2d, 3d Collaboration

2D,3D collaboration on Vimeo
Wassup people. Started my final term last week. To ease us into what will be 2 months of stress we were given this assignment. To team up with one of the 3d students and do a short animation based on a piece of dialogue which was provided by our lecturer; Parents making a statement about their kids with the child in the background contradicting or reinforcing the statement. Eg: The parent could say something like, he’s really quiet and the child could be making a racket behind them. The idea was inspired by Nick Parks Creature Comforts.
After picking our partners, dialogue and tasks out of a hat (envelope) we got down to it. My partner was Emma (I forgot her last name, will edit it in later). She animated the parent, I did the child. The dialogue was: “We’re all a slave to her allergies.” (I personally think it sound more like, “We’re all a slave to allergies”) Our idea was to have a child itching and sneezing due to an allergic reaction to the cat she’s holding. Obviously, the cat’s no good for her, but she’s a brat, you know how some kids can be.  Steve Roberts (our lecturer) advised us to use flash as it would be easier to composite. Traditional methods would have taken to much time. I was a bit reluctant to use flash as I prefer the freedom and expressiveness of pencil and paper but our lectures are always saying, there is more flash work out there than traditional animation, so I got off my high horse  and decided to give it a go. In short, I learnt so much this week, took a while getting use to flash, I was doing everything really slowly, but I’m pleased with the results. It’s a very simple animation using lots cycles, symbols and other flash jargon, but I think flash caters for this style of movement (that’s not strictly true, I’ve seen some amazing flash work that looks like hand drawn animation). There is more I wanted to do to it like when she turns her head back after the sneeze, there’s no follow through or smear. I also wanted the snot to hit the dads shoe and drip slightly. In addition, I would have liked to have added more shadows to make her feel like she’s part of the space. The 3d element also needs to be fully rendered. And the colour changed so that that the 2d fits with the 3d better. We tried cell shading it but it didn’t come out right. If I was working by myself, I would have tried to push it to increase my understanding, but I wouldn’t have met the deadline and when I’m working with someone, I feel like I don’t want to let them down so my main concern was getting it finished. Hopefully I’ll have time to tweak it later.

And Again….
Wes
Ps I’m gonna start posting roughs for my finals, watch this space….please 

Dash

At the beginning of the my course I did an older Dash in flash (no "rhyme" intended) run cycle. I did the above sketch the other week because I heard Pixar are making a Toy Story 3, TOY STORY 3??!!!! WHY?? I'd prefer and Incredibles 2. Everyones older, Violet engaged, Jack Jack learning his powers, Dash at Uni, Frozone with his first daughter or son (Ok, that might sound corny but I'm no writer). I think you could do more with the Incredibles than another Toy Story, then again, Pixar haven't messed up yet right. Lets see how it goes. Didn't wanna post old animation but what the hell. Check below.

And Again....
Wes

Ps: As usual, there's a lot I'd change about this. I'm gonna do another run in flash using symbols, same amount of frames, different character.




The Dash on Vimeo

Bruce Lee's Advice to Animators

Bruce Lee, Speaks On Animation.... on Vimeo

Wassup people. Haven't blogged properly in a while. Really sorry, just had so much going on. Come April 16th, I begin my final term in St Martins. Got a lot to do. I'm off for 2 more weeks so I'm working on some things from last term as well as some experiments so, I’ll post it as soon as. In the mean time here is my second lip synch task. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand I feel really happy with it because of how much I learnt. On the other, I feel disappointed because it’s not the animation or result I see in my head. I did this in about 6 days (conception to realisation) but I know if I had more time, it could have been better. It would take me longer than a professional to do it, weeks longer, due to lack of experience, but this animation has convinced me that I could be a decent animator. Why not right? I’m really frustrated at the moment because I have so many unanswered questions, questions that can only be answered by me. My own journey of constant practice and trial & error. But my course will be over come June and I’m worried that I won’t have the creative freedom I have now in a working environment. I feel like I’m under achieving. I guess my final film will be the make or break.

This piece is just like all the animation I’ve done, I see nothing but areas I want to improve. Acting, arcs, design, drawings the list is long, and the explanation is longer so I won’t go into it, but if you wanna know what I think, let me know. And let me know what you think and how I can improve it.

