Gordans Alive!

Today was our first flash tutorial. We had it instead of our 3D tutorial because Georg is away at Bournemouth training, and we have a second flash tutorial in about half an hour. I already knew most of what we were taught, but it was fun just to be back on flash. We were taught the basics and about symbols and classic tweens, which was good. We made short bouncy ball animations with a Halloween feel to them. The first one I made in class:

And this one I just did quickly when I got back all bored:

Also, Becca has returned from her trip with some society, which means I now have access to her printer and scanner again, so expect those character designs from the creation workshop to be up soon :]

CG is Back

I have finished my second CG assignment, though I cant find where we are supposed to hand it in to on the learning space, so I'm a little worried, but still, here it is:

Lazy Ol' Me

so, i may have neglected blogging recently due to business doing stuff in general. So a quick recap of the week. Monday we had another digital animation lesson, where we used a ball rig that could squash and stretch, and we learnt how to generally mess about with polygons. We have been given another bouncy ball related assignment that i shall start after this post.

 I also had small group with the CU on Monday which was excellent, got to meet some more new people and had a generally good time, and I got to help Sam do worship, Him on Guitar and me on my ukulele. That is one of the reasons for my lack of posts actually, I got a new ukulele, a beautiful tenor mandolin bodied one. I haven't put it down much this week....

Anyhow, back to my week, Wednesday (yesterday) was cool too, another storyboarding session, which though they aren't majorly thrilling they are pretty cool and rather essential. The I had a free meal at Emmanuel church. Ate so much pasty and cake :]

Today was rather cool. As with the last two Thursdays, we had 2 lectures and then a workshop, which is a quite full day. the first was another of Ann's History and Theory lectures, all about stereotyping in animation, women in animation (particularly Disney princess's) and how we know who the villains are. The Derek started on character creation, which I loved.

He started by talking about designing Jesus for "Miracle Maker" (I may have mentioned, I LOVE this animation, and am amazed that I get taught by the producer) he had to work with a mixture of Russian and welsh teams, the Russians getting two thirds of the film to do, and the welsh getting one third. They met with very different visions of what Jesus was to look like, Derek's friend had designed a massively muscly almost warrior-like Jesus, whereas the Russians wanted a most soft renaissance style Lord.It ended with a cool angular Jesus with aspects from both, though when the Russians made the model they smoothed it down somewhat. It all sounded really cool and exciting. he also talked us through designing other characters for "Other World" and "Hippos House"

We then had a workshop on creating characters, which was cool. we had to do them in the style of our backgrounds from last week, which i found difficult, because the first character had to be based on yourself. I have Japanese Art and this is done with wood block printing, so there are basic outlines and features and lots of patterned clothing. This was surprisingly difficult, and I intend to redraw my version, though I shall post the original too. the second character had to be something different to you, whether it was a different gender or race or anything. this was easier, because I wasn't restrained by my appearance.

I don't have the images scanned in yet, but when I do, I shall post them here immediately :]

Backdrop Making

We had to design a background for an animation, and we were given a scenario and had to do it in the style of an art movement. I chose Japanese Art, and the scenario we were given was a courtyard with outhouses and buildings, and a road leading up to it with an archway. It also had to have some natural formations and foliage in it. This is what I came up with, I added a fountain and mountains to it too to add my own twist to it. Enjoy:

Enviroseminar

We had a seminar today on creating environments and backgrounds. Right at the beginning we had another history and theory lecture from Ann, which are my least favourite lectures, and I often disagree with some of the things she says, but its still pretty fun, and we get to see many different forms of animation.
Then Kathy showed us the work she did as a backdrop designer for various animations, many of which were at TV Cartoons, the company behind "Father Christmas", "Angelina Ballerina", "Oi Get Off Our Train" and "Wind in the Willows". It was one of the most interesting lectures so far, and I found the backdrop drawings were really awesome, using a brilliant range of techniques, media and colour. We learnt about limited and deep spaces in a background, and we spoke about how we may collaborate with music, graphic design and illustration courses, so they can design characters/soundtracks etc for us to add animation to.
Kathy also spoke about how best to draw foliage and trees, which I found really useful, as I found them difficult, and how you don't draw individual leaves but merely suggest then. Backdrops are often 15 field in size, with space at the edges to extend the scene
Derek also briefly taught us about a layout where the camera shots in a scene are thought out. I learnt that > is the symbol for a camera in a layout, and i found the difference between Dollying and Panning, and between Zooming and Tracking.

