Life Drawing

 I really enjoyed this week's life drawing session, we did lots of long poses that allowed me to get some shading and more depth into the drawings. In an exercise to encourage us to stand further back from our work we had to attach our charcoal to the end of a long bamboo stick and, holding the stick at the end, draw the figure. This produced some interesting results. The drawings became a lot looser and more fluid, but despite this I seemed to achieve a better sense of proportions, due to the fact I was standing further away from my drawing than usual and so was able to view the figure in its entirety, rather than getting bogged down with one aspect that then does not relate spatially with the rest of the body. This has taught me stand further away in future.

Shiny New Showreel!!!!

I made a new showreel as I realized I didn't have one that actually showed my entire portfolio of animations, rather than module specific showreels I had made as part of my course.
The song playing is 'Fillip' by Muse.

More Perseus Designs

Body designs..... 

Simply Creepy Or Into The Uncanny?

I coloured up the two best character designs and those who thought the top one looked too much like Burton retracted their statements... so glad I decided to go with it anyway. I think the bottom one has lost some of its disturbing qualities now that I've coloured it.

Perseus Character Designs

So I've been doing some character designing of the Perseus, main character variety.... I initially started off using Tim Burton as reference, such as the characters from Frankenweenie, shown below:

This is Jamie, he's the live action version of Perseus, so I tried to get some of his likeness into my designs.

After asking a few people they said my designs just looked a little too Tim Burton, that I had borrowed too much of his style and that my character resembled 'Corpse Bride's' Victor too closely. I agree with that for some of my faces, but not the one I was going with, which was the face in the bottom right of the second page of drawings down. So I drew a bit more, trying to keep a Burton feel but with less similarities, it was late at night though and I'd had enough, so didn't really get anywhere useful.

I checked out more Quay Brothers' characters, shown below, and decided to incorporate this into the character. The Quay Brothers' characters are far more uncanny and disturbing than Burton's, with more realistic faces but with squashed and misshapen features.

These last two designs are fairly disturbing in my opinion and are uncomfortable to look at, so I achieved my aim here. I personally prefer the other more 'cute-creepy' design I did, but these last two serve their purpose and genuinely look creepy, so it just depends which way the film goes, although I think the earlier design I did is better suited to the film, as there isn't any real reason for the main character, who is meant to be the hero, to look unpleasant and disturbing. Whereas it makes sense for him to look a little dark, as this aids the tone of the cell scene.

Furniture Designs For Deep

Here are some designs I drew up for the old fashioned, slightly battered and broken furniture that will line the cell. I've taken inspiration from Tim Burton to create the off kilter designs. Derek asked me to incorporate the shape of an ancient Greek lyre into the back of the chair, so this is shown in the second image. The idea is that there will be lots of little classical Greek references like this in the film, to reinforce the whole Perseus-Medusa thing that's going on in the plot.

Deep

Here's another drawing I did for the background design of my scene in 'Deep'. I was testing out a wooden look as this was another option we discussed in our meeting. I created this with pen and watercolour, adding colouring pencils over the top to add more texture. It's a bit messy but you get the idea. Also I'm really not too sure what I was doing when I stuck the random black pillar in the central foreground.....so yeh just pretend that bit's not there.......

Deep

One of our modules for this semester is to help out with our tutor Derek's film, 'Deep'. I chose to work on the stop motion scene, for which an animatic had already been created by previous students. I've included this below:

I'm working alongside Paris Washington, Harry Bayfield and Emily Henshall. We want to go for a style which draws upon the works of Tim Burton and the Quay Brothers. I have drawn up an initial concept piece created with black fineliner pens and then edited it in Photoshop. In our group meeting we discussed how the cell was like a make shift one that the mob boss quickly threw together in the cellar of his mansion, so it would contain an assortment of old furniture, perhaps covered by white dustsheets. I made the ceilings arched to create more of a dungeon type feel and kept my pen marks quite scribbly to get an erratic textured look.

Stop The Privatisation Of Student Loans

So that's that, two intense weeks and this is the outcome... I think for just two weeks its pretty good to be fair. Eline Lindaas animated the swinging shackle shot for me and Vicky Keaveney animated the girl's hair, legs and arms in a cycle during the falling scene once she has been eaten by the suited guy, so serious thanks to them for helping me out in my hour of need.

Due to the time constraints I had to just get the animation to a standard where it was passable, having to then leave it and move onto the next bit. I am aware there's a lot wrong with it and it is limited animation, but I think its strong style carries it through and makes it interesting to watch. Ideally I would have created this by hand instead of on Toonboom, where I could have given the characters a lovely boiling texture by scribbling with black pen when I coloured them in, but unfortunately that never would have been finished in time. I really do long for the day when I have enough time to create something exactly the way I want it, but I feel this is growing to be a rare commodity in animation these days.

Caged

The backgrounds for the cage scenes: