Business shizzle...

I haven't updated much recently, but this isn't actually because I no longer need to, I do plan on keeping up with my blog even though college has finished, but I've only really been working on final show stuff and as it's things that I'll be showing I didn't want to ruin it by putting the images up on here... 

I have been continuing to take a few screen shots and plan on taking photos of other stuff I'm making so once final show has opened I'll stick them up, along with some photos from the show itself.

For now, here are the final designs for my business cards. Estimated delivery date is 2 days AFTER final show, which isn't very useful, but I'm hoping they might arrive within a week, if not I'm going to have to knock up some rubbishy temporary ones. Boooooo...

making a little progress...

... but very very slowly...

oooOOOOoooohhh...

... this is my first post since handing in all my work for the end of my course! sad times, but there's still final show so it ain't over yet!

So what have I been up to since then? Well, working mostly! but I've had a couple days off and have been doing some bits and pieces.

The last two days were spent doing some images for a friend. He wanted some characters for the showreel for his companys website; something really basic, and had a list of scenarios for the characters to act out. We finally agreed on a design for the characters and I drew a bunch of them up in photoshop. 

Here's some of the finished ones, they're going to be on an orange background on the website so I've stuck one on here so you can see how they look, one of the guys putting the showreel together is going to animate them too, move the heads and whatnot so they don't look so static...

Today I FINALLY made a start on final show stuff :s it's not looking too promising though, I have a week to get all my stuff in for print, which includes, hopefully, 5 digital paintings, which are taking AGES, and I'm working a lot so that doesn't leave me much time to do it all, so it's probably going to be a little bit of a disappointment as I've already had to cut a lot of stuff :(

I've drawn up 3 of the images I want to do so that I'll at least have 3 completed ones (hopefully!) and then I can try and find time to do the other 2. They're all images of Mabel and her husband, Arthur. I have a photo from their wedding day in 1946, a photo from a holiday in Brighton in 1950, and a photo from Mabels 70th birthday when she gets her pet cat (who needs a name, suggestions are welcome!) as a present from her hubby... the last present she'll ever get from him! 

These are all going to be painted digitally, something I haven't really done a lot of... well, in fact I've done it twice, so probably not a wise move. The inspiration is from this Future Lions poster. There's a few on the walls in the studio at college, turns out it's done in Photoshop which is pretty crazy. I love the look of it, so I'm hoping to achieve something similar and give my characters a more 3D look, it's not going to be to that standard but hopefully it'll work... ish...

Well here's one of the images, this is the beach holiday one...

I've gone about colouring it the same way I did the portraits in previous posts; with a coloured outline and blending it in. The image is pretty basic, but as it's not my strong point and I don't have a photo to reference it's taking some time to do...

Fingers crossed I get them finished so that I have something to actually show at Final Show!! :s

S.W.O.T analysis - Overview of academic year 2009 - 2010

So before I print all my blog off for hand-in, I thought it would be a good idea to do a brief analysis of the last year so that I can highlight areas that need improved so I can work on them over the summer:

Strenghts:
   Research - I feel that when it comes to research I explore every possible avenue, trying to think outside the box to draw inspiration from unusual sources. My research files usually pull in my best marks.
   Photoshop - over the last year my skills in photoshop have developed a lot more, though there is still some way to go.
   2.5D animation - this was my strength last year as I am able to produce nice clean work which works well in 2.5D, this needs to be revisited so I can build on this strength.
   Model Making -  although I haven't been overly pleased with the models I have produced I do think that it is a strength of mine and during the processes I am learning a lot so hopefully my skills will improve.

Weaknesses:
   Cinema 4D - 3D modeling and rigging - I've bought a book for this so that I can work through tutorials over the summer and grasp a basic knowledge of how to model characters. I will also learn new skills by working through tutorials on the greyscalegorilla website.
   Illustrator -  I do most of my work in photoshop but being able to create vector art would be a massive bonus. Again I have bought a book that I can work through over the summer and will be setting myself little projects.
   Life Drawing - Having only done a weeks life drawing classes in first year, I need to add to these skills, there are a number of classes over the summer which I hope to attend, and I will also be using posemaniacs.com to work on my drawing skills.
   Producing Sound - I need to think more about the sound when developing concepts as this is a massive weakness of mine, or I need to find another source to produce a sound track for me or with me.

