Something Old, Something New

Here's a mix of sketches both old and new.

With the first four I was trying some designs and body shapes out for a character i can't seem to get a handle on at the moment. I want a big guy with little legs for a walk cycle but haven't quite found what i want yet. The fourth is the closest I reckon I've come so far so I'll keep you posted about how that goes. The two heads are just a couple of bruiser types I came up with that are sort of a variant on each other inspired by some comic book characters. The last one is a drawing of a sculpture from the V&A museum I did a while ago. I'll definitely go back and do more at some point as they've got a great sculpture room there with a really good collection of pieces by Rodin among others. I thought I'd put her with these guys to add some balance to the testosterone levels.

Is There Anybody Out There?

The following is real, you are not seeing things, do not adjust your monitors, this really is a NEW post. My self imposed exile from the blogosphere has finally co
me to an end!

Oh who am I kidding, no one's actually reading this are they? There probably wasn't even anyone to start with. However if by some miracle there is someone actually reading this or even the less likely event of someone actually waiting for this then all I can say is better late than never hey! Seriously though, it's been a long time and well overdue. I was originally contemplating a rant about how life is so hard that I couldn't bring myself to even put two words together or much less post an image. Instead I'm not going to make any excuses, I've simply been crap and I intend to decidedly less so from here on in. I'm not gonna make any promises except to say I will try and post something at least once a week even if it's just a load of scribble on the back of a receipt, envelope or some other such scrap of paper. If I fail to do so please let me know and at the very least I will know that there is someone out there.

So, reintroduction over here's some work to look at. It's a little thing I did a few months ago for a documentary about Stanley Kubrick. The director filmed people in the street talking about what people thought he looked like and I then animated a morphing Kubrick according to their rather vague descriptions. I've also added a couple of sketches I did before hand just to get a feel for what he was like. Hope you like it and even if you don't please let me know. Constructive criticism only please no need to be rude as it is likely to crush my rather inferior ego.

Better Late Than Never......

OK, so it's been a long time....very long....4 months almost! I'm sorry for that and i can't promise anything else too soon after this but I've been busy finishing some work and sorting out my showreel.

I finished my animation course in June and did a couple of odd jobs since, including teaching some animation if you can believe that! It was interesting to say the least. Anyhow I've since been trying to finish off my Macbeth witches project, which is STILL incomplete but I'm getting there and I'll post it as soon as it's done. So off to Spain for a week and some much needed sun and then I've got the Private View/screening at the national gallery for the project from my course. Once that and the project is out of the way then it's out into the big wide world and the daunting task of looking for work.....wish me luck!

Blogger seems to having problems with uploading videos at the moment so here's a link to a current version of my showreel that i will update again when my project is complete. I've also been having problems hearing sound on you tube so i don't know if the sound is any good or not.

If You Can't Stand The Heat....

Hello there, I haven't posted for a little while simply because my deadline looms closer over the horizon and the pressure and work load is mounting. As I've been so busy animating I haven't had anything to put here either but I felt I was a bit overdue.

Yesterday was Friday 24th May and we had a rough cut crit with the people from the National Gallery. Overall I think It went fairly well and you can see mine here:



There were many points and suggestions made about everybody's work, some I agreed with and some I didn't. In fact many people didn't seem too happy about a lot of things that were said. This is at least the impression I got from the aftermath of the meeting. Personally though I found it mostly constructive and think some others perhaps took things a little too personally.

I don't want to speak for any one individual or the merits of their respective works but I feel with anything like this you have to put the criticism of others in context. The people from the National Gallery are coming from a very different professional and personal point of view. They are part of an institution and area of the arts that on the face of it is seen as quite stuffy and straight laced. They also want to maintain some integrity and insure our interpretations of their paintings are appropriate, representative and engaging. This isn't to say that they are right and justified in everything they say but then they are only voicing there opinion and viewpoint. They know more about the paintings than we do and we can therefore use that knowledge to enrich our work as we seek to show those paintings in another light.

