11 second club - Finishing touches

So I started animating the sound clip for the September 11 second club just 3 days before the final deadline on the website. I couldn't finish animating on time so ended up uploading whatever I had, key frames and all.

For our module though, I decided to keep going with the September file and finish what I had started.

The animating did not take as long as I expected it would. 

Although I did decide to make quite a few changes in the camera positioning and some of the main key poses.

Look at all those twos and threes (and fours!).

With a couple of weeks left until the end of the month I finally coloured in my last frames and gave my background some final touches.

Didn't go too wild on the background but then again we were meant to be looking at how characters interact and how we 'talk' with our bodies.

I really enjoyed this assignment.

I think if I have time I wouldn't mind trying next months 11 second club too.

Let the storyboarding begin!

All the portraits and all the lines!

The first drawing of the day. We were asked to just draw like we would and he would go from there.

This time I managed to get some quick sketches in my sketchbook too.

We learnt the basic portions of the human head and to observe how everything works together.

I found that I started to over think about the measurements and forgot to think about the person I was drawing.

None of the drawings above look like the real model and I was starting to get a bit frustrated.

I just wanted to draw the woman in-front of me right the first time but realized that these things need practice.

Accepting the fact that I wasn't going to get her spot on made me relax a lot more and her likeness slowly started to come out a little.

I think out of all of them this one, the last one I did, is the most like the real woman.

Still is not her but I'm really happy with the progress.

PICKN'MIX: Thumbnailing

After working out a rough script for the comedy series we were then told to put everything together to make a storyboard and an animatic.

So I decided to stick with the introduction or the beginning of the first episode, to introduce how the main characters are going to interact. I'm trying to apply what I learnt about storyboarding so far but still will go to get a second opinion.

Here are a couple of the thumbnails I've done for part of the 'pilot' episode.

Forecast for today: Major brainstorm in the living room

Please excuse the atrocious handwriting and numeral spelling mistakes.

This is what it looks like when I write as fast as I think.

Like my literature teacher once said, it looks like a drunken spider ran across the page.

Making marks and shapes

Fast warm-up 2 min drawings

This session was mainly about observing the negative and positive spaces more carefully.

I can tell if I was just tired or maybe my glasses should have been cleaned better but I found it hard to focus on the different spaces this time.

Quick 2 min gesture drawing.

Really really wishes we had more of an opportunity to do more gesture drawings.

Especially if we had to capture a story or moment of the pose quickly.

Maybe bring in some props? 

5 min drawing

NOTE: I shouldn't wait around really. It is university and we should be learning a lot more independently. I might message some acting students or dance students on the campus. 

Who knows right? They might let me pop in for a rehearsal.

A pastor, middle age village, comedy series and George Hammond Steel

I've mentioned this briefly in a previous post but one of our latest projects, which I'm really enjoying, is called PICK'N MIX.

We were all given four cards at random.

One card for main character, one for setting, one for style and the last for genre.

Our job is to put all the elements together to make a possible animation.

Luckily my cards somehow fit together really well although I still find it rather hard trying to make a comedy series using George Hammond's style.

Wasn't sure if the beautiful layered style would distract from the humour of the series??

But then I did think of MirrorMask (2005) which did have an beautiful and elaborate design yet still managed to contain and even emphasis the characters witty humour.

Anywho and anyhow, here is some of my developmental work so far.

As my show is set in the middle ages, I did some research on the architecture back then. I also looked at painting and drawings depicting old medieval villages.
This one is by Giovanni Antonio Canal.

A background experimental drawing of mine, trying to combine medieval architecture and Hammond's style.

Early character designs