11SecondClub January 2015

During the month of January I gave myself the challenge of completing an 11SecondClub animation and submitting it into the month's competition. And that's exactly what I did! :D

After listening to the piece of audio at the start of the month I knew it was going to be a fun one!
To me it sounded like a drunk women giving a speech - and i tried to think where would her speech of 'feeling excited and wanting to party' be the most inappropiate and therefore amusing... a memorial service! These are the pages from my sketchbook, writing and drawing out ideas:

I also had the idea of a second character to react to the main character to make the situation even more amusing and understandable. It also added the challenge of animating a character interacting with another.
I shot some rather funny reference footage which became very useful!

(used a water bottle and a pen as my wine glass and microphone...)

With my more elaborate idea this time, a more interesting background environment was needed:

This lead to me creating an older looking version of 'Malcolm' - therefore all the characters in the scene looked like they are related:

I submitted my animation and it ranked 67th out of 179 entries which wasn't too bad for my first submission! I also took part in 11SecondClub to see if I could get some critic and advice from the others on the site. Overall the comments said I had a good idea and a funny scenario which was great to hear; and things I need to work on is polishing my animation and looking out for things such as 'floaty arms'!

- Malcolm character courtesy of AnimSchool.com

Supervising A Life Drawing Class

I was asked to supervise a life drawing class for the 2nd year animation students. For this class the theme was portraits and different angles of the head. As I have always been the student sitting down drawing I have never had to concentrate on what the next pose would be. Therefore I had my Moleskine notebook with me to keep track of what poses had already been done and how long the poses were, so the students ended up with a variety of drawings by the end of the session. I also called out the time left for each drawing. From past experience I know how much you can get caught up in a drawing, not realise the time is up, and to not have that last minute warning to add the finishing touches your drawing! I also went around the students every so often to see how they were getting on and give advice where I could :)

Notes and quick sketches from my notebook to keep track of the poses:

Life Drawing 29/04/2015

Went along to a life drawing class in the morning. The first half of the class was quick poses followed by 2 longer poses in the second half:

Lip Sync November 2014 challenge

This is the first ever piece of lip sync animation practice I've done. I decided to use the November 2014 audio clip released by 11SecondClub.com. That way I was able to see how others were getting along animating to the same clip by looking through the forums on the site. The website is also completely full of great examples of lip sync and filled with good advice.

I listened to the piece of audio first and then brainstormed some ideas. Once I decided on one of the ideas I shot some reference footage. Next I downloaded AnimSchool's Malcolm rig (free to download from their website). I think it's a great rig and character to use for animation practice - the rig and controls are easy to use and the Animation Picker is an amazing tool!

These are pages from my sketchbook where I wrote out the audio, drew quick sketches of my ideas, and started to note down advice from 11 Second Club and Digital Tutors about lip sync and facial animation:

For the scene, I had the idea of a man giving himself a pep talk in a mirror. I had to work out in Maya how to create a mirror effect and I ended up achieving this by using a Phong shader in the colour black with the reflectivity turned to full:

experimenting with mirror effects...

not quite there yet...

success! :)

- Malcolm character courtesy of AnimSchool.com

A Return to Life Drawing

Considering I haven't been to a life drawing class in quite a few months, I don't think I did too badly! Although I did panic slightly that I had completely lost my drawing skills during the first drawing - top left figure in first picture... :p

Bookstore observations...

Was sat in Waterstones with a peppermint tea and one of the new ginger syrup Christmas muffins (yum) and got the sketchbook out to do a bit of observational drawing. The old man reading with the magnifying glass fell asleep for quite a while until the store got more busy - I probably would too in a cosy corner surrounded by books! :p

"Do you know the muffin man?"

New studio...

Since finishing the Masters course I have been one of DJCAD's Animators in Residence! So I have a new studio, which I share with the other Animator in Residence, to work on personal projects whilst helping out with the department.
I gave the room a good spring cleaning and now it just needs a window fixed - keeping big scarf on for now!

AnimSchool's Malcolm rig is looking a little angry in this one :p

Things that I would like to work on during the residency:
- Showreel (including examples of lipsync, and missing examples of animation principles and acting)
- CV
- Website (think I definitely need to create one!)