Short

I'm finally posting the short I worked on during the summer. It was for a contest in Mexico, encouraging people to recycle.

The animation was done in After Effects, unfortunately we didn't win the contest, but it was a great experience to actually work on the whole process of a short. It really helped me understand better how things work in the industry.

Really liked working on a short, definitely not my last one!

I apologize in advice that the video doesn't have subtitles, but I think the message is pretty clear :D So, no more words, here it is! Enjoy and comment!

Don Polo Malos Modos from Andrea Alcaraz on Vimeo.

Experimenting with pastels

So, I bought this box of pastels a while ago, but didnt really use them. This Sunday went to TSA for some Life Drawing and decided to take them with me and experiment a bit. To be honest, I had no idea of what I was doing. Pretty much, I was just testing and trying to figure out how to use them. I'm not 100% happy with the results, but I think it's a good start.

And a portrait we did in Life Drawing today. Again, trying to experiment more with pastels and colored paper. I want to go over this one and push it further, but I'm afraid I might put a little too much and make it worse. (Sorry for the quiality of the pic)

Any feedback would be really appreciated!

Toon Boom

Toon Boom is awesome!

First assignment with lip sync (kinda hard) and some acting.

Particulary love the male voice of my girly character, good stuff.

Teaser

It's been a while since my last post. I'm back to school again, I must say I'm really excited with this new semester, seems like its gonna be tons of fun!

I've been working on a project about recycling during the summer. Here's a test I did for one of the scenes. It was made using after effects.

More info about the project coming soon!

Color Studies

My injured sister has been getting tons of flowers lately. Flowers are beautiful, but hard to draw. After messing up a little the colors in my first attempt, I forced my self to do some color studies and pay attention to the different shadows, hues, values, etc. Still trying to get better at watercolors, and I also experimented a little with pastels. I noticed that as I kept going I started to get a little bit more the idea of how to use the different mediums. Gotta do more studies to get better!

Sketching places

I haven't had the time to go sketching some buildings and places here in Mexico this summer, but I'm looking forward on going this coming weekend! 

Didn't really finish these drawings but I kinda like them. I pretty much tried to experiment with watercolours (which didn't turned out that great).

First drawing: Palacio de Bellas Artes (Palace of Fine Arts), Mexico City

Second drawing: Antiguo Colegio de Minería, Mexico City

Last drawing: Riverdale, Toronto

Old Sketchbook Drawings

Here are some sketchbook drawings from my first year as an animation student.

Life drawings:

Random sketches:

Playing around with colors. I loved these giraffes until I put some sparkles on it and closed my sketchbook without letting it dry :( 

Craziness

It's gonna be a crazy end of the week.

I'm going back to Mexico City this weekend. I'm worried about the people, my friends, my family, my own health...the situation seems pretty bad right now, and they not only are dealing with the swine flu, but two days ago there was also a quake. I just hope I don't get the flu while I'm there. If I survive the first days at the zombie town, I'll make sure to post more of my artwork and make a vow to become a better artist :D. Seems fair.

Meanwhile, the pages I submitted for the yearbook.

Dr.Jekyll to Mr.Hyde transformation

So here it is, the final character design assignment that took away days and hours of sleep. I kinda tried to go with a different style this time.

Dr. Jekyll is undergoing a bee-venom therapy (also called "apitherapy", you can look it up if don't believe me :D) to increase his brain power due to the high amount of energy and vitality you can get from the therapy. He doesn't like the feeling of being stung by a bee (and who actually does?), so he plays with the bee venom and DNA, but something goes wrong and he ends up turning into a crazy bee!!!

I actually got the idea of the bee from my mom. She literally loves this bee therapy and seems to actually work for her.

Hope you like it!

more digital paintings

Another two assignments for digital tools.

"El mariachi loco"

 Edgar Allan Poe

Digital Painting

I never did digital painting before, and I never used a wacom tablet until this semester... so AWESOMEE!! It's kinda hard to get used to the surface of the tablet tho.. and not to mention that u have to be really good with lightning and color theory if u want your painting to look nice. Here is my first assignment for my digital tools class (the layout was provided, I only panted it).

Character Skeleton

Skeleton study for my character design class.

Trip back home

Thought I might upload some pictures of my trip back home (Mexico City) for Christmas. It's really sad to see that most of the time we don't appreciate and enjoy what we have. But it was really cool to visit my city again from another perspective. 

The picture below was taken in a flea market full of piñatas. During Christmas there's a tradition called "Posada"... long story short: u sing, eat, and break piñatas (I'm not gonna go trough details, I could never finish).

 These other pictures were taken downtown. I never really paid attention before to the amazing architecture of these buildings. Most of them are about 400-500 hundred years old, really really gorgeous buildings.

These las two pictures are from "El Palacio de Bellas Artes" (Palace of Fine Arts). I have to say is one of the most beautiful buildings there. There are tons of little details that I started to notice after some time sketching..  Never really saw before all the sculptures and reliefs of beautiful human figures on the roof and sides of the building. Inside, you find murals by famous mexican painters like Diego Rivera, Siqueiros (personal favourite), Tamayo, etc. And the place is also an Opera House!

Old drawings

Some of my life drawings from Art Fundies.

Getting started

Hi everybody.. so I'm kinda new with this thing, right now im just trying to figure out how things work, and how to change the design of the blog. 

As soon as I find out, I'll start posting stuff!!