   In order to improve my skills in these areas I will be using illustrationfriday.com and working through the archive of topics and producing work either hand drawn, in Cinema 4D or in Illustrator, trying to stay away from using the media I feel comfortable with.

Opportunities:
   Music Video - producing a music video for local band Odd Shaped Head will be an opportunity to fine tune my modeling and stop motion skills, and get my work out there.
   Boreal Wallets -  producing wallet designs for an online store, again this gets my work out there as they also advertise the artists who produce the work.
   Festivals - producing work for festivals over the summer, or submitting the bands music video.
   Freelance work - the possibility of freelance work over the summer will help add to my portfolio and showreel and possibly provide opportunities to learn new software.
   Funding - applying for funding in order to buy the equipment I need to set up freelance.

Threats:
   Other animators - those who are more experienced than me and have better skills.
 
 

business cards, sneak preview...

I can't imagine I'll be updating much this week... or maybe I will in order to put off doing scary work stuff for hand in.

This is for part of my hand in though; my business card designs.
I decided to go for the mini cards from moo.com. Well, I say 'decided' I've known all along I wanted that size and hadn't really considered normal sized ones. It's only £11.99 for 100 of them, and you can upload up to 100 images so each card can be different. Bargain ay?

Well 100 images is a little too much, so I've opted for four. These four images will make up a full image when pieced together, kinda like collectors cards. There will be 3 panels which I am having 30 of each printed, then the fourth panel will only have 10 printed, and they'll be numbered; card 1, 2, 3 or 4. Of course the idea isn't really to collect them, it's just a bit of geeky fun, no one needs 4 of my business cards anyway!
These will tie in with the website though, as the main page will (hopefully) be of these four panels, so anyone who has a card and visits the website will see the whole image anyway. The idea is, if it's possible, to have each of the four panels as a hyperlink (or whatever you call it) to a page on my website, for example panel one will lead to my illustration page, panel two to my animation page and so on. These will be labelled of course, I'm thinking scanned in masking tape and a hand drawn font.

If everything I want to do is possible then there'll be some other fun sneaky bits too, but we wouldn't want to spoil it all would we?

So for now here's the cards so far. I still need to add the shrubbery for the floating heads to pop up from, the woodland floor and a whole bunch of other little fun details...

Finished ESTING...

So here it is, the finished Esting...

The more I watch it the more I want to redo so many things haha, but I haven't got time for that.
For my first real piece of stop motion I'm pretty pleased with it, especially considering the amount of issues I had during the model making process! ack!

I put the final cut together in iMovie because I find it a lot easier to work with, then dragged the finished edit into After Effects to add the binocular bit, which I drew up in Photoshop. I make it sound like it was a doddle, it was, but only after a friend of mine found out how to do it and talked me through it, so thanks to him for that :)

The sound leaves a lot to be desired as that was a rushed job in about 20 minutes y'day evening :s but it will have to suffice as I have far too much other stuff to do for hand in on Friday and I want to put this project to bed now. For some reason it's coming up as 11 seconds on youtube, but then it plays through as 10 *shrug* I'm not sure what's going on there.

So, yeah, that's that. Onto the next one...

Gaaaaahhhhhh...

Well, my penultimate week of college is now over, and I have a LOT of work to do. A LOT.

We had our little presentations today on final show. It was really good fun seeing what everyone had planned, I'm really excited about some of the ideas.
My lecturer seems to approve of mine too, and although I'm sticking with my new idea which all centers around Mabel... the squid is staying! HURRAH! Though he won't be on my board with Mabel's stuff, he's going to be suspended from the ceiling. Although I am thinking about tying him in somehow by having one of the digital paintings/photographs in the installation of Mabel's late husband catching the squid. I just think it'd be nice to tie it in somehow.
So I really need to start gathering stuff ASAP!