Here is a website we were given with brilliant backdrops from hundreds of big animations, which I can see  being very useful in the future. Here it is :animationbackgrounds.blogspot.com

Life Drawing Fail

I had my second life drawing lesson today, and it went really well. First we did ten twenty second drawings, only being allowed to use 3 line per drawing. I didn't like doing that, but it was over pretty quickly. Then we had three two minute drawings which allowed much more detail, and in one I even had time to shade. The we did another contour drawing like last week, ten minutes of not being allowed to look at the paper, It teaches you to look at the subject more and to see things you would normally miss. The we did my favourite. Twenty minute charcoal reduction drawing. Finally something I can do well. It turned out really well in my opinion and I was really proud of it, and I had time to do the entire body, except the top of the head. All of these drawings were done in charcoal which is a very smudgy media.

Now I bet you expect photos of these drawings, but unfortunately, I must disappoint. I didn't know we would use charcoal and so didn't bring any fixative (hairspray etc) and so I rolled the drawings up and put them in Ben's boot to take home, and when I got back, the drawings had rubbed terribly. The charcoal reduction had rubbed black over all the others and the drawing its self was barely recognisable. So I recycled the life drawings in the bin. Sad times :(

The First of the 3D Projects

So, as he said he would in our Maya session, Georg has set us a 3D assignment in Maya. It was set this morning, so I decided to do it immediately, to prevent from falling under a huge workload again. The task was to create 2 bouncing balls that fall at different speed, either creating them together, both in one video, or separately. TI knew I could do them separately, as I made one with squash and stretch when I came home earlier in the week, so I decided to do them both together, This caused a few problems that confused me at first when I was working on the animation graph, but I got my head round it. I had difficulty creating the slower falling ball, but I think it went well in the end. I also added colour to the balls, since I was messing around and discovered it was rather easy to do in Maya.

Tuesday, Day of Work

Last week we had a storyboarding tutorial which I posted about, which was really fun. in it we had to create a storyboard for one of three scenarios. I chose the second, which was to have to characters doing something, then the cameras view is obstructed by something, and when it moves back out of the way, the two characters are doing something you didn't expect. I only just scanned mine in today, I apologise for the poor quality, the storyboard is on A3 paper and I was using an A4 scanner, which wasn't co-operating. Here it is:

I also finished my Box Man animation that we were set during our last animation principles seminar. I'm not sure if I mentioned it, but basically, we had to have a character made of just a box body and a circle head, arms were optional, and it had to jump and then show an emotion. We had to show anticipation and overlap, two principles we learnt about. So this is my animation, I hope you like it:

It was meant to be a sad emotion by the way, if you were wondering. I have only seen one other persons Box man animation, and I thought it was really well done, and so have decided to link it on here. His name is Adam Wesson, and he is on my course. He has got the timing in his animation really well in my opinion and it does much more that just the simple jump mine did. this is his tumblr where he has his animation: http://grozlin.tumblr.com/

Bouncy, Bouncy, Squash!

As promised I created a bouncey ball animation in Maya at home, to see if I could do it without Georg's guiding hand, and to see if I could add stretch and squash without help. I am proud to say it works, thoughit looks much better on a loop, so I apologise for the shortness of this video, but i have other work to be getting on with. Enjoy:

Welcome to Maya

We had our first lesson in Maya from Georg today. If I havent explained it already, Maya is proffesional 3D animating software, and is used by all the big animation companies in the industry. I is created by Autodesk, a company which has pretty much monopolised the animation industry. Georg started by talking us through everything you can see onscreen when you start Maya up.

he talked us around all of the toolbars, and showed use what most of the basic tools. We learnt some useful shortcuts which are as follows:

q - selection tool

w- move

e - rotate

r - scale

a - frames all th obects in the screen

f - frames the selected object in the screen

Holding alt allows you to adjust the camera using the mouse buttons, e.g. to dolly or track with it.

We made short bouncy ball animations without squash or stretch.This meant we learnt how to create polygons, a sphere in this case, and then learnt how to insert keyframes, and use an animation graoh to move the keyframes to correct the timeing. Here are the two bouncing ball animations I created:

They have no colour, but as my first animations in Maya, I am proud of them and hope to soon create some with stretch and squash.

