2017 Update 3 - CTNx Round 2 (ding ding)

I’ve been to CTN Animation Expo every year since 2013, but I’ve only gone to shop around a professional portfolio once before, in 2014. (My recap from that occasion can be found here.) This was the 9th year of the convention.

For those who don’t know what CTN is or have never been to a convention of any kind before, there are 3 basic components of the weekend - 

1. Individual artist tables, where artists and illustrators (generally those working within the industry) are selling prints, enamel pins, art books and various other Etsy-esque products 
2. Live art demos, Q&A panels, and workshops 
3. Industry Giant booths, AKA large sections of the floor where Disney, Dreamworks, Sony, Nickelodeon and the like are set up to do portfolio reviews and recruit potential new talent.

Essentially it’s a giant networking event for the animation industry, with a side focus on art for gaming and illustration. I’ve made acquaintances from all my classes at the Concept Design Academy over the years, but very few of them were there, so it was a good 3 days straight of me talking to people I don’t know for 8+ hours. (If you know me personally, you know this was hard.)

I was genuinely shocked, after submitting my portfolio for studio review in advance of the convention, to get a recruitment call-back from Nickelodeon, who I almost didn’t even submit to because I figured my stuff wasn’t their style. This meant that I had a professional interview with them on Saturday morning of the convention at their booth. Getting that email was the best kind of validation of the past few art-focused years of my life - a professional at a major studio had looked at my work and determined I was worth talking to. 

Because I hate drawing things out, I’ll cut to the chase and let you all know that I feel like the interview went... okay. It was fast - they roll people through there like Krispy Kremes on a conveyer belt. (Mmm.) The recruiter was really kind and genuine, took his time looking through my work, and gave me some feedback (more props, especially vehicles, was my main takeaway.) I didn’t get the sense that it was a “We’ll be calling you ASAP” type of situation, more of a “You’re on the right track, keep going and stay in touch” situation. Which is a great thing! I mostly wish I hadn’t gotten so nervous right beforehand and done the entire 15 minutes with my face beet red. I wanted to fly casual and I definitely did NOT fly casual... just call me Tomato. Oh well. Acting Natural is not my strong suit.

I had some other portfolio reviews throughout the weekend - you could wait in line to meet with people from DreamWorks and Blue Sky, which I did, and those were fairly positive (although again, not glowing. It’s a competitive industry). I got quality, actionable feedback from Brett Bean and Justin Rodrigues, two great artists (and personal favorites of mine) who I’ve gotten to know over the years, who both told me to simplify and push my shapes - which was going to be my next directive anyways. :) I caught up with Kelsey Eng, a former CDA classmate whose work & career have taken off, and attended a great panel about doing authentic work, featuring presenters Peter de Seve, Carter Goodrich, Nick Galifianakis, and John Kascht (whose name I initially didn't recognize, but who I was delighted to discover I knew of as I've posted about him before). Most of all, it was truly wonderful to meet in person some of my fellow Oatley Academy mentees from the summer - I had a great time hanging out with down-to-earth Natalia, hilarious Leanne, super sweet Melissa, uber-talented Amie, and beautiful Dooz. You should make time to check out all of their work, it’s truly phenomenal and I was privileged to be in their company. Other notable new friends from the weekend include fellow OA students Craig Russell, Laura Belevica, Abigail Kraft, Gabriel Leal, Rebecca Whitley, and Nora Jirau.

Photo from an Oatley Academy meetup at Simmzy's in Burbank

Two of my best interactions came completely out of the blue at the very end of the day on Sunday. I just happened to strike up a conversation with DreamWorks TV character artist Ivan Mendoza at his table - I actually didn’t even know who he was, but right off the bat he was extremely easy to talk to after 3 days of exhausting, slightly awkward conversations. He ended up taking a huge chunk of his afternoon to chat with me about my portfolio and draw a personal caricature in the art book I bought from him, which was more than kind. 

Immediately afterwards, on a whim, I decided to get a ‘portfolio’ review from renowned caricature artist John Kascht (the one who I’d recognized in a panel the day before - I'd connected with him briefly afterwards, during which he’d told me to come by and talk to him on Sunday afternoon). 

