LITTLE PINK OCTOPUS / cindey chiang

adora

2011-09-19T22:53:00.000-07:00

Soooo it's time to actually update this blog!

My fourth year film: Flavour of the Week

2011-04-30T00:31:00.000-07:00

My film this year, Flavour of the Week, will be screening tonight (April 30th) at the CalArts Open Show. The show runs from 2- 6pm, a break, and then 10-11:30 pm. My film will be screening during the second half.

My film from last year, ink'd will also be screening at 1pm, but in Seattle at NFFTY.

I'm still working on my film from this year as I was not able to complete it the exact way I wanted to for the Open Show deadline. However, I plan on finishing it soon and uploading it within the next few weeks.

Coming Soon!

2011-04-14T11:40:00.001-07:00

Here is a peek at what I have been up to lately.

11 more days left to finish my last student film at CalArts.

Wish me luck!

tiger tiger

2011-02-25T00:49:00.000-08:00

a valentine

2011-02-17T10:46:00.000-08:00

Well, that was fun to make! :)

The owls were stickers. It would have been cooler if I had designed them.

doodle doodle

2011-01-24T11:42:00.000-08:00

Stop Motion Tests

2010-10-18T01:30:00.001-07:00

5 weeks into my last year of school already! It's been crazy and confusing, and I just really hope that I'm doing the right thing. I guess we'll see right?

I'm doing stop motion for the first time! Here are some tests from the class so far:

(The music test is a group project between myself and Lisa Brotz, I animated on the left and she animated on the right)

Lions

2010-07-31T15:55:00.000-07:00

some initial doodles ...

Conduct Happiness Hair Clips at Comic Con

2010-07-14T19:03:00.000-07:00

I handmade 100 Peas for Conduct Happiness.

They'll be on sale at the San Diego Comic Con at Booth #4380. :)

Also, I will be launching an etsy shop really soon with my own hair clip designs!

Ink'd

2010-05-18T14:10:00.000-07:00

ink'd from Cindey Chiang on Vimeo.

Also on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgX90L8lHUw

My third year film... Ink'd

2010-04-29T22:07:00.000-07:00

So after many 17 hour work days, several pots of coffee, numerous cups of tea, and a new diet coke addiction that developed a few days before the deadline, I completed and submitted my film this past Monday.

Come see it this Saturday at the Open Show at CalArts!

my first hair clip commission

2010-02-05T10:48:00.000-08:00

A friend recently commissioned me to make an octopus hair clip for his girlfriend as a part of her Valentine's day gift.

I had been asked in the past if I'd ever make hair clips and sell them, but I was always reluctant because I didn't know what I should be charging and if I would no longer be the only girl that wears those hair clips in her hair. Unfortunately (but maybe fortunately too?) I do enjoy making these quite a bit and being in art school makes you sell your soul and welcome cash... so I gave in.

However, this may be the only octopus that I will ever make for somebody else... haha. I'm open to making other things though.

Here is the octopus that's getting sent to Portland next to my pink octopus. The stitching on this new one is much better. I guess I was pretty sloppy when I made mine 3 years ago. It's slowly falling apart too, so I may make a new one for myself.

So, I think this is the beginning of something... :) Would you buy one?

tea party

2010-02-01T12:37:00.001-08:00

February... too soon!

I am not at the place I would like to be on my film... but I think maybe because I have been more disciplined since coming back to school this semester, I hope I will be able to catch up soon.

Character Animation Gallery Show 2010

2010-01-25T15:39:00.000-08:00

For the gallery show this year, I decided to do a quick piece to hang on the wall. So it didn't exactly end up as a 'quick piece', but I was able to treat it as a weekend project. It's funny how after 2 years of scrambling to put something together for the show, the same thing happened this year. Maybe next year I'll actually be more prepared?

Just so it didn't feel too barren, I also put some frames with some of my felt creations on a little white table from our (Jenessa and I) pink tea party cube.

Below are some close ups of the piece. I think it'd be kinda cool if they were giant stickers!

... and now, film time!

Fisheye Getty

2010-01-25T15:05:00.000-08:00

Here are some photos off of my fisheye camera. They are from a little visit to the Getty in November 2009. The first one is a double exposure. The Getty is so much fun!

film study: the taste of tea

2009-11-18T19:18:00.000-08:00

Zesung and I have been drawing from a film called The Taste of Tea while listening to Norman Klein in our history of simulation class. I have yet to actually watch this film, but it looks pretty fun!

Bicycle

2009-11-13T17:47:00.000-08:00

film study

2009-11-09T17:24:00.000-08:00

Ridley Scott's Gladiator:

Life Drawings

2009-11-04T13:38:00.001-08:00

Some drawings from last year, second semester...

Hansel & Gretel color script

2009-11-04T02:07:00.000-08:00

Our visual development class is doing development work for the Brothers Grimm's Hansel and Gretel...

First post of this brand new school year and the semester is already half over! I need to organize my stuff so I'll be able to post more often. More to come!

