Helena Bonham Carter

Here is a portrait I sketched of Helena Bonham Carter in her role as the Queen of Hearts.

It took about 3 hours and I sketched it in pencil.

Penguin Lip Sync done!

I have FINALLY finished my penguin lip syncing. It took me about about 20 hours to do.
I need to leave the computer for a while and look at it again before I can evaluate it. I feel like a zombie at the moment.

Maya Room Development 2

Here is a further development of my maya room. I've changed the material of the sofa, introduced a rug using some Indian style textures and added some lighting. I was struggling with adding lighting to the room as I had my giraffe picture right by the window. I moved the giraffes away and put a directional spotlight in between not the render is much better. Still needs work obviously.

This is the start of my penguin lip sync animation.

This took me about an hour to do. I learnt a lot so far doing it. I realized I was putting in the lip movement far to slowly and had to select everything and drag it forward by about 12 frames. I haven't put in the movement of arms, eyes or the other 2 penguins yet but I decided it would be easier and less confusing doing them all individually to put all my focus on one at a time.

Maya Room Development

After being really ill over the weekend I managed to do some more work this week on my 3D Maya room. I struggle quite a lot with 3D and it takes me ages to pick up techniques and I can only take in so much information at once. So far I have learnt loads from making this room through trial and error and with help from people around me and tutorials. I wanted to make an interesting psychedelic room, kind of like a surreal 60s room with a big window, crazy furniture and giraffes looking through the window- suggesting the room is upstairs or like a space ship may be.

These are the finished pieces for my background project.

I'm really happy with my drawings, and even more so with my marks.

In the first picture; I feel there are places I could have made darker to give a sense of more depth and colour. Furthermore, I could even have used a different medium to draw or paint together to build up a texture or shading. I got slightly confused with the brief and instead of making the picture all pencil and shading, I made it monochrome with greens and browns, working on a pencil-shaded basis. I sat out on Falmouth Campus drawing the big ancient oak tree in the rain for an hour to get the basic outline and rough distance markers with trees. If I could add to it now I would put in more fine detail like branches. My favorite thing about the picture is the dandelions in the closer section of the drawing and houses right in the distance between the branches of the trees.

In the second drawing; I really enjoyed thinking this idea up, and putting in the really dark shadows using such an over-exaggerated light source. It didn't come out quite as sinister as I imagined, but I think that's because of my un-sinister, rather friendly looking puppets which I do like. I learn ALOT about using shadow in coloured objects and also in rooms where generally shadows are. For example, Cathy told us that the floor is usually light and under the table is always very dark, which I added last to my picture which I think really finished it off. If I did it again I would add more shadows to the edges of the picture to give a sense of the light being less broad in the area as it would realistically be much smaller. My favorite thing about the picture is the clown; I think he looks really realistic and I think I drew the colours and shading really well and shadowed him nicely.

The third drawing; this is my favorite one. It took the longest and was my first one. Cathy at the beginning of the brief told us to read books to spark our imaginations. I got my inspiration for it from a set of Winnie The Pooh CD audio books my Mum got me for Christmas, coz everyone can learn something from Winnie The Pooh, from a picnic scene. I made the central picnic items pinky-red as Cathy said this was a good idea to bring the focus through the centre of the drawing. If I were to add to this drawing now I would make the trees in the distance less defined to make them seem further away. Also I would paint the picture in a landscape position as this is more fitting to the painting's purpose of being a animation background. My favorite thing about the picture is the food on the blanket, especially the cake slice closest to the viewer and jelly as I think they look well-stylized and would fit in well in a animation.

I spent about 8/10 hours on each drawing and I didn't want to over-colour or add too much detail in places that were far away to give a more realistic sense of space and distance so made myself put down the drawings when I came to a certain point.

When I finished the drawings and paintings I was slightly disappointed as I felt they didn't look real enough and I really struggled with creating a sense of distance in them, going against my pre-conceptions of how to draw spaces. Although looking at them now I think I was too critical and tried my hardest and got a great outcome from it.

I really enjoyed this brief and will continue to draw from still life and my imagination and feel i've learnt so much from this task I'm really glad to have done it.

This is concept work for my penguin idea. I started off with a basic outline, then decided the facial features were too big so shrank them, then it still didn't look quite right to me, so I referred to a photo of a actual penguin and realized the facial features were far too central so I spread them out to the sides of the penguin's head as the penguin has a beak extruding from the center of it's face.

