All original artwork © Andrew J. Latham and may not be used without permission. If you want to contact me, email me!

Friday, August 07, 2009

The Finishing Post

Well here we are at the very final post on this blog. I have written 340 posts over the last 1150 days, which seems like a good round set of numbers to finish on.

As promised, I have started a new blog with a more focussed existence. I do hope some of you, particularly my regular readers, follow me there. Here's where you can find it......

Animation Notebook
http://animationnotebook.blogspot.com/

I'd like to just say a BIG thank you to everyone who has visited this blog, especially those who have left comments over the years. You have all been a huge help to me in a quest that has taken me from knowing next to nothing about animation to being a professional animator.

I'll see you in the next chapter! :0)


- Andy

Saturday, July 18, 2009

The End.....Nearly

I've been neglecting this blog something rotten lately. Actually I've been thinking about what to do with it in the future. One of it's purposes has been to keep track of my progress in the field of animation. Mainly I've posted single drawings I have done over the years, with the hope that I might look back on them in years to come and see my progression. The trouble is that when I look back at what I was doing at the start, I don't feel like I have come very far. I know I have come on leaps and bounds with my actual animation, but it's important to me to be able to draw well too. I think one problem is the fact that I have only posted my best work. When I started out, I would have to draw 100 drawings before I got one that was "publishable". Nowadays I produce a decent (notice I say decent and not necessarily good) one more often than not, yet I still only publish a couple of them. So it appears that my progression has only been minor.

The thing with blogs is that I think they have to have identities. They have to conform to certain initial conditions that you set. My blog is extremely general and provides little of interest to most readers, mainly because that was never it's purpose. It was more of a thing for me. It was a way of me making sense of the craft I am trying to learn.

I think it has run its course now and has been more useful to me in the past than it is in the present. I think it's time to call it a day.

However this is not the final post. There is one left. I'm going to start another blog with a new purpose and will post a link to it for anyone who wishes to follow me in the next chapter.

So until the new blog is up and running, here are a few scribbles.....

Thursday, July 09, 2009

Tagging Along

Bitter Animator kindly stripped me of several minutes of my life with questions for each letter of the alphabet. I hope I can return the favour Bitter! ;)

A - Age: Old enough to have to work it out when I'm asked......erm......26.

B - Bed Size: I haven't got a clue. Could do with being a bit longer as my feet stick out the end.

C - Chore you hate: All of 'em. I guess washing up more than the others. I long for a dishwasher.

D - Dog's Name: Never had one. Always been more of a cat person, and my last cat, which was the family cat, was called Jack. I remember wanting to call him Arnie after my favourite Austrian at the time.

E - Essential start your day item: Erm, a cup of tea I guess, although I tend to only make one because I'm bored waiting for my slow PC to start up at work.

F - Favourite colour: Blue I think, although it depends on my mood.

G - Gold or silver: Silver. I hate people who paint everything gold as if it shows they are wealthy. What looks more cheap than a gold coloured car?

H - Height: 5'10 or 5'11, it's been ages since I measured and I might have shrunk.

I - Instruments you play(ed): The recorder, glockenspiel, triangle, tambourine, coconuts, and anything else requiring no talent really. Oh and the guitar in later life.

J - Job title: Animator. Still feels weird calling myself that.

K - Kid(s): None as yet.

L - Living arrangements: The tiniest of basement flats in a dull part of a crappy city.

M - Mom's name: Well it's mum, or Jill depending on who you ask.

N - Nicknames: A heap of bad nicknames and a heap of bad memories attached to them. I guess the most recent used by my ever shrinking batch of friends is 'Lade'. Don't ask. My girlfriend calls me bb, which is cute.

O - Overnight hospital stay other than birth: Appendectomy. My appendix nearly burst apparently. The most traumatic part of the ordeal was the indescribably irritating boy in the next bed. And the weak orange squash.

P - Pet Peeve: Right, where do I start......Cynicism. I can't abide people who criticise everything. There's nothing more demoralising than talking passionately about something, to just get shot down by someone finding every negative thing under the sun about it. I know people who do that with literally EVERYTHING. I have never heard them say something nice about anyone or anything.

Adverts that use 'exciting' words to try to hook the men. There's a shaving one that uses the terms "shield" and "refuel". We're not flying a bloody fighter jet for Christ's sake. And I hate ads that constantly make men out to be idiots, when it is outlawed to do the same to women these days. Double standards are a huge pet peeve of mine. Mind you if men are stupid enough to fall for the Gillette ads....

Oh and on the subject of double standards, I hate reverse racism. I hate that it's acceptable to be criticised for being white just because noone has the balls to stand up to anyone for fear of being accused of being racist themselves. God help all the apparently stupid white men out there, they haven't got much going for them at the moment.

Q - Quote from a movie: "Wwwwaaaaaaaaalllllllll-eeeeeeee".

