My nephew is turning one!

Designed the invitation card for my nephew's first birthday party :) It's Calvin and Hobbes themed so I drew him in my best Bill Watterson-esque impression.

Mom, I love you

Excited to share my latest project :) Putting all my heart and love for my mom into it.



"Mom, I love you" animatic from Karen Chan on Vimeo.

Pusong Pinoy Sa Amerika

I created this little animation sequence for a tv show called "Pusong Pinoy sa Amerika" a few weeks ago. The episode has already been aired, making it my first work to be shown on TV. Yay!

I was given only about 1.5 weeks to build this and another sequence from scratch. It was tough, there was a big learning curve but I'm happy with the results that I pulled off just in time before the deadline. Looking forward to another opportunity to apply and improve on what I've learned :)



Martha from Karen Chan on Vimeo.

The Story Locker

Finally took a crack at animating in After Effects. Got to say, I'm really impressed at the tools they have. I animated this logo for The Story Locker.

The Interview - Work in Progress

The Interview - Work in Progress from Karen Chan on Vimeo.

This is a dialogue piece that I've been working on for a potential series of interviews that I have an idea for. It's still not done, just needs more polishing to smooth it out and flesh out the environment a bit to show that she's at her desk in an office.

My idea is to interview people on certain themes, get candid answers and animate it. The theme for this is "Immigrants working in the US". It's a simple idea but I believe it's cool to learn more about different cultures. Largely inspired by Creature Comforts and Russell Peters lol

So the question for this one is:

"Tell me of an expression that they use back in your home country."

Animated by Karen Chan

Rig by Romain Digonnet

Voice by Chandni Chachra

Totoro doodles

Just some very loose doodles. I ended up doodling him in a walk cycle lol I like to see them move!

Ruslan & Ludmilla

And I'm finally putting this set of boards up. This is a sequence for a collaborative project that I've been working on. It's based on a Russian fairy tale. The plot is pretty much the princess gets kidnapped by a wizard and has to be rescued. It has a lot of trademark elements in the story but of course, we're trying to economize and put our own twist into it at the same time. This is the sequence where she wakes up in the wizard's chambers, beats the wizard up and runs away.

What the...?

How would you feel waking up to this?

This is just a POV shot that I made for a storyboard sequence that I've been working on for the last couple of weeks. I will be finishing the sequence soon so please come back in a few days to see the finished sequence!

Who's there?

I love you Mr. Owl!!!

Sparta Owl!

Ashley

Did a little drawing for my cousin's adorable baby.

Airbending owl

Finding rhythm

So I've been focusing on line sensitivity and finding rhythm in my gestures and essentially every line I put down. I recently realized that aside from my usual rough style of sketching, I draw my curves pretty much the same way every time, causing my drawings to not look too appealing. So I've slowed down and put more thought in creating rhythm.

Robin Owl

Super quick sketch and color. Recently got into archery. It's been a lot of fun

Bunnies

Made some bunnies for a friend's short clip to be shown at the end credits.

Nom nom nom

*Flop*

Back Home: Short film

Been storyboarding like mad for the last month. Churning out an average of 30 panels a day. But the experience is amazing and I definitely learned and improved a lot along the way. My composition and storytelling skills have gotten a lot better. Feel very happy when I feel like I captured the right emotions in each scene. Storyboarding for a live film definitely gave me different challenges as opposed to boarding for an animated film. I've learned to work with physical limitations and changing my boards to accommodate logistical problems.

Biggest problem we've had is dealing with our main protagonist, a girl. Since this is a student film and  the girl and the family are just volunteers who've never done this before, we've encountered problems with the girl's (and family's) temperament and schedule. We had to rewrite the script and cut down the shots as much as possible. I've learned to be more economical in my shot choices and cut down so that we don't have to shoot the same scene several times as we only have one camera. It works for the most part but sometimes I feel like I could have brought more emotion and storytelling by having more shots but... it's a give and take situation, and I'm adapting along the way.

Here's one short scene.

Perspective, gesture and appeal

As the post title says, I've been practicing on my perspective, gestures and appeal. Did some experimentation and made a lot of mistakes but they were good learning experiences.

Liked this guy a lot so I gave him some color

Rock on!

Fist bump

Went rock climbing with some friends

It's been cold, really cold (>v<)

Loved this guy too :) Yoga cat!

Ned Stark

After finishing the 6th book of the Wheel of Time (Robert Jordan) series, I finally decided to take a break from the series and start on A Song of Ice and Fire (George Martin), namely, Game of Thrones! Been psyched about starting on this series ever since the HBO series first came out. Love the series, especially the opening theme. I keep playing the opening theme in  my head whenever I think about Game of Thrones. Anyway, here's a drawing of Lord Eddard Stark that I drew awhile back.