More Talks, and More Caffiene

Today we had our second animation principles seminar tteaching us about the laws of animation. Last time we learnt about stretch and squash and a little about timing. Today we did more on timing and as a result i remade a bouncing ball animation on flash. although it is only a small quick animation, the bouncy ball seems to be really good for testing animation principles on. So here is the new improved ball, with better timing, so it slows at the top of its arc and speed up on the way down.

We also spoke about anticipation and overstep. Anticipation is the movement before an action, like the bending of the knees before you jump, and overstep is what you do after the action. We also talked a little bit about putting emotion into movement which was interesting. We we then given the BoxMan assignment where we have a week to make an animation of a simple box with a ball for a head and stick arms, which we have to animate jumping, using stretch, suash, anticipation, overstep and timing. Then after it has made the jump it needs to show an emotion. I look forward to making it on paper but I cam home to create some trial runs in flash first so i can work out the anticipation and overstep.

We also had a day yesterday full of lectures which included our second history and theory lecture. We had two reading to do for this one, one 33 pages long and one 28 pages long. The first was all about violence and how it effects people, and how you can change the order or sequencing of a scene to change how it is viewed.  So you could put the victim first, or the person commiting the crime or the place where the crime is committed and all of these cause people to look at the scene differently. The other readin was all about mis-en-scene. I find them difficult to read because its written in a rather dull format, and i find it hard to get stuck in to them, especially with the second one.

We then moved on to a lecture by Derek on Storyboaring which was awesome and I though it was really fun. He really seems to know what he is on about and is obviously enthusiastic which is cool. He showed us the storyboards for a film by Aardman called The Tortoise and The Hare. It was meant to follow Chicken run, but it first had some scripting issues, and once they were resolved dreamworks and Aardmans partnership fell through and it never came out. this is a shame because it looked like a good movie and the scene that we saw storyboarded was good. It was 100 storyboards for one scene, but everyone was vital and told part of the story. Afterwards Derek and Kathy lead us in a storyboarding workshop where we were given a scenario and then had to make a storyboard for that scenario. It was good, but before I scan mine up onto this blog, I want to refine it more, as my drawin was prett shabby, and though I know that storyboards arent meant to be about drawing, I saw the quality of everyone elses and I know I can do that well if I try harder, so that is todays task :]

Also in one of those seminars ( I think it was Dereks one as he was talking about how animations doesn't have to cut to change scenes like live action does) we were shown th following animation which I though was immense, and reminded me a little bit of the Monty python animations. Enjoy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmR0V6s3NKk

Collaboration Complete

This is my finished animation for the collaboration. It took much longer than I originally anticipated, and so I had to rush it to finish on time, and as a result, I couldn't add colour and the first few frames are still in blue mechanical pencil. Also, due to the rushed line testing so that I could make it to my first CU meeting, the frames are a little bit jerky, but I think overall it came out alright. I'm eager to see everyone elses animations to see how I compare, and also to see what the pros did :] If I can I shall post the full class version on here.

Silence for too Long

I havent posted in a while, because I had a lazy weekend, apart from church, where I got a free meal, and met a lovely family, and some great guys. The reason I didnt post yesterday, was because I spent alot of the day on the light boxes in the Animation room, carrying on with the bugs bunny animation, and then when I came home a began on my Wall-E costume for thursday nights animation party. I havent got any new photos of the animation or the costume, but aas soon as I do they shall be straight up here. Another history and Theory lecture today, and we have had a lot of reading to do this week for it, all about violence and how it effects people etc.

Bugs Bunny Takes on X-Factor

Started on my part of the group animation today. Claire gave me her last frame, which I have to use as my first frame. Hers has to be about X-Factor, so she has Jedward being squashed by the logo. She added colour to her frame which means I shall have to spend time adding colour too. Here is the frame:

My theme is Bugs Bunny, so I have to get him in somewhere. I started by creating my last frame, so that Max, the guy after me in the animation has a first frame to use. Here is the last frame

Sorry for the bad qualtiy, I drew it with a blue pencil, which are used in animation originally because they dont come out well on camera when you are recording. not helpful if your trying to photograph blue pencil drawings though. I plan to make two worms burst out of the X-Factor logo and then munch up Jedwards legs, after which Bugs will turn up and wave or something. I only have 8 frames so far, but I have all day tomorrow to do it, so its going to be the animation suite for me all day long.

