A City Tech OpenLab ePortfolio

Author: Anthony D (Page 1 of 4)

My name is Anthony Delbrun. I got my name from the biblical Saint of Padua Anthony. I was born on April 26th, 1999 at Kings County Hospital at approximately 5:27pm. I lived in Brooklyn, NY, USA for all my life but as for my parents they were born in Haiti. I come from a Haiti background but I barely speak the language. As a young boy growing in East Flatbush, I was a shy boy who didn't speak up for myself until the age of 7. What made me enroll in the Communication Design field is my passion for videogames and drawing. While growing I never really had a career decided for myself. The fact that there were so many jobs out there to my liking I couldn't choose. First I wanted to work at a pizzeria since I love to eat pizza. Second, I wanted to be a scientist because I wanted to make a time machine and take a blast from the past. Now we ALL know that's not possible. Lastly, I made up a fantasy career of becoming a “Bus-Driver-Crasher” meaning I'd drive a bus and crash into many objects and people.
That had to be one of the dumbest ideas for a career ever! But since I was a little boy at that time I made it up, that's fine. It wasn't until my cousin from my dad's side who introduced me to videogames and drawing. From there on I experienced a passion for them, thus motivated me to become a Graphic Designer in videogames. Plus I wanted some excitement in my life. My skills are average but I’m still learning some techniques here and there so they will be useful in this field. A tagline to remember me is this: “Hard-work beats natural talent!” Also, I have an addiction to Japanese Anime! Look at my profile picture for example.

Presentation & End of College Journey

Anthony_Delbrun_Final_Internship Presentation

Wow. I can’t believe I am in December already and the year is almost over. Starting next week, it will be the last time I’ll be attending City Tech as a student. This is my final year of college and once my internship class is over, I now begin my own life. I want to take this moment to reminisce. I am not going to lie; I have been waiting for this moment of all my life, oh lord. Heh, I just made a song reference! But in all seriousness, I have overstayed my welcome.

My old schedule 5 years ago. The VERY first class I ever attended at City Tech.

I should have been finished last semester however due to one class (Foundation Drawing) that I took back in Spring 2018, it only offered two credits and that derailed my academic career. I attended City Tech 5 years ago (August 2017) and at the time there were offering classes that were two credits or more.  Much has changed since then, different students and professors that have come and go, there used to be another building to attend classes (Midway Building) that no longer exists and the exterior/interior of the main building. I wish I could say the journey to reach this point was a cake walk. It was NOT.

My second class I ever attended since enrolling. Also, I used to attend classes at the now extinct Midway Building.

There were classes I took that were so stressful I not only came close to failing them, but they made me cry. There were times I wanted to dropout and felt like the whole journey was pointless. I have heard many stories from past students who used to go here that told me college was a waste of their time and money, they worked so hard to get a job in their field of study and never found work which caused them to be depressed and so on and so forth.  With encouragement from friends, family, professors, my idols and etc I found strength I never thought I had to keep pushing forward.

Third class I attended since enrollment. Had to take a remedial class. However, I had the BEST professor!

Here I am now about to cross the finish line! 🙂 I enjoyed my journey here at City Tech and have many memories that will stick with me forever. If there is one thing I’ve learned while attending this college is that life is NOT easy. There will be moments where you come across an obstacle that will break you mentally. physically and emotionally, but it is how you handle the obstacles that will determine where you stand in life. If you are the type of person who throws in the towel quickly, life will be difficult for you. Although, if you have the right mindset and the right people in your inner circle, you are going to be victorious.

I am going to miss this college (preferably some of the professors and students I made as good friends) but I will NEVER forget the teachings it taught me. Vendi Vini Vinci – I came, I saw, I CONCURED! I AM the VICTOR!

Ethics #2 – Ethics in Advertising and Marketing

The video I was watching.

Going back to the topic of ethics in Advertising and Marketing we discussed in class on Halloween, it was perplexing for me. I found myself lost what was said in the video and article I have read regarding the topic. Correct me if I am wrong but it seems like consumers (meeting us individuals) want things that are less troublesome and safe for us? Yeah, I didn’t really know what was going on and just writing this to wrap up my blog posts. But, I’ll try to be aware of the legal issues that are in Advertising and Marketing. I’m sorry I don’t have much to say in this.

Screenshot of the article I was reading.

