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.

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.

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!!!!

Letters and Pigeon Holes

I've really excelled myself with this one!

I'm currently in the process of writing a letter to the great Glen Keane, one of my animation heroes. Who knows whether he'll reply to me (or if he'll even get my letter), but here's hoping! I did write to Richard Williams a few months back and got a lovely letter back from him. I have so much to ask these people. I'm also hoping to write to James Baxter, assuming I can work out where to send it. Is he full-time at Dreamworks now, or does he still have his own studio? I'm particularly interested in him because of his English origins.

From a Height

Following on from yesterday's simple rabbit animation, I decided to do another one tonight. This is all following from my realization about enjoyment the other day. Tonight's animation took about an hour and a half and was inspired by one of my colleague's rather odd (yet possibly justified) fear of sloths!

Hop To It

A guy at work inspired me to do a really quick animation tonight. I probably did this in about an hour or less.

A Floury Lesson

The other day I showed a pretty crude attempt at modelling a flour sack with Fimo clay. Well I've completed the job with a rather crude attempt at painting it. I wish I hadn't used glossy paint.The thing that struck me about this (and my subsequent reason for posting this) is that I made this little model, purely for reasons of enjoyment. I know I'm not a great sculpter and have no particular intention of becoming one (although it would be nice). If I could just channel some of that into my drawing, I'd be a lot happier I'm sure. I really DO want to become great at drawing, but I often let that need get in the way of the enjoyment of drawing just for the sake of drawing.

New 'Princess and The Frog' Trailer!

There's not really much point in me putting this on here as it's all over the internet already, but here we go anyway! The new Princcess and the Frog trailer!

I can't wait!

Onwards and Upwards

I just saw my results for last month's 11 Second Club......23rd place. It's a bit better than 45th rank I got last time I entered in February at least!

I got some nice constructive comments from people, which is good, although I took exception to this one:

"Nice render, thats about it..."

Anyway, I've got what I think is a good idea for this month's clip. I just hope I can do what is in my head!

Intoxicating

This is a quick sketch from Monday lunchtime. I was in a coffee shop, drawing people queueing up to pay at the till. I had drawn a few people prior to this, but wasn't producing anything I liked. Then suddenly I began to draw by feeling my way around rather than looking. I don't mean I manhandled the customers, but I did feel like my pen was moving over them. It became less about translating what I was seeing into lines in my sketchbook, and more about just letting the lines happen.
That description sounds like crap really. It's the kind of thing you should laugh at. However I can think of no other way of putting it. Have you ever been so tired that you have been able to do something without thinking about it? Maybe, like me, you can only play pool after having a few drinks? Well I wasn't particularly tired, and certainly wasn't under the influence, but I did have that kind of 'out of control, yet not crap' feeling. I think it might have come from looking at a lot of people and boring the left side of my brain to death.

Cheese String

This isn't particularly animation-related, but I have nowhere else to show this stuff off, so here it is. I spent this afternoon playing with Fimo clay. You could write my knowledge of sculpture on a postage stamp, yet I have visions of making a chess set over the next few months. My theme is Cats and Mice, so I just thought I'd test the water by making a base for one of the mice.I was pleased enough by this to attempt a base for a cat. I decided to try a ball of yarn. However I made it far too big for a chess piece.Finally, to relate this in some way to animation, I made a flour sack. Nothing to do with a chess set, just for a bit of fun. All these models have to be painted yet of course.

Coraline at Last

I went to see Coraline last night (can someone explain to me why we sometimes get movies in the UK months and months after their release in the US, and yet we get other movies at the same time?). I believe with Pixar's 'UP', we will be amongst the last of the European countries to get it. It's not like any translation is required!
Anyway, back to Coraline. I donned the funky glasses to watch it in 3D and for the most part forgot I was watching a 3D film. Clearly studios are learning to avoid having too much stuff coming out to poke you in the eye. However it begs the question of whether it's worth using 3D if you forget it is there. What's the point? It's mainly this question that makes me think 3D will not catch on any more this time around than it did before. I think as soon as most cinemas have converted to the digital format, we will see a rapid decline in 3D films.

I noticed another problem when I saw 'Bolt' in 3D. It was really easy to spot flaws in the CG models that you just wouldn't notice on a flat image. One example that springs to mind is car headlights. They really looked like a texture layed onto the surface of the car, rather than a piece of glass with a space behind it containing a light.

In general, I thought Coraline had a good story and amazing animation, however it failed to deliver that spark that 'Nightmare Before Christmas' had. It felt rather like a Tim Burton film that they had forgotten to involve him in. I felt like it was lacking in imagination just a little bit. Things were creepy and surreal at times, but there wasn't really anything new there. As much as it pains me to say it, I can't imagine ever sitting through it again for any reason other than to study the fantastic animation.

Am I Telling The Truth?

It's a bit of a boring post today, but then it is the weekend! Most weekends I go to a cafe to draw people. I would like to get into the habbit of drawing people more often....literally all the time that I can. Been saying that for months though! Anyway, today I tried some advice from Walt Stanchfield. It involves not drawing what people look like, but rather what they are doing, working out what they might be thinking or feeling. To paraphrase Walt, "don't just draw the facts, but go for the truth". Whether my drawings are any better than usual, I'm not sure, but I sure as hell enjoyed drawing them. It was a far more 'artistic' process, for want of a better word.