The stripy nightmare begins

So, production on 'Cub' started week before last and I'm beginning to really appreciate how hard I've made everything for myself. Keeping track of stripes and whiskers and fingers and toes is proving to be a bit nightmarish...anyway, I think it's do-able.

I had a rushes panel on Monday with the lecturers, and they seemed reasonably positive about the project (if a little concerned about the timeframe I have in which to finish it).

I was struggling with a tiger walk cycle last week, and doing lots and lots of drawings that I just wasn't happy with. One of my tutors, Teagan, suggested that I took some time out and just drew lots of pictures of my tiger character to get more to grips with it, which really helped me nail down the cycle.

Also, the wonderful Jacqui Davis has been hard at work on the backgrounds for the film, and they're just wonderful! Totally perfect...you can see them all here.

All my second years have been doing an excellent job! Elodie has done some designs for the toy tiger the boy plays with at the start of the film (which are here), as well as an amazing piece of animation, and Lauren has been doing some designs for the deer. 

I'm getting quite excited now about seeing the project come together, and I'm going to try and keep the blog up-to-date with developments

Sarah

Animation Test

I decided that I wanted to try out some animation with the anthropomorphic rat character. I roughed out him putting on a waistcoat, because the movements involved are more complicated than you'd initially think. Also, because I haven't really animated fabric before, so I just wanted to get a feel for how it might work. All in all I'm pleased with how it's turned out, though there's still a couple of things I'd change if I was going to clean it up properly.

I've also been looking at the last of my reference points for the character, as well as trying to break down some natural-looking movements from some video reference that I took from Alonso and Reece. Hopefully I'll be able to use them to get a good walk and run from.

I really want to get a model sheet done for the character soon...for both the realistic and anthropomorphic versions, so I'll probably be posting that up next week if I manage to get it done. Got a pretty hectic week ahead, though- I'm going to the zoo tomorrow to try and get some observational animal drawing done, as well as the many cinema trips I've got lined up (I have friends who still haven't seen Toy Story 3, and I really need to fix it!)

Sarah