I have three modules that I have to hand in on friday, so I'm going to list them here so I can refer to it.

PPD

*File containing:

*All briefs, feedback forms and tutorial forms.

*CV and covering letter

*Business card designs

*Research into companies (with group presentation print out)

*Leaflets etc from exhibitions (NYC trip etc)

*Live briefs and competitions (YCN, D&AD etc)

*Blog - print off, screen shots of any linked websites and videos - evidence of time planning

*Inspiration -  artists, films, etc

*Business cards

*Showreel - one containing full versions of animation, one showing 'best of'

Portfolio Development

*A3 Portfolio

*Commentaries for each piece in portfolio -  justify relevance to skillset.

*Personal Ident

*A second animation or fully realised concept
*Model photos - tidy in PS

Work Related

*Negotiated Brief (E4 ESting)

*Presentations (E4 Movie night, Bands Video, E4 ESting)

*Work experience (OSH) and diary of work - meeting with band etc robots for website

*Uni courses

*Skill set print outs - skill set presentation.
*Boreal wallets

I also need to finish editing together the final animation for E4 and type up my research and development for it, fortunately the character board and storyboard is already done and mounted. If I can get all the written work out of the way this weekend I'll be happy! Then I can spend next week doing my ident and another 10 second animation! :s

Final Show Ideas...

I have to do a presentation tomorrow on my ideas for final show. As far as I know it's nothing major, this sort of thing seems to be Dave's way of making sure we're all on top of what we need to be doing, and as I've already discussed this with him I'm not too worried about it.

So as I've been sitting pondering it I thought I'd stick a few things on here.

This is my original idea for final show...

I had wanted to have a corner if I could, and have managed to put dibs on the old armchair that is knocking about the studio. For a long time now I've wanted to make a giant plushie squid which I have a pattern for, and so at the beginning of the year I decided to make it for final show. I wanted the rest of the show to be quite twee and chintzy, but none of this "shabby chic" stuff you see everywhere these days. I wanted to design a wallpaper for the walls, something that would look like a damask print, but then up close would have pictures in it, in particular dinosaurs. This would be two colours only, the images would be silhouettes, maybe a dark green on a lighter green background. 

I wanted to display my work by printing onto canvas and then framing this using embroidery hoops in various sizes and hanging them on one of the walls. This would mean that I could also add to some of the pieces by sewing onto them. On the other wall I wanted to hang plates which I would paint. I wanted to do some 3D stuff too, rather than just lots of images, so I decided to do my own version of flying ducks; either jelly fish or something to tie in with the squid, or I had another idea based on an old drawing I did of a cowboy and having a cowboy, an indian and a cactus. Finally, to play my animations I wanted to use one of the monitors and build a box for it, drawn in my flat 2D style and dress it up like a retro TV. I also wanted to try and get an old magazine rack to put my portfolio in so it would fit in with the layout.

Anyway, there are a bunch of problems with this...

Firstly the boards we have to use can't be painted or wallpapered because of health and safety, they would be a fire hazzard. So if I want to have wallpaper I'll have to mount it on panels the size of the boards and mount them onto the boards... why that is any less of a fire hazzard I don't know! 

Secondly, I might not necessarily get to have a corner.

Thirdly, I kind of need to have more of a theme. This idea is a little all over the place, it's all random bits and pieces thrown together.

SO, I need to have a think, come up with some alternatives, but for now I've rejigged this one a little and tried to give it more of a theme and keep all the pieces tied together. This is a quick doodle I did in PS of how the layout might look...

This one is all centered around my granny character, Mabel, and I've done it based on only having one board to work with, this actually means less space to fill so I can spend more time on individual pieces.

I'd still like to do a wallpaper, though maybe not dinosaurs as it wouldn't really suit Mabel! Maybe something to do with knitting? Anyway, I want to have framed work on the walls, like a little old womans house, and these will be digital paintings of Mabel and her late husband from various stages of their life together. I still plan to do the TV/monitor thing if possible, and might have a photo or two in frames on top of that. I would still want to use the magazine rack for my portfolio too. As I wouldn't be making the poor squid, I like the idea of making Mabels dead cat, which in my original character designs is constantly slumped over her arm like a handbag. I also like the idea of having her slippers by the side of the chair as if she's left them there. I'd like to try and get hold of an old lamp too, or if I have time make a cage, in the same way I want to do the box for the TV, and have a plushie budgie in it.

