more presents....

fah lah lah lah laaaah, lah lah lah laahhh...

I finally have a day off! Hurrah! So i've been wrapping christmas presents :D I figure it's a creative process so I'm posting them on here. And anyway, they do look rather pretty even if I do say so myself. I knew that my drawer full of salvaged ribbons from christmases past would come in useful!!

...

Change of plan for Christmas, I'm now going to be making my moulds out of Vinamold, which, even if I order now, won't be processed until after christmas (booo!). So over christmas I'll be making the armatures for all the models, and building a few of them up with plasticine ready to use to make the mould. I can probably start on the clothes and stuff too 'cause the plasticine models will be the same size as the final ones. The Vinamold can be melted down and reused so it'll be a lot more cost effective than using plaster as once I've cast a few models from one mould I can reuse it for the next.

I'm also meeting up with the guys from Odd Shaped Head this week to discuss the possibility of doing a music video for them. If it all goes ahead then I'll be doing it as one of my college briefs, and as I'll be getting paid for it, if I struggle to get a placement, I can use it as my work experience.

I haven't been too well today, so I've been snuggled up watching DVDs, drinking a lot of tea (as per usual), doing a little work on my armatures, and drawing a picture for my christmas cards! Rather than making loads of bits by hand for it like I have done in the past, I drew a picture on brown paper and have coloured it up in photoshop. I'm just going to print it onto photopaper and make some cards to put it on. Can't afford to buy cards this year, so a few people will be getting these. It's the thought that counts right?

GENIUS!...

this is why i love them so much....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8408233.stm

So everyone in class is looking at Universities for next year, I've already done a degree so i'm not looking to do a third year, firstly 'cause I've got my Design degree to back up the two years i'm doing at the moment, secondly because I want to get out into the workplace, and THIRDLY it'll cost me 4 grand for the 3rd year and I don't get a student loan! So instead i'm looking at companies that I can target. At the moment my interest lies with model making, but I've only made one model and that might have been a complete fluke, that's why I'm doing my live brief in stop motion, to see if I can do it and so that I have something to put in my portfolio.

The only company I've looked at so far is http://www.mackinnonandsaunders.com/ which is very unlikely, a bit of a dream job!

This week I managed to make three of the armatures for my E4 project. After having a few problems with Grannys armature I made sure that this time I twisted the wire as tight as I could get it. The armatures have proved to be a little bit of a chore as I need to get them all the same size so that they fit in the mould I make.

Yesterday I covered one of the armatures with plasticine to flesh out the body ready to make a mould from it. I made the neck longer than it would need to be so that I can trim down the silicone and attach the heads afterwards. I did the same thing with the feet as these too will be added afterwards. I'm making the feet out of Polymer clay so that I can add tie downs as these can not be glued to the silicone afterwards.

So to make the mould I first made a box from card (with the help of Mr Folwell) and filled it with a layer of plaster. Once this had dried I placed the plasticine model on top of it and added another layer of plaster, filling from the corners to flood the mould, filling it up to halfway up the side of the model. Once this is dry, slip (water and clay) will be added to the top layer before adding another layer of plaster to stop the two layers bonding together.

There are a few areas on the mould where there is some undercutting, hopefully the silicone will be flexible enough to remove without causing any damage to the mould.

Mondays plan is to get some oil paint on the way to college to colour the silicone, add the 1mm wire to the armature to make the fingers and cast them with the silicone. I also plan to make another two moulds, another male figure and a female figure, so that I can be casting 3 figures at a time. Hopefully i'll have a few models to be working on over christmas to make clothes for.

We had group tutorials today to see where we're up to with the stop motion project (the Granny one). As a result I have a to do list to complete for January 4th, the day I go back to college after Christmas...

1. Time Plan - I need to add to this and detail what scenes we will be working on and when etc.

2. Concept art - This will either be done by scanning a scene from Sams storyboards and colouring it up or photographing Granny in a pose and using that to create some concept art.

3. Building the set - the majority of the set work is done, it just needs printed off on a large scale to suit the models and mounted onto card.

4. Stock Footage - collecting stock footage for the montage at the beginning of the animation

5. Collect Sound - collect a number of sounds for the animation so that when we get back after christmas we have a large sound bank to choose from.