R - Right or left handed: Right. My dad's a weird one - he's left handed when doing anything except writing, for which he uses his right hand.

S - Sports: Do Wii ones count?

T - Time you wake up: Usually wake at 6am but don't get up till several bashes on the snooze button of my alarm.

U - Underwear: Boxers

V - Vegetable you dislike: All of them I think. I can just about bear broccoli and carrots, but I;m even going off carrots! I hate sprouts and cauliflower in particular. They clearly evolved to taste repulsive, so why do we eat them?

W - Ways you run late: If I have to be somewhere, I'm rarely late, if ever. I hate being late. I'd rather be there with 2 hours to kill than to be a minute late. I'm not terribly fashionable!

X - X-Rays you've had: My abdomen when I had my appendix out, my teeth several times. I have a freaky extra set of teeth behind my wisdom teeth, burried in my jawbone.

Y - Yummy food you make: I'm not bad with a toastie. I'd live off those if I could. Hell, why can't I?

Z - Zoo favourite: I love watching elephants (or flumpalumps as they are affectionately known in our household). People say they see so much humanity in dogs. Well I see stupidity in dogs. I see humanity in elephants. I feel so sorry for them in the zoo, but at the same time am glad they are there as I would never have had that appreciation for them otherwise.

Phew! There we go - my life in 26 sections. How would this work in Spanish I wonder? Anyway, I have to tag some people now. Let's see, I pick Mel, Ben, and Andrew, as well as anyone else who wants a go.

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Drip, Drip, Drop

I'm not doing too well with this blog lately, am I? I just haven't made time to update it in a long time. Things are getting very busy at work. In my last post, all that time ago, I mentioned that I was working on Lego Harry Potter. Well I'm about to be spread like butter across the warm toast that is Traveller's Tales, working on Lego Indy 2 as the project comes up to crunch time, as well as animating the main intro for Lego Rock Band, developed by TT Fusion. I'm also trying to think up a good idea for a short film, as it's really about time I made one. It'd be great to try to get something of mine shown at some festivals in the future.

So lots on! I'll try to post more regularly though if I can. It was raining heavily here today (in the UK? What a surprise!) so until next time, here's my interpretation of the mayhem taking place outside the front door....

Tuesday, June 02, 2009

Hogwarts Has a Lot of Bricks

I can finally reveal what I've been working on since Lego Batman.......

Lego Harry Potter!

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Ugly Legs

Ok so no animation today. I don't want to feel tied to doing one every single day. They are intended as a bit of fun, so I don't want to push them. Instead, tonight I did a bit more sculpting, following on from my little flour sack. I didn't set out to do anything particular, but I ended up starting an ogre.
You can see the lack of planning as there is no armature for the upper body, which should have been made before I started sticking clay on. He got more and more hunched over as I was sculpting, meaning I had to brace him with a wire crutch. I think I might give him really big arms that reach the ground, allowing him to use them for support in the end.

Incidentally, for anyone making something like this, I recommend using a glass plate to build it on as it allows you to see the model from underneath through the glass.

Saturday, May 16, 2009

Size Issues

From yesterday's dinosaur, I have scaled down to a hamster today. Actually scale is an apt topic to bring up here as I seem to have a habit of allowing the sizes of my characters to wander. This is particular apparent in the animation below. Well I'll work on improving that from now on.

Right, I mentioned yesterday that I was planning on learning a bit more anatomy. At work recently I have been doing a LOT of sitting around waiting. When we have animated our scenes, we have to get them working in the game, which involves 'baking' off the character joints. I won't bother going into what that is because it's dull. Nevertheless it takes a lot of time to complete on scenes with a lot of characters in. So on Friday I decided to spend a little of this waiting time studying my hand.

As you can see I have particularly been looking at how the bones in the fingers join together and hw the skin folds at the joints. I have also looked at how the different parts of the hand flow together, as indicated by the arrows I have put on my hand. Click the image to enlarge.It's by no means a perfect representation of my hand. For starters my thumb is too small. However I did learn a fair amount from doing it. If I can learn in the same way about the rest of the body, then it'll be a big help.

Friday, May 15, 2009

Jurassic Park 4....?

I have formulated a bit of a plan. I love doing these little animations as they allow me to animate in 2D without worrying about my drawing ability. However I don't want to ignore my learning. I currently do quick gesture sketches when I'm out and about, but these suffer a bit from my lack of understanding of anatomy. So my new plan is to keep doing what I'm doing at the moment, but add into the mix a bit of anatomy studying. I'm going to concentrate on one body part at a time, really learning how to draw it properly. That should help with my sketches of the public, which will in turn help improve my 2D animation. I'll stick up a study of my hand that I did today tomorrow (if that makes any sense!).

Anyway, today's little animation is a savage and terrifying dinosaur attack. Play it if you dare!!!!