tie.

Here are some previous sketches that I did. You can see that was playing with his proportions and details. I later noticed that the eye lines in the drawing on the farthest left side it’s not working. On that drawing his eye line feel like a ball behind his face, plus it blends with some lines from the hat.

Here are 2 quick drawings of Jack running from the Giant. I thought it would be nice if Steamy were always puffing steam, which would give away their location.

Here are 2 Steamy doodles that I forgot to post.

HIPSTER VAMPIRE

2009-11-08T16:27:00.000-08:00

I did this drawing almost a year ago. I did some thumbnails of a vampire hipster kid (see the pics below). I swear to God that I never heard of Twilight and those teen vampire films back then! That was an idea that I had about night creatures going to a bar. Something like the movie Swingers, but with night creatures and classic horror monsters set in the Los Feliz.
I used a tweed texture on the pea coat and some jeans template to experiment with textures. I tried giving him some unpleasant color mix. Mostly grays and muddy greens.

STEAMY (JACK AND THE BEANSTALK)

2009-11-07T13:59:00.001-08:00

I forgot to say that we’re supposed to redesign only 3 characters from the tale. The main character (Jack), the villain (Giant) and a sidekick. I thought about all the other characters and their importance in the story. We have the Mom, the cow, the guy who sells the beans, the fairy, the Giant’s wife, the magical harp and the golden egg goose.
I thought it would be nice to have the sidekick as a prisoner in the Giant’s castle, so that Jack have a reason to help him out of the castle. Since it’s a steam punk setting, I’m going to design the castle as a flying steam machine. But what would generate the steam to keep this massive castle flying? The sidekick!
My sidekick is going to be this steam robot life form called “steamy”. He’s the heart of the castle and a prisoner as well. Jack will befriend him and help him out of the castle, which will anger the Giant as his castle is falling apart.
Steamy could be considered as both the Magical harp and the golden egg goose. It’s the Giant most precious belonging and he’s not going to give it up so easily. Steamy’ situation also helps us sympathize more with Jack and dislike the Giant.
I hope it doesn’t look that much like the fire from “Howl’s moving caslte” :)
Here are some early design explorations.

Since Jack is more boxy and the Giant more triangular, steamy should be basically a circle. He’s like a metal sphere holding his steam energy. His limps are pipes and valves.

The instructor told me to explore some other forms that steamy could move around. Since it’s a robot, it doesn’t need to have legs. So here I’m trying some other pipe limbs and ways that it could move around.

GIANT DESIGNS

2009-11-07T13:14:00.000-08:00

My first designs of the Giant were a steam giant robot, with very intricate design and little details, much like Nemo’s submarine. I gave up the idea while reading about Jack the ripper in an article. I like the idea that he’s very educated, serious and proper, in contrast with little Jack. He looks like a noble gentleman, but with this mad serial killer look in his eyes. I was looking at some old newspaper illustrations and some Ronal Searle drawings. They always did this long pointy nose at the top of the head and I always thought it look creepy, in a good way (Searle’s drawings are AMAZING).

So here are some thumbnails, 3 silhouette drawings and a few ideas that I like.
I though it would be cool if he had two hooks in his hands to catch his victims. Like those used to carry meat.

I made a few sketches giving him this crazy smiley face, but he just looked too goofy. Also I want to stay away from the bowler hat guy. I love the bowler hat guy, but I want my character to be creepily serious.

Here are some sketches closer to the final version. I made him more serious and always posing as a calm, noble man. I focused more on his expression. I gave him a serious face and creepy eyes. He’s wearing a grey suit with a double-breasted vest and those high shirt collars where you can see the tie wrapping around his neck. They used to wear those cool jackets that came all the way down in the back, but it wasn’t looking good with the cape.
Gloves! Is a must have for any killer.

VISUAL DEVELOPMENT: JACK AND THE BEANSTALK STEAMPUNK

2009-11-06T19:26:00.000-08:00

I’m taking this visual development class where each student has to chose and redo a fairy tale in a different style. We had to chose one out of 3 stories… Dracula (I know it’s not a fairy tale), Little Red Ridding Hood and Jack and the beanstalk. I chose Jack and the beanstalk to be done in steampunk style.
I went on to read the story to learn more about the characters. According to the original story, Jack is actually a spoiled kid. Supposedly his recently widowed Mom spent all her money because she indulged him too much. His Mom also calls him indolent, careless, and extravagant. Is not that Jack is bad, he just doesn’t know better. After all, he’s just a kid.
So here are some doodles that I’ve done. Just drawing a kid being a kid.

Since Jack is poor, but spoiled, I imagined him collecting all this used clothes and fancy second hand stuff to try to look extravagant, but in a poor way. As a kid I always like to play and run bare feet and since he’s poor, I’m going to take away his shoes.
Kids are not old enough to know what's good fashion (even some adults still don’t know) and as kid I recall wearing a bunch of weird looking stuff that was cool to me, but wasn’t really a good combination. Since his clothes are second hand, it should not fit him properly.

Here are some more drawing exploring his costume and props. I tried giving him some “formal” Victorian era clothing and some objects that a kid might want to use to look like an adult. His clothes should be baggy and worn. I see him wearing a hat and a cane to look elegant, but at the end he just looks like a silly kid. Please don't pay attention to the dog, I hate that drawing :)

In the original story Jack is actually a dirty little thief. He just gets into the Giant’s castle by accident and steals all his stuff. Later they changed the story where a fairy tells Jack that the Giant killed his father, which serves as an excuse to get the Giant killed. Poor Giant... all he wanted was to live in his floating castle.

WELCOME :)

2009-11-06T15:04:00.001-08:00

I just recently moved to San Francisco to start a MFA in 3D animation at the Academy of Art University. I’m starting this blog to get some extra motivation and to show my progress in class. I’m also going to post some personal work and inspirational material. Please, feel free to post comments and to ask any question.

Thanks for visiting my blog!