And Again….

Wes

Following is some of the development work i did.

Naked Animation

Seeing some Prince of Egypt Model sheets supplied by Paul Stone (resident animator and another teacher) gave me the idea of animating the form first. My anatomy isn't great, but it did give me some understanding of whats going on underneath. Next time, I won't do it so detailed.

Bruce Lee, Speaks On Animation....phase 02 on Vimeo

Sketches

Martial Artists Always have powerful hands so i thought it'd be a good idea to do some hand studies. I don't think I did them to well in the animation, but I'll keep at it. The first set were done from memory, the second from life.



The Master..Bruce Lee...
Jump
While I'm here, might as well tell you of the show I went to see last wednesday. Jump, Peacock Theatre in Holborn. If you like martial arts, comedy and animation, yes animation, go see this. I was so inspired, i'm gonna attempt an animated walk from the show, pics below.


Ok, I'm done now. :)

Master & Student, Rough Inbetweens....

Master & Student on Vimeo

Before I say anything, This is not finished, I repeat, it is not finished. My course ends in 3 months and I still have so much I want to try out so I've decided to put this aside till I get a few things off my chest. I've only inbetweened the parts I felt I could learn something from. My main reason for doing this was to better understand the importance of inbetweens and arcs. How do you go from one key to another? The students movement is more of a straight line going from one pose to the next. The master goes from one pose and curves down to the following stance. Also the spacing and the timing effects the force of the movement. Really, i just tried to put a feeling of "difference" across. From what my class mates have said I seemed to have pulled it off. I learnt so much from doing this. Also the way I've inbetween it showed me a lot. Normally my inbetweens are more finished. I guess I can see what my boy Tim (messy timbo) was saying about focusing on movement rather than character design. It's definately the fastest I've inbetweened anything. It also means I can pick whats wrong witht he animation quickly then make the nescessary changes. If I'd laboured on the inbetweens and made mistakes, I think i would have been reluctant to change it. Another thing that made me decide to Inbetween this way was Glen Keanes lecture. (check out The Art Of Glen Keane Blog). He did a straight ahead animation with really simple drawings which had lots of energy and movement. Incredible. I definately want to try that out. In terms of this animationI also wanted to do follow through on the masters beard and the rest of his clothes. In addition I would have extended the follow through on his sleeves just so you could get a sense of a powerful force going through his body. I could go on and on about the things I'd love to add to this and the things I'd love to change to that but I have so much to look foward to. I guess thats the beauty of animation. Got some more animation to post. I've been busy so I apologise for slacking on the posts but I've got a month off uni so I have time to experiment. Watch this space!

And Again....
Wes

Warm Up

Quick warm up sketch. Doing some work for my assessment on friday, been ill, lots goin on, blah blah bare with me, I'll have a lot to say on my next post....

And Again...
Wes

Lip Synch.

This is my first piece of lip synch and probably my fastest piece of animation so far. Did it in a day. I don't think its great, but I can't help feeling that it wouldn't have been better if I spent a week on it. This showed me that sometimes when you take away, choice, time and all the stuff we "artists" think about, we can come up with some interesting results. More animation is coming....

And Again....
Wes



Lip_synch on Vimeo

Your not so friendly neighbour hood Spider-Man....

Wassup people. Sorry I haven't blogged in a while (for those of you that care :) been busy. Lot of exciting, changes are happening in my life so I'm kind of adjusting. There's a lot I wanna post, and a lot I wanna say, bare with me, it will come. In the meantime, here is a quick-ish rendering of Spider-Man. I'm looking forward to the new movie, black costume and all, kind of wish they kept the original design though. I don't really learn much from drawing like this, but I do have a lot of fun doing it. Hope you like
And Again....
Wes

The Master guides, the student follows....