Anyway the idea is that it'd be like a little section of Mabels life, and you'd be able to watch some of it on the TV in the form of a 2.5D animation. I've had a brief outline for an animation I wanted to do for Mabel for a long time now, so this would be a good chance to do it. What I hope to achieve is having people look at the images and watch the animation and feel something; feel sad or feel sorry for Mabel, 'cause then I know I've done a good job of building the characters background and animating her well!

More bits and pieces...

Here's the next bit of animation for the boy character, after he looks through the binoculars and sees something in the water...

This is the view through the binoculars the first time the boy looks through them. The animation is pretty fast, I'm running out of time as I only have 10 seconds to play with and ideally I'd have liked to keep the E4 logo on the screen for 3 seconds at the end, looks like it might have to be just 2 seconds now. This will be cut down to 1 second, I've tried to make everything a little longer at the end so that this dead space can be trimmed to make the final edit fit together better. Next I need to animate the final scene where the logo comes out of the water so it's more visible and bobs there for a bit... 

and so it begins...

Yesterday I finally managed to finish making bits and pieces for the E4 animation, including the binoculars, which were super fiddly. Seems I only took one photo during the making process, but will take one later of those and the E4 that I made and update it on here...

Setting up was pretty difficult due to the lack of equipment, I had to just use any lamps that I could steal from around the house and set up on the floor in the corner of my room with my camera propped up on some books! It'll do for now. Once I can afford it I'll have to invest in a tripod and some decent lighting, which I'm sure is going to cost a small fortune!...

I used three lights, one on either side of the set and one behind the camera. Ideally one of those would be lighting the background but as it was very small I needed the model to stand really close in front of it so that it would fill the camera so I couldn't fit a light in between the two...

I did a few test shots on Dragon to try and get the exposure right, then did some little bits of animation, which I tried to put up on youtube but they weren't playing properly.

Eventually I did the first part of the animation, I tried rendering it out two different ways as I wasn't entirely sure how I should do it. Here's the first...

I rendered this one out as high resolution jpegs, and as you can see the light flickers really badly. The bulbs in the lights I'm using are energy saving bulbs which are fluorescent and so they flicker constantly, the camera picks up on this and so it's visible in the animation. I'm hoping to put a filter on the animation so this might disguise it a little, but I also think it makes the animation look less smooth.

For this next version I rendered it out as a Video and it seems to have smoothed it out a little so I feel it looks a lot better.

There are still things I'm not too happy with; the reaction/double take he does is really poor, I'm hoping that once I add the mouth on afterwards it will look a little better.

Nearly there...

For the sets I drew everything by hand in ink and then scanned it onto the computer. First I tidied the line work up in live trace as this kept it looking rough and hand drawn, then I transferred these images into Photoshop and coloured the line work and used flat colour with a texture over the top on a very low opacity. I used a water texture for the waves, and a wood grain texture for the boat piece, then used the same worn-paper texture on everything (the same one I used on the story boards).

All the set pieces were printed onto matt bond paper for a high quality finish, and the fact that it's matt means that it won't reflect the lighting when I'm animating.

To assemble the pieces I first cut them all out with a scalpel...

Next step was to cut some card strips to create a framework for the back of each piece to make it rigid so it could stand upright. Originally I was going to mount the pieces on card and cut them out, but this wasn't very economical and the card was very thick so it would be difficult to cut the details out without it looking messy. These pieces were glued onto the back of the printed pieces...

To create the waves, which will be animated by sliding back and forth, I created a rig from card. At first I had intended for each wave to stand by itself so it could be moved independently of the others, but the pieces on the back to stand it up would need to be long enough to counterbalance the weight and this would mean the gaps between the layers would be too wide. The solution was to have alternating waves on one piece of rig. The rigs were made from the same rigid card as the frame. I'm not sure how to explain how it was made, hopefully the pictures are pretty self explanatory...

