Don "Babyface" Orvicelli

 Assignment for Moroni Taylor's online storyboarding class: the assignment is Big Guy, Little Guy.

"What an Animated Figure!" closes today.

Today marks the last day that my art show "What an Animated Figure!" will be posted in the Harrison Fine Arts Center on BYU campus. This show has been a wonderful experience for me, and a great time to look back and reflect on how much the animation department has affected me over the years. I want to offer special thanks to my Mom and Dad who are the fuel to my tank and who push me on a daily basis to pursue my crazy dreams; to my siblings who keep me going and believed in me whenever I lost my faith;  to the BYU animation faculty particularly Ryan Woodward whose genius and talent in this field inspired me to create this show before graduating from college; to Jason Lanegan for helping me set the show up, providing all the resources I needed and for being so patient with me; to Bob Barrett for being the best figure drawing instructor I've ever had; to Spencer Carter and Tom Leffler who helped me record Bob's voice for the "Art of Art" mini documentary; and finally, to three of the most talented artists to ever come out of BYU's animation program: Anthony Holden, Jake Wyatt, and Ty Carter. These three guys were willing to go out of their way to help me, a scrawny, insecure, arrogant loud-mouth improve as both an artist and as a human being. I am forever grateful for their friendship, their encouragement, their examples, their senses of humor, and most of all for their persistence in their dreams despite whatever obstacles lie in their way.

       Thank you to all of my friends and family as well, and to those who enjoyed the show. I also just realized that I never posted "The Art of Art" on this blog. Here's the link to the video if you guys want to see it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7uwTH11aAI

Once again, a special thanks to everyone who helped out with the show, and for those who have supported me throughout my time at BYU.

Sketchbook theme this week: Horror

Mile High Concert

Here's the animatic for "Mile High Concert". It was part of the storyboard section in the art show.
Note: I do not own copyright to ACDC's "Thunderstruck" or Justin Bieber's "Baby".

Leap of faith keyframes

This piece is a demonstration of the concept of key frames for the show.

Shaolin monkey sketches

These sketches are all part of the upcoming show too. They show how the design process works; from the sketchbook, to the imagination, to the final render (which isn't on this blog just yet). These were inspired by watching Golden Lion Temerins at Salt Lake's Hogle Zoo. They are an endangered species of monkeys on the verge of extinction. They are also very graceful, quick and agile little critters. As I sketched them, I thought of Shaolin monks who, like these guys are rare, orange, and very graceful and fluid in their motion. Eventually it led to these doodles going into the art show and to the final product that I'll be posting soon.

Bill Perkins Workshop

The great Bill Perkins came to Utah Valley again to conduct a week-long workshop. The first half was a color workshop, while the other half was a plein air painting workshop. Bill is a brilliant, kind, artistic man who is so willing to share his light with others. I'm grateful for men like him who go out of their way to pass on skills to others. I'm also grateful for men like Richard Hull, who even at his age, and even when he's retired, is still willing to attend these workshops and learn and further develop his skills. It's men like these two that are great examples for me in the field of art. Anyway, here are some of the paintings I did in the workshop.