Qilin Concept Layout n Practice Plus Maple Bacon Animation Film

Still working on coming up with this in a manner I feel satisfactory with.


This is another motion graphics & Animation sort of moving picture. I will animate the hair in layers, and I have already shot my cloud B-Roll all summer, and I have lots of it.

I will be including it into my Qilin film project.

This style is not anything new and I had seen many similar pieces of art (especially anthro foxes and cats usually in a kimono), but STILL compositions. I'd always wanted to do my own unique version with my own characters. It's basically 1 or 2 figures within a Chinese mountain side garden. I'd seen a lot of these kinds of things in China.

Back in 2002 I was at Antrho Con in Philadelphia and I bought a Portfolio and a few other prints by Dark Natasha including THIS one which I want to credit as my favorite in this style, which also somewhat reminds me of Gongbi paintings.

As much as I like her work, I don't want to do it exactly like hers, but my own version that is more me. I also cannot decide if I want to do spring or autumn, or even red maples.

To give you an example of my own styles of Qilin as Anthro I have THESE:

Obviously, I wouldn't be doing an animated cartoon piece anywhere near this detailed, but more simplified for animation. 

More like THIS:

Or similar to these:

I'm STILL working on figuring that out, including the composition layout and framing. I can;t decide how it will be yet. I'm getting closer, but I'm still not there yet. I will eventually get it, but I need to work at it.

The major frustration is due to not being easily able to access life drawing classes. I want a more formal and disciplined study for that.

As you can see in Dark Natasha's piece there's falling flower petals & leaves. SO, i'bve spent quite a lot of time learning & practicing custom making particles in Adobe After Effects CC. I did NOT know how to get that to work for a few years, and was very frustrated.

The Making of: Whimsical Jackalope In Spring: Art On The Marquee Full 001 from Kandice Zimbleman on Vimeo.

As you can see, the falling petals in this work is just pink triangles. Literally NO ONE I'd asked knew how to make a custom particle and all the tutorials were outdated and didn't work. NO one at UMASS knew how, and the curator, Jeff, also didn't know how. I must've asked easily 3 dozen individuals, and they also didn't know, including those whom taught After Effects in classrooms, or worked at gaming studios, and NONE of the people whom made tutorials would answer me on: YouTube, Twitter, and Email.

It was my daughter whom helped me to come up with the triangles as a compromise, and even programmed them. Then the curator, Jeff, helped me fix the programming.

Obviously, I've learned a lot more about particles since then, but I still couldn't get a custom particle to work. So, I had to reach out to Adobe and their people in the forum helped me.

So, these are the custom particles I came up with, plus using trackmats:

Watch BlackUniGryphon Logo Custom Particles Falling Leaves from blackunigryphon on www.twitch.tv

That was A LOT of WORK! 

Some of the particles are leaves. The leaf was an open source bit I borrowed online. But I want to actually custom make my own soon. I finally got a new scanner.

Other particles are my Black UniGryphon Logo. Some are like falling leaves, and other are like snow fall, or confetti.

So, you can see how a lot of these things are related. I'm often still perplexed about pre-compositions in After Effects, but I'm getting better at it.

Leaves, and Maple Leaves are gonna be a HUGE focus lately, especially since the film I'm a DP 7 Chief Editor & Graphics on is called "The Holy Maple Tree" and we finally did some filming for that. I'm NOT filming today tho'.

I've also been Live Streaming my work on Twitch:

Watch Sketching Anthro Qilin Unicorns in my Sketchbook n hanging out on my balcony from blackunigryphon on www.twitch.tv

Maple Bacon Film is Almost Done:

But also the Animated Film I'm doing with my daughter is almost finished. It would've been done in July if not for the heat waves.

Watch Animating in Toon Boom Harmony from blackunigryphon on www.twitch.tv

Animation Updates 2018

My cohort & I have definitely been learning several programs. I've spent a lot of time with Adobe Animate CC, Adobe After Effects CC, and I also invested in Toon Boom Harmony which was crazy expensive!

The kid has been playing with various other programs as well, and also got more proficient at Animate CC... to some degree.

I've also been busy working on a film "The Holy Maple Tree", and a local TV show "Tipsy TV", plus my own Television productions at WCA9-TV, as well as videography work I do for HockeyTV as a contractor.

The kid, herself, got a trophy award from The Walt Disney Family Gallery in the International Teen Animation Festival of 2nd Place.

We had decided to make a short film last summer, and all kinds of stuff got in the way including working on "The Holy Maple Tree" which had a lot of drama that went down, multiple times, plus we also spent some time in Philadelphia, and in Florida this Spring.

Here's the work I've done since the Winter:

We're finally agreeing on a logo & a "brand" name.:

My own logo works:

One of several of the first version tries:

Meditative version of my compiled recent works:

Redoing my old vintage animation:

Maple Bacon short film bits (we're almost done):

Documentary Version of Jackalope Project:

Graphics for "Heaven & Hell TV" in the film "The Holy Maple Tree"

Animation Montage Edit AMV:

Documentary Film I made at UMASS (short version):

My FULL VERSION

Meditative Film  I finally made that I'd been wanting to do:

Other Notes:

I had been working on "The Holy Maple Tree" film as a Production Assistant since November of 2016. By 2017 I kept getting promoted, and went from Audio Girl to Chief Editor, Graphics Designer, and by October I ended up becoming the Director of Photography. So, by winter I'd begun heavily investing in equipment here & there to improve production quality and take the film in a more artistic direction, and bump up the quality. It's still very much a learning process, and I'm always learning. Since then I've acquired new lenses, video tripod, a jib camera crane, a gimbal, and an action camera. I'm always looking to expand that. So, I've tested a lot of things, and shot a lot of video projects since then.


I will be filming ALL DAY tomorrow on location. I will probably be filming some more of my own Television projects whenever I have good weather and transportation the rest of the summer, and also the Fall.

And, between this, since the kid is home now, we are working on animation every friggin day. Since I'd gotten Toon Boom Harmony, my frame by frame traditional animation goes so much quicker now.

Once we finish the "Maple Bacon" animation short we'll be able to move onto some serious animation studies like the walk cycles, and really hone the skills & techniques. These things take time.