Anatomy has been on the mind a lot recently, learning about it is almost addictive. I watched the Anatomy for Artists 4-hour streaming class over at Conceptart.org, which I really do recommend if you have the cash to spend on it. If not (or as well as), Marshall Vandruff, who teaches the class, has a list of anatomy books which he recommends.

Some bits from over the last few weeks, most of which you can see larger in my sketchbook over at CA. I tend to update my sketchbook there twice a week. You should get on there too.

By the way, Simon Acty is also on CA. Go there and make him update it.

For our main project of this term, we have been asked to choose between either a ‘post’ or ‘pre’ production theme. Naturally I went for pre-production, though I was surprised by the choices of a few others in our group who favoured post-production. I think some may of been put off by the research focus of the pre-production route. Either way, this term will be pretty unique compared to ones before it.

I try to avoid referring to the pre-production project by the description in the brief, simply because it refers to Doctor Who. Strange as it is may seem that anyone enjoys that program, it has been chosen as the base for our project. To be fair, we can mostly ignore the fact it is all about Doctor Who and just pretend it is another time-traveller with an assistant, with scripts that happen to be identical. We will be producing the design bible for a script (just one script, although we research five), so potentially we can turn it into something very different.

The 5 Script Settings

We have five scripts to research, then choose just one to create the design bible for:

• Ancient Pompeii
• Titanic
• Shakespeare / London
• Chino (futuristic china-inspired planet)
• Louis XV

I already know I want to do Chino, simply because I’m a fan of some of the Chinese styles, plus there is the futuristic element that can be added to it. I believe it is mostly set in the market place, so I have a few ideas of what feel I might go for and seek inspiration from.

We have to present our research findings as small groups next week, then after that we should be able to get the ball rolling and get some drawing on the go. At the minute I am doing 6 hours of life-drawing a week, though that may cut back to 3. The hours I’m doing are across 2 separate sessions and a different lecturer for each. I’m thinking of stopping one of the sessions, simply because I don’t think the techniques being dictated in that session are right for me.

We should also be having Cinematography lessons every Thursday, but our lecturer has broken his arm, so that has been postponed until some time in February.

Evaluation:

Our 3 day project was to create an animatic for a short story based on a fairy tale, directed by writing students, for a fictional company called NUFSED. Our fairy tale of choice was Goldilocks and The Three Bears, portrayed in a sequel. Our genre was ‘dramatic narrative’, so our writers felt it had to have some punch to it. We had considered various things like flashbacks to alert the viewer to what was at hand, but we wanted the climax to be a surprise, so we decided to avoid giving too much away.

My role for this short project was Animation Director, although I think I performed more like an advisor. If there was something people were split on, I got to call it. I didn’t know a great deal about the role, but I asked a few people about it. Although having the power is nice to have, I don’t think it is really something I am comfortable with. I don’t like telling people what to do, particularly when I don’t feel I’ve earned it, which was the problem. Though if I was a master of my field and was employed to help and influence a team, I probably wouldn’t mind that. I’d like to think I am good at helping people make their decisions.

Overall I think we were a very settled group, having Leah as a producer was nice, she seemed to enjoy having the role. Since we both knew each other from college, it made it very easy to bounce off each other. The group members obviously had individual ideas about the direction, but were all happy to compromise and go with a majority choice. We all looked at the timescale realistically, which really helped with production time.

Since both I and Leah weren’t really sure what to get on with, we helped the other people with their roles. Leah created character designs and coloured frames as they were completed. I agreed to draw up all the bears, though I miscalculated how many there were, so it took me the best part of a day. As time pressed on, I had to rush quite a few frames. As it turned out, by not doing them chronologically, the difference in detail wasn’t so obvious. This mistake in frame ordering turned out to be a blessing in disguise, though perhaps not so much for Simon in post-production, who had to fill in the blank spots, as and when they were completed.

There wasn’t many problems, though naturally post-production was pretty hectic. We should of setup a file-naming system to ease Simon’s editing, which got a bit out of hand. Various memory sticks were being used and the files weren’t being created chronologically (partly my fault), so he constantly had to fill blank spots, right until the end.

I think the biggest issue we encountered was negative feedback on the second day. I genuinely felt we had been unfairly treated and initially told my group to ignore all the feedback and continue as planned. The main annoyance was that we had been criticized on our script, which we had already pitched the day before. I am happy with critical feedback (in fact I love it), but what we received that day I felt was unconstructive; vague, partially contradictory and ultimately, a day late.

What went particularly well though, was our time-handling. The people in our group made it easy to assign tasks and could accomplish them on time. Even though our animatic was very rough around the edges, it did the job. We also did it without the hair-pulling a lot of other groups had. Don’t think I’ve ever been in a relatively relaxed group before.

It is always a unique experience working within groups, so throwing writers into the equation didn’t feel that startling. They were also very easy to get on with. I did feel a bit sorry for them; they didn’t have a great deal to do after the first day. They had a chance to help out with sound effects, though I’m not sure whether the sounds were used in the final piece.

The project was an interesting experience. I didn’t particularly want to do it, but it was a nice wake-up call to start the new term. I don’t really think I’m a team player, but it can be rewarding to work with people from other fields. If I become a freelancer and create my own projects, I would definitely like to use people with the right experience, whether they are a writer or not. By delegating a task to someone who is more skilled than you in a certain area, it allows you to spend that saved time more effectively, as well as gain better results.

Happy New Year! Feel refreshed? I think I do, though I’ve picked up bad habits in the month off. Luckily we are due back on Monday (weather permitting), so I can start getting up in the mornings again. And going outside. Actually screw the last bit.

I have to admit, the start of 2010 has been terrible so far. PS3 broke shortly after New Year, and… snow. SNOW. What the hell? I’ve been waiting for t shirts from DesignbyHumans for ages it seems, thanks to the adverse weather conditions. I need them, my wash basket is brimming.

I’ve been thinking about a few resolutions for the year. Kept it short and sweet, which will hopefully make them easier to accomplish. In no particular order:

New Year’s Resolutions

1. Print my first T shirt design
2. Build my first website using PHP
3. Start building a brand
4. Not to work at weekends
5. Learn to drive

I got a few things over Christmas which will hopefully help kick start the year. I got a lovely new scanner and mechanical pencil. Also, a personal present from me, to me: an electric eraser. My girlfriend also got me some nice frames to hang up some inspiration on my empty walls. Finally I can put up my Dan Mumford screen print and Wesley’s Ice Cream Man.

Reflecting on 2009

2009 I think may, without thinking too hard about it, of been the best year yet. Musically it was jam-packed for me. Particularly the latter half, which included two festivals (Download and Reading) and 11 bands just in the last month before Christmas.

I also started drawing a lot more (well, it is all relative) and starting to enjoy it in my spare time. 2009 was the year that I started to try and think seriously about what I want to do. I’ve discovered that there is only one thing I want to do: whatever I want, when I want. I want to be flexible enough to try out various paths and then decide what area I enjoy most.  I do love my animation course, don’t get me wrong, but the initial reason I signed up for it is no longer an interest to me. That said, the course is still completely relevant and I will try to push the projects which I enjoy most, as hard as possible.

Christmas Drawing

Not such a ‘Big Christmas Draw’ this year, though I did get a very important drawing done. A few years ago I was asked by a family friend’s son to draw Spiderman, while we were on holiday. I said ‘yeah sure, I’ll draw one as soon as I get home’. It kept getting put off and I was getting a bit worried about what they would expect after such a length of time.  Just before Christmas, I spent the best part of a day doing a few poses for him on an A3 sheet.

Below are some of the other sketches I did over Christmas.

Bring on 2010.

I’ll get this in early, because it pretty much sets the tone for how this project really went. It was very last minute, the whole thing including post-production was completely in an afternoon. Only the pirate ship itself was created before then, possibly even a whole month before (sitting in the garage). Although completing the project only a few days before deadline was not intentional, the cheap feel of the boat and the animation itself was something we had hoped to use. I think in that case, the spontaneity may even of worked in our favor…

At the earliest stage we had planned to include a lot more (in fact something completely different). The original idea was to take the ship almost straight down to the beach, and then have a battle with either an armed fortress or another ship, then have the original ship sink into the sand. By the time our ideal (last chance) animating day came around, no more props could be quickly prepared, nor a tested animatic. We just went with it and decided to have a little fun.

Some interesting things that we encountered along the way: Rain, battery life and dog shit. As you can imagine, cardboard doesn’t handle rain that well. We started to lose pieces of it quite early on. By the time we had taken the final photo on the beach, it could barely be held together. We also discovered that batteries drained very quickly, so we had to buy more. That is what sparked the idea for the actor-swap at the Spar shop. I think I used 10 AA batteries in total.

Also, Gareth managed to get dog shit all over the front of the boat. Didn’t mention that highlight in the Production Report though. You can watch the final animation below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Final Thoughts

Overall I think we were quite relieved with the result, after panicking a lot before going out, thinking that we wouldn’t get enough footage for our audio clip. I think the frame rate works for the way we shot it, and the ship itself gave an amusing feel and was appropriate for our animation. It was quick, cheap and a lot of fun. Though it seems like me and Gareth are the only two who find it funny… if you did, at all, then leave a comment.

The highly anticipated first volume of Botobit arrived through my letterbox yesterday.

If this is the first time you have heard of ‘Botobit‘, maybe I can enlighten you a little. It is a high qaulity illustration magazine featuring the work of some very talented artists from various different countries and backgrounds. Each of the artists are required to create a piece based on the topic specific to the volume. Volume 1 revolves around the theme ‘Epidemic’. Every artist’s themed piece is then followed by feature pages of their other creative work and an interview.

Aside from the great artwork inside, the first thing that struck me was just how well the book has been put together – from page presentation, right down to the binding. This is certainly the start of a very collectable series.

Huge kudos to Wesley and Ryan Eggebrecht for putting this book together.

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List of participating artists for Volume 1 below:

Patricio Balanovsky | Mathieu Beaulieu
Wesley Eggebrecht | Min Yum
Troy Galluzzi |  Scott Daly
Chris Houghton | Dennis Brown
Jens Claessen | Maria Filar
Anthony Baez | Jillian Evelyn
Federico Piatti | Victoria Maderna
Leo Espinosa | Matthew Byle
Don Kilpatrick | Nicolas Francoeur

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Pick up a copy today!

Break Down

We had to approach the project with weekly goals, uploading our progress each week. Let me break it down for you:

Week 1

By the end of the first week, we had to make sure we had our video reference footage recorded and our dope sheets prepared. I found it quite difficult to imagine poses for the clip, so I wrote the clip out, then broke it down into key words/phrases and brainstormed a few possibilities for each. Then it was just a case of seeing which flowed into each the best. See the clip below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The dope sheets always give me neck strain? It took me about 20 tedious minutes to work through the 11 second audio, and I think impatience at this stage is what threw out my lip syncing in the final week. Remember boys and girls, this should be done properly, it saves you a lot of time later on. I was just in a rush.

We also had to put together a quick character sheet.

Week 2

In the second week we moved straight into blocking out our animations, using key poses. Definitely the laziest effort this week, since all the lecturers were at this year’s Bradford Animation Festival. I took at good look at the video reference footage I had recorded, and used it to animate the character into his most important poses. Quicktime is great to use for reference, as it allowed you to scroll through frames individually. At this stage the there is only natural tweening between poses. See video below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

We were encouraged to use the G_male Rig.

