Drawing rehab. one day at a time

While I was in Japan over the summer, I had a cool job at a CG company working as a lighter/compositor for a TV show which will be aired soon in Disney Channel.
That was all great and I learned a whole lot, but the problem was that I stopped drawing almost entirely during that time. Now I am back in school trying to start my own animation realizing how far I had become from drawing.
When we had a first class of figure drawing class with infamous professor Vilppu, he looked at my drawings for 5 seconds and said "You are just copying. Have you ever seen my drawings?" I was super-embarrassed by the fact that one, he didn't remember me from last year at all and two, I was totally copying like he said. It was a loud wake-up call for me.

I have been presenting my storyboards with my colleagues these days and that really stimulate me because everybody draw really well and they each have their own styles.



Anyways, so I am slowly slowly getting back to drawing each day. Here are some sketches I did at Page museum by LACMA. I don't like bones too much because they are just sooo complicated and I always run out of patience before I finish the whole body. That day was better because I had some friends to chat with while doing them and kids came around and entertained us.

And, since I have a new film to focus on, I have been doodling my characters bit by bit. I still don't quite know them yet, so I hope to spend more time with them and get to know them. You can kind of tell that I can't distinguish them yet. They look way too similar when I draw them now.
I have been having a hell of a time modeling them also. It is good to get back to Maya.




The last thing, I did a character sketch and storyboard with Kartika Mediani for a short film script called Terminus. They are trying to get funding for it on Kickstarter. I hope they get the money!!

Saturday Morning Doodle

The school started last week and it has been pretty nice getting back to studying. I presented my first project in one of my classes and I have mixed feelings about it but I feel motivated and creative about going with my initial idea. It is great to meet new artists in and out of school and I hope to meet more of them as I keep studying.

When I woke up today, I started looking around for some animations that students have done in CalArts and I was blown away by their quality works! Damn, I need to learn a lot lot more to get to that level!

And with that inspiration, this is what I drew. How does my brain work???

Japan Japan Japan

It has been a month since I uploaded last. It is almost August!

I have been back in my hometown Tokyo for about a month and I feel like I am finally adjusting to this now alien environment. This city is super high-tech and much cleaner than LA but so small and less relaxing it feels like. I feel that I had to get used to constant stress and less chilling. Maybe it is my unstable situation that is causing this kind of dismay. All I know is that I need to get used to it and do the best I can under the circumstances.

A couple of weeks ago, I had one of my best friends come to visit me here, so we took a short trip to Nara and Kyoto both of which are much less hyped traditional city with many many awesome historical buildings and culture remains there.

It is very interesting to see disconnection of our contemporary and traditional culture. It almost seems like everybody died all at once and then were born again with no education of previous civilization. Those historical sites we visited were mostly occupied by elders and foreign tourists. I wonder, where is my generation of Japanese going? Where do they acquire these valuable tradition and culture if I see none in here?

Anyways, I took some photos from there and in Tokyo as we walked around. It is very interesting to see them in such fresh eyes.

Art and Movie Day! "Exit Through the Gift Shop"

Today was incredibly inspiring and productive day.

I met one of my actors from my movies and my dear friend at Montana street and we went around looking at some really chic furniture stores. She has earlier gave me a book called "Artist's way" which is a very positively influencing book for artists and I was very thankful for that. It was a great time talking to her about life and all. I was also very inspired and encouraged to make stuff. I kept thinking about what to make with all of those fabrics I've found on the street yesterday. I found some pretty cool ideas.

When I came home, I had the greatest urge to clean the entire apartment so I vacuumed it and got rid of some clothes laying around. It feels good to clean sometimes. It's like resetting a computer. I still have a lot of mess in this place, but I think I will get to it tomorrow.

Then, my colleague from school came to visit me and to discuss about his project I've been helping him on. I've been doing some little animation for parts of his film and I was pleased to see how my works have integrated to great looking live action footage. In the same time, I felt very responsible for creating work that would be worthy to the film. I felt very motivated about continuing the work.

We haven't seen each other in a while, so we spent some time talking and decided to watch a movie by Banksy, "Exit Through the Gift Shop".

The movie was very funny and interesting and got me thinking about how art is found and brought to us everyday as products and in means to make money.

Money and Art is like a couple that hate each other. As much as art is not supposed toe be connected to monetary value and merchandise, it needs that to keep going and be spread to the public.

It also made me think about the importance of having ideas and obsession to your creation. I felt that if you want to be successful as an artist, you need to be smart and persistence. Skills to create things are not as essential as the ideas to do it.

I understood that the main intention of the film is to criticize about how ironic the whole "Art" business works, and I realized that weather I like it or not, I am part of it and I will have to live in it. Banksy is an exception because he is talented and established already, but for the rest of us still trying to make it, we actually can learn from MBW about how things work around here.