Journal #10 (Self Evaluation)

Since I am done with my unpaid internship much sooner than expected, I still am doing work with the Dream Team. Throughout my time at the internship I have been communicating as much as possible with other team members giving feedback, asking questions and presenting my art work. Based on the self evaluation I received from my mentor Brian aka Shadow CCO and Mr. Tyler Adams I do agree I wished I had done a better job presenting my work much better in terms of cleaning it up and anatomy of the interior and exterior. While taking the internship I have to keep up with the blog posts from the internship class and taking Character Design COMD 3413, so of course my art work is going to suffer.

I am slow when it comes to getting assignments done and I am working on improving my time management skills. Since I am going to be graduating at the end of this semester I will have all the time to fix up my assignments. Going back to my previous post I want to be able to clean up my assignments as Background Artist to start doing Storyboards to put into my portfolio. Since Mr. Adams mentioned to me that around sometime next year the company would start doing paid stuff, he would most definitely want to keep me around and hopefully get paid!

Do I plan to go to graduate school after receiving my Bachelors? Maybe. But, after all the stress I’ve dealt with over the course of my 5 year journey at City Tech I might want to take my time honing my art skills more, learn how to live independently in this head-aching, cruel world we live in and most importantly, DE-STRESS! I definitely earned it! My mental and physical health has suffered BIG time and too much stress isn’t good for you.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everybody!

11/28/22 App review: Procreate

An app that I have heard about but never used is called “Procreate”. Procreate is a drawing and digital art app that can build an individual’s illustration skills by creating sketches, paintings, illustrations and even animations. As intriguing as the application is, it can be daunting for someone that has never used a design app before with the number of features and creative tools available. However, the app has a good number of helpful tutorials a newbie can follow. Also, you only purchase it once and not weekly, monthly and yearly.  

Image of a digital painting on Procreate iPad.

The downside of Procreate is that you need to use another program such as “Illustrator” to clean up your work or vectorize it. Not to mention you need to make sure your canvas size is big enough or everything appears pixelated. Lastly, brushes don’t bleed like a vectorized brush. Procreate sounds like the best app for me considering my field of interest. If the app doesn’t best suit me then I’ll use something else. 

Ethics: Dr. Seuss Enterprises vs. Comic Mix

Dr. Seuss Enterprises were correct to sue Comic Mix for copyright infringement of “Oh The Places You’ll Boldy Go!”. The book clearly has the same art style and type font as Dr. Seuss’s book “Oh The Places You’ll Go!”. For Comic Mix’s book to be a parody without infringement it would need to have permission from the rights holder, which is Dr. Seuss Enterprises. Some individuals would see Comic Mix’s book as fair use since they do have the right to express themselves in any fashion. For me the fact that they heavily relied on the original work to create their parody which embarks a resemblance, Comic Mix were stepping on legal toes. 

Image from Misfortuneofknowing.

Virtual Field Trip (Blue Exhibit)

Before I start, I want to get this off my chest. I was a little disappointed that we couldn’t do the field trip to the Museum of the City of New York in person. Due to time constraints and the number of individuals who are taking the Senior Project course I can understand why. Now with that out of the way let’s dive into the virtual field trip of the Blue Exhibit. To be honest I didn’t really care much about the blue exhibit at Nassau Museum.  

Alex Ferrone “On the Shore” (2018)

Yes, the narrator did give some inciteful information about where blue originated and its various symbolism; but for me I was bored. People talking about paintings and wanting to give complex philosophy beliefs about it is what bores me. I will say though I did like one of the paintings during the exhibition. 

Journal #9

I setup a virtual one on one meeting with Mr. Adams, the recruiter who brought me onto this internship and his team, wondering how many hours I have worked so far and to get myself an evaluation. To my surprise Mr. Adams told me that I have worked over 144 hours and complemented me for my communication skills with him and the other members of whom are working on the same series as I am. Furthermore, he appreciated my dedication to the team because I really wanted to show that I am a worthy member to have and work at an animation studio. Onto the evaluation for myself: Mr. Adams did state the above that was mentioned. Also, just like with Shadow Mr. Adams wants me to work from reference and added that I clean them up a bit to make sure that my work is presentable.

Screen shot of post conversation with Mr. Adams.

Once the evaluation was over, I asked Mr. Adams if he could give me some tips on how to pitch my idea for a show to a network and he told me that I should have confidence and positivity and don’t make it too long, just get straight to the point. Another thing Mr. Adams told me is that he accepts ideas for series to be made only thing is all the members of his team are working on 5 other series (Beta Crystals included), so he doesn’t have much manpower to work on more ideas people pitch to him. I appreciate the offer, but I would like to try my luck with other networks such as Cartoon Network or Sesame Workshop because those were the two networks that I wanted to pitch my idea for an animated series to. If all else fails, then I might consider “Dream Arc Company”.  