I had only these three feeble Hirschfeld-wannabe attempts to show him, but he was more than complementary, practically demanding that I continue my pursuit of caricature (something I’d been interested in, but putting aside for some time to focus on the animation portfolio). It was the best kind of conversation with an artist you look up to - meaningful, motivating, and fun. In the space of 20 minutes we managed to get deep about what the art of caricature means and the ways in which humans relate to each other visually. He told me when I get into the weeds on a portrait that I’ve been working on for a while, to go back to your very first, initial impressions of the face, and “hang on to them like a life raft in a raging storm.” And he recommended me to two new caricature artists’ work for reference - William Auerbach Levy and Ralph Barton - who both worked in the simple, linework-focused, reductionist style that I’m trying to achieve. It was a wonderful exchange, made more so because I could sense that he was as delighted to talk to me as I was to talk to him.

It was on this note that the weekend ended, and my fifth year at CTN came to a close. Going forward into 2018, I have a few directives: 

1. Concentrate on creating characters and illustrations with simpler, bolder shapes and lines 
2. A new simplified-style portfolio story, tailored for my passion genre, kids’ educational TV (now that Pinga is leaving me alone) 
3. A few personal mini illustration series that I’ve had in mind for a while
4. Caricature study on the side
5. Finally start pulling my weight in terms of house settling-in and decoration so that I don't get divorced

But first... the annual Sous Family Christmas card calls. Happy holidays everyone!

© Gina Florio 2017

CTN 2014 Recap

Heeeeeeeeeello everyone... I'm just going to pretend I'm Phil the Groundhog today, poking my head out to see if it's really, actually 2015 and I really, actually haven't posted in 3 months. (Two and a half if we're being really precise so put down those pitchforks already.)

I wanted to do a recap of the 2014 CTN Animation Expo before it got too far away, since building a professional concept art portfolio to show at that convention was ultimately the goal that I've been driving towards for... the entire time I've been writing this blog. To start off, here's a cute little recap video shot by artist Anthony Vu. (You can even see yours truly from 2:03-2:12!)

For anyone who doesn't know, CTN Expo (stands for Creative Talent Network) is a 3-day convention held every November in Burbank, primarily for the creative side of the animation and videogame industries. The convention floor mainly consists of artists selling originals, prints and books from their booths, but the major animation studies (Sony, Disney, Nickelodeon etc.) all have representations there as well. There are professional portfolio reviews that you can apply for ahead of time, as well as art-related panels and demonstrations that are constantly going on. It's almost frustrating to be there, because at any given time, 5 different things could be happening, all of which you want to be present for.

This was the fourth year of the convention (started in 2010). I had been the previous year, in 2013, but just for a day to walk around and see what it was all about. This year I went all out. I bought a 3-day pass and made reservations for a couple of art demos that I didn't want to miss. And most importantly, I worked really hard, for four months, to get my portfolio in order so I could have something at least mildly professional-looking to present for reviews. My completed portfolio can be seen here (or by just clicking the 'portfolio' tab above).

Firstly I just want to say that the energy at this convention is insane. It's a growing event in a fairly small space, so it can reach Comic-Con levels of crowdedness - but it's so awe-inspiring to be in a place where you know everyone else is just as much of an animation and concept art geek as you are. That said, it can also get incredibly taxing, especially if you enjoy your personal space as much as I do. My first day there (Friday) was an extremely long 8 hours of waiting in lines and jostling with crowds, as well as approaching artists I had been admiring over the internet for years, introducing myself, and asking them to look at my vastly inferior portfolio and give me feedback (which feels about the same as vomiting in front of an attractive stranger). I also had a professional portfolio review with Disney and with Bento Box (the producer of Bob's Burgers. Interesting side note, I found out they operate out of the same office building as 51 Minds, the reality TV production company I work for. Hollywood is a really small town sometimes).

