Colour Studies

So it turns out that colour is harder than just picking a few swatches that you like and sticking them on a page, ain't that a bitch. So here are 3 of my studies from the content of the pantry before we eat it ... ... ... as opposed to after.

 

Pastel chalk, which is an annoying yet colourful medium. You should've seen my hands afterwards, it was like a rainbow shat on them.

Lots of stuff

So I've recently been told off by a friend of mine, that I do life drawing with, after I showed her a load of my work and she exclaimed that it should all be on my blog, so I promised I'd stick it up. On a slightly different note I'd highly recommend checking out her blog she has a wonderful fresh style that's a real pleasure to look at http://animatedthinking.blogspot.com.au/.

So here's some of my work thus far on my animation

 

So above we have Backgrounds, Colour scripts a few tapestries. I should explain that this isn't all my work, there are more backgrounds for example but I'd rather not display them, they leave much to be desired but I this there's only so much going back and fixing things I can't do before I find myself just wasting time, it's a learning curve, I'll do better next time. I am enjoying myself though, very stressful at times but there are those brief moments of real pleasure that come with doing what you want and just creating.

I have now done 37 backgrounds and have maybe 12 to go, It's defiantly been a test in discipline and an overall attitude to working creatively. I think after this I may even tackle writing again, which is something I gave up on in the pass due to a mixture of judging my lack of skill very harshly, frequently feeling embarrassed by my own work and a inability to work though a lack of inspiration which is perhaps one of the most valuable skills I've gained in doing this short.

In my next post I'll either put up some life drawing or some of my storyboard work that I did about 4 months ago. I may even show you my colour studies, colour has proved to be a challenge that I'm still struggling with and wrestling a lot throughout this animation so I'll share with you both the advice I got from one of my teachers and some of my pastel art of fruit and veg.

Briefest Post Yet

Wow, that title almost looked exciting. So true to my word, here is a very very  brief post to show you all my 3D future car.

 

 

My rough reference design

 

Finished result 

I shall now move on with my day and will give you all my blessing to do the same.

Last 2 Characters and My Internet Connection

Hello people, I haven’t blogged in a while so I thought I’d say hi, hello, I’m alive.

I have got stuff that I’ve been working on, in truth did it quite some time ago, but somehow between doing one thing and starting another thing I haven’t found time to post my progress. Also my internet keeps failing, this might sound positively antique but there is a cord running through my house, one end connecting to a little white box saying ‘Bigpond’ (this is fastened to the underside of a desk with an old seat belt, please don’t ask, not even I know) and the other end connected to the phone line, and whenever my 3D crashes again and I go off to contemplate taking up drinking I forget to step ‘over’ the cord and not ‘through’ it. I quite simply abolish my internet connection. Fan-Bloody-Tastic! I am not in a very good mood. So with that in mind I’ll leave it at that.

Below are some character designs my King and my Guards, They are all done now. Enjoy.

 

The Guards may seems dull and generic, tragically that’s because they are. I don’t have the benefit of making several unique characters to all be guards. It has to be one guy duplicated, if I was to give him any outstanding features then I think the fact I’ve duplicated the same guy several times will only become more painfully obvious.

 

Oh my gosh, live update, I fixed my internet, breathe a sigh of happiness people because I can now post this post (I’ve been writing it in word). Now I am going to do something that makes me happy, I’m going to work on my short and have a cup of tea.

 

What Should I Do?

Ladies and Gentlemen, should I change my blog name to ‘Sleepless Animating’ because that’s almost sums up the way things are feeling at present and it seems that the future will dictate this to become more than a feeling. There’s also not a whole lot of thinking happening in the world of ‘What I think’. I am been melodramatic, so don’t be alarmed kind souls, I am sleeping. But by all means please do let me know if you like the name, leave a comment or send me an angry e-mail. Post cards and Morse code are preferred though. It’s that time of night and I’m been a little bit stupid.

 

There is a Point

There is a point to this post though and I’ll get too it soon. I am doing a large variety of work at TAFE, (I’ll try and post some of it over the next 2 weeks) the majority of which is 3D, this is prefect because presently 3D is one of my major concerns as far as my animation life is concerned. There is a definite desire to get better at it, I love it, but it’s not my strongest point. With that in mind I decided that my animation short this year will be in 3D and I was going push myself as much as I could manage by doing things like hair, fur, cloth and other such messy things that may hurt me and hopefully I’ll learn a great deal in doing them. So far in my experiments with Maya fur I have already learnt a lot. I should also express that in the knowledge that this project may pull me through the ringer I picked a story and some characters that I would hopefully really enjoy with the optimism that, and this may sound really dumb so bare with me, that I could re-use these rigged characters, improve on them and use them to practice with, perhaps even create a few more characters as I go. So far I can say that I really am quite fond of my characters and that they’re good fun to draw.

Now I have one more thing to mention before I get to the point. I actually love hand drawn animation, I love watching it and I love doing it, even with all those in-betweens. I actually feel a lot more comfortable and relaxed doing hand drawn animation than 3D, I like the fact that I can spend more time focusing on the creative aspect of just drawing the pose, the character, the expression and the way it all flows together. I like the fact that I don’t have to model, rig, texture, add cloth, add fur, some light, don’t forget to save, for that sake of all that’s sweet in the world please don’t crash, or corrupt, where did this polygon come from, why is his leg moving backwards and of course I can’t forget ‘Holy sh*t, how long did you say that render would take?’

The Point Has Arrived

It has been recommended to me, on more than one occasion that I shouldn’t do this animation in 3D but that I should do it as a hand drawn. I’ve kind of put these recommendations to the back of my mind thinking something along the lines of ‘ok, well that’s a fair back up plan’ until today when one of my teachers said that I should quite seriously consider the idea of doing this as a hand draw short. So as a result here I am seriously considering it. I don’t really know what to think. There is in my mind more of a grantee of success if I do hand drawn. But am I throwing in the towel before I’ve even started? At the same time I am aware that it is unrealistic to believe I’ll be able to create a good quality amusing animation all by my lonesome while doing 3D. I’ve seen 3D project done by teams of people with bachelors in animation and have been less than impressed.

 

Anyhow, after further talking with my teacher we agreed that it might be an idea for me to model my most difficult character (the baron) over the next 2 weeks,  try and reach the quality I’m aiming for, if I can’t, then I do a hand drawn animation.

I know you won’t, but I’ll say it anyway, ‘watch this space’.

The Baron

I forgot to post yesterday, so sorry, I am a terrible person, that’s not an excuse, it’s just an explanation. An enlightening new fact if you will.

Moving on

This is yet another character design of my baron who is the less than delighted receiver of the message. I might later draw some comparisons between my messenger and him, have a bit of fun with them should I manage to find that mystical thing called ‘time’.

Wish me luck ladies and gentlemen, next time I post I should hopefully have the design for my guards.

 

 

Character Design

This is not going to be a long post, I’m trying to design a character a day, so the less time I spend writing this post the more time I can spend designing someone else.  Now it's not finshed, I still need to figure out the colour of what he's wearing and other minor details like that but I'll come back when I've finshed the brunt of the design for everyone else. So here is my first character, The Messenger. Scruffy, sorry little fellow.