Cinequest Film Festival Spot

For the past few weeks, I had the chance to work on a short film/commercial spot for Cinequest Film Festival directed by David Chai. It was really fun working in a team again and good experience for 2d pipeline production.

The first few images are concept work I designed inspired by UPA style short films. It was a challenge creating character ideations because they had to be general people from the bay area as opposed to a specific person with key characteristics. It was completely different from the way I'm used to working. Working in the UPA style was also incredibly fun! I experimented with breaking the rules--purposeful tangents, line/shape, texture...limiting my visual vocabulary to only a specific set of motifs and shapes.

We had a small team and very little time for turn arounds, so I was responsible for some of the backgrounds, while working with Kimberly Knoll, Wilbur Liang and Christine Nguyen. The animators designed the characters and the last images are color styling specific to the lighting of my scenes.

old BFG work

This was a group project assigned in Nino Navarez's class a year ago that taught me so much. There are definitely tons of mistakes in lighting and design. But I'm still very fond of the concepts behind our work. It would not have been possible without the collaboration of my awesome team mates, Fred Stewart, Alice Wong, Wilbur Liang.
I designed the BFG and his prop like things.
Fred Stewart, brilliant artist, designed all the mean giants.Wilbur designed the human characters except for Sophie, and Fred painted over them.
Alice designed Sophie, her various dos and frocks.

I designed the environment for Sophie's orphanage.
Fred was responsible for Giant Country, the story moment of BFG's visit as well as our version of the flesh-like snozzcumbers.
I had initially turned in a different story moment of the BFG fighting the other giants, but I wasn't happy with it. So I scrapped it and quick painted this and somehow never finished it.
Alice designed the dining room of the Queen's palace. I don't think I have a finished version of it.
I think this was supposed to be Wilbur's story moment. The BFG is savoring his first taste of human food. I was greedy and painted a version for myself.

camel sak

I helped the animators customize a gift for Jason Spencer. We all wrote thank you notes on the blue tags. It was a good working with my hands again. :)

quick sketch

Semester has ended and I'm need to get my life back, haha. Was seeing how far I could go until I broke my face. The second one reminds me of fanciful geishas. Inside joke w/ friends Rachel and Januel.

Part Time Indian

This is my most recent project in BFA. We were designing for Sherman Alexie's, "Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian." It's about a boy who ultimately has to choose between a leaving the reservation for a better future and the tradition of sticking with his family and staying in the res. I want to thank Jason Spencer Galsworthy for giving me extensive feedback and Kendal Cronkhite for pushing me in the right direction, and last but not least, my professors Bunny and Courtney. Also, huge thanks to SHM alums Jeff Sengali, Dela Longfish, Nikki Lucas and Bob Mckenzie for kicking off the semester! There are definitely a few pages I NEED to revise, but here's what I had for the final. Will update when those are fixed :)