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

Quarreling Hippos

So, for this week's micro-project we were each given a proverb from a different part of the world and we had to create a short animation illustrating it. Mine was 'When two hippopotamuses quarrel, don't put your oar in'. I decided to take it quite literally- two hippopotamuses having a girly fight over something, man comes in and tries to separate them with his oar....but then gets sat on!

I'm pleased with how a lot of it came out in the end...in particular the girly fight, the way the characters step back when the human pushes them and the high-5 at the very end. I think I never truly appreciated until now how much you can do with holds and cycles, and still come out with an engaging piece of work!

There are some things that I would like to have changed though- for a start, I orinigally wanted the animation to begin with one of the hippos shoving the other (in an attempt to provide a reason for the fight breaking out in the first place). I think this would have made the whole thing stronger, but decided that it wasn't necessary, especially considering the time constraints. I'm really keen to ink this and scan it and colour it properly to create some showreel-worthy stuff, so I might make some amendments as I do that.

Also, the reason that the video is so blocky and layered, is because I used so many cycles, and animated each character on separate pieces of paper for the most part. I worked out how to cut them all together in Digital Pro without having to vectorise the line, but it wasn't a perfect solution.

Anyway, hope you enjoy the animation, if you've got any feedback I'd love to hear it

Sarah

Starting 3rd Year

Well, I meant to update the blog literally weeks ago, but didn't because I'm now back at Uni! I really want to consistently post here every week, though, so from now on I'm going to schedule in posts alongside my work. From now on, I'm going to officially use Sunday as blog day, because I'll be able to write up what I've been doing over the week, and hopefully I won't be too stressed out about being in the studio and frantically trying to get work done :s 


So then, for the first three weeks of the semester, we're being assigned 3 one week 'mini-briefs' in an attempt to try and get us used to animating constantly and going into the studio all the time. This week's brief was to create 9 short animations depicting various prepositions (e.g. inside, behind, in front of, over, under etc.) using only basic, geometric shapes as characters. Pretty stressful stuff, considering that this was set to us on the Monday and due in of Friday! 
So, we've all been hard at work at that project, and although it's been difficult and exceptionally stressful, I see why we were asked to do it, and feel like I learned quite a few things from the experience. The most significant of thing for me was that it re-emphasised how important it is to plan your scene properly before you start animating. I think I would have really benefitted from allocating a day to planning it out thoroughly, and not just barging my way straight into animating in a desperate attempt to get it done on time.


I'm pleased with some of the animations, especially considering the timeframe that we were given in which to do them, but I think most of them could really stand to be improved. I might post the video here later on in the week (depending on how I think it looks when it's edited together...)


Hopefully I'll keep my resolution for regular updates and post again next Sunday

Sarah

Procrastination!

Well, I haven't managed to get an awful lot done the past couple of weeks, what with getting ready to go back to Uni and stuff.

I've mostly been working on my other summer project where I have to write a sentence for each of Walt Stanchfield's 28 principles, as well as illustrate them. It's mostly going OK, except it's really difficult trying to summarise some of them in only a sentence...

I'm also working on a project for Sarah Lawrence, which seems like it's gonna turn out really awesome! I'll try and update again on Monday.

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