Formation Intro Final

This is the formation intro I have been animating and perfecting over the last several weeks.

I am happy with how it flows now and the colours and movement.
It originates from the cut out card story board I made a few weeks ago (see blog below). They were scanned in and made into symbols and defined on photoshop and made into more blocked colours.
We put these colours on our group blog so we knew we were all using the same palette.
I got the music from a copyright free source and think it fits really well.
Next we need to put all our animations together and add a music track we all agree on.

Steven Fry

This is a drawing of Steven Fry I did in 2H, 2B and H pencils.
I was going to make the shadows darker but didn't want to over-work the drawing.
It took about 4-5 hours.

Sketch Book Project 3

Here are two of my favorite sketches from our brief where we had to take a real-life object and add something surreal to it.

This is Magret who comes into the coffee shop where I work. I drew her in secret and put a snake round her neck because her jumper had a snake-skin texture.

Sketch Book Project 2

For this brief we had to get someone to scribble in our sketch book and make a drawing from it. I only put my favorite sketches in.

Sketch Book Project 1

These are for a sketch book project brief to draw an object every day.

Formation Animatic

This is a animatic with my cut outs depicting roughly how our final title sequence will look I'm really, really happy with it.

Cut Out Formation Storyboard

I did this story board over about 3/4 hours on a beautiful sunny Sunday afternoon.

I cut up all the card for it and stuck it on separate frames which will all go on a huge board when they're finished.

I used red to distinguish danger from safe, earth colours.

Monster

A drawing I did for fun.

My beloved monster and me, we go everywhere together.

Wearing a rain coat that has four sleeves, gets us through all kinds of weather.

Opening Title Sequence

Ideas & inspiration.

Here are scans of our group opening titles project. We all negotiated ideas and planned shots together using some of each of our own input and creativity. We decided that the style would be 'art deco' with silhouetted shapes and characters and objects using a continual slow pace yet panning along to give the effect of time passing. We want to create a animation in the style of the opening credits to 'Catch Me If You Can' as below.

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.