Sunday, 19 December 2010

CHAINSAW MAID?!?!

I ain't posted here in a while so I though I would grace y'all with my presence. I stumbled upon this amazing animation on youtube. A stop-motion animation which has to be one of the most graphic animations I have seen in this medium. The Blood animation is impressive and works really well with the cartoon style. The Soundscape of this animation is also really impressive. It has a nice creepy quality that adds to the suspense.

Tuesday, 7 December 2010

Aardman + Sony Pictures Animation = NEW MOVIE!

Aardman seem to be back and this time they hooked up with Sony Pictures Animation to create this festive film that is set to come out next year. Sony Pictures Animation were the creators behind "Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs" which was a surprisingly great film. So Lets hope that with the help of Aardman studios too this is going to be a great Christmas treat.




After having A look at this trailer I still have my doubts about the look and style of it but yet again it is only a trailer and I've said that before and the film has been Amazing so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Wednesday, 1 December 2010

Off to the Woods

Here is one of my finished paintings for my 3 piece background project. More to come.



I decided to try and switch the colours round as the lighter colours would be closer to where the sun is. I also added some shadowing too.

I also went in and added highlights to the rock and tress. Giving it a more dimensional look.

A Lovely Bit of Animation

I was looking over some of the winners of the 11 second club and I stumbled upon this one. I simply love the animation in this one. The emotion is captured so well and it really has a sense of drama.

It was created by Arthur Gil Larsen and I can't wait to see what he produces next.
Here is a link to his amazing blog. click here

"I'm.." by Arthur Gil Larsen

Tuesday, 30 November 2010

Channeling The Hipster Inside Me

Impressed with how manly I got this one. I tend to draw more female characters then male characters.

My Animated Walk Cycle

We were set the task of creating our own walk cycle based on footage that we took of ourselves. It was a lot of fun to do this. I started of by taking the footage and putting through After Effects. I took my walk and tracked it to one spot. Then cropped the composition creating a real life walk cycle for myself.




After doing this I had a great reference to work with to create my 2D walk with. I noticed that I wasn’t that aniamated in the way I walked as my arms didn’t swing in time with my opposing legs. All these little details are what helped me start to sketch out my basic cycle. After testing it on the line tester I felt like it was missing a few frames so after adding a couple it began to look more natural.



I am really pleased with the final outcome. I think that it really has a small piece of me in this walk from the way the shoulders move to the way the legs swing. I am looking forward to trying this in 3D next time.

Friday, 26 November 2010

Playing God - Making a Tree

As I Start to work on one of my backgrounds I decided I would design how the tree will look like within the scene. I wanted something that was clean and graphic. Nothing to detailed As it would draw the viewer's eye away from the animation that would be happening in the scene. Firstly I sketched out some rough ideas.


After I was happy with them I went on to pick the ones that I though were working best and Tested them with a bit of colour.

I fiddled around with some and mixed different ideas until I found one that I think it exactly what I was hoping to achieve when I started off.

Wednesday, 24 November 2010

My Munkey Walk

Here is Munkey. He is a simple rig that I did a short walk animation with. I think it went really well. I think that the arms have a nice weight to them and he has a really sweet walk. If i had to change something i would attempt to give him a better facial expression.



Here is another angle.

Tuesday, 23 November 2010

Stop Motion Induction

Got my first test of working with stop motion yesterday and I loved it . it was simple but the packback from this kind of animation was so good. I would love to work on this style more in the future.

My one is the one in the middle.


Sunday, 21 November 2010

Storytelling?

This started off as a innocent colour test with my watercolours but I decided to go all the way and make a little story out of it.I like the textured strokes that I achieved it gives it a very menacing feel.

Saturday, 20 November 2010

Fashion Illustraion

Flicking though my friends Grazia Magazine I noticed a column on fashion Illustration. It was fascinating, they were all so graphic so I took some Images on the web and tried my own hand at it.







I am really pleased with the last one. It was so simple just a pen , brush and a little water. It feels graphic with a little added depth.