As for us (when I say us and we I assume you understand that i mean my peers and I) we know more about animation, what works for us and what is achievable in the time we have. Therefore I don't think the creative direction of our work should be dictated to us by those of a different mindset or outlook. I must stress i don't think this has happened in anyones case on the course but I simply wish to point where and how I feel everybody should stand, at least morally if nothing else. However there were a couple of occasions i felt that people either weren't standing up for their work or weren't given the opportunity to justify the creative decisions they had made up to that point. This may just be a case of those individuals agreeing with what was said or not feeling confident enough to counteract the points that were made. To be honest I don't entirely know as I haven't asked every individual in person but this is just my objective view.

You often hear about a writer or director whose artistic vision has been compromised by a board of Hollywood producers who think they know everything but end up butchering the work. Sadly this is what happens from time to time and this is what we all have to expect will happen to us at some point. Again I must say I don't feel this has happened in this case but I do feel it has been a valuable lesson for everyone in how to take criticism and use it constructively. Hindsight is a wonderful thing with which we can learn valuable lessons and gain fresh perspective. Nobody wants to compromise themselves or their work but and we all struggle to find a balance in this regard. I think patience, perspective an ability to listen and take criticism constructively, the courage of our convictions and belief in what we're doing generally will stand us in good stead.

So feel free anyone reading this to leave your comments on any of my posts. In fact I encourage you to so that I may learn from your Constructive criticism and become a better artist and a better animator because of it. Just make sure you don't cross the line and needlessly slag me off because your comments will be forcibly removed.

Layouts, Poses, Dialougue & Heads.....

Yeah, yeah, I know It's a crap title but I wasn't feeling titularly inspired and It does what It says on the tin.

So to start with here's some poses and heads that follow on from the last post. They're all of the young witch but I've created a host of poses for each of the three lovely ladies that I can refer to as I animate.















For regular readers of this blog (oh listen to me kid myself, regular readers!! dillusions of grandeur abound!!) you will have seen a couple of these heads, in the screen caps from flash, in the last post. Anyway here they are again with their ugly sisters in all their rough, flash brush glory and a range of stunning hairdos to match. Speaking of hairdos I just let my mother cut my hair yesterday because I'm a poor student cheapskate at the moment and needs must. However despite a near disaster with my fringe I am happy to say I escaped unscathed. Anyway, I digress, this blog isn't about my grooming habits but about my work so lets move on shall we.

I started off last week doing these heads and poses whilst trying to get hold of some actresses to record my voiceover track. I couldn't really animate properly without It so the week was a slow one in terms of the amount of work produced. However I met up with a couple of young ladies from the drama centre who were very enthusastic about the whole idea and we arranged to meet at the national gallery on the friday to record the dialougue. They were brilliant, nae fantastic and I've got some great voices to work with. I've now edited the best bits together to create the audio track and all i need is some effects sounds but they can come later. I'm also going to hopefully get a musical score as we are meeting up with students from the Royal college of music on friday morning and i'm really interested to see what they can come up with.

A good friend has offered to create some background effects, for the sky and lightning, using After Effects and I'm a little apprehensive. I created these layouts in photoshop at the back end of the week before last (Hope that makes sense).
















These are for the opening shots of the animation and are directly referencing the painting. I like these and so did my friend but he said he felt he could do something interesting with these shots in After Effects. As I said I'm apprehensive about this because I don't want it to detract too much from the look I'm going for but I also realise I mustn't get too precious about anything and i'm open to new ideas. So the apprehension is balanced out somewhat by an anxiousness to see what he can come up with. On that frontIi guess it's just a case of, 'watch this space.' So now I can finally start getting into the real meat of this project and fleshing out the animation. There's six weeks left now, the race is on.......

We Have Lift Off!!

I've been delaying this post for a few days because I wanted to post my animatic, which i presented at the National Gallery last Friday, the 25th. Although a beast off a session at around 3hrs it was the general consensus that it was an overall success. There seemed to be two criteria that our clients (the gallery) were looking for. 1: Did the animatic work and make sense. 2: Was it a good interpretation of the chosen painting. I am happy to say that while there were a few issues raised here and there, no one failed on both of these counts.

