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: