Idle Drawings

Today I brought home my notebook from work with the intention of scanning the many doodles contained within its pages. I was surprised how little I ended up scanning though. I guess things just aren't as good as I thought they were when I drew them!

I'll only bother posting the ones I have something interesting to say about though as I feel I should write more on here than I do.

My workmate John was totally pissed off today. I have only been working there for a couple of months, and this is the first time I have seen him really angry. He had loads of work piled on him after two of our colleagues left last week for pastures new, and he had very little time in which to do it. Added to that was the fact that our computer systems are not up to the tasks we use them for, so he was being further frustrated by software crashes. I could feel his anger and apparently so could my pen as this appeared in my notebook:
For once my drawing actually looks like the person I was trying to draw! Normally my attempts at caricaturing people do not go well.

Now the animations we are working on at work are vector-based, ie they are basically a computerised version of cutting out bits of paper and moving them around. To cut (pardon the pun) a long story short, I hate it!
I don't like the look the characters end up with, and vector animation is such a restrictive medium to work with. The simplest movement can often be a nightmare to achieve. I'm even sure that with the feedback process we go through to get the animations looking how the client wants them, we could actually do them faster and to a much higher quality by hand-drawing them. To that end, here are my interpretations of the two characters above:
I'm not one to brag about my own drawings, but aren't they a lot more appealing?

A Site For Sore Eyes

For a while now I have been meaning to get round to remaking my portfolio website. The site has gone through a number of changes. It started out as a complex html site and began to evolve into an even more complex Flash site, but I soon got tired of the hastle I had to go through to update it with new material. Hence why it never got updated!

Well I have spent the last couple of evenings completely redesigning it to be as simple as possible so I can maintain it easily, whilst still making it look nice. So without further ado, may I present the new Andy's Animation Portfolio Site!

Mon"keying" Around

I have been eager to get back into some hand-drawn animation as I haven't done any in ages. I have been fiddling around with different 2D animation programs with my new Cintiq tablet, and have finally settled on using TVPaint. I just started doodling and ended up beginning an animation of an ape. I have only done a few keyframes, but I thought I'd post it even at this early stage to show my progress, as I have been doing with my 3D stuff.

Ape 1
Uploaded by andylatham82

Not very exciting yet is it?!

I borrowed a microphone from work today with the intention of recording the voices and sound effects for my new 3D showreel animation. Although I have been storyboarding it, I still haven't completely nailed down what I want to happen, thus making it difficult to decide what I need to record. I guess I'll just record everything I think I could possibly need in the hope that I cover myself.

In-dy and Out

Here's another attempt at Indiana Jones. I should really draw a different character! This time I experimented with matching the colour of the outlines to the colour of the paint.
My new showreel animation is pretty much storyboarded out now, so the next step is to record the soundtrack for it. I'm really eager to get animating on it, but I can't until I have the voices recorded.

Ah, Dr Jones!

As I said in my last post, I have begun work on a new animation that will serve as the backbone of my animation showreel. Since I think the idea is pretty good, I don't want to 'unveil' it until it's finished for fear of someone pinching it!

However the problem is that I won't have much in the way of animation to show on here until it's done. I'm going to try to keep finding things of interest to post in the mean time though.

I went to the cinema with my girlfriend a few nights ago to see National Treasure 2 in the vague hope that the new Goofy short might be shown before it as it has been in the USA. Unfortunately it was not to be, which got me pretty annoyed. I hate the fact that in the UK we never get anything like the Americans get! Take DVDs for example, our versions are usually watered down versions of the original US releases. I want to know if we are going to be treated to any part of Disney's new shorts programme at the cinema.

Thankfully, my disappointment was offset by the release of the teaser trailer for Indiana Jones 4! If you haven't seen it yet, go to the Indy site. I'm trying not to get too excited about it as we all know that a trailer is absolutely no gauge of whether or not the movie will be good....The Phantom Menace anyone?

Nevertheless I decided to mark the occasion with a drawing of one of my favourite movie characters.
Roll on May 22nd!

Enough of Frank...For Now

Right, although I haven't finished with Frank yet, I decided to shelve him for a short while in order to concentrate my efforts on a new idea, which I must pass on the credit to my girlfriend for. I have long been trying to come up with a really great and original idea for my showreel that will make it stand out from everyone else's. Today Sian came up with the answer with irritating ease! I don't want to share it here until it's complete as I'm worried about someone pinching the idea!

So for now, here is an updated and rendered version of Frank. I spent some time yesterday trawling through the tangled spaghetti of an animation graph for him, removing redundant keys and smoothing those that remained. I think the result is more flowing than my last update.

Frank Animation 3
Uploaded by andylatham82

On a seperate note, I read on the net that the new Disney Goofy short entitled "How to Hook Up Your Home Theatre" was released on the front of the movie "National Treasure 2". I have been trying to establish if this is true of the UK release, as I want to go see it. I have no interest in watching the movie, but will gladly go if Goofy is there! Can anyone answer my question?

Spacing Out With Frank

I have finally got round to updating my animation of Frank from 'Father of the Bride' using my brand spanking new computer. It still needs a lot of refining to make everything smooth, but here it is so far:

Frank Animation 2
Uploaded by andylatham82

It's so much easier working on two large screens, especially when working with animation graphs.

I also did another quick doodle on my Cintiq tablet. I wanted to get round to starting some 2D animation using it, but haven't yet found the time.
I wish I could find a way to have all three of my monitors running at once: the two main monitors and the Cintiq. I only have two DVI ports on my pc and so have to make do with rebooting the machine every time I want to swap. If anyone has any ideas, I'm all ears!

All Tooled Up

It has taken me a while to get animating lately as I have been busy buying new toys! I came into a little bit of money and decided to invest in some new animation tools.

Firstly I bought a new computer. Previously I had been doing all my 3D animation on a 15" notebook pc, which is less than ideal, so I got a new powerful desktop pc with dual 22" monitors, which will help space things out a lot. I also got a SpaceNavigator, which is a little piece of hardware that sits at the side of your keyboard and can be used to move and rotate your view in any 3D application such as Maya. It's a great time saving device, which I fondly refer to as my 'nubbin'! I recommend them to any 3D animator.
On the 2D side of things, I bought something I have been drooling over for ages - a Cintiq drawing tablet.
It too is a great time saving device and is really enjoyable to draw on. As soon as I have some Cintiq-produced 2D animation, I'll post it. Here are some quick doodles I did with it though:
I feel kind of guilty spending all this money, but I figured that I'm not going to be able to afford them any other time in the near future, so I may as well get them while I can!