6. Pixelation - to create the scene where the hands are holding cutlery Pixelation will be used. I also need to make the cutlery props for this.

7. Create my own Timeplan - as well as the group stuff I have my E4 stuff to do, which is a lot of work! (9 stop motion models to make!!!) so I need to organise myself!

here's some doodles to keep you occupied...

 

I drew this at college today... when I probably should have been doing work :s I think I might draw it up properly and colour it up.

And this was something I doodled in bed the other night. Neil does this drawing a day thing, so I bought a little sketchbook, 10cm x 10cm, and was going to fill a page a day with a doodle. I did this one four days ago and haven't done one since...

Mission (almost) accomplished...

The plan for today was to rework the story for my live brief, rework the storyboards and finalize my character designs. Unfortunately I didn't get a lot of it done. I did a few things off my 'PPD to do' list instead, just odd little bits and bobs so that took up my morning.

This afternoon I did manage to work on the storyline for my live brief, I changed quite a few bits though, to explain this I did a page explaining it for the Development in my sketchbook. I also typed up the storyline in a script format which I hadn't planned on doing. 

As far as character designs go I hit a bit of a wall. Nothing I was drawing looked right, so I was getting frustrated with it. In the end I coloured two of them up (see below) though they're bit rubbish. I need to find out if I need to do proper character boards for every character as I have about 8 at the moment, hopefully i will only need to do one for the two main characters and can just do a few scribbles for the supporting characters. These drawings will do for now for when it comes to dressing the figures. 

Hopefully tomorrow I can sit down with my lecturer and figure out what I need to order to start making it all!

Showreel

Well I've put it off as long as I could but here it is, my showreel. 

Pains me a little to put it up 'cause there's so many faults with each animation so I'm a little embarrassed to post it, but i need to for my PPD Module. Ho Hum, all the more reason to do better this year so next years reel is less embarrassing!

It was really thrown together at the last minute for hand in too. I'd like my next one to have some of my artwork in, and break up the animations rather than just running through them all, just have little clips of them.

Ticking off the "to do" list...

Well I managed to get my 2D Pensioner very nearly finished on tuesday! was just after midnight when I packed in working (by like 6 minutes, so it still all counts as being done on Tuesday really...) but I had him drawn up in photoshop and coloured. 

I didn't get much done at all yesterday as I got to college and we had a computer lesson. We learnt how to use Flash. I didn't get much finished, I found it pretty frustrating to use, but I'll be going back to it as it looks like it'd be pretty useful for creating quick little animations and animatics once I get the hang of it. So hopefully i'll get on top of my workload so I have time to go back and play around with it.

This morning I finished off my 2D pensioner by adding some textures. He's not amazing but he's only to stand in the background so he'll do. I also typed up some Development work for my Live Brief work after my presentation the other day, taking on board some of the feedback from Dave. So the rest of today will be spent adding to the script, reworking the storyboards and hopefully drawing up the final set, doing some character designs, and drinking a LOT of tea.

These last few posts have been pretty wordy! so for those of you who don;t bother reading it and just look at the pretty pictures, here's Gramps...

so far not sooooo bad...

Well I managed to get some of my stuff done today, just! and there's still an hour left so who knows what else I might manage to do!

Dave told us today he wanted all of our research finished... today. That hasn't happened unfortunately. I've managed to look at several examples of mixed media animations and techniques and save some images to annotate but haven't put it together and typed it up yet. I had the choice of putting my own stuff on hold or putting the group work on hold, and I didn't want to be responsible for holding the group project up when there's 3 other people to consider. So I prioritized as best I could.

So from my list for today I managed to sort out the script (changing some scenes round and adding new ones), type up the 31 questions we were given to answer as a group about the project, and do the images for the piles of junk for the outdoor animation scenes. 

I still need to do the 2D pensioner and a few props but hopefully they won't take too long and I can maybe do them tomorrow.

On the upside... The guys from boreal.org.uk have asked me to do the background for the website for christmas AND they sent me one of my designs in it's finished wallet form for my portfolio, and i'm super chuffed with how it looks all printed up and sewn together. Not sure whether to save it or use it! Will post some photos when I manage to get some.