Requiem for Romance - Development Stuff

I'm working on the development stage of a proposal right now called Requiem for Romance. As you may have guessed, it's a breakup story. Lately, I've been really inspired by the water ink animation of Shanghai master Te Wei. But at the same time I have these vivid anime-esque images in my head. And then there's the cute squishy style that I always seem to end up with. I'm really torn in terms of the style at the moment.

Asthma Tech - Scene 9 action shots

These are the final action scenes in Asthma Tech when all the superheroes come together as a team!

Word War One

Swanky once told me to just keep sketching letters and something would come of it.

Switch. Concept. Metro










During my research at Concordia, I tried to find a way to bring elements of narrative and movement into my graf sketches. If you think about the nature of graffiti and how new artwork is constantly sprayed over the old artwork, each past layer is covered up and lost forever. But those layers are still there, and if you think of this series of layers as a sequence of images, it becomes animation.

For this particular experiment, I decided to have a conflict of words with opposing meanings:

Sin >> Nature >> Artificial Behaviour >> Primal Instincts >> Supression >> Freedom >> Oppression >> Rebellion >> Capitalism vs Communism >> Journalism vs Propaganda >> Science vs Creation >> Singularitist Conception >> Sin

Music by the Canadian artist Mango Lasi. Completed in Fall 2007.

Asthma Tech - Scene 8 rough animation

This is another one of my favourite scenes from Asthma Tech. When I was a kid I couldn't go outside for a lot of the recess periods cus I had to take this asthma machine, which I still have by the way. All I could do was sit there and draw pictures. Battle scenes, Transformers, Ninja Turtles, GI Joe, etc. This scene is about Winston's character discovering how to draw an asthmatic space ship and having it take over his reality.





These are a couple of early rough board panels.



Let the Transformers sound effect play in your head.



First time flying a space ship is always a bit stressful!



As usual recess never lasts nearly as long as you thought it would. Just when it starts getting good, it's over.



And here's the composite in colour. This stuff is from late 2004 and 2005. Enjoy!

Asthma Tech - Speedline!

The top image is a board panel. The last image is a final screen shot and the rough animation is in the middle.

Asthma Tech - Scene 4 rough animation

These are some of the first animation tests from back in 2004. It's kind of nostalgic to look at this stuff again. Roughs were animated on chroma and inked with those faber castell pitt artist pens.



When I was a kid, I could actually run pretty fast. I would be in the front of the pack at the start of the track race, but after a while my asthma would kick in and I'd have an asthma attack. And the rest of the kids would pass me by.



The characters were a combination of kids that I actually knew when I was a kid, and kids that my mom had as students. This guy was somewhat reminiscent of a friend named Nathan.



This girl was based off of that athletic asian girl archetype.



I had a childhood friend named Sam and he had glasses.



There were a lot of blonde girls in my public school, back when little kids actually wore dresses to school. This ones for them.



This girl's kind of a tom boy.



All together now!



Cough! Cough! Cough!



The classic blue ventolin puffer saves the day.



So here's the colour composite. Basically, this was me everyday in gym class!

Asthma Tech - Proposal images

These were the initial marker sketches that I submitted as my proposal to the NFB to try to get some investigate/development funding for Asthma Tech. These are from late 2003.

Sherry, like the Drink - 2 min short film

So here's my tribute to my mother Sherry, like the Drink. It's traditional animation, inked on chromacolour. The music was composed by my childhood friend Chris Reygel. I finished it in spring of 2003. It didn't play that many places, but it played at the student Ottawa festival SAFO, Reel Asian, on CBC and on Teletoon. It came second in the Most Promising Student category of the Teletoon scholarship in 2003.

Sherry, like the Drink - poem

I was driving myself out to Oakville in the summer just before 3rd year. I was on the QEW highway, and these few lines just came to me:

There once was a woman,
Who's laughter could summon,
Smiles on face full of frowns,

There once was a teacher,
Who's kids loved to greet her,
And play with her on the playground,

Her name was Sherry,
You know, like the drink!


That's all I had at that moment. But the "Sherry, like the drink" part came from a saying that my mom used to tell people, to allow them to remember her name.

Sherry, like the Drink - painting

Just an inspirational painting to capture the way I felt at the time. It wasn't ever an image I intended to put into the film, but I felt the need explore it. Sept 2002.

Sherry, like the Drink - watercolours

This was one of the images that kept resurfacing. My mom was a teacher, and her students were having a hard time with her passing. So I kept thinking of them. Sept 2002.

Sherry, like the Drink - charcoal sketches

These were the first sketches I did, as soon as I knew I was going to make a tribute to my mom. Charcoal was great to get some of the images out quickly, but it was too dark for the theme of the film. This is from September 2002.