Camera Heist

Okay so I have finally comandiered somebodys camera briefly and have taken some photos. I apologize for posting so many times today, I'm just all excited, but this shall be the final one. Promise.I apologize for the bad quality photos, they kept trying to rol up, so I was fighting to stop the drawings hiding themselves while photographing. So here are the results of yesterdays Life drawing for you all to see:

These 3 photos are of the first 10 drawings we did. They  were short poses, only about a minute or two each, and we had to use soft media like charcal or pastel, though i did one or two with my graphite stick. i really dislike short poses due to often not having enough time to finish, and rarely finding time to add detail or tone.

These two drawings were done without looking at the paper. They were about 10 minutes each I think, and It was very odd, as you wernt sure where you were on the paper, and if you lifted your hand from the paper you were imediatly lost. For the second one, we were allowed two glance, and mine went okay until i did the second leg. By then I had used my two glances and so there was much overlapping. this exercise was meant to teach us o looka the the model or subject more, which is an important part of drawing because often many people, myself included took at the paper more than the model, and you miss things, little details and you draw things incorrectly.

This final  drqawing we were told we had 2 minutes for, but due to lack of time we only got 10. We were allowed to use any media we wanted and were told we could draw however we wished. so I grabbed a biro, because recently I have reall been into biro. unfortunatly i didnt get much done, but this is my favourite drawing of the day as its the most acurate and I had time on my side.
I got to see everyone elses drawings too, and loads were brilliant. we really have a good class with lots of awesome styles. Derek (one of our teachers, who does lots of storyboarding etc) was joining in with the life drawing and his drawings were pretty spectacular. Sometimes when he finished a drawing and had ime left he would draw some of us students. I hope that when I get as far in animation as he is, that I can draw that well.

And finally, the other monkey drawings for the Toy story assignment. i know i was supposed to do twenty, but that was a rough number and it was supposed to be an hour a day, so I think mine are enough. I quite like some of them aswell. Enjoy:

Return of the Ball

Okay so here is my slightly improved version of the Boucing Ball. I think the animation is smoother, the lighting is better and I added shading to the ball. The downside is that I somehow got a stain on the first frame. Still, I think it is better than the first version, and I have learnt to protect my frames better from stains. Another problem was that the line tester I used seemed to have a smudge or somthing on the centre of the lense which i could wipe off, which is a shame and effects the animation, but the other line tester was pretty full, with a nice long que of people wanting a clean smudge free animation. I thought the smudge doesnt ruin the animation all that much so I went with it. Enjoy: 

Stretching, Squashing and Grumpy Hangovers

This morning began far too early for my liking and it was straight off to a 9am lecture on animation principles. It was slow to start, much of the first few slides was repeating other lectures a teeny bit, though that could have just been the lack of sleep and hangover that possessed me. After about an hour we were given a break and I went straight to the campus shop to buy something caffeinated to fuel my day, so when we returned I wasn't fighting to stay awake, and the lecture got a lot better. We learnt about Stretch and Squash, which is very important in animation and were shown examples in early disney animations, when stretch and squash first came about. Basically, in animation, as something speeds up, it needs to stretch, and as it impacts something it must squash. the more you exagerate these effects, the more cartooney it looks, but you still need some even in realistic animation to prevent the animation from having a cold wooden feel to it. Squash and stretch add vibrancey and life to animations.
 So we were set the task  of creating a bouncy ball animation with squash and stretch on paper. Like most of the class, I went to it almost immediately, which was a bad move because it was rather crowded, and only two line testers work. This is the end result.

I am not completely happy with the result, because I rushed it, and could have put more work into the lighting and the detail, but as there was such demand for the line testers I couldn't retake the photos, as that would have been unfair to my classmates, hogging the machine. I also dont think the hangover helped, so I have learnt not to drink and play pokemon till the early hours of the morning with second years. At least not when I have a morning lecture the day after. I may go back tomorrow and restart it, or at least edit my frames to improve them. In the meanwhile, to make up for my shoddy work I took to Adobe Flash and made 2 quick animations to show squash and stretch better, so VOILA!

These only took about 5 minutes and werent as much fun as the hand drawn animation, but they show the effects of Squash and Stretch well. The workload is getting high now, with a group animation to do by Wednesday, where each person must make a 125 frame (ish) animation on a particular theme, and all of them must link. So I was given bugs bunny as a theme, and claire, who is before me in the list, has the X-Factor logo. So I have to animate from her last frame, which I believe will be the remains of a smashed and beaten logo, to something involving Bugs Bunny. Im terrified that I will mess up the animation and ruin Bugs, so I am going to watch alot of Looney tunes On youtube methinks. On Top of that, the Hand-Drawn bouncy ball animation has to be done for tomorrow, and Kathy set us a new drawing task, with the title "People Doing Things" which is rather vague, but easier than the Toy Story one in my opinion. I must not forget the two readings we have to do for Theory and History by thursday aswell. Ah, I cannot wait until Sunday, that is my day off in a sense, I can finally go to church and then try sea swimming. And the expensive drinking that freshers fortnight involved will be over.

