The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

I’m sure a lot of people have seen the now deleted post on the blog of Matt Williams about his experiences at Disney. I won’t comment on that, but there was a second part of the post that I found very inspiring. He spoke of not liking the ego-trip aspect of blogging where people only post things to get praise. He then put up some complete sketchbook pages, warts and all. So I’ve decided that from now on I’ll do the same with the intention of bringing more honesty to things.

I went to a restaurant tonight. I forgot to bring my main sketchbook with me, but I’ve been carrying round a small Moleskine soft-cover sketchbook for occasions where I don’t have my bigger one. I didn’t get a lot of chance to sketch, but here’s the small amount that I did:

Lee Evans – The Ultimate Animation Reference

Here’s something for those of you outside the United Kingdom. You may know of Lee Evans as the odd little bloke in comedy films like ‘There’s Something About Mary’, but here he’s much better known for his amazing stand up comedy shows. What strikes me about him whenever I see him is that the guy’s like a living cartoon. He does things with his body that just shouldn’t be possible. I swear he has limbs of rubber! Take a look at this clip of him at work.

Take a look at 2 minutes and 30 seconds in…..you’ll see a walk he does (one of many fascinating comedy walks he does). It’s like he can break his joints!

Sketches from the Pub

Today was great…..beautiful sunshine, a walk to the pub and a barbeque. Here’s a few of the sketches I did at the pub.

The woman in the stripy top came over to me to have a look at my drawings and said some kind words about them.

I particularly enjoyed drawing the kid in the blue hat!

Sketch Selection

Here’s a selection of recent drawings from my sketchbook (click to enlarge). I’d love to hear some opinions of them! :)

 

They’re all drawn in ink on brown recycled paper (I wonder if anyone has drawn on this paper before!) and painted with watercolours, a medium I have very little skill with, but they are portable.

 

This last one I’ve shown before, but I painted it up so I thought I’d re-post it!

At the End of the Day

Never show your work to your supervising animator just before you go home on an evening…..ever.

I do this all the time. I spend all day (or several days) working on a scene and just before I leave for the day seems to be the time where I get to the point where I need to show it to the lead animator for some feedback. At this point I have done my absolute best with the work so far. It might just be a layout, it might be a blockout or it might be full animation, but whatever stage I am at, I’m pleased with my work. And naturally I assume that the lead will too, convinced that he will just say “that’s great!” and I can go home and enjoy my evening.

However this is rarely the case, like today for example when my latest Lego Clone Wars cutscene blockout was pulled to pieces. Though my face showed eagerness to make the very significant changes, my guts were tearing up inside me with despair.

So what do you do when this happens? Well there’s no easy answer to that. Some would say that you shouldn’t get attached to your work so that you’re not disappointed when it is torn up. While that’s great in theory, I’ve never been able to do it. How do you not get attached to something that you have put your all into?

Sadly it’s just something that comes with the job of an animator. We just have to hope that when we have made the changes, the result is better than before. The only consolation is that, whether the result is better or not, we will have learned something new in trying a different approach.

Bookstore Sketches

Well as I hoped, I did some sketching!

I’m Still Alive!

I haven’t posted anything meaningful in ages, not because of laziness but because I’ve just had nothing to say or to show! I can’t show what I’m working on at Traveller’s Tales (although I reeeeealy want to), and I’ve told myself I can’t show what I’m working on at home either as whenever I do that I end up stopping the project. Add to this the fact that I haven’t had time to pick up a sketchbook out in public due to moving house, and you’ll see why posts have been a little thin on the ground!

Well I’m determined to start sketching again tomorrow, although being the first time in a while, my drawing ability will no doubt thoroughly depress me! Ah well, I’ll just have to keep at it!

For now anyway, I’m temporarily breaking my no-show rule with this design drawing for my own personal project. I won’t say anything else about it, other than to mention for my own records that I am currently in the storyboard process. As you can see, he’s a mime. Now an animation involving a mime is hardly original, but I think my plans for him story-wise are.

While I’m here, I’ll take the opportunity to plug my colleague and fellow panini enthusiast, Andy Holden’s blog, Extremes & Inbetweens. Andy’s new to blogging, so why not pop by and say hello! :)

Baffled, But Pleased

My ex-colleague, Dave Martinez pointed out something funny to me today. It’s seems I have topped a list of the 50 most awesome cartooning and animation blogs on the web!

Quite how I have beaten such great blogs as Cartoon Brew, I’ll never know, but thanks to Guide to Art Schools for the recognition!