As promised, the short animation which was inspired by the previous post....ok, it's not complete yet, only the thumbs and Key positions for now. I'm a bit frustrated at the moment because we only had a week to do this. The first sketch I did pumped me up so much, I really wanted to do this well, But I find it hard to move characters around when I don't "know" them. I kind of had to do a model sheet as I go along, tracing from keys positions, but that only helps a little. My friend Tim thinks its more beneficial to concentrate on the animation as this isn't a character design course. He says to keep my shapes real simple, but I know what I'm like, drawing stick figures all week will kill me. I know I can draw stick figures, but turning heads and bodys, thats the challenge (for me anyway) Guess I have to find a balance.

And Again....
Wes



Master & Student on Vimeo



Master & student keys on Vimeo

Master & Student....

I haven’t done much character/ finished/ highly stylised pieces of late because I really want to concentrate on becoming a better draughtsman, and most of my work prior to now is 99.99999% comic/ character design and 0.001% life/ observational drawing (most of which is over the last 3 months). I’ve been told however that my blog is…er…ahem…a bit boring LOL. So I think I’ll start posting a healthy balance of life drawing and character work. This latest piece is for our animation task this week, character interaction. I find it helps my motivation to set the feeling of the animation with one drawing. The final animation won’t look like this, I only have a week, but it’s important to get to know the characters and believe in them. That’s what Glen Keane says anyway :)

Tried to give it a painterly feel in photoshop but colour, paints etc is not my strong point. After the course I definately want to start learning how to paint.

If I like the final animation, I might post it.

And Again....

Wes

Been Busy....

....hence the big post. I’ve had a really good start to the year and feeling pumped. Hope it stays like this. Thought I’d give a quick breakdown of what I’ve been up to over the past couple weeks. After this I’m gonna discipline myself and make sure I post at least once a week.

Life Drawing at Back Hill 10th and 17th Jan 2007...

Had 2 sessions so far this year. The 1st was a real struggle. Couldn't draw. it could have been because I hadn't done it for a while, could've been I expected so much after a long break. Maybe I wasn't feeling the model. Maybe a combination of everything I just mentioned, but I know I was really frustrated so I just started drawing people round the class. Thats when I started to relax.....

The second session I really tried to put things into play. We had a good model. Very feminine figure. I was told before the holidays that I overwork my figures sometimes. So this session I really tried to look harder and find the best marks to describe the form. Also went mad with shadows coz I'm usually afraid of them. I think it's my best life drawing session so far. Our Lecturer, Maryclare, warned me to be careful of making my "handwriting" too strong. As in there is nothing wrong with style but sometimes we can loose the importance of life drawing. Loosing form with creative marks. I think she thought I was offended but what kind of a student would I be if I couldn't take constructive criticism . (Just for the record Maryclare, I appreciate all the advice you give, never worry about offending me :)

New Out & About Book...

The paper in the other one sucked LOL. This one's a lot better. I was also told I need to study faces more so I've really tried to push that but I find it reeaaaaally hard. I've noticed I seem to draw better with the animation col-erase pencils than pen. Not that I want to blame my tools LOL but the blue pencil is so comfy to draw with.

Thundercat Revamp...

Seen a lot of blogs with Thundercats re-inventions. Sean "Cheeks" Galloway is by far the best. It's a big departure but if they made a cartoon of it, I think I'd love it. It's somewhere on his blog, check it out. Anywho I thought I'd try my hand at a Thundercat but I thought I'd cross the legend with Bleach (if you dont know what bleach is I can't help you, not sure I want to either LOL). Did a few sketches and came up with a pose only to find I hated it. The figure's very stiff and lacks personality. The swords a bit crap as well. My brother hates it. Said I should create a "Blog of Shame" and post it quick LOL. I definately will to take another stab at it when my work load calms down. I'll Make Lion-O cooler and more cocky. I'll probably do "Bankai" and "Shikai" variants (please watch Bleach).

1st Major Project

This is probably the first time we've got to do real character design on the course. Last term was more about getting the mechanics of animation down, you know bouncing balls, arcs, overshoots blah blah blah :) This term is about acting and bringing characters to life. Here's some school work :)

These are the images for my storyboard. It's not 100% yet. Still needs a layout and lots of film jargon (which I'm still getting to grips with). I'm thinking of taking an eastern approach to the layout, so you read it down instead of across. Just wanna be different I guess. At the moment it's across. Don't wanna say what my story's about just yet (prefer you to guess). Sound is definately a big factor in it. In fact, the thing that makes all the noise won't be seen in the final animation (that was a clue)

Books

My Christmas present arrived to day :) :) :) yes my smile is big. Happy happy joy, joy The other 2 books I ordered because I want to study outside my subject to "inform" my subject. I'll probably talk about that another time...

phew, ok gonna go now. Till the next post people, keep striving and keep helping each other to strive.