The first image shows the strip that was scored and glued to created the sections that the waves would be glued to. The flat side of this and the sides of each vertical section were glued to an 'L' shaped piece of card...

A corresponding piece was made in the same way, this time without a side piece as the 2nd set of waves would need to slide through this...

Once the alternating pieces were glued to the rig, this provided one half of the entire piece...

The same was done for the other half with the other set of alternating waves, but with a mirror image of the rigging parts. For the 2nd half of the rig the waves were glued to the outer edge first, then this was placed along side the other half of the rig, with the waves alternating. The other end of the waves were glued to another strip to keep them in place, and interlocking the two halves of the rig. These can now be slid back and forth using the two end pieces allowing the waves to be animated. Man, I'm not sure any of that made sense! haha, just look at the photo below, it's pretty clear how it works, I think...

So next up I needed to finish the model...

I marked out where the hole needed to be for the head and drilled a hole. I worked out roughly how deep the hole needed to be and then once it was done, I gradually trimmed down the silicone around the neck, filled the hole with a glue gun and then pushed it on and held it in place...

So here he is. There are still some things I need to fix, after animating I'd like to go back and tidy up the legs and paint them with the same solution I used on the arms and neck, just so they all match, and I need to re sew the trousers, but they won't be seen in the animation so it can wait, it's more for myself, to make the model look a bit more finished.

The mouth in the photo is a small piece of black card held in place with blu tack. I prefer the card mouths I made but they're so small and fiddly so I'll be using the sculpey ones I made; they're just like the granny ones only painted in a flesh tone slightly darker than his face. They make him look like he's got Mick Jagger lips, but I think they might work better for animating, we'll just have to see how it goes...

E4 Model Progress...

Well I've been putting this off for a little while, I didn't really want to put photos up because of how terribly wrong things have gone and I'm not too happy with the model.

On the plus side it's allowed me to iron out a few issues with the model making process before I do the bands models, and now that the model is dressed I don't hate it quite as much as I did... it's still not what I had hoped to achieve, but time is short so I'll have to work with what I've got...

Firstly, as time was short and I was in a panic, I forgot to take all the paints I needed to college on the day of casting, and the flesh tint I had was very pink, but as I couldn't afford to leave casting another day I just had to go ahead using the paint I had and hope I could maybe fix it afterwards in After Effects. Turns out that was the least of my problems as when I opened the mould there was a lot of trapped air in the mould and the hands hadn't come out well at all.

Where the wire had been touching the side of the mould the wire was poking through and all along the side of one arm was one big air bubble. The feathering around the edge of the model was bad too as the damaged caused to the model during the first casting had ruined the edges where the mould meets...

As the arms were thin the polymorph inside was showing through too...

When making the bands models they will need to be a lot bigger, the arm and legs will need to be thicker so ensure there is a thicker layer of silicone covering the wire and polymorph, and the hands and fingers will also need to be bigger and longer.

In order to patch the model up a little I filled half of the mould with silicone, placed the model back in it and then closed it up, this meant that the arms of the mould were already filled with silicone. I also cut some runners into the arms so that the air could escape, and then once the silicone had settled I topped it up little by little.

I used the head I had already started making for Alice. To make the hair I used felt and cut strips by measuring them against the head and gluing them into place piece by piece...

I left the back pieces of felt long then trimmed them to the length I wanted...

The eyes were painted with brown acrylic, I chose brown as I felt black would look too harsh...

When I had opened the mould after patching up the arms the model was really badly stuck to the mould, particularly around the hands and so I had to cut it out :( This left a really messy edge around the arms and hands of the model which I was really disappointed with. To tidy this up I made a solution from clear bathroom silicone and oil paint with some white spirit to thin it so that I could paint it on. This unfortunately picked up on all the messy bits of silicone and raggedy edges so that it looked even worse that it originally had! I added a few layers of this solution, some of them thicker to try and fill in the gaps. The only benefit of this was that it allowed me to change the colour to match the head of the model...

