That's Life

It's so hard to find the time to draw when you're working!....or is it? Here are a few doodles I did whilst being bored typing seemingly random letters and numbers into the computer. I don't think they require much explanation so I won't bother. Instead I'll witter on about other things to fill up some space!

There has been another development in my quest to do some life drawing. After spending the last few weeks trying to get in touch with the organisers of drawing class beginning on November 15th to book my place, I finally tracked them down. To my utter dismay I was informed that the class had been cancelled due to lack of interest. Considering that I live in supposedly the most arty region of Manchester, where on Earth are all the artists?!

Fortunately this miserable phone call turned a corner when I was told about an art studio in the city centre called Rogue Artists' Studios. It seems they run life drawing sessions every Wednesday, so provided I can make it there after work tomorrow, I should be able to take the next step in my animation journey! Watch this space for the results. The 'session' is not a class though, so I will still be teaching myself for the forseeable future....Tao, I'm going to need your help!

Back to the Drawing Board

Well after filling a fair amount of space with computer generated stuff, I thought I had better put on some more drawings. After all, this blog is mainly about learning the traditional methods of animation. You may remember that I decided to go to some life drawing classes, starting in September. Well September came and September went and I'm not further forward. I have been thrown a bit by starting a new job, so I haven't really had time to dedicate to drawing. However that will soon be changing.

There is another batch of classes starting on November 15th - the day before my birthday no less! These should be better as they are much closer to my home...so I have no excuse for not going! I really feel that I need the classes as I am a bit in limbo at the moment, drawing faces and hands over and over again.

Speaking of hands, I am still finding them extremely difficult to draw. I seem to be quite able to draw a realistic hand (provided I have a hand in front of me as a reference), but when it comes to more cartoony hands, it's a whole other story.
As you can see in the drawing above, I have drawn my own hand and then tried to convert it into a typical four-fingered cartoon hand. I wish I could say I was going for a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle hand, but I wasn't. And believe it or not, this hand was the best of a bad bunch. My other attempts at toon hands have been disasterous, although I can't really understand why, because I find their construction relatively easy to get my head around when looking at other artist's versions, as can be seen in these Preston Blair copies.
To finish off, here are a couple of heads. The first is a deer which I designed with the help of Sian. We have an idea for a funny short cartoon starring this little fellow. Next is another character from my growing collection of bald headed men! I don't know why I don't add hair. I decided this one looked a bit like Alfred Hitchcock.

Finally, we have some more Preston Blair copies. This time of Tom the cat. I discovered, just from this one picture of him that Tom is extremely difficult to draw convincingly.

They Don't Make Them Like They Used To!

Ooooo it's been a while! It's nice to get time to add something to this blog at last! It seems that after five years of university study, I have done what every student fears...I have had the misfortune of aquiring a job! Sadly, it has nothing to do with animation. Nothing to do with physics either. I spend all day plugging numbers into a computer for an insurance company.

And that last sentence brings me nicely onto the subject of this post - CGI.

I remember going to see Toy Story at a little old cinema in Wakefield over a decade ago and, like everyone, being blown away at what appeared on the screen. I had grown up with Disney movies, seeing the quality of the artistry improving with each film, but here was something that was such a huge leap forward in terms of visuals. To me, as was the case with a lot of people at the time, these new computer techniques were the future of animation.

I used to dream of animating for a living, but never really seriously considered it until recent times. As a lot of animation newbies do, I turned to the computer and began to learn to animate - first with Cinema 4d, then 3ds Max, and finally Maya. However, after seeing behind the scenes of the computer animation process, I began to feel like it was becomming a bit of a cheat.

Here is one of my earliest animations. It was used in a presentation that I was part of at university, preaching the perils of bird flu to my peers. I was in the "Orange Group" - hence the writing on the floor and the fruit.

Halfway through the presentation, this one was used to show a chick getting infected with flu and the virus replicating.

I then started to experiment with facial expressions, resulting in this guy sneezing. Notice the inclusion of simulated hair.

My follow up was an experiment with hair - and here is where I fell out of love with CGI.

The bouncing ball was produced using colliding rigid bodies (essentially the computer works out where the ball should be at any time using my old friend, physics) and the hair was simulated in a different way, but amounting to the same principle. The point is, though, that I didn't actually animate ANYTHING!!

Lately, I have noticed that the most important part of a movie (the story) has begun to take a back seat in computer animation. Even more recently, I have noticed that as the medium becomes cheaper, the actual quality of the animation itself has begun to deteriorate. It was this, that spurred me on to get involved with the hand drawn stuff. Thus this was my last computer animation.

Notice that it contains only true animated components, no simulations. Computer animation will always be around, and I have no problem with that. But please all you digital animators, keep the quality high.