And Again....

Wes

A Few Train Faces....

Not much to say. Someone told me I talk too much (they know who they are LOL). Back at uni now, ready to go.Was told I should study faces so here they are…

And again….

Wes

Why animators shouldn't study animation....

No drawings this post. Just wanted to share my thoughts on a film called (pause for effect)…..”Big” It came on TV over the Christmas holidays, channel 5 me thinks. It’s amazing to watch something in your child hood, come back years later, watch it in adulthood and look at it in the same way and yet in a completely different way. I’m studying animation, so over the last couple months I’ve tried to look at things closely, understand movement, mannerisms etc. Watching that film gave me an appreciation for why Tom Hanks is such a good actor. You can see he really studied the mannerisms of children to pull off a very believable performance. I’m not talking about the obvious things like, playing with toys or chewing with your mouth open. Little things like, lying down on his stomach watching TV and his legs are up in the air swinging behind him. The part where he's in the toy store talking to his boss continuously swinging and playing with his bag. Even when he cried it was like a child, constantly fiddling with his fingers. The greatest animators of our time repeatedly say don’t try to do animation by studying only animation because you’ll only learn mechanically techniques. I thought I understood that, but for some reason watching that film really brought home what they mean. I’ve had a lot of epiphanies lately, and I hope they keep coming.

And again….
Wes

New Year, No Fear....

Thats right people, 2007 is here, hope everyone had a good time welcoming in the new year and "learning" from the old. I definately learnt alot about myself over the last 2 weeks. I've seen a lot of blogs, with so many talented, hardworking and confident artists. Realising how high the levels are out there began to affect me big time. I just started looking at my work and loathing it. Became very concious and just didn't really feel like drawing. Don't wanna go into too much detail but the b-line is, (through much soul searching) I'm glad to be me, and I like the way I draw. Don't get me wrong, this ain't self indulgence. I have so much more to learn, and need to make vast improvements before I consider myself good but I'm realising or remembering that it's important to find the things in your drawings that you do like. It's important to have confidence but not arrogance. I think me starting this blog is probably the 2nd best thing I did last year (1st doing the animation course). I'm really excited and can't wait to see who I'll be in a year. Ok, enough talk, more drawings. LET 2007 BEGIN!!!!

And again....
Wes

PS Just wanna thank Tim McCourt (for making me aware of blogs) and (Kristian Antonelli for giving me the push to actually start it) Check their blogs out....
www.kristianantonelli.blogspot.com www.messytimbo.blogspot.com



Conflicting angles and perspective on the chair methinks.....


Drew this in the X ray room at Barking Hospital, I added the greys in photoshop, got the idea from Kristian. He seems to make it look so natural and spontaneous. Anywho, I think I got some of the shadows wrong. Next time I'll take notes so I can put the shadows down properly....

Last Life Drawing Class of the Year. Candid 19/12/06

This session I felt a lot more confidence. As in, trying things and not worrying about the results. (trust me, it may not seem like it but for each drawing I had different goals). I did a lot more in my 5 min drawings than my 2min this time. But the problem now is my 5min has more than my 10min, LOL. oh well... Since this class I've seen some amazing life drawings from a guy named Alan Cook. It's depressing that someone could be this good, and yet exciting because now, I have another place reach. You must check this guys work. I don't know where he finds the time. you'll see what I mean when you see his blog. cookedart.blogspot.com
Wes

Out and about.

This is my "out and about" sketch book. It's A6 so it's ideal for traveling. Got it from muji. I've decided to be ready to draw at anytime so I carry it everywhere now. The drawings are a bit concious as I feel uncomfortable drawing in public. Especially on the train, but out and about is the best time to draw. I learn more when I'm uncomfortable, I think....