Weekly Life Drawing class

I found out this week my uni holds a weekly life drawing class! 3 sessions every Friday! Unfortunately I miss an hour and a half of the session due to training but I'm going to make the most of this opportunity! First class is tomorrow :D

I'm gradually drawing more and more, my news years resolution is going slowly but I'm happy to say I'm sticking to it. Hopefully by the end of the year I will see improvement ;D

I'm currently focusing on anatomy in my spare time ;D

Keep Sake Animatic

Honestly? I'm very disappointed with this... I need to start working harder, this is my first animatic and it's not very good... at least I got it done in time, and put it down to experience. I need to get better :( No sound yet sorry :( I will be choosing the final voices this week though.

Some positive news though, I got 70% for my presentation so I'm happy about that ^^

Keep Sake Storyboards

(Click images to enlarge) My first attempt at a proper storyboard, I did do some in sixth form but I always ended up doing most of the storyboarding after I'd made the animation @____@ Silly I know, kinda defeats the object. I got the templates online from the BBC, not exactly appropiate as it was actually designed for a competion for a promotional film hense the title ^^; Please ignore that haha.

Animatic coming next ;D working on it this week :D

Housing for September 2012

Been looking at accomodation off campus for this September, I've been getting quite worried about it but today I found one and I'm all set for next year, which is a load of my mind ;D

I'm currently on campus accomodation,but I only have a couple months left, so I thought I would post some pictures of my room, just so I have it for memories sake ;D I didn't actually bring much from home to my room just a few knick knacks and the essentials.

 

My collection of toys, as you can see I have a sort of CARS shrine building up, mainly from put together from presents from my friends (They know me so well :P )

My workspace

My wall of animated posters

This took hours @____@ had to find them, organise them them to the correct size, print, cut them out, white tac and stick them up... all 128 of them. Worth it though!!

Extended Project - Poetic Journey

I'm back again at university for my second semester, and I'm well under way planning my first animation. I did my presentation this week to the class, and I'm going to be starting the animatic this weekend, best part of this is I'm auditioning voices for three of my characters, and the response I have recieve is amazing, the people on voice acting alliance are so talented, it so much fun recieving their auditions!

The theme for the animation is 'Poetic Journey'. My idea is called 'Keep Sake' and makes a subtle connection to the theme as it depicts an emotional 'journey' rather than a physical one , and stresses more 'poetic' sense of the the lessons learnt. The story revolves my main character, Lilly, a pretty porcelain doll.

Character design for Lilly

Character Design for Ragdoll

Character designs for Lydia and her Mum

There are four characters in total, Lydia the young girl celebrating her 8th birthday, her mother and the wicked Ragdoll. 

Not going to give too much away, save that for when I post up the storyboard ;D

2012 - New Years Resolutions

1. DRAW MORE!!

2. Stop wasting so much time on pointless things.

3. Make a portfolio website.

4. Get a summer job in animation (intern or shadowing).

Overview of semester 1

Clay Model of Super Hero baby

Its been a long time since I last updated, I've been pretty busy with my first semester at university studying animation, but I'm currently on a 4 week break for the christmas holidays, and have a few of the projects I have been working on the past 3 months, since starting in September.
We had a workshop in model making, I designed a '2 year old super hero baby' character, called Teddy.  Mine didn't come out as I planned, but I had alot of fun making it!

Stopmotion Skeleton

Also had an introduction to stop motion and shown the basic structure for the skeleton of a stop motion model.

My first attempt on Maya. For this I made a model for a 2 year old toddler. I've never used Maya before, and it is very daunting at first, I have the student trial downloaded on my computer now so I have been practising in my spare time, during the first year we don't get much training on Maya but its the aspect I'm most interested in. I need alot more practise, I'm looking forward to learning more about modelling, and also getting training in rigging and animating :D

VIDEO SHOWREEL SEMESTER 1

 This is a video showreel of the animations I have done during the first semester. There is nothing here that I've done I'm particularly proud of :( This semester has mainly been about settling in, we haven't gone through any basics about animating such as timing or weight so I want to do some additional studying in my spare time. I have complied these animations, in the hopes that I will be able to look back at this and see improvement.

1. Death of Anonymous - Pixilation - This was a really fun project to start the year off, and I had a wonderful group to work with! We worked really hard on this and I'm pleased with the outcome. This is a short clip from the animation.
2. Rotoscoping - Another technique of animation. For this we had to film two people throwing an object back and fourth and then later import the video to photoshop and trace over it to create an animation.
3. 360 Degree Turn - This is a 360 degree turn of a Tinkerbelle figure.
4. Human in Motion - For this we had to use 2D animation and the observation skills we used in life drawing to demonstrate 4 emotions using movement. For this I created a short scene in which a little girl drops her ice cream.

Overall, I'am enjoying university, I'm happy with the campus, and gaining some independance, and I love all my classmates on the course, they are all amazing people! but in terms of the course, the spectrum is too broad, and they aren't providing enough workshops and support :( and I don't have enough understanding of the basics such as squash and stretch :( In the process of updating my CV, so I can hopefully do some shadowing of industry professionals in the summer ;D Also looking to invest in a new tablet, mine is looking a little worse for wear :(

Happy New Year everyone! Hope 2012 is a good one!