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.

 

 

Putting More People in More Danger

Hello Happy Shining People, I’ve just come to realise I like chaos and violence. Actually I’ve always known this, they say the first step is admitting you have a problem, I personally don’t think it’s a problem, but I will admit it as a fact none the less.

So, in keeping with my lust for all things hurtful I am going to sink a ship. This has nothing what so ever to do with my short story, this is for a different class, but I’m still having fun with it and it’s also getting a generous helping of my attention. So here’s some of the design work including the ship itself (which I’m looking forward to modelling) and the choice of shots.

Life Drawing

So every Monday for the last 3 weeks I’ve been going to the UWA campus to do some life drawing. The main reason I started was because I’ve been having all hell trying to design characters straight from my head, there have been rare occasions were I’ve had some success but in most instances my characters look deformed, quite generic or all together without character entirely. Study of proportions and a whole range of golden rules of the body did help in the early stages of my drawing but I do find them now to have less of an impact, perhaps because everything they’re telling me to do I’m already doing (with few exceptions).

2 of my very few successful characters from my head

I was aware that it was common practice for big studio’s like Disney to encourage life drawing, particular to study movement, and after further reading I discovered Richard Williams, in his book The Animators Survival Kit devoted an entire chapter ‘Time to draw’ to life drawing. In the opening to the chapter I read this

 

·       Epitaph of an Unfortunate Artist

 

He found a formula

For drawing rabbits:

This formula for

Drawing comic

Rabbits paid,

So in the end he

Could not

Change the

Tragic habits

This formula for

Drawing comic

Rabbits made.

-Robert Graves-

 

 

‘Life Drawing is the antidote to this’ – Richard Williams

‘Thank Lord!’ – Claire Pettigrew

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am glad to say that life drawing has brought something fresh to the table. I’m still quite far from where I need to be and even further from where I’d like to be, but I do feel some improvement, a new appreciation for weight and balance been a big one.

 

 

My life drawing will continue, I need to work on faces because despite knowing the ‘formulas’ I’m still struggling to create anything new.