I got really wonderful portfolio feedback - in that I have a fairly clear direction for what I want my next steps to be art-wise. I had several people say "Your skills are in a great place, you could be working as a prop designer right now, no question" (which got a little frustrating after the 4th or 5th time, because of course the ideal response would be "Okay, so... here I am!!") Lora Innes and Justin Copeland of the Paper Wings Podcast literally freaked out over my portfolio, giving me a huge boost at the very start of the convention. I was able to meet Pascal Campion, Cory Loftis, Brett Bean and Justin Rodriguez (both of whom I knew from the Drawing Club), my former character design teacher Jose Lopez, Oatley Academy helmer Chris Oatley, Clio Chiang, Stephen Silver, Bobby Chiu, and James Gurney (!), the author and illustrator of Dinotopia which I have loved since I was four. In addition, I was able to ask most of the above for a portfolio review, most of which were, at the very least, favorable. Almost everyone said something along the same lines - that I need to imbue my characters with more personality and I need to work on my storytelling. They all said this in different ways - some more specific, like tailoring environments to fit the characters more - and some more vague, like “It’s all in the line - you just have to find the line that speaks to the personality of the character.” They all asked for more action poses and more expressions, and more process work, like silhouettes and rough sketches, and they all encouraged me to do more plain observational drawing, painting and sketching. But the true revelation came when I talked to Dutch artist Edwin Rhemrev, and he said “Character Design isn’t about how the character looks. It’s about who the character is.” He showed me a page of sketches he’d done for a single character and said “See how these all look different? Here he’s old, here he’s young; here he’s fat, and here he’s skinny. But they all have the same personality. And you can tell.”

Ahhh. The clouds parted. I don't know that I've ever felt such sudden clarity in my life.

© Edwin Rhemrev

But the best thing about the convention was that by the end of the third day, I felt like I wasn't a lone little fish swimming against the tide anymore. Just from the sheer amount of time I spent there talking to people, asking questions, being polite, generally networking, I felt like I belonged there. My normally overactive imposter's syndrome had faded. On Sunday afternoon, I made the rounds to revisit the artists who gave me portfolio reviews, to thank them and buy something from their booths (the least I could do after the free advice they'd given me), and they all recognized me and greeted me warmly. I no longer felt, or feel, like an outsider in the Los Angeles animation community. Since the convention ended, I've been to several of the drop-in lifedrawing sessions and sketch clubs that I know of around LA, and almost every time I recognize someone and am able to quickly strike up a conversation. Even though I'm just an amateur artist, and it looks like I'm going to stay that way for the time being, I no longer feel like a phony sitting down to draw next to professionals from Dreamworks or Disney. And that feeling is priceless.

© Gina Florio 2015

CTN Expo 2014 - I'm Off to See the Wizard

Hey everyone!

Just a quick note to say I'll be at CTN Animation Expo all 3 days this weekend! Besides going to portfolio reviews, there's a great lineup of workshops and panels that I plan to attend - notably, an "all-star" character design panel helmed by Chris Oatley, Brett Bean, Stephen Silver, Tony Siruno, and Jeff Wamester. I'm also excited to visit the many artist booths and meet some of my favorite artists like James Gurney, Ty Carter, Mingjue Chen, Cory Loftis and more. I'll also be going to a "Drawing Party" opening night event at the Silver Drawing Academy on Thursday night. It promises to be a busy but exciting weekend!

I've been hard at work on a new chunk of portfolio pages which I'll put up soon!

If any friends/readers will be in attendance let me know! Hope to see you there!

© Gina Florio 2014

New Portfolio Pages

I'm currently keeping my head down working on a portfolio for this year's CTN Animation Expo, which is happening at the end of November. However, the deadline to submit a 12-page portfolio for their specialized recruitment event was today, and I'm happy to say that I just submitted.

After two years of taking classes and going to countless workshops and art events, it's a bit surreal to be finally submitting my portfolio to actual animation and game studios. No matter what happens, I'm proud of the work that I've done and the skill level I've achieved, and I'm excited for whatever the future holds.

Here's some of the recently completed portfolio pages I made to go along from my work from Jose Lopez's Character Design class. You can view my entire portfolio by clicking on the tab above, or just clicking here.

I had a lot of fun with these if you can't tell! Props = good times. Although I am officially over attempting to do solid linework using a tablet... yeesh... whose idea was that.

© Gina Florio 2014

San Diego Comic-Con 2013 Recap

Jack, Dave and myself arriving on the train, Fri July 19

Disclaimer: the super nice, non-instagram-sized pictures in this post were all taken by my boyfriend, Dave. You should go check out his Flickr!