Mallard Duck

2009-08-22T21:57:00.000-07:00

I designed and animated this guy for a short segment in my film this past year. Since I hadn't made any hair clips in a long time (and once had ambitions to create hundreds... yes, hundreds!) I thought it'd be fitting to convert him into a hair clip. I've been sketching out some other designs and hopefully I'll be making them soon!

I still have a box of plastic beads leftover from the days when every 7-year-old had some sort of beading kit. I guess it was worth saving over the years because the black beads make good pupils! :)

please make me update my blog

2009-08-12T16:10:00.000-07:00

Summer is quickly drawing to a close... which is scary and exciting at the same time. Scary because I haven't gotten as much done as I had hoped (and have obviously been neglecting this blog). Exciting because I can't wait to get back to school! It's still hard to grasp the fact that this will be my THIRD year already.

So i've had this lomography fisheye camera for almost a year and I just developed the last roll of film I had bought. I try to lug it with me (why must it feel so unnecessarily bulky in comparison to the gadgets of today?) when I go places, but I've been using it sparingly.

Anyway, after three rolls of fooling around and 'failed' photos- here is the first photo that I feel is notable. This was taken at the cemetery in Virginia City in late May with three exposures.

Now to buy more film...

Second Year Film: Paper Pains

2009-06-05T18:50:00.000-07:00

Here it is, finally uploaded it on youtube...
Many more valuable lessons were learned this year and hopefully I won't make the same mistakes as I did this year... especially in terms of work habits. The key is to start early and make deciscions early!

So it's not really "finished", but it's as far as I got this year.
I think my goal for next year is to actually make something that I will be proud of.

film characters and some life drawing

2009-03-08T15:54:00.000-07:00

These are the two main characters of my film this year.

a super happy but not so bright raccoon...

and his pet and friend bird...

Only 42 days left to complete my film... ahhhhhh.

---

two drawings from last semester...

february?! tangled snake and character gallery show.

2009-02-04T02:16:00.000-08:00

A painting I did during the first week back from break.

Below is my space in the character animation gallery show this year...

on the pillar is little glimpse at my friend Amelia Lorenz's stuff. Unfortunately when I took this photo, I believe the bottom panel of one of her pieces had fallen off. BUT you can go to her blog to see her stuff!

Well, it's that time of the year again... I should hopefully have the final version of my story (finally) cleared this week after all the revisions so I can start animating!

Notre Dame Show

2009-02-04T01:04:00.000-08:00

A character/concept art show our class put together in January with some work from first semester...

vacation time!

2008-12-18T13:39:00.001-08:00

I can't believe that I've been home for almost a week! I've concluded that it's hard to do work when there's so many other things to do. As soon as I came home, it started snowing- which is pretty impressive for Vancouver since all it ever does is rain here. I also have an appreciation for the general landscape here... being able to see the ocean and big blue snow topped mountains is really great.

I'm off to Florida today and Disney World's on the list of to do's. Unfortunately, no updates until I come back- so I hope everyone will have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Thank you to all the people that have visited my blog or commented this year. :) I really appreciate it.

Tessellation

2008-12-10T00:27:00.000-08:00

It's the last week of school and there's only 3 days left!

Sleep deprivation is apparent, but it's not too bad- I know it was way worse last year. Things have been happening too fast.

Here's a something I made to accompany the final paper/project of one of my critical studies classes. I wrote about Tessellation.

bye bye november!

2008-11-30T13:07:00.000-08:00

So I've got some paintings for this post...

This month went by... super fast!

Tomorrow is December. Just two more weeks until I get to go home, which I am super super super excited about. :) I'll get to eat good food, walk down my favourite streets, look at all the fancy christmas decorations and lights, take the bus, breathe in the cold crisp air, feel the rain (maybe even a bit of snow?), watch movies, and be lazy.

Lazy like these hedgehogs...

But before all of that good stuff... there's still a lot of stuff that needs to be done. Papers and projects... and of course stuff for my film this year. I still need to revise a story I already boarded out and also board out a brand new story... one that I only have the concept of, but no actual story. And then I have to make an animatic. Lots to doooo.

tree frog friends

2008-11-21T00:31:00.001-08:00

finally got out the gouache last week... I should paint more, for practice.

in my room

2008-11-04T09:59:00.000-08:00

another layout...

me enjoying a book in my room or what could be my room.

how can it be NOVEMBER already?!

friendly email

2008-10-27T00:13:00.000-07:00

This is just a little thing I did for one of my critical studies classes. We had to redesign the gmail interface. It would put a smile on my face if I get a little greeting every time I checked my email... happy smiley sun included. I was thinking the graphic could be dependent on the time of day and local weather too.

So I felt like the walking dead and wished that I had the ability to teleport back to my room and cubes this weekend because of the 48 hour lockdown. I wasn't planning on doing it, but I ended up working on a film with a group of friends. We still have to composite it, so I have no idea how it's going to turn out yet, but I think we all tried.

