Return to the Third Dimension

You might have noticed that my blog has undergone a bit of a makeover. I thought it was about time that I got round to personalising it. I altered the title banner to include a couple of my drawings, which I thought best described what my site is about, and I added a wood effect background. I wanted it to look as though the blog was written on white paper and laid on a drawing board. I'm thinking about making a couple more minor changes to it in due course. A big thank you to Phil Thompson for his help in figuring out how to make the changes I wanted.

To celebrate my new-look blog, I thought I'd try animating something new. Although I started trying 3D animation quite some time ago, I have never really animated a proper character. I have always been put off by the tedious modelling and rigging that needs to be done before a single key frame can be set. However, I was alerted to the LowMan rig, which is a simple character available for free, with which anyone can practice their animation. So this was done in Maya:

Although the animation isn't perfect, I am quite pleased with how this worked out. It took me a couple of hours to do as I had to figure out how the rig worked first. I might go back to it to refine the animation, but I think I will probably just try doing a different action. I'd like to point out that this return to 3D animation doesn't mean I have been neglecting my 2D stuff! Here are a couple of very quick drawings I made, based on two images of Tom the cat in Preston Blair's book.
I didn't bother making them look like Tom as I just wanted to concentrate on the gesture. After these I made a drawing of a depressed man:
He was just something I drew from my imagination. It's much harder to draw a convincing human figure from your imagination than it is to work from a reference subject. However, I feel that my ability to do this is improving significantly.

Today I had an interview for a trainee camera operator and video editor job. It's not animation, but it would at least be a step in the right direction if I got it! Anyway, I think I impressed them because they want me back for a second interview.

Drawing Board or Bored Drawing?

Well it just turned 6am and I haven't been to bed. I'm very tired but I seem incapable of sleeping. This happens at some point every year - I turn nocturnal! I've been drawing to try to wear myself out mentally, but it hasn't really worked, so I'm now bored.

Since I have nothing better to do, I thought I might take you all on a tour of my animation desk. I posted a picture of it when I got it several months ago, but it has got a lot more cluttered since then! Here it is:
You'll notice that as well as being covered in junk, it is covered in letters to aid my description of it. You can click the image for a better look of course.

a) I won't make much of an animator without this - paper. I believe it is 12 field size.
b) My collection of model sheets, secured with a clip at the top.
c) A calculator for working out the number of frames needed for any particular movement (I realise a scientific one isn't necessary, but during my time at university I became attached to this thing!)
d) An electric pencil sharpener - very useful time saving tool.
e) Animation cell paint, which as yet is largely unused.
f) A cardboard box filled with paperclips and rubber bands.
g) A homemade pencil/pen holder, made from two Tic-Tac boxes and a magnet from Disney World.
h) Louis the shrimp - a magnetic soft toy from Universal Studios in Florida - which holds a small piece of cardboard, used to rest my hand on when cleaning up drawings (it prevents smudging).
i) A small pot of cell paint, mixed with water for use as an ink.
j) Tiny copies of some of the pages of Preston Blair's book.
k) A good old ruler.
l) A magnet of Disney character heads with different facial expressions and a red frame to show which one I am feeling like today.
m) Some cards with Disney movie posters on them.
n) A Mickey Mouse tin for keeping more bits and pieces in (currently empty).
o) A Mickey Mouse peppermint tin, which holds pieces of charcoal.
p) A stopwatch for timing out animations.
q) A pegbar for keeping my paper in place.
r) A few toys intended for inspiration purposes. They will be more inspiring to me when I get round to replacing them with characters that I actually like!
s) The first character I created on my animation journey - Dwain.
t) A Mickey Mouse eraser.
u) A spare supply of Blu-Tak for sticking down any more bits of junk I might want to litter my drawing board with!
v) The switch for the light behind the animation disc.

So that's it - almost one thing for every letter of the alphabet! When I can afford it, I would like to replace the cheap plastic animation disc with a good one on which panning shots are possible. I wish they weren't so bloody expensive though....donations anyone?!

Drawing Lesson Videos

Anyone looking for my collection of drawing demonstration videos can now find them here.

A Reel Show Off!

Thanks to Brian Sibley, I was recently given a contact at Aardman animation, who have asked me to send in a showreel of my 3D animation work. I can't imagine that the stuff I have done is good enough to warrant them offering me a job, but I decided to put together a show reel anyway - it can't hurt!

I decided to add a little 2D stuff at the end of it, just for completeness. I don't want to think of myself as a purely 3D animator!

Legging It

Continuing the theme of the last few posts, I've been practicing my animal drawings tonight. I'm not producing fantastic drawings (yet!) but I feel like I'm developing a method for drawing them. It's sort of a mix of the Glenn Vilppu method of gesture drawing, but with a line of action and construction shapes thrown in. My first page of drawings consisted of a baby ostrich and a flamingo.
I felt quite pleased with the flamingo considering it was only the second drawing of the evening, but I don't really like the ostrich. I don't know whether it looks odd because it's a baby bird, or because I just didn't draw it very well! Next up was a wild horse and an eagle.
I think the horse is pretty poor. It's out of proportion and its pose was far less dramatic than I had hoped for. I preferred the eagle though. However the best of all has to be...the fish!