Far too Early on a Thursday

So lofe drawing was fun though I cant photograph any of my drawings until tomorrow as I gave them to Ben to look after while I went to the Animation Pokemon Stadium Tournement. We had an older model than I was used to, but she was good and we got lots of poses done, and so I am hopefully well on the way to improving my drawing after a lazy summer. We had many quick poses, a couple of poses where we were not allowed to look at ournpaper while we drew and then a 10 minute pose where we could do as we wished.
I got to meet LOADS of 2nd years at the tournement and they were all really cool, and many of them were into pokemon which I must say is something my flatmates lack, though they are still all lovely. Also got to bust out some tunes on Teds ukulele which was cool and had fun messing on his banjo. Animators night out tomorrow, should be cool, I can meet everyone who missed out today like Omari who only arrive as I was leaving after my pizza.

To Woodlane, and Beyond!

So Today is the Toy Story assignment hand in date, and i have most of them done, although the printer was being awkward, so my tablet drawing has come out mostly green. At 5 i shall be at Woodlane campus doing my first lifedrawing session of the year, which im actually quite looking forward to, because i became lazy over the summer and my drawing skills suffered a little bit, so here is my change to bump them back up again. Its a one and a half hour session, and i shall have to take a bus to get there, which i hate, but i cant be helped. Afterwards some 2nd years set up a Pokemon Stadium tournement night on their N64's so I shall go along to that too, and hopefully my brain with be alive enough tomorrow to do some of that thinking we all love so much. Only one lecture tomorrow, but its a 9am :S  Also we had our first storyboarding lecture today, which was basically an introduction and Derek showing us a reel of some of the many films he has worked on in the past. Among them was the title sequence to Jeeves and Wooster and The Miracle Maker (which blows my mind everytime I think about it) I asked about the Miracle Maker and found it took 3 year :S and the models were smaller than I thought. So that was a successful lecture in my eyes, as I have watched that in church for years. Anywho, i need to set off soon and get some money out for the bus, so no more shall be written today.

Lecturey Fun

Had our first Animation Theory and History lecture today. 3 hours is alot of listening. It was okay, some bits were really interesting and we almost hit a Religion vs Science arguement, but that was avoided. But the bit at the beginining about why a chair is a chair and why a picture of a chair is not actually a chair.......really? was that needed? still there were some awesome animations we saw, like Crazy Cat and Little Nemo, and my favourite, Dancing Skeletons. Must say, setting a long talky lecture the day after the neon rave, bad move. the hangover made things harder. Still tea is now in the oven so soon all shall be good once again.

I am going to upload more little drawings, as soon as Aarons camera becomes available.

Return of the Tablet

Finally managed to sort out the pressure sensitivity issue that my tablet had and so was able to do another Toy-Story assignment drawing. I created it all on Adobe Photoshop CS4, using a wet media brush that I have never used before. By using the pressure sensitivity and the opacity option I was able to create decent shading and i think it came out quite well. What do you think?

Apologies

Okay I havent finished my graphics tablet drawing today due to issues with the tablets pressure sensitivity. But as soon as its fixed I shall update it as soon as I have finished it. Went to the beach today which is time I should have probably spent drawing so tomorrow shall be a pure drawing day, except when I skype my family and when I will visit the freshers fayre to find the CU.

Oops a lil bit late

I may have been out a bit late at the pscho disco last night, so I never got to post the second drwing I did yesterday. I wasn't going to post it until i had done my graphics tablet drawing today, but the nib of the tablets pen is malfunctioning so i need to take it out and let it rest for an hour or two, so in the mean time im posting you yesterdays drawing. Here it is :] 

Its just a quick pencil sketch but I enjoyed it alot. It reminds me of a pose that a life drawing model we used to had did. It was just sitting on the bed, so no extravagent background, but the bed sheets are fun to draw.

This next photo is the one I am going to be doing my graphics tablet drawing of. I took it out of the kitchen window, and dropped the monkey out of it a few seconds later by accident. I think the background will take a while but it should be good :]