My Colourful Walk Cycle

I am really pleased with the outcome of this animation. It really has a feeling off weight when the foot get placed down.


Tuesday, 16 November 2010

Bradford Animation Festival

Just a Few of my sketches I did while we were at Bradford Animation Festival. I took some of the lessons to heart. I started making my drawings simpler and more graphic. With bolder lines that have more confidence.








Friday, 5 November 2010

A Very Productive Evening

I sat in my room and decided that I would do some more paintings. I did all of these from covers of albums that I have. I liked the flow of drawing with a black ink pen and trying my best to keep my pen on the paper to create a continuous line drawing.

Rihanna


Sara Bareilles

Lissie


Corinne Bailey Rae

I am really pleased with these paintings. They may not be perfect but I love the impressionistic feel that they all have.

Thursday, 4 November 2010

WaterColours. Oh How I Missed You

I thought I would do My brief of random people using a medium that I love; watercolours. I think that they have a lovely tone and give each picture character.





I also tried using new mediums with watercolours. For example here where I used an Eyeliner pencil as a conventional pencil. I think it worked quit nicely.

Tuesday, 2 November 2010

Cubey and his Double Take

I really enjoyed this task out of all the ones we have been set so far. I think i could have stretched the poses out a little longer. But I still think it is very effective.




I also tried it with a quicker framerate to see if it would help.



It gives it a better sense of emergancy but it also feels a litte rushed. I think that out of the two I like the slower one better.

Sunday, 31 October 2010

The "other" Sketchbook

Just a few small doodles I've been doing over the weekend.


I really liked that day of the dead style of artwork that have seen this past Halloween. I might try and work something into my costume next year in this kinda theme.

Saturday, 30 October 2010

It Got Me Thinking

This film really made me think about animation again and the way I still get people I talk to who believe that animation is only suited to children. Mary and Max surely has to be one of many reason s why that is most certainly not the case. The film deals with subjects of loneliness and friendship even spiralling depression and suicide. It's a stop-motion film that is set in both Melbourne, Australia and New York. I found that when I was watching it I began to forget that these were simple clay figures, they had become to much more than that. These were real people and I was witnessing their harrowing story. I still believe that in modern society we should be able to have more animated films that tackle real issue and push boundaries. The world needs to be more open-minded about animation and I feel that one of my personal goals it is to make it so.

Thursday, 28 October 2010

Things I Find on YouTube

Lovely French love story. I enjoy the pacing of this whirlwind romance It makes me happy everytime.


Reaction

Swinging when you're Winning

okay not been posting. for this I appolgise. Busy times. Anyway back to the work. I really enjoyed this model. It was great to mold and pose. It has a nice curve when it swings although I think I might have made it a bit slower than it should but I still think that it looks okay. Can't wait to get my hands on the next one.


Monday, 18 October 2010

Anticipation and Overlap

Here is another small animation test we had to do this week. I think that it works really well. It has character and you can really feel the flow of the jump. I would love to try and attempt it with legs next time.


Thursday, 14 October 2010

15 Step - RadioHead.

I really enjoyed doing this piece. I listened to the song and saw bright colours. Movement and energy. So I got out my friend's Acrylics and got to it. I think That this has worked really well. I especially like the small section nearest to the middle. Where a lot of the paint splatters landed.



My Final Piece


Quick Close Up.

Bioshock Infinate

The highly stylised gaming franchise is back and revamped batter than ever. We trade the sea views and art deco theming for the sheer blue sky filled with Americana. From this 10 minute demo this game has a lot of promises to keep in terms of animation. It looks a lot smoother than regular gameplay trailer. The game engine itself looks more refined. Lighting is stunning and vista are crisp blue skyies. Only thing I would point out from this animation is that they still can't model the humans in this game well. Although I am reall impressed with the girl close to the end of the demo. I look forward to see more gameplay in the near future.

Wednesday, 13 October 2010

The Beginnings of my SketchBook Project

Okay , Here the deal. I have to do one painting/drawing a day while I stick to a certain rule each week. So I decided this week to Follow the "Badly Drawn Boy" brief. Where we take a song and use it as our inspiration for the day.


