This year (2025) I went through a foundation course online for concept art. Its been a long time since I updated this blog and artstation site. 

Not sure if it was timely, as I am currently in work transition. It’s an opportunity to relook at all the past works and see how to position myself for the next thing or whatever that is.

While there is little jobs here where I live for games and animation, I felt that getting the foundations is important for my portfolio building and eventually making my own story worlds.

So I went back to sketching something I used to do back in the old school Days in 2012 and it has stuck with me on and off, looking and drawing from good reference and life.

Sketching Again

Went to look for some refrences on Artstation and found a few here from Flash Studios

Solider and Swat Sketches

Later I went into Photoshop to fire up another PSD file to sketch and breakdown the forms

Drawing Props

Learning to draw an Environment

Links:

Flash Studios Art Reference Warfare
https://www.artstation.com/marketplace/p/DNmLD/male-warfare-poses-photo-reference-pack-1500-images-no-ai?utm_source=artstation&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=homepage&utm_term=marketplace

My Final Animation reel from my time at 3dsense.

Links:

Website: http://williamteh.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIxRko4-PZ4

Working on a new acting animation piece. titled Harmony. Wanted to do a simple acting piece of 2 characters sitting down.

Idea

The main idea is the character Malcom, he is trying to explain to the counselor about his actions and defending himself for it as if he was accused earlier.

Today I started working on Arc the Dragon rig doing a jump in Maya. It's quite a fun exercise to animate creatures especially fantastical ones. Since they do not exist so will have to draw inspiration from some real life animals.

Here are some clips of my progress currently just blocking things in for this short animation piece.

Arc the Dragon Flight Test

Dragon Jump timing test.

Currently having some trouble applying the body movement of a cat onto a larger dragon. Mostly it's timing issues as a cat is smaller and more nimble than a large big hulking Dragon.

The reference I will be using for the animation is a cat and an eagle.

Rig I am using Arc the Dragon: https://www.joshsobelrigs.com/arc-the-dragon

Latest animation I am creating in Maya, it’s a guy taking photos and sees a button and gets an unexpected surprise.

I really enjoyed doing this piece it was fun to act out the reference and try my hand at facial expressions.

Lessons learned

Anticipation needed.

I find some parts lack the anticipation of the character maybe I need to add more moving holds between each action.

Where are the eyes looking?

Make sure every frame counts every frame needs to tell it’s own story about the character intentions. The Eyes are the window to the soul as they say.

Remember the 12 Animation Principles

I feel that there is a need to re-look at the 12 principles of animation some I am missing for this piece.

For every animation piece although different you will have to touch these 12 principles in some way where it occurs, on the hands or the face, is up to you.

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This blog post first appeared on: https://williamteh.com/animator-journey-dont-touch/