Yawn

He did a yawn. Well it was me that did it actually. Starting to feel like a puppeteer.

Jill did a weight shift

I used a body rig named Jill and made her shift her weight. I had to keep getting up and doing it myself. Its crazy that i don't really know what my legs are doing half the time. The timing of this could be better but i had playblast issues so i think this will do.

Renderring

Learning to render is hard when the people sitting next to you are watching videos of dogs falling over but i kept going despite the hardships.

friends

A breif my teacher told me to focus on was the drawing your friends with different emotions. I enjoy portraits even though they're quite difficult to do especially when you know the person your drawing you tend to guess rather than observe which is the most important part.

            

Pots

I decided to broaden my arty skills and went to a pottery class. I loved it and my pinch pots turned out pretty well. The willow tree ash glaze looks very organic.

character designs

                                                                  

                 

Some character drawings for my storyboard projec. Think the blue would look nice as an album cover.

Monty Walk

The more i practice walks, the easier it gets. This one didn't actually take that long. I think the head movement gives it character and a bit of story/conflict.

I TRIED THE FOX AGAIN

Last time my computer crashed and so did my mind so this time i did it with a vengeance. I didnt spend much time on squash and stretch but focussed more on the tail. Overlap and follow through stuff.

stop motion walk cycle

This was my first stop motion walk cycle. It's a bit jittery and stompy. I enjoyed the physicality of the medium. It's a tactile process which is nice.

Pink smoke

This is a looped smoke cycle. I found the shapes quite tricky to keep consistent. I do love smoke and clouds so this was a great.

Deep Story Board

Derek gave us an excerpt from a sreenplay that he had written. It was set in victorian times so i tried to incorporate wallpaper and costume from that era. I used collage, pencil and oil pastel as i like the contrast in texture. I also made Caroline a vampire so when she said the word vampire (in slow motion), there's an extreme close-up of her mouth and teeth.

Stop motion

I enjoyed using this puppet to do stop motion he was very good.....until his leg came off.

digital drawing a storyboard

I started drawing the storyboard on photoshop when i overheard someone say, "People forget you can to things on paper." This made me think I might just do this storyboard on paper.

Jumping Squirrel

This week our task was to animate a 2D squirrel jumping across the screen. I found this surprisingly easy. I think this was because of all the practice with bouncing balls. So that was worthwhile after all.  The focus of the animation was overlap and follow through of the tail which is something i hadn't done before. After I completed the animation for the first time i closed the programme without saving it and therefore lost all my work. I did it all again and learned to always save my work.  

Dear Julia,

Today I read a book with great illustrations by Brian Biggs called, 'Dear Julia,'. It was about a man who went crazy, was being chased and tried to fly by jumping from the ledge of the 8th floor. I love the style of the writing and drawings and had a go at drawing in a similar style myself.

Luis Cook inspired me to draw

We had a lecture from Aardman's Luis Cook. He presented his sketchbooks from over the years and encouraged us to use our notebooks for various things such as; lists, ideas, collections, doodles, story boards etc. I found it enlightening as he reinforced the idea of play. I'd forgotten about the importance of playing and experimenting, I think I've been spending too much time trying to get things "right" if that exists. He also mentioned the cobra movement and David Shrigley, both of which I like very much.

 

FlyFox in 3D!

I was bored of making the fox jump and bounce so i made it fly.

Weighty Teapot

For this task we had to demonstrate weight through a character lifting something. I had a really good cup of tea today so i chose to use a teapot as my weight. I found it quite hard drawing my character and found that his head started to grow but you could say he was kust puffing out his cheeks in exhaustion. I enjoyed animating the pouring of tea and in a way this showed the weight of the liquid too.

The Peach Kings "Mojo Thunder" by Kris Merc

These are some stills from a music video I recently watched by Kris Merc. I really like the stylistic choices and the chalky aesthetic. It reminds me of a Noir film because of the black and white and the femme fatal character. It's nicely abstract and plays with scale as seen in the first picture of a man floating in a glass. A good metaphor. I also really like VW Golf cars.

Life Drawing

These are some of my recent life drawings. I experimented with chalk, pencil, graphite, charcoal. I enjoyed the exercise where we couldn't look at the paper. Came out with some interesting marks and improved my observation.

Turning hand

My first digitally drawn animation made with Toon Boom. This was also my first time using a tablet to draw with. It was all very different and strange but I tried to be open minded and give it a good go. It was quite hard getting a consistent size of hand.

ReBEARth

Here's a link to my final stop-motion film from my foundation course. It's the story of Miles, a bear who runs away from home and returns having changed a bit. Rebirth.

https://vimeo.com/127404541

3D bouncing ball

For this project I used Maya software to create a bouncing ball using squash and stretch. I didnt really exaggerate the squash which miht have looked better. I thought a subtle squash was more realistic. This took quite a long time to master and I found it challenging. I also added a little roll to the end. This time i only moved it in the X and Y axis but maybe next time i'll venture into the Z axis as well.

Teebs - Overgrown

I found that this music video fitted really well with the theme of "Turning the real to the surreal" I've been looking a lot at hands and i really like the watery reflective effect of this piece. I also really like how it fits wit the minimal music.

https://vimeo.com/121810122

Jumping man

For this exercise we had to make a man from a square and circle jump across the screen using squash and stretch. I made this in flash and found it quite challenging making the timing of the jump look right. 

Bouncing ball exercize

Through this exercise I learnt about the motion path of a bouncing ball. The more frames you have, the slower the motion so I tried to make sure the descent was faster than the top of the arch. We were told not to attempt squash and stretch.

From the real to the Surreal

These are some collages that I put together under the title "From the real to the surreal". It got me thinking about what is real and what isn't. Even though some things we make are surreal looking; they are still real because they're physical objects. The magazine I got the images from was real and all I did was cut it up and move it around. I tried to focus on composition, mixing up limbs and interlocking parts to create new structures.

Story Boarding BUG CREAM

Bug-cream

This was our first storyboard assignment. The task was to create a story in which two characters travel in different directions and at different speeds to meet at the end. I think the purpose of this was so we could better understand how parallel editing can build suspense and tension. My story consisted of a ladybird travelling slowly and an ice-cream falling quickly on top of it. This created bug-cream, a new species of ladybird. I'm not sure the drawings successfully captured the travelling or suspense but the idea's there.