Wonderful Animation Using Sketches

Hey, guys. I made two great findings today:

The first one is the Motiongrapher website, full of fantastic animations from different sources. You should check it out, it's a great resource and quite inspirational if you're into these things.

While I was checking it, I bumped into this little animated jewel: 

(notes on) biology from ornana films on Vimeo.

It made me laugh out loud, not only because it's sheer fun from beginnig to end, it also reminds me of myself as a student. Being in a classroom immediately gave me fidgety fingers.

Well, read you around!

Revamping a Logo for Impronta Films

One of the first sketches for the Impronta Films logo.

[WARNING: This is one of those "how I did it" posts. I think that to reflect about the creative process helps to do it better, especially when one makes the effort to share it with others in a comprehensible way. Maybe some of you will find these ideas helpful, or interesting.

If you think this kind of thing is boring, you have my blessing to skip this post, there will be more sketches soon enough, don't worry.]

My friends at Impronta Films asked me to redesign their logo. 


They liked the one they had before, also designed by me a while ago (the one on the right, click on it to see it bigger), but they wanted it to be more alive, to jump out of the page.

They also wanted their mascot to have more personality, as they intend to animate it in the near future.

I already had a few ideas, so I set out to work:

I used Inkscape and Gimp, two wonderful free tools with nothing to envy to other commercial software. I fully recommend them to everyone, amateur and professional alike.


I drew the owl from scratch, showing more of its wings and tail to make it more ominous as it soars over its prey (a successful film). It is also clenching its talons now.

I focused on its eyes, giving it a more intense, penetrating gaze; I tried to make them the center of the picture, directing the sight of the reader to them.

I gave it more owlish eyebrows and a kind of beard, reinforcing a grumpy appearance.

I also darkened the silhouette of the moon, giving it a slight greyish tint. (I was going to make it more detailed, drawing a few craters on its surface, but I felt that it would detract the attention from the owl.)


Then I colored it, again focusing on the eyes of the owl. I gave them an intense yellow tone, with soft shadows in orange and grey tones. I also darkened the eyebrows.

I gave the talons a yellowish tone, darker than that of the eyes, to attract attention but on a secondary level.

I kept the sand palette for the body, but added a few shades to give it volume. I feel that the shadows of the wings and tail make the owl more menacing, while enhancing the paler body and legs, thus the yellow of the eyes and talons.

I gave some transparency to the colors, I believe it's a nice touch and the moon underneath gives them a unifying tint.

Finally, I slightly corrected the color of the lettering, changed the outline for a shadow, and placed the owl in between to enhance the illusion of depth.

Here's the finished result, that you can find on the Impronta Films website and in all of their products: