James Gurney

James Gurney.

My childhood memories are decorated with his illustrations.

My parents love to read and shared this with us by filling our library with a wonderful range of books.

Learning to read was a struggle when I was younger so the books I bonded the most to were always to heavily illustrated ones.

Even though 'Dinotopia' and 'The voyage of the Basset' were probably some of the biggest and hardest books to read when I was little, the world was always there for me to explore with my own imagination in Gurney's illustrations.

As you can probably tell I am and was completely in love with his illustrations.

I've always thought it was the level of detail he used but now I think it was also how he made fiction blend with reality using colours too. There is no way humans can really know how to we would interact with dinosaurs/fey folk but his drawings make it seems like its our second nature.

By painting the creatures and environment using realistic lighting and natural tones, all the elements just blend together. 

It seems to gives the creatures a sense of weight and with that, life!

"It's like magic!"

Little character sketches

Showing off those moves

So I finally finished my dance duet project and I think I'm happy with where its at now.

I was still itching to try and draw someone or thing dancing with cleaner lines so I ended up starting a second dance animation.

I really enjoyed working on the almost experimental style of drawing in my dance project but I think I need to get into the flow of cleaner lines.

I really like the sketchy look but I want to work on drawing with more clarity in single strokes.

Figured it could help me develop the habit of drawing clean shapes and make inbetweening a lot easier, for me and anyone else.

The moves are finally coming together

Nearly there.

The all the key moves have been drawn out though it's not visible in this exported version.

Everything coming together a lot nicer and I'm happy with the way my interpretations of the movements have turned out.

I decided to go with this style of drawing as I really like how my sketches looked in my notebooks.

I also wanted to try and capture a short story in the dance as well.

So far the male dancer starts out like a pencil drawing then when coming in to contact with the girl in 'ink'

he transforms into a ink drawing as well, perhaps suggesting their bond and connection.

Still a lot to do and clean up but I'm really happy with the development.

Reminiscing

Just remembered my old drawing blog from when I was 13-15.

Looking back at my old digital drawings is a really good reminder for me to draw for fun more often.

Give my brain a bit of imaginative play time.

Dancing progess

After watching different contemporary dance videos on YouTube I felt a lot mo inspired in terms of what moves I could try out and push even further in my animations.

James Bay's 'Let it Go' dance video was a huge inspiration.

This is my latest update to my 10 second dance animation.

Some moves are pushes even further like the leg kicking motion and I tried to mix up the rhythms a bit more.

This week I finally met up with the dancers and together we came up with some new moves I could work with as well as reference footage.

I managed to get some life drawing in as well too.

I find drawing the dancers from life and trying to capture the movements by drawing creates some very interesting lines.

Lines that I could reference back to when trying to exaggerate the motion.

Digital characters

This has been my first year using Photoshop and I am loving it.

Still getting the hang of things but I love experimenting with different brushes.

Haven't done a digital drawing for fun for a while now

so here is a stubborn/angry looking lady in red.

Dance: Room for experimentation

This is what I have so far without any reference.

My plan is to use this as a base and eventually when I meet up with the dancer show her what I have and see what she has to say.

I'm hoping with her knowledge and skill,

she can help me make the movements a lot more fluid.

 The one thing I've made a strong note one is to try and not take too much influence from Ryan Woodward's gorgeous animated dance piece, 'Thought of You' .

Currently I have the same straight forward layout of two people dancing and I have to admit it is looking rather similar.

I've been trying to look at other animators interpretation of dance to try and shake things up a bit in my head.

I still have enough time to work on this and hopefully, by the time I'm finished I would have pushed things a little further.

There's something missing.

Movement and connection

A couple of weeks ago we had the opportunity to take part in our own short dance workshop, dancing and working with dance students in the university.

It made a huge difference to me to go from sketching the dance moves to physically trying them out yourself.

You suddenly have a greater understanding of how weight is transferred and can feel which parts of our body can lead other parts.

We worked with contemporary dancers and I think it was perfect as contemporary is about expressing your self and is a combination of different moves and rhythms.

Its all about freedom of expression and that, I think, is perfect for animation.

Our task from this was then to (with a dance student) choreograph and animate two people/subjects dancing together.

10 seconds minimum.

Rough choreography & animation

(Due to the fact the dance student I was paired with will no be available for a while, I was told to go ahead with it)

Exercising in the studio (letting my mind and pen do the work of course)

Based off an existing interpretation of a run cycle.

I've tried going ahead and animating my own run but thought this time to copy some body positions to see how different runs affect the muscle movements and leg movements.

Thinking about trying an extremely exaggerated run or some form of movement but focusing on different ways I can convey weight and impact...