‘The Mime’ Short Film Update

Tonight I finished the first minute of my short film’s story reel, which is quite a big achievement for me. I was actually hoping to have the whole film storyboarded by the end of tomorrow, but it looks like that will be unlikely! This first minute represents about a third of the total film and I’ve been drawing the storyboard for about five days now (although only in the evenings when I’m not at work).

However this initial section has been the hardest to plan for me. The rest of the short is quite vivid in my head, so should pose less of a problem for me when doing the story drawings.

Life Drawing Week 4

Here’s some of my better drawings from the fourth week of our life drawing sessions at Traveller’s Tales……

Mime Storyboard

Just over a month ago I showed a single concept image for the short film I’m working on (the aforementioned “secret project”, tentatively called ‘The Mime’). I’m currently in the storyboarding process, so I thought I’d give another little preview……

I started doing the story sketches on 6” x 4” paper, but it was taking so long to redraw elements over and over along with all the scanning involved that I yesterday decided to make the transition to drawing them in Photoshop. This is an example I drew tonight. The good thing about this method is that far less drawing is involved. In this shot, the background planes and the foreground sign are on layers so I can just redraw the mime himself without worrying about anything else.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned it before, so I’ll mention it now……this will be a hand-drawn animated short. The actual animation drawings will be done with good old pencil and paper rather than relying on the Cintiq, and the backgrounds will be painted with…..well, paint! This is for three reasons:

1. I can control a pencil far more precisely than a tablet pen.

2. I want to become more adept at the traditional method with all that comes with it, such as rolling drawings.

3. I just love the romantic feeling of creating something physical that I can hold in my hands.

I’m itching to talk about the story. It’s a personal thing that comes very much from within myself, but I’m hoping it will resonate with an audience too.

Sketches

Here’s a couple more recent sketches. I need to sketch more often!

Sketch Dump

It’s about time I caught up with posting some sketchbook drawings. As I said last time I put some on, I’m trying to be more honest with myself by posting the unedited sketchbook pages, warts and all. So if there are crap drawings, that’ll be why!!

It pains me to post all those rubbish ones! The urge to chop them out is huge!

Life Drawing Week 3

Last night was the third of the life drawing sessions I’ve been organising at Traveller’s Tales. I really struggled this week, much more than the previous weeks. I think far too much when drawing and it gets in the way.

Still, the fact that I struggled is probably a good sign. Here’s a couple of my drawings anyway.

Life Drawing at Work

At work we’ve started holding weekly life drawing sessions, open to anyone in the company, whether they are in an artistic discipline or not. We’re posting our drawings on a blog to keep track of our progress. So for all those who may be interested, the blog can be found here:

http://ttlifedrawing.blogspot.com

This particular drawing is one of my efforts from this week’s session.

Update

Another day, another missing blog post! I've been off sick for the past week and have tried to pass the time with a few sketches. I just haven't found the energy to scan them in yet! Hopefully I'll get them posted tomorrow after I've dragged my mucus-filled carcass back to work.

I've also passed a significant (to me anyway) hurdle on my super secret project, so I'm pleased about that, not that I can tell you what the hurdle was!


- Posted from my iPhone

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