I finished off with a drawing I intended to make last night, but I was feeling a bit intimidated by the foreshortening. However I thought I'd be brave and tackle it head on tonight. The result was this zebra:
Ok I know it could be a horse, but trust me - it should be stripy. I've noticed that I have started to learn things about myself through my pencil. For instance, drawing animals has made me realise that I really enjoy drawing legs! I'm not sure why that is. It doesn't really apply to human legs, just animal ones. I guess it must be because of the different ways in which they bend from species to species.

Walk With the Animals, Draw With the Animals...

After drawing those two polar bears a few days ago, I have been feeling like attempting some more animals. Therefore I decided to try a giraffe yesterday. I tried to keep my drawing loose like I have learned to do, but it just wasn't working. I don't know if I was just having an off-day but my drawing was flat and lifeless. I tried drawing the head of a moose too, but that didn't turn out much better. Anyway, here they are:
Not great, are they?! Well I gave up for the day after that. Tonight I decided to have another bash at it though...if at first you don't succeed and all that! I spent a while looking for pictures of animals on the internet that inspired me, printed them off and sat down to draw with Beauty and the Beast on in the background (hoping that some of the Disney magic might rub off on me!). First, I drew a baby lemur sitting on a branch. Now I have discovered that I have a habit of starting out with a nice loose gesture and then ruining it when I come to add detail, so I decided to take a snapshot of the gesture before I continued with the drawing. Here it is:
The final lemur wasn't quite as impressive as I thought it would be. In the photo, the animal was crouching down as if ready to jump, but I didn't manage to capture that very well. After the lemur, I drew a tree frog. They can both be seen below:
I found the frog quite difficult because there weren't any simple shapes like spheres that I could find in his body. After these, I drew a pair of meerkats, but they were so rubbish that I decided not to put them on here! So next, I moved onto a cheetah and an elephant:
I was quite pleased with the cheetah until I came to add the face - yet again I ruined an otherwise ok drawing! The elephant was another example of a drawing going well up until the moment I tried to add more detail. Drawing animals is tough! I momentarily stopped drawing after these since I was feeling pretty tired (it's now just after 2am here!) and I considered packing it in for the night. However I decided to try just one more. The previous night's giraffe attempt was looking at me from across the room, laughing at me with its crapness. I couldn't let it get away with that! So I drew another one, this time in a more interesting pose...and thank god I did...
If I had gone to bed after the elephant, I would have felt pretty low about my drawing ability. However drawing this giraffe made me feel much better - I was actually happy with it! I felt that the line of action I started with was good and even adding detail didn't spoil it...it's a miracle! The only little problem I have with it is that I couldn't quite figure out how the far front leg attached to the body as it was in darkness in the photo. I guess no drawing can be perfect!

Seeing How It's Done

I found a video on YouTube a few days ago which I thought was really cool. It's of the animator Glen Keane drawing the Beast from Beauty and the Beast. I love watching animators draw - it really gives an insight into their techniques. Anyway, here it is:

I have done a brief search on Google for similar videos but haven't been able to find much. There is a popular series of videos on YouTube of Glen giving a lecture some years ago, but it is more of a talking (rather than a drawing) lesson.

Anyway, it got me thinking - if any anyone knows of any other videos along the same lines of the Beast one, please could you let me know about it? I'd like to compile a list of them all for the use of myself and other budding animators, keen to see the techniques they have been reading about put into action. The videos might be of cartoon drawings, gesture drawings...whatever...as long as it's related to animation drawing.

I hope some of you participate as I think the list could be a valuable resource!

Bare & Bear Models

Oh dear...I haven't posted anything in a while...again! Well I'll fix that now with some drawings I did tonight. I've been spending the past couple of days copying drawings I found on Shane Lewis's blog. I love the style of drawing he has. However, I was getting frustrated with my attempts. Some were decent, but most were bad. Therefore tonight I thought I would go back to gestures as I haven't worked on them for a while. Here are the first two:
The one on the left turned out ok I think, but the one on the right is a bit confused. It's a bit hard to tell what the pose is. Still, on to the next two:
Yet again, these two aren't particularly good. I found the forshortening in the left one difficult to manage. I also decided that I should begin drawing animals. Since it was a little late for a visit to the zoo, I found a picture of a pair of polar bears on the internet and drew them.
I tried to use the same loose approach for the bears as I use for the gesture drawings of humans. I hate the one on the left...it looks like a kid's drawing. The one on the right is better though. I think it's the hind leg on the left one that I dislike most. It jumps out at me like a sore thumb!

I'm going to plug Shane Lewis again, as I found a post on his blog all about turning a pencil sketch into a piece of digital art. I thought it was quite a cool little lesson, so go see it!

On the job front, there isn't much news. My blog has been generating a bit of interest among a couple of people in the business but I don't know whether they are people that might be able to help me career-wise.

Finally, my ex-animator friend Tao Nguyen recently sent me a link to this site, giving a few details on the upcoming 2D Disney feature, The Frog Princess. I really hope the film does well when it is eventually released - I think it's important for animation itself. I have been a little skeptical about Disney's choice of story, as the original Grimm Brothers' Frog Prince tale is particularly short and featureless. However I like the idea of the movie being set in New Orleans - a good twist in my opinion. Oh, and I like that it's going to be a musical. I feel that Disney movies need to be musicals like they used to be. Having the characters sing the songs is so good for story telling - Brian Sibley's radio show about Disney music taught me that!