Oh- and Mark Andrews came and talked to us this past Friday. That was pretty awesome. I'll end this post with two quotes from him-

"stay up all night, you can sleep when you're dead"

"I thought it was cute, but it wasn't a meal- it was like skittles." - on Juno

hippo-mouse tea party

2008-10-20T22:38:00.000-07:00

Here's something more recent- a layout i did a few weeks ago:

They are happy and tea parties are lots of fun!

disneyland & some drawings

2008-10-19T14:01:00.000-07:00

So this was kind of the highlight of the day last monday:

Ice cream...

... On main street...

..at Disneyland!

Not a super exciting post, but I gotta keep posting... I promise I'll post some new stuff soon. Here's some life drawings I had on my computer from over the last year...

paper birds

2008-10-15T19:10:00.000-07:00

Yellow birdies I made with construction paper back in January:

I went to Disneyland on monday with a group of friends, we met up at 7:00 am, got there at around 9:00 and left the park at closing (11:00pm) and got back to calarts at midnight. It was a long day and I think I'm still recovering from it! Maybe I'll post some pictures on my next post. :) It was a good long weekend to just take a break, but I wish I had done some film work (ie. solidify some idea).

I hope my fellow canadians had a good thanksgiving!

underwater adventures

2008-10-09T23:59:00.001-07:00

Just to keep things going...

silhouette cut out assignment from last year:

second year begins

2008-10-06T21:54:00.000-07:00

a happy little armadillo taking a nap in the jungle.

So it's been a good month since I flew back to CalArts.

I'm going to try to be better with this blog thing this year...

To keep things short, second year is proving to be intimidating, rather overwhelming, but very much exciting. Strangely enough, I feel almost as though I learned nothing last year based off of my perception of what I have to accomplish this year... must work harder!

lazy summer days!

2008-07-18T00:11:00.000-07:00

well... lazy and kinda busy! Or at least a bit busier as of recent. Before it was honestly just lazy and perhaps very much unmotivated... very much.

Here is a quick doodle for now... I actually don't like it much, but can't be picky right? Especially when I haven't updated for so long haha...

more details and interesting stuff will soon follow!

First year film: Favourite Sock

2008-04-29T22:50:00.001-07:00

So I decided to post my film up on youtube... enjoy!

no more films

2008-04-28T16:39:00.000-07:00

(a doodle I doodled in kris' sketchbook)

Films are done, Open Show happened, went to Disneyland with a few friends and little Tokyo with pretty much half the freshman class... Without a film to do it feels like there's nothing to do... but that's not true because there are still many papers to write and a portfolio to put together. Despite really wanting to finish my film when I was working on it, I actually really want to start working on another one again! It was a very interesting experience- frustration, little sleep, and even more frustration, but it all came together in the end. I hated it when I started to put things together, but now I think it's alright. It's not amazing and I'm certainly not proud of it (perhaps just proud of having made a film), but I guess it's something.

The Open Show spanned over 12 hours with 8 hours of content, but it passed by rather quickly and it was really interesting to see what everyone's been up to over the year.

I'm still debating whether or not to put my film up. I'm looking forward to the Producer's Show though, exciting. It's almost the end of the year! :(

Time to write my papersss.

Foxies

2008-03-22T13:03:00.000-07:00

One of my favourite things to do is to draw foxes.

It's Spring Break!

daylight savings, the loss of an hour :(

2008-03-09T00:45:00.000-08:00

I'm waiting for my laundry to be done...

So here's something I saved for a filler post as well:

my hair clip/pin things! little pink octopus, cupcake, and yellow birdie

I made little pink octopus first last year during the month of march. I started the cupcake last april, but didn't finish it until I made the bird this january. Funny how I always make grand plans which often fail to pass... I had actually wanted to make a hundred of them this past summer.

filler update!

2008-03-04T23:45:00.000-08:00

nothing new...

just a colour and design assignment from last semester...

i don't like the last panel though, it's the one I rushed through.

i'll gouache things up again after films are due, perrrrhaps.

Expressions

2008-02-23T22:24:00.000-08:00

Dave Pimentel who's currently the head of story for "How to Train your Dragon" from Dreamworks came on friday and talked about Story and their training program for graduating students. Jennifer's got the entire lecture covered on her blog though (as always!), so you can all read it there.

Film progress is still slow. Much slower that I would like, I had wanted to be halfway done with animating by the end of the month, but considering I only just started animating two weeks into the month... that doesn't help too much. I still struggle a lot with animation and even drawing in general... but I have to pick the pace up.

So here's some expressions stuff from life drawing a few weeks ago...

new blog

2008-02-15T14:44:00.000-08:00

I finally Update! I've been meaning to do this since October.

Two insides of sketchbook covers from september 2006 and january 2007. I still like them a lot.

Happy belated Valentines' Day!

I made these cards a week ago, which was a lot of fun.

I have more stuff to show, but I'll save them so I'll actually keep updating.

Jim Capobianco, the writer/director of Your Friend the Rat is coming tonight, fun fun!

And I started animating (finally) but it's going very slowly because I'm still struggling with my first scene, and it's only 2 seconds. I have decided that a strict schedule needs to be implemented which includes reasonable wake up times and early bed times in order for me to even have a chance of finishing my film.