I made some trousers using a navy fabric from two panels sewn around the legs. They're pretty messy, they need to be re sewn properly but they won't be seen in the animation anyway so I don't want to waste time fixing them just yet...

To make the shirt I cut out four panels of white fabric, one for the front of the shirt, one for the back, and one for each sleeve. First I sewed the front and back panel together at the top, leaving a gap for the neck so it was kind of like a poncho, then I hemmed the sides (as I couldn't sew the shirt then put it on the model it would have to be sewn onto the model, and the hemmed edges would be sewn together leaving a neater edge, you'll see what I mean later). Next step was to sew the sleeves on so that the centre of the sleeve panel was in line with the shoulder seam, this would leave the sleeve seam on the inside of the arm (man that's a bit of a tongue twister). Again these were hemmed on each edge...

Once all the edges of the shirt had been sewn ready to sew it onto the model I tacked it in place on the model and drew on the stripes. I then painted these on using red fabric paint...

The images below shows me stitching the shirt onto the model, sewing the hemmed edges together. This made it a lot easier to do, as for granny I sewed her sleeves by just tucking the raw edges in and sewing it together and it was very awkward. To sew this I started at the arm pit and sewed down the side of the torso, and then did the arms starting from the armpit too. This helped to make sure I kept the fabric lined up properly, I could afford to alter the cuffs and bottom of the shirt if they didn't line up, but if the seams in the armpit hadn't lined up it would have looked messy and needed un picked and redone...

For the trousers I had used invisible thread, which is clear, plasticy and very shiny, and so didn't work well on the dark fabric, I plan to replace it with a navy cotton thread which will be less visible. The plastic thread does work well on lighter fabrics though and I used it for all the hems, but when sewing the shirt together on the model I used white cotton thread. This allowed me to go back and tidy up the seams by painting the stitches in the red areas of the shirt which are darker and would have shown the invisible thread. Below shows the first stripe on the left after being painted with fabric paint, and the other two before hand...

The hat for the character is pretty basic, so I just made it with some thick paper. I curled a tube of paper and pinned it, then cut it to fit the characters head. Once I got the size and shape I wanted I opened it out and used this as a template. Using a navy fineliner I added the detail, then secured the shape using a little piece of tape and tacked this loosely to the felt on the models head. As I plan to use this model again and will be removing all the hair and the hat I didn't want to waste time making the hat from fabric. The model will only be shot from one angle too so this should do the trick...

So this is where I'm at at the moment...

The head needs a hole drilled into it, and then the silicone on the neck trimmed down and the head glued on, the feet also need painted but they won't be visible in the animation so if they don't get finished it's no big deal, they'll be getting painted a different colour for the next project I'm using it for anyway...

3rd May - 9th May

Well based on last weeks list I'm predicting a lot of the little extras I put on this weeks list won't get done, unless I manage to do a lot of catching up. As things haven't been going quite as planned the order in which I'm doing things has been jumbled, and so I'm scrapping the whole colour coordination thing! hurrah.

Bank holiday means no college on Monday (or so I'm assuming) so at least I'll be able to catch up on stuff and hopefully get back on track by finishing off mounting sets and finishing off the model.

So, this weeks plan, which can probably be taken with a pinch of salt, looks like this...

Monday 3rd May: Mount sets. Gather sound. Make Binoculars. Attach models head. Type up Research. Start typing up Development.

Tuesday 4th May: Animating. Gather images for Portfolio.

Wednesday 5th May: Animating. Plan images for showreel and choose music.

Thursday 6th May: Animating. Concept for 2.5D animation.

Friday 7th May: AM: PPD. PM: Editing. Add sound.

Saturday 8th May: WORK. Typing up Development.

Sunday 9th May: Finish all E4 written work? (Development and Evaluation). Portfolio work. Branding. 2.5D concept.

I've given myself a lot of time to do the animation, at least I think I have, just incase I come across any problems. With any luck it'll take less time than that and I can catch up on things!