This review is coming about five and a half weeks' behind everyone else's SDCC recaps, because I'm slow and bad at life. I also don't have many pictures to illustrate my favorite memories, because I am terrible at asking people I admire for a picture, and awkward in front of a camera to boot. But in a nutshell, and in no particular order, these are my favorite memories from my very first San Diego Comic-Con:

1. A FANTASTIC, intimate panel for the upcoming documentary on the great movie poster artist Drew Struzan.
     1a. Meeting and getting to shake the hand of the man himself.
     1b. Meeting and getting to shake the hand of Dean DeBlois, the director and genius behind the How To Train Your
     Dragon trilogy, and getting to tell him how much the movie means to me, during which I'm sure I sounded supremely
     juvenile.
     1c. Scoring an EXCLUSIVE HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2 poster by Drew (one of only 2000), which has quickly
     become perhaps my most prized possession.
     1d. Getting said poster signed by Drew, who is without a doubt one of the kindest, most humble men I've ever met.
     1e. The movie is called Drew: The Man Behind the Poster, and you should absolutely check it out. A favorite quote
     about Drew: "His art creates a feeling of nostalgia for something you've never seen before."

Bonus picture: HTTYD director Dean DeBlois holding aforementioned poster. It's beautiful.

2. Meeting an artist I've admired for a long time - Aaron Diaz, who writes and illustrates the famous webcomic Dresden Codak. I happened to catch him at a kind of lull at the Topatoco booth, and we ended up having a fairly extended conversation, where he mostly talked my ear off about Metropolis... which is pretty much exactly what I would expect from the creator of Dresden Codak. In any case I was mostly just relieved it was him talking MY ear off and not me being worried about the reverse, as I usually am in these situations.

One of my favorite pieces of Dresden Codak art.

3. Simply standing at the Schoolism booth for a couple of hours on Saturday afternoon (looking exceptionally mature in my Pokémon costume) and getting treated to not one, but TWO, awesome, FREE demos by artists I love, the amazing character designer Stephen Silver and the absolutely legendary Nathan Fowkes. No one else watching was speaking up too much so I just peppered them with as many questions as I could think of as I watched them make beautiful art. Oh look, I actually have a picture of this one.

He signed my sketchbook too despite me looking like a complete weirdo. Success!

4. Meeting Brett Bean, a smaller, more local artist, but one of my absolute favorites! As far as I am concerned, Brett is the master of the very technical, specialized technique that I call 'Fun Shapes™' (a few examples below). I almost worked with him and his wife Julie (an equally amazing jewelry designer) editing a video for his latest Kickstarter project, but unfortunately their deadline was pushed up at the last minute and I was unable to help on such short notice. Even so, they were perhaps the nicest human beings I've ever met, and as a bonus I was able to pick up a cool steampunky compact mirror by Julie!

 

5. Dressing in my Pokémon costume! This was my first time wearing a costume to a convention and thus joining the worldwide phenomenon known as cosplay. It wasn't a terribly difficult costume - I already had the shorts, T-shirt and socks, so I got a wig, bought and modified the jacket (I'll wear it again), bought the hat from etsy (this one, in fact - it's great quality), bought green fingerless gloves, and got some cheap black Vans knockoffs from Target and painted them (unfortunately you can't see the shoes in this picture).

By far the most time-consuming part of the costume was making the pokéballs and belt. Usually when people make pokéballs they make them out of styrofoam, but I really wanted them to look like super shiny, manufactured, hard plastic like they do in the show. I ended up buying those clear decorate-it-yourself Christmas ornaments, painting the insides to maintain evenness on the outside, and adding a black rim and white button on the outside like I saw in this video. Then I secured them to the belt by using snaps (in the front, so I could take them on and off and pose with them) and by sewing the ornament-tail to the belt itself (in the back).

It's not an elaborate costume, so I didn't really expect anybody to take notice, but actually a fair amount of people took pictures of me! By far my favorite was a little kid who was ALSO dressed as Ash Ketchum (or rather, Ash's his current outfit on the show, mine is the 'retro' version now I guess. In related news, the Pokémon show is STILL GOING, you guys). He was so curious about how I made my pokéballs, and was very intent on showing me the little stuffed pokémon he was carrying around.

It's not drawing or painting, but cosplay is definitely a very fulfilling creative craft! It definitely felt good to get away from my desk and work with my hands using physical materials. If I wasn't concentrating so hard on drawing, I'd be diving headfirst into more cosplay projects. It was a lot of fun.

My dear friend Thadd is on the left, cosplaying Spock from Star Trek IV.