So I felt sad but motivated. True talents are out there and Banksy can make films, a real good one.

I kept thinking about all these great noble things, but my cat is obsessed with me and he would not go to bed without me so I am going to bed.

Good night.

Found these by my house!

Tons of scrap fabric:-D
Me and my friend were extatic!

At Ross

Bizarre and grotesque things I found in a friendly market in my
neighborhood.

Weekend report

It's already monday, and I am sick.
Hare are some things I've been doing. I've been keeping pretty busy except for working hard.

Thursday- figure drawing
I started using charcoal with my sketches and realized they are great for shading. Still not that great, but it is fun to experiment.


































































Friday- Art shows
I had a chance to go to the opening of a solo show of Allison Sommers at Thinkspace with a good friend of mine.
Also, we just peeked from the window and saw bits of Thomas Doyle's show at LaBasse Projects right after. What a nice coincidence! The works are brilliant of course, but most of all, we were just soo hyped by the fact that they were both utilizing glass domes to put their artworks in.
There was just something about the domes that just made us so excited and we decided to work on a piece using it ourselves.
Too cool!!!


















Saturday - Hunt for a dome and more art show
To my surprise, finding a glass dome was much harder task than I've ever imagined.
We started with thrift shop, then T J Max to Micheals... and finally till Petsmart to find no luck whatsoever. There were so many regular glass vases and containers, but none of them would go upside-down nicely. I mean, of course they are not designed to be upside down. We are still looking for it up till today, but I have a feeling we need to make some kind of compromise in the end.
After getting exhausted by empty hunting, we decided to refresh ourselves with a little bike ride.
We went to a small collage near her house to find this bizarre site.

























Bunnies!!



































and more bunnies!!

There were hundreds of them around on the lawn, just chilling out. I was so amazed and full of wonder how the school operate with most of their properties occupied by rabbits.
Later that day, I was able to go to another show by a local students, which I did appreciated to some extent but was not too impressed for the most part.

Sunday - Museum and D-box
I revisited Museum of Jurassic History. This time, I was able to sit down and watch some of the videos I missed last time, but come to find out, there wasn't much clear information in the videos as I hoped. Some of the visual, especially about the Russian scientists who were convicted as counter-revolutionary organization under Lenin. There was some odd time back then.
Then, to change the mood 180 degree, we experienced D-box, the moving seat in the Chinese theater. We watched Elm street, the new one.


It was literary a massage chair that is synchronized with actions in the movie.
I wasn't so into a movie itself, but I fully enjoyed the vibration and movement. It was almost like an amusement park attraction.
Would this have repeaters? I don't really think so. It was fun, but not enough to make me want to go again.

Old people are interesting.

I was really tired and frustrated last night when I got home and I just started thinking about old people and how interesting they are.

I feel that their wrinkles and steins are almost like delicately crafted artworks created as proof of experience and struggles. They are beautiful and so unique.

And even though old people might be less productive or useful as workers, they could be appreciated for their presence and wisdom they have acquired over the years of their lives.

This country, or maybe just this city I am in, feels too young sometimes.

Old people are looked down upon as slow and stupid, and they are hidden away somewhere. They are much depreciated than young and foolish people. It is very hard to age comfortably.

Anyways, I just did some quick studies of old people's faces and it calmed me down a lot.

Stuck in the render farm

:-( feels like time freezes here.

Settling down, starting over

It has been a long while since I last posted anything online, but I just felt like I needed to make better effort to connect to people more, and also just keep a log on my work. So I'm trying again!

To give you some updates, I've recently moved and I actually have a decent studio space now. I've even decorated the wall with lots of great artworks. hehe!















And also, this is a pretty big news but I've decided to go to grad school to study animation! So I really need to start preparing myself for that. I've been a bit intimidated and anxious about it for a while, but hey, what better opportunity could I have than that now.

Anxiety shows in my doodles.




















I'm planning to go to a figure drawing class tomorrow and am pretty excited about it. Hopefully I could continue to post stuff as I go!!

Time to simplify.

I realized that my website was getting too elaborate to the point where I didn't want to mess with it anymore. So I just decided to start fresh from an empty blog! All, nice and white!

Hi, my name is Saeko Igarashi and I am a starting artist currently located in LA.
I work as a 3D generalist at a small animation studio called Arconyx. I love it there!
I am from Japan and my background in art education is traditional oil painting and live action film making. Somehow, in the beginning of my senior year of my undergrad at Cal State Long Beach, I decided that I wanted to do animation instead of film, partly because I felt like I was unable to fully expressing myself with the medium, and partly because I got so sick of political drama that was constantly evolving in the department and people who were within it.
Anyways, since then, I have made my way into animation world mainly working on 3D and other digital motion graphics.
I hope to learn as I go.

My interests right now are stopmotion animations, LA underground art, scooters, and of course movies.