I asked Mr. Adams, even though I achieved over 120 hours of my un-paid internship, if I can continue working on his team to gain some more experience and he gave me the thumbs up. He even mentioned that he would support me to make my dreams become reality because that was the whole reason he created “Dream Arc Company”, to help people like myself who want a career in animation to gain more experience in the industry so one day we would be ready to take flight and purse our endeavors at another animation studio. If things don’t work out Mr. Adams would welcome us back on his team because we are like family. I got teary eyed because I am so grateful for the support I’m getting, and my dreams are starting to become reality because this is the career I’ve yearned for since I was a kid. I will continue to work hard at “Dream Arc Company” once I gain enough experience in the animation industry to pitch my idea to a studio/network one day.

Before I go, I wanted to say that yes, I am technically doing free labor since I am wrapping up on my final year of City Tech, I am not ready to move onto a paid job yet. I still want to enhance my illustrations skills further. I didn’t mention this to Mr. Adams but, once in a while I have self-doubt and worry, I may not find a job that’s on my field of study because it’s difficult to get a job in that field. I WILL do the best I can and won’t let the self-doubt hinder my path on achieving my goals.

Journal #8

I attended yet another virtual meeting at my internship but this time it was more one on one with my mentor Brian as he wanted to go over my progress with my assignments. He told me that I am doing great with the fact that I am keeping up to date with my assignments. However, one thing he would like me to do is to draw from references because some of my illustrations look a bit off proportion. But Brian did tell me that I have creative freedom to do whatever I want with my drawings. Brian then sent me a Google Drive link with more references to use for my assignment to draw the interior home for the character Tex the Dragon and exterior planet Irus.

Tex’s Bedroom (Dragon Palace) (Interior)

Shadow even suggested that if the assignments get too overwhelming for me, I could talk to him or Mr. Adams and they would gladly take some off to ease my mind. I appreciated the suggestion, but I believe I can handle them. After all, I DO want to show them that I’m able to get my assignments done. I want to create my own television series at an animation studio one day, so I need to climb up the ladder if I want to reach the top. I even asked Shadow when I’m finished with my assignments for background art if I can start doing storyboards to which Shadow approved and now has me as a Background/Storyboard artist. 

Google Drive for Beta Crystals.

Journal #7

After the webinar I attended on Saturday, November 5th, I attended a meeting for background artists (like myself) and storyboard artists from my virtual Internship via Discord. One of the artists, Brian, set up the meeting just to go over where the web series, “Beta Crystals” is right now. So far Beta Crystals are making slow progress due to people joining the team since July/August/September and not communicating with Tyler Adams nor the other members of the Beta Crystals team. Mr. Adams wants everyone to give a week to two weeks’ notice of the assignments we have been given and let him or Brian know if anything’s going on in our life that prevents us from doing our assignments. The meeting was very informative because it seems like Mr. Adams wants to have enough work for Beta Crystals finished so he can release the pilot episode in January 2023.

VYOND – Webinar: Storyboarding for video: A beginner’s guide

Screen shot of the Webinar I attended:

On Saturday, November 5th, I attended a webinar virtually on VYOND that discussed storyboarding for video and film. It was a post-recorded webinar that was hosted by a woman named, Prakriti Rai, who is a video producer on “Vyond” website. This webinar was very inciteful because I learned some techniques on how to storyboard effectively for animation but found out where storyboarding originated. Storyboarding came about around the 1930s by Webb Smith, a Disney animator who worked at Walt Disney Studios. I had a feeling that storyboarding all started during the Walt Disney days. However, I thought storyboarding was around the early 1920s due to the silent short films Disney created. The first short film Walt Disney created was “Alice’s Wonderland” which premiered back on October 16th, 1923.

So, I had thought they may have made storyboards for that and other short films that aired before the 1930s. The first proper storyboards created was the short, “Three Little Pigs”. Now, I’m not sure what they meant by “proper”. Did they mean that the storyboards for shorts previously “Three Little Pigs” were out of place? Who knows. Storyboarding also expanded to other industries such as live action, video games and etc. Overall, the webinar has opened my eyes on how to improve my storytelling abilities via illustration and go back and fix up my previous storyboards from my portfolio.

« Older posts