6. Meeting the cast of Heroes of Cosplay! As an editor, this is something I don't get to do a lot. The producers prefer to keep us in dark windowless little rooms and never let us out. But since almost all of the cast had booths or some type of business at the con, I sought them out and saw their awesome costumes in person. Unfortunately I don't have pictures with Holly and Jessica, who I actually went out to breakfast with and had a great time. But here are some pictures with Yaya Han (cosplaying the Invisible Woman), Victoria Schmidt, and Riki LeCotey (as Yeoman Janice Rand and ... someone else from Star Trek, respectively). They are all wonderful and incredibly talented people!

7. Last but not least, check out these awesome photos of other cosplayers, all taken by Dave.

This guy was huuuuuuge. His costume basically looked professional.

Pick up that can, citizen!

Leeloo multipass.

SDCC, you were crazy, exhausting, and fun. I'll be back next year.

© Gina Florio 2013

Daily Sketches - Week 7

Had some time to branch out a little last week and experiment more with my watercolors.

Feb 11

Feb 12 - this is a building on my street that I've always liked for its interesting look

I've wanted to paint the cul-de-sac at the end of my road for a long time, because it's always a welcome sight to me - it means I'm finally home (usually after a long day of work). I photographed it when the sun was starting to set and the light was really interesting, and worked from that. I also decided to take pictures of my process. Please note that my level of knowledge about watercolor and painting in general is basically at 0. And please feel free to give pointers. I would love that actually.

This is my watercolor set. There are 24 colors, and I was originally using most of them, but then read that it's better to use less colors, and to always mix your greens from blues and yellows instead of using green paint. The test swatches on the paper with the dots below them are the ones I've been restricting myself to. And yes, I paint right in front of my computer, it's pretty bad. I wish I had the space for a separate traditional art desk.

I've been reading a lot about color and light and I knew that I wanted there to be a separation between the "warm" parts of the picture (everything the light was touching) and the "cool" parts (stuff in shadow). I decided to try to accomplish this by using a yellow underpainting in the warm sections and a blue underpainting in the cool sections, since watercolor is transparent and hence good for layering.

The painting with more or less all of the shapes blocked in, I had also started to do some shadows on the trees in back.

The final product.

I am happy with the way this came out - or maybe I should say, I'm happy with what I learned by trying it - but it definitely could be better. The colors need work - I don't think I achieved the high contrast between warm and cool that I was going for - but I think my real problem here is with value. In the original photograph, the stuff in shadow is noticeably WAY darker than the stuff in light, and that's not true in the painting. Everything's very midtone. I think it was Ty Carter (who has done a lot of great posts lately on color & light) who said, "Your paintings can work without color but not without value... if your values are off, everything is off." It's hard to get dark darks in watercolor though! I'm always afraid of going too dark at first because there's no way to fix it like there would be with a non-transparent medium like oils. But then I end up with a painting like this with no contrast. So it goes. Learning...

Feb 14 - trying a black and white watercolor to improve my values.

Feb 15 - I like turtles.

Extra for Feb 15.

Feb 16 - visited the Stanley Kubrick exhibit at the LACMA and decided to attempt a still from The Shining with markers.

Feb 17 - monkies, which were much harder than expected.

I also made a few improvements to my desk this past week (most notably, my new clamp-on swiveling daylight-color-temperature lamp/magnifying glass which I'm in love with) and decided to take a couple pictures of my setup. The desk itself is actually an Ikea countertop, which I bought legs for & attached. I usually just push my keyboard and Wacom tablet back and draw or paint in that space. (My desktop background is by the amazing Khang Le.)

Eventually I'd love to move the printer somewhere else and put an angled tabletop drawing board in that area.

A reminder pinned to my bulletin board.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, an exciting bit of news - Dave and I and some friends FINALLY got tickets for the San Diego Comic-Con this year (the big one). I have been wanting to go for years now, we've even tried for tickets the past couple of years, but never gotten through. I know, I know, it's all big and commercial now, and it'll be super overwhelming, and there will be too many people, and we'll spend most of our time waiting in line, and our hotel was ridiculously priced and will probably suck... but I'm excited anyway. I would feel bad calling myself a nerd if I didn't go at least once. And hopefully I'll get to meet and buy prints from many of the artists I follow there.

Happy President's Day to everyone - I hope everyone has the day off (unlike myself... but I can't complain! It's good to have work).