So I put on my iTunes and the first song on shuffle I decide to base my first drawing on. It was KT Tunstall's Paper Aeroplane.





I decided to take this song title literally for my piece. Keeping with the soft nature of the song I used watercolours to make it feel fragile and vulnerable. I really like the way it turned out. It has a feeling freedom and innocence as the plane flies of into the white abyss.




Here I channeled Style and Rebellion. After listening to This song I pictured something stylish and fit for partying. I had this idea after seeing an advert where they use a lipstick as the heel of a shoe. So I thought that a glass would be really fitting for the song. More Drawing are soon to follow and I can't wait to start doing more of these soon.

Saturday, 9 October 2010

Animation Assignment

We were given a great first assignment in which we had to animate on paper a football bouncing and a bowling ball bouncing. In order to learn how to express the weight of different objects. So to begin with I start doing a little research on how each ball bounced to see what I was going to be dealing with.



As you can see the football can really bounce a fair few times before it winds to a halt. In order to make the boucing on my animation become more pronounced I shall use the age old trick of squash and stretch.



I am really pleased with the final version. I added a few more frames at the start so it looked more like the ball had actually flown in from outside of the screen. After working on that I went on to tackle the bowling ball.



Even though It isn't falling onto a hard surface you can still see the difference in weight between this footage and the previous football footage. Less bouncing really shows that it is a lot heavier.



This worked really well. Although I think that it could have done with a few more frames in between the drop so it lasted just a little bit longer. But I really love the way I got the simple roll at the end to give it a bit more dimension.

Friday, 8 October 2010

Simple and Clean


Felt the need to whip out my watercolours so I did a copy of one of my old pieces in watercolour. I'm pleased with the outcome. I think I might try using more colour next time.

Thursday, 7 October 2010

Morning Sunshine and Don Hertzfeldt's Animation

I can't quite remember how on earth I found this animation but I really love the humor and the absolute love the randomness of it all. The animation is simple but extremely effective. Marker Pens. That is pretty much all it is. But It works so well. xxx

Saturday, 2 October 2010

Tangled - The Hair

I came across this on youtube and I am amazed at the realism that Disney has acheived in developing the hair for the feautre film Tangled. It moves with such beauty in a way that I think could only really be achieved in computer graphics. I really can't wait to see the whole film when it gets released around the end of the year.

Friday, 1 October 2010

Little Bit of Life Drawing

As I emptied my room to leave for Uni I found a bundle of old life drawing pictures I felt I should share with you guys. I think that each pose was about 2 mins long. If my memory serves me well.

Thursday, 30 September 2010

Fresh Start

I thought I would start my new blog off with a bang. I spent the majority of the Summer Drawing when and where I could. Always keeping a sketchbook handy on the train journey's in and out of Bristol. here are just a few that I was really pleased with.


I drew my inspiration for this drawing after watching the Film "Chicago" I loved the forms and shapes that the dancers threw across the stage. Also I find that period of history fascinating in terms of fashion style and architecture. That vaudeville style is beautiful and I kinda hope that I could incorporate it into a future project.


I really like the feeling of freedom this has. I feel like this girl is a free spirit. I wanted to try and give a feel of weight to her so by adding a slight lean to her form and countering it with her clothes folding in the wind I think it really does have a good impact. If I was being critical I would have said that her arms are positioned in a very cartoony way and I don't think that arms can be bent that far back (I tried) But I think that it really adds to that element of freedom and helps it communicated that message.


I wanted to see here if I could draw something highly stylistic with a composition that feels like it's been ripped right out of a comic book. I had been listening to a lot of singer Janelle Monáe. Who sings about her alter ego who is a cyborg who falls in love with a human. Here is one her stand out tracks.

Found at: FilesTube


I feel like I could develop this character a lot further and maybe put this into a potential piece of animated work. I might try and do a couple more sketches of her and see what happens.