Blood...............

I enjoyed making this scene...
Again, I don't like the vectors, but it is sufficiently gory to make up for this. If I'd have painted this out in watercolours frame by frame or something similar I'm sure it would've looked better, however time was not on my side, so corners had to be cut.

Colision!!!!

I'm not too happy with how vectorized my character looks, but that's the trouble with animating in Flash. I was pleased I managed to turn him round though.

Underwater Scene

 Look at all the shiny bubbles :)
This is the background I animated for our underwater scene, as well as the bubble to eye morph. I wanted to animate the sea rolling around violently and the bubbles spiralling around Elise but I didn't have enough time. It's nowhere near violent enough, but it'll do.

Curling Waves Final Design

My final version of the curling waves, with all the issues ironed out.

Collision Surfer Design

This is my design (adapted from Olivia's) of the surfer that Elise's board collides with. I was trying to make him more simplistic looking than the other surfer I designed as it needed to fit with the simplified version of Elise.

Hot Surfer Dude Designs

I was charged with designing the hot surfer guy that would walk past Elise during the first interview shot, who she would flirtily wave at, as we wanted to build up her character and make her seem vain, as the reason she keeps her scar is because of her vanity. But due to lack of time, we had to cut him from the final film. I was quite pleased with the end design as I think I managed to make him attractive (as far as animated characters can be). I wanted to make him stereotypically attractive, with a muscular body and wavy hair. I smushed up his face a little in the side view, but that's the biggest problem here.

3D Adaption

For this project we had to turn the 2D background we made in Toonboom into a 3D background, using Maya. I found this incredibly difficult and am not in any way pleased with the result. It has just ended up looking like a worse version of my 2D one. Even though I used the sculpt tools you can't actually tell, except when at certain angles in Maya.

Motion Studies Showreel

This is my showreel for motion studies class, set to the track 'It's Time' by Imagine Dragons. I found it quite difficult to choose a track for this showreel as the animations I had were mostly quite slow and so don't really lend themselves to dynamic snappy editing.

More Walks

For motion studies we were given a choice of walks to create, I chose bad mood and late for work.....

I'm not particularly happy with either of these, the characters are basic and a bit ugly and I didn't have time to put any secondary animation, like hair, on them. But I think you can tell which one's which at least.

Finished 2D Adaption

Here are some sketches of what my robot would look like and how to animate the water dripping:

Here's the finished thing:

I think the camera move works well and the background looks good, with it having a slight 3D aspect thanks to Toonboom. The drip works alright, but you don't actually notice it as your eye is not drawn to it, it's tiny and it's not on screen for long. Therefore it was a bit of a waste of time and was evidently a mistake in my original planning. The animation on the robot is pretty poor and was honestly a bit rushed because of encroaching deadlines. Toonboom seems like a really great piece of software and I want to get to grips with it, as it's obviously much better for animation than Flash, but much less user friendly. This project however has been a nice little introduction to it.

Falmouth Animation Ident

I'm really happy with how this turned out! I think it's quite entertaining and it doesn't get annoying watching it multiple times, which is important in an ident. I had quite a few issues when exporting from Flash but it worked out fine eventually after much frustration and high pitched whining on my part. I would've liked the chewing to have lasted longer before the electric shock happens, but we had a 10 second limit so I couldn't. I think the seagull maybe should've blinked one more time, when it bites down the first time. But these are minor complaints. 

What Happens If You Electrocute A Seagull?

I was quite excited by the ident project and wanted to put some creative effort in and do something cool. Idents are basically like the whole Estings thing on E4, so a kind of visual identity. We could animate whatever we wanted as long as it incorporated the words 'Falmouth' and 'Animation'. I wanted to relate my ident to Falmouth and the course somehow, so turned to my trusted friends the seagulls for help, as they are what I think of when thinking of Falmouth. Computers screwing up is something that goes hand in hand with animation, so this formed the animation link.

Below is my storyboard (beautiful isn't it?) So basically a walk cycle is being animated on Flash, but then the computer breaks and we discover it's because a pesky seagull is chewing on the wires... it gets its comeuppance though as it electrocutes itself and explodes in a shower of blood, which then drips away to form 'Falmouth Animation'.

Here's my design work for the seagull:

I wanted quite a dumb looking seagull for more of a comedic effect so settled for this one:

Me figuring out how to electrocute it:

The background design work, done in watercolour:

Since I'm animating in Flash I wanted the background to be hand done so that it has texture to it, otherwise it would all just look to vectorized and clinical for my liking.

Life Drawing

These life drawings are from several different sessions, I just haven't uploaded in a in a while is all.

Background Project Finals

As promised here are my final images for the background project...

The exterior layout is the weakest of the three, it's not the most dynamic of angles (although I did try!) and my perspective has gone kinda weird when it gets to the cabin at the back. It would appear I've made it lean too much to the right and the windows and door are not spaced out properly so look strange.

This project is the first time I've tried actual watercolour paper and to be honest I'm really not too fond of it. I can get a far smoother result from just using cartridge paper. But anyway I gave it a go on my exterior and interior painted backgrounds. I used an analogous colour palette for the exterior, which I think works very well, and tried to create deep space by having stronger colours in the foreground, with the closest rocks being almost entirely black. I think this has worked to some degree but not as much as in the coloured pencil tests I did previously, merely because I had less control.

My interior is the one I'm most pleased with as although it's a bit messy I now have a way better understanding of how light works as I looked at images such as the one below by Georges de la Tour for inspiration. This image works because there are areas of complete black contrasting with yellow, almost white light. I tried to replicate this in my own painting and I think I've achieved it. I also noticed that when light hits objects it creates these hot spots where instead of yellow the light becomes orangey red, so I tried this out with the objects on the table, as they were the closest things to the light source. The composition also works well as I've managed to make the cabin look really cramped and claustrophobic by making both the floor and ceiling visible at the same time, as well as three of the walls.

Sketchbook Stuff

Just some random drawings I did in my spare time. Enjoy!

Adaption Project Update

This is just a quick post to say I changed the colourings of my background for the adaption project. I did have it like this:

But now I've changed it to this:

I think this looks a lot better as it's a lot more atmospheric and less garish. See, I have a problem where I go over the top with things, and this was the case when I was tweaking the colours in Photoshop originally. I asked around and the general consensus was that the toned down image looked better. At least I know I'm doing it now and so I just need to stop tampering with my work so much.

Background Project Sketchbook Work

 For the background project I have had to create one animation layout, one painted exterior background and one painted interior background. We had to take these from some of our frames from the storyboard project we did last semester (the pirate thing). I have found this quite challenging as I've had to think about angles and not just draw the obvious (and boring) flat on image i would naturally be inclined to do.

Here's my prep work for the layout:

Here's my prep for the exterior background:

And my prep for the interior background:

I did the colour ways in coloured pencil as it's a very fast medium and you have a lot of control over it, so it's good for working things out.

I'll post my final images soon, I just need to scan them in first, so stay tuned people!