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Sunday, December 18, 2011

Just Stuff... and things

I've been busy animating for the Mad Magazine show, so I haven't had time for any of my own projects. Here's some random drawings I've done on my iPad and short animations that I haven't posted here yet, if you haven't seen them already.





Like all the work I've done in the past year and a half, these shorts started out as animation exercises and then made some sort of story after the fact. One of these days, I'll put in some forethought.

Also, here's some random iPad drawings.





Wednesday, November 16, 2011

"There's still plenty of chocolate"



Here's a nasty comic I made today. I think I'm going to do more of these.
Sunday, November 13, 2011

A colorful painting on a typical, grey, Northwest day.


It's been a really boring weekend. I think I took two showers today simply because I couldn't think of anything better to do. Here's a picture I drew Saturday night after the six-pack of Big Flats was exhausted.
Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Prospector Occupies Wall St. and my favorite comedian

In case you haven't checked out my latest Prospector short, here it is.




The last couple animations have all started out as tests that I later decided to create a story around once the drawings were all finished. I'm actually going to write a script and storyboard for the next one. It's going to include my favorite real-life cartoon character/ quotable man-whore; Arny!

Arnold "It's not a tumor" Schwarzenegger

cop rough drawing

Other than this, I started doing clean-up work and coloring on an animated pilot for Cartoon Network.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011

I didn't win the skate mental contest... and for good reason.



So, I didn't win the Skate Mental contest. They chose this extremely clever Twitter graphic with a penis attached. It actually does make more sense to have a easily recognizable corporate graphic over original artwork. It both simultaneously informs that this skate company has a Twitter account and piggybacks on the success of a popular webservice without taking any chances, 'cause that would be scary.

"… The weirder, dumber, funnier, stupid-er…the better!!", straight from the administrators of the contest. I'm just glad the corporate world hasn't invaded the skateboard community, because, you know, we're all a bunch of maverick renegades who can't be sold. 


Small clips



So I'm making a bunch of small clips to include in my Indie a Go-Go presentation film. It'll basically be a bunch of prospector clips with a voice-over of me rambling incoherently about how I want your money.
Monday, October 3, 2011

Oh, Craiglist people...

A lot of the work I do is for people on Craigslist. Half the time they're looking for free work. I'm not sure why they think this is acceptable. Most of the time I don't reply when, "There's no pay, but it would be great exposure for your reel". This time I did. Here's the email I received with my response.



Guy who wants a music video:

Hey Ryan we'd love to have you make a dark animated video for our song. It would be great exposure however there is no pay. You could easily make something dark without putting alot of time in it. We have several U.S. tours coming up and it would help promote what you do. We'd like to have something like what Gojira does here's a link to one of there videos http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZVCD6y-LNM Seems simple to me but I'm no animator! I'm sending you an mp3 of the song!



My response:

Hi [craigslist poster],

Thanks for getting back to me. You're absolutely correct, I could easily make your animated music video without putting a lot of time into it. There's really nothing to it. In fact, most of us freelance animators work for no pay and sustain ourselves through the self-satisfaction that comes from helping others promote and make money while getting nothing in return. You obviously have a lot of respect for your music and therefore want to produce a well made video to showcase your talent. Trust me, you went the right way. You'll find nothing but Grade-A animators to produce your work since they don't have to go through all the rigmarole of sending out invoices and file taxes and all that cumbersome paper work. It must of been really difficult to strain through all the professional animators who were willing, nay, clammoring to spend there business hours creating your music video. Someone like you that has soo much respect for the art community must have a lot of respect for their own work. That's just so rare.

As a fellow artist, who sustains myself through my own sense of self worth, I'm going to let you take all the glory by letting you make your own music video. After all, you too could easily make something dark without putting a lot of time in it. Think of it as a double-whammy. Not only are you making the music, but your self-produced video would also "help promote what you do". Now I know by letting you do the video it's going to be a hit to my business, but I just want to see you thrive. After all, us artists don't do it for the money, right?

Thanks again,

Ryan Ortgiesen
Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Prospector finds the gold...all of it.


This is a shot of the prospector finding the enchanted gold, which subsequently through a series of unexplainable (or easily explainable, I haven't decided yet) events, allows him to travel to the year 2007. If anyone has any suggestions regarding the animation, backgrounds or whatnot, let me know. I'd like to hear.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Prospector Background




Here's a background for the last animation I did. Starting to get a wee-bit better at these Photoshop paintings.

Also, Here's a shot of the Prospector finding the enchanted fools gold. I'm hoping to getting a video together real soon for the Indie-Go Go site. I'm taking a long shot to see if I can get a little bit of funding for this project. I'm hoping to make enough to be able to buy a Cintiq to hasten the process.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Heart of Gold: A Prospectors Story promo



Hey y'all! Check out this trailer for a little project I'm working on. I came up with this idea with some of my roomates back in the day about an 1850's prospector who travels to the year 2007 and all the zany antics he gets in to. Check it out.
Monday, July 18, 2011

Skate Mental Deck Contest


A skateboard deck company, Skate Mental, is having a contest to design a deck graphic for 'em. Business has been a wee-bit slow lately, so I thought I'd give it a go. I haven't drawn anything in a while. After having serious creative block, I decided to paint one of my favorite characters, Arnold Schwarzennegger, in one of my favorite movies. This is a picture of Quaid (or Howser, depending on how far into the movie you are) from Total Recall. Although, this isn't quite accurate, Quaid (or Howser) is actually stuck in the Total Recall chair when he tell's Cohagen to, "GIVDISPEEPL EYRE". I also wanted to incorporate the scene where Arnie is sucked into the vacum of Mars and there's an awesome shot of a rubber, molded Arnie face, profusely sweating, with his eye's popping out, yelling out some classic Arnie garble, "EEAAAGGGUHH GEEAHHH DU DU DU GEAHHHH!"
Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Demo reel


I made a new demo reel. I went through all my old Flash files and resized them to HD.

Almost two years ago, I created a 28-minute, animated musical for my final project in college and only five seconds I deemed worthy enough to put into this reel. On the other hand, there's always been a couple of dancing clips from an old project, based on the book "Dante's Inferno", that I've always liked. I reanimated those clips, adding more weight, cushioning, reaction and genital swinging making them more disgusting and sexually ambiguous then ever! It almost seem like I've progressed in the past four years.

I also started working on a comic about a 1800's prospector whom, through a series of zany events, travels through time and lives with a household of college students.
Sunday, March 13, 2011

Billy the Kid




I've mostly been working on small projects to improve my reel recently. A while back, someone told me that my work was become much more "mature". Boy, were they wrong.
Monday, February 21, 2011

Naked Amazon hookers and their white tigers.


This is a screenshot of the project in the works. I really need to get a calibrated NTSC monitor. Everything looks amazing on my working computer, than total shit when I upload it and view on my iPad or laptop. It's so dark that you can't see any of the small details or expressions. That's alright, as the old (and terrible) saying goes, "We'll fix it in post"....
Friday, February 11, 2011

Animation Still


At the Titmouse party in New York, a few months back, I met a lot of professional animators and shmoozed with the wizards of cartooning. However, I have yet to pursue these contacts and feel like a complete pile. So, I'm putting together a new reel and will hopefully try for a real grown-ass man job. Here's a still of my latest project. Video to follow.
Monday, January 24, 2011

Little John Bad-Man


This started out as a simple walk-cycle exercise from different perspectives. I was reading, "The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood" by Howard Pyle and decided to change the drawings into the character, Little John. Also, practice with Photoshop making matte-paintings and such.

I started this when I was in Freibug, Germany many months back. Finally got around to calling it quits. I've ran out of inspiration or desire for this project especially after finishing the Robin Hood book. I had some strange ideas of where to take this piece after LJ bites the deer. Things like turning Little John into a robot and eating Robin Hood or doing some sort of Dragonball Z homage.

I don't want to work on this anymore. Here is the shabbily pieced together final.