I'm really pleased with the final penguin. I think it looks really suited to the voice I'm putting it too and well stylized.

Box

This is a nice box I made on Maya. I'm really bad at Maya so it was rewarding to make something visually pleasing with a lot of help.

We learnt to move the pivot point so that the box unfolds in the corners which is where it would in reality.

Penguin Test

This is a initial test idea for my lip sync animation.
It is based around the 1st voice recording (recording A about 3/4s through) where the students are talking about 'regurgitating' information for their essay writing.
I had the idea that I can put penguins in the place of the students. While they are talking about 'regurgitating' they can have a hungry and inpatient baby penguin pestering his Mum to give him some food, who ignores him, causing him to go diving for his own food in a ice pool in sight behind.

Valentines Day Animation

I only wanted it to be a rough animation- to give it a comical sense.

Inspiration was my Mum & Dad.

Backgrounds Project

Here are some sketches I did a few weeks ago as ideas for my background design project.

The first one i've decided to scrap and change to something more organic like possible a monochrome tree landscape.

The other 2 I'm happy with as rough sketch ideas, but with advice from my teacher Kathy, have realized they need more depth to them. This is what I couldn't work out why they didn't look right.

I'm now going to use my A3 pad and draw them up to scale of how the final pieces will be.

After Effects DVD Authoring

DVD Authoring

Today I made a working DVD menu on After Effects, using a tutorial and with the help of me After Effects teacher.
I really enjoyed doing this as the tutorial was really easy to follow and my teacher was constantly around to ask questions and help.

Stop Motion Scratch Puppets

Here we came up with the idea in our same group to make the puppets copy each other scratching, as people in real-life do.

I'm really happy with it and think the subtlety of what's happening is really effective.

Stop Motion Puppets

This is a stop motion puppet tutorial I did in a group of 3. The puppet I animated is the ginger one on the end.




I really enjoyed doing this and would really like to make my own puppet to animate

Live at 5

For our 'Live at 5' project, working with Broadcasting, I made a animated sun and a rugby player: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8MkXmhM2EE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8MkXmhM2EE

The rugby player was for the sports table results and the sun was for a weather map. Unfortunately, Broadcasting chose not to use my rugby player sequence. I made him from tracing over different moving sections of him in photoshop (i.e. leg, arm, head) then importing them all as individual items to the library in flash and animating them.

Portrait Portfolio

Here are some portfolio sketches I started working on over snow week when I got back early January.

Jeffree Star. 4 hours. Pencil.

Some magazine bird. 5 hours. Pencil.

Robert Pattinson. 6 hours. Pencil.

Lily Cole. 2 hours. Pencil.

Lily Cole - Acrylic. 4 hours.

I think since I began doing them I have progressed a lot in the sense I can define shadows and shading more effectively. In addition to this, I found myself getting quicker and quicker at producing pictures. Also, the picture in acrylic above is my first acrylic painting ever and I'm please to have tried it. I found it really hard at first and didn't realize how bold the un-watered down colours are, but I carried on and built up on the layers and got to a comfortable medium which I enjoyed working in.

2D Walk Cycle animation

This is a walk cycle I did based on my own walk we had to study and try to recreate. I found it really hard to make the hands look normal and think they look unatural still, I think my walk in general is weird.

This is another 2D animation I did before the one above. I prefer the way it bounces- it's more alive looking. I didn't draw in arms as I wanted to focus on the walk cycle and movement and stretch and squash.

Life Drawing

Here are a few drawings from our animal head's brief I've been working on. I especially like the idea of using animals that sing in place of busker heads- e.g where I used the canary head for the guitarist busker.

This drawing is done in graphite pencil, 6B, of a ram skull. I'm please with it as I think the few lines I used to show the shape of the skull are effective and the shading gives a sense of realness.

This is a drawing I did trying to keep in mind how weight on bodies is held. It's one of the drawings I'm most pleased with so far, although I think the left leg is too long.

Pixelation Animation

Here is a pixelation animation I worked on in a small group. I'm really please with it considering it only took several hours to make.

Cubie and Sphere

This is a video that took me about 3 hours on Maya. Our brief was to make the Cubie and Sphere characters interact.



I found the last few times I've tried animating on Maya VERY hard but this I found much easier after getting used to it. I'm really pleased with this animation, although looking back can spot things that could be improved once I'm more experienced.