Week 3

During the third week, all of the body movement was completed. All facial features are left untouched. I made sure to start with tidying up the largest movements, since I didn’t want to return to them afterwards, once all the fingers and smallest movements are keyframed. It really puts you off going back in, if there are keys on almost every frame. I also started to work on the eye movements and eyebrows, which would be continued in the final week.

Final Week

I was a bit worried about this final week, because I’ve not really done lip syncing before. Also, my dope sheet was a bit out of sync. It also didn’t help that I was using the video ref at the same time, so they conflicted a bit. I decided to just work with my dope sheet, then iron out afterwards. I found the timing seemed better after offsetting the sound clip by -2 frames. After a while I got a bit anal with getting the lip syncing right, to the point were I couldn’t look at it anymore. Get someone else to check it for you, it just won’t look right if you stare at it for too long. Final version is below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Final Thoughts

I have no idea what to make of my lip-syncing, even now. I was concerned that I had made the animation a bit busy in the end (I was initially worried about under-animating), I think the conclusion was that I had a little over-animated.

A good friend of Andy’s, who had previously worked for Disney, came to be the main judge during our feedback assessment. He didn’t mess around, which was great. He gave everyone critical feedback. His thoughts with mine were more so to do with my choice of actions for the character, rather than the animation itself. His final point was that he felt the character turned too far away from camera towards the end. Basically all things I didn’t even notice or expect.

Well, now I’m off to sail a pirate ship.

R

It was up to us to choose reference material, whether it be from life or photos/magazines/internet/stills from films. The majority of my reference material was photographs. I searched on Flickr a lot, simply because it is a gold mine for excellent photography. I have credited a few people at the end of this post for their work that I have used as reference.

My first almost entirely filled sketchbook. Now to start on another…

Reference sources:

Carlo Nicora
Mazda6 (Tor)
Anton Kawasaki
Sir Realist
Tin Green
Thomas Lottermoser
JT Karanka

Big thanks to the talented photographers above. There are possibly more, whom I have not credited. If you believe I have used one of your photos, let me know which one and I will add you to the list!

Thanks again.

It is always a bit of a challenge for someone like myself to be at all organised when it comes to time-management. I have got better with it over the summer, so throwing in a week of house moving is a nice little test. OK so far, although I have got a little behind on my drawings for Kathy. I still think I can fill this sketchbook from front to back with sketches though, before our hand in.

Below are just four more of the pages from this ‘Conversations’ sketchbook I have started.

Click here to see the completed sketchbook

Hopefully the more studio-like feel of my new room will help me with my sketching. Also with a great fellow sketcher upstairs, maybe we could get a bit competitive with it.

We were asked to concentrate on certain qualities for this, to give the character its own thought process. It took me ages to decide on two emotions and a cause. I didn’t want to add in props, because they would require animating too. I already knew people were going to approach theirs with seeing/overhearing something off-screen, so I wanted to have him affected by something a bit different.

That’s basically when I thought, ‘what might the character be able to see near himself, but I cannot?’. Then I thought about how ridiculous people look when trying to deflect a fly or a wasp.

I instantly knew there was potential for the animation to look misleading though.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sure enough, the result can be quite misleading. It does indeed look like he is wafting a fart, at least at the beginning. I decided I wasn’t too worried about this, after laughing at my screen during a playblast.

Critical feedback – I didn’t really receive any when we presented them all on the Monday morning. Aside from the heckles and sniggering, the actual feedback on the animation was quite positive. I’d say problems it has include some of the slow-down during wafts. Although contrasting speeds are good, it looks a bit unnatural in mine towards the end.

Video Reference – it helps.

After last weeks exercise, I had decided working with video reference was a good idea. I tried to over-act a little with it, although I only performed a single take. Some of the tips which I learnt in the our Acting Workshop today could of been pretty useful here. Oh, and ignore the fancy dress costume.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Next Week

Our next exercise is the main one for this unit. It involves animating to a short sound clip for this month’s 11 Second Club competition. Although we are allowed to use last month’s sound clip if we wish, it cannot be entered into the competition. More on that next week.