So what of my animatic? Well it was deemed a fairly straightforward interpretation that worked although it was felt by some to be like a clip or segment, rather than a specific beginning, middle and end. This bugged me at first, for a number of reasons. Firstly the painting itself has no story or background to it and remains a bit of a mystery. Secondly I am interpreting a fixed text, (Shakespeare no less!) and this doesn't give me much room to play with. Thirdly, it was said that the witches perhaps needed a reason for what they were doing, yet I reason that they don't because they're witches and inherently evil; at least in the context of Macbeth. Lastly, in Macbeth the witches are a plot device and don't need explaining. What does anyone reading this think? I'd be interested to know your views, Do the witches need a reason for their incantations? Anyway my tutor Steve said he didn't have a problem with this and that he liked it, so I'm following his advice.

As I said at the beginning of this post, I wanted to put my animatic on here, but unfortunately the audio i used was taken from an existing version of the play and I wouldn't want to risk any copyright issues. I suppose i could have just taken the audio off but some shots were quite long and I didn't have time to re-edit it. So instead here is the storyboard, which says it all anyway.

Images run left to right













One of the things I have been thinking about and finding difficult to do is to make my youngest witch a bit sexier. Not drop dead gorgeous, just better looking, so there's more of a contrast with the older witches. I had some advice from Wesley Louis (who has a great blog, check it out) and he suggested thinking about what I like in women. What kind of eyes, lips, type of hair, body shape, face shape etc. I looked at the Disney heroines, Bruce Timms gallery(awesome!!), magazines, even the girls around me (but don't tell them that though) and coupled with what feel i wanted for the character i managed to come up with something that i think works a bit better. As I'm on a tight schedule I haven't created a fully coloured and beautifully rendered new character design but instead started drawing (quite roughly) straight into Flash, as this is where they'll end up anyway. The following images are screen caps and head shots, from Flash, of the design.






























There's also some poses I've worked out for all three witches and some layouts I've done but right now I've got to go to bed so I'll put them up later in the week. Besides i think this is enough to digest for one post, so till then, Adios.....

Two's Company...

So i just finished my first week back on my course after the Easter holiday and it's right back where we left off, all guns blazing. It's only been a week but it feels like two! This week we we're doing the 'Pairs' project where the 2D students (that's me) were paired up with the 3D students. Our tutor Steve gave us two lines of dialogue per pair and we had to animate a character each in our respective mediums.

Our tutor decided to give us chat up lines, most of which were pretty ropey. He even went out with a tape recorder and tried them on people, and as he said himself he's more than a little out of practice. Oh the laughter and fun we had taking the mick out of him. So what was my line i hear you cry? Well, brace yourself......ready?.....here it is....

Man: Let's be honest with each other, we're both here for the same thing.

Woman: Ooh, yeah! You're right! let's pull some girls!

OK, OK, i know it's not great but compared to what it could have been i think i did alright. Anyway i had to go it alone for day one as my partner Marianne wasn't in but we managed to correspond via the modern marvel that is the world wide web and some new fangled thing called email. Not sure it'll catch on myself. Anyhoo the idea was to have two old aged pensioners, out on the pull, at the Bingo. Well, i did the woman (in flash) as she was on an electric buggy and with a only a week it would have been a lot to ask for Marianne to model one of those babies in Maya.

I hand drew it straight into Flash with my wacom tablet because i didn't want to rely on symbols unless necessary, for example the earings and the buggy were symbols. I was fairly happy with how it came out in terms of movement although given a bit more time i would of liked to have put in some shadows and highlights, made the wheels look like they were actually turning instead of sliding and perhaps make the buggy more stuttery with an engine sound. But like i say, we only had a week. So what's it like? Well here's a low res copy of the finished animation. You can see this again and others from the rest of the course on my youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/Adamation82



It's no world beater but it was fun to make. In fact it was nice to get something done quite quickly and it got rid of any rustiness that might have been there after the Easter break, so it was a nice practice or ice breaker for the main project; which kicks back into gear next week with the animatic presentation, wish me luck.......