grad panels next week

I think I'll be ready for grad panels, but one can never be sure. We have to have 1 minute of animation, 3 rendered scenes, and an updated production schedule. Wheee!



Here's a little look at what my watercolour work process is like...generally I just spread things out on tables. I was unsure with some of my backgrounds as to if I should keep them as boils as it was a bit too hectic-looking for me, but I think I will just bump them down to 7.5 frames a second (I've been doing the rest at 15 fps on 2's, so essentially 30, or 29.97 fps.)...so far tests at that speed have looked pretty decent, so that's my plan for now.

I just finished making all my waterbottles bob. They may be bobbing too fast. Darn it all!

waterfalls

I've discovered that I have no idea how to animate water properly! I still managed to finish animating and painting the waterfall scene yesterday, though. Here's a still...I have a boil for the background byt I may end up changing that if it looks too busy.

tests and more leica

Things have been going pretty smoothly -- I'm actually getting some work done!
If you'd like to see the fifty billionth version of my leica reel, you can click here ... again, it's about 80MB.

I've also been doing some animation! Wow!
Here's just some bottled water boils (this is so edgy and topical if you're in Vancouver right now!) that will eventually be moving around in after effects in some water. There will be 18 in total -- 9 different boils with two label/colour variations each (not shown here). I'm doing the start of this scene to the end of the waterfall-turning-to-dribbles scene for my motion graphics final project, which is a nice way to get two water bottles with one turbid rainstorm. (ha ha, that so didn't work).

ps. I can't remember how to embed video with html...can anyone help me? I tried a web tutorial thing that didn't really help.

leica leica

Okay, I think this is one of (if not the) finalish drafts of my leica. It's 63 megs, but if you're able to check it out and give me feedback, that'd be really appreciated. I'm pretty happy with it, I think.

After talking to Marilyn earlier this week, I decided to do the ol' "scan at hd, render at sd" trick, and have the hd fieldguide sitting on my desk to prove it.

Now: to work!

trying to find the grindstone

Work on my film has been exceedingly slow these past few weeks. I've come to the realization that I always like having a lot of little things to do; small projects and artworks and such. I think, though, that to get this film done by April I'm realllly going to have to cut back on them. Fortunately I don't have too many more non-grad-film related school projects to do, so I can focus in that regard at least.

The things I'm working on this weekend include:

• starting rough animation
• finishing my leica reel changes
  (here's three panels that I scanned together that I thought looked kind of cool when all put together for some reason:)
• deciding once and for all whether I am doing this in HD or SD! I keep flip-flopping....I'd do it in HD, but I don't want to get to April and have to turn in my film late because I am rendering....plus since I have so much after effects compositing to do I'm afraid it'll slow that stage down. But at the same time it'd be nice to work in HD.....hm, I don't know.
• starting to get a list of needed sounds down as I will be recording my first foley session on wednesday or thursday (or both). The sounds in my reel still are really not how I would want them, but I think I'd prefer to just start getting things how I want them than fiddle around with scratch sound forever.

Here's an image of what is technically not the first animation that I will do on this film (as I did a watercolour-boil test a few weeks ago), but it is probably the first bit of animation that has the possibility of ending up in the acual film in some way. It's one leg of a polar bear, ha ha!
My desk, while I was working:
Note the Richard Williams book for reference (that doesn't have quadriped walk cycles in it for some reason it seems!) , the loose bear skeleton for anatomy, the tea for drinking, the apple for eating, and the pencil....for drawing.

Hopefully I'll have the final draft of my leica up sometime this week!

in between

I've taken a few days off of thinking about my leica after my weekend adventure. Today I drew and painted some stuff from reference to get back into it. Icebergs and bears, respectively. I really need to learn how to draw all sorts of (non)random things! Shoot. And: hooray!

leica reel take 2

If you're curious about my leica reel (draft the second; the first draft is incomprehensible and I will not be showing it around), it's here. It's rather large (83M I think?), so you might have to right-click and save, or else just....wait a while. It's 3:46, which makes me happy as it's right about where I wanted it to be (the first darft was 4:00, which made me a bit nervous).

I had my grad panel this morning and it went well I felt -- the faculty members had lots of good suggestions and didn't seem to get lost, even though one of them had not seen any of my lead-up work to it and didn't know what to expect. I feel like I'm getting closer here... maybe with another draft or two I'll be at the point where I can just start animating / recording sound / etc -- though I don't intend to redraw the whole leica again....my wrists and back area already paying the price of doing that once!

One of the biggest suggestions made (I felt) was to have no music to the film, which is something that I hadn't considered before, though I did intend for the music to be a lot lighter than it is here (and less Philip-Glassy) and to be more of an ambient kind of thing rather than as "40's Melodrama"* as the scratch music is.

In any case, if you do take a gander at the reel, I'd really appreciate some feedback -- there are a few things that I'll definitely be changing (mainly with some of the images as it gets to the climax, though there's a few other places too), but it'd be good to hear what other people think as well. I'm a bit nervous showing this kind of stuff to people partly due to uncertainty about my animation skills and also because I think this project is going to mean a lot to me (not that it doesn't already), but at the same time I want it to be the best film that I can make at this point, and I don't think it's quite there yet. Critiques? Very welcome.
Thanks!


*that's from Marilyn. And it's so true!

new things!

Soo....the summer is over, and fall is upon us once again. Since I don't have time for the drawing-a-day whilst in school, this is going to become my production blog for my grad film until May, where presumably I'll just post drawings again. I'll still post non-grad-film related drawings in my sketchjournal.

For my first grad-related post, I'll get you up to speed -- at this point, I am on the cusp of my fall grad panel where I have to present mainly my leica reel, among a few other things. This weekend I completely re-drew my leica, after realizing that the version I had previously done was not at all comprehensible to new viewers. The images worked as storyboards with explinations beside them, but they really didn't speak for themselves, and a lot of the morph/pan transitions didn't come across at all. So...here's how it went:

To start off: materials! Watercolours kindly donated by Winston (thanks!), a brush, index cards from staples, a brown col-erase pencil, and a pencil sharpener.

Here's the first five panels, in process:


A few hours later, things are much the same. You can see that I have the older, smaller images for reference in front of me.

The next day, I finished! Here's the final stack, 75 paintings in total. Whew!

Here's a few of the finished panels....

Aug 11-13

August 11 and 13 are from the Folk Fest and an old doodle that I coloured up, accidently shut off power on my computer before saving, and then scanned and coloured agian. Wheee! I think I liked the first version better (in that one it was night-time and the sky was dark blue.


In any case, I am heading out on holidays tomorrow morning, so there'll be a lot of nothing for a week, and then a lot of everything. in theory.

long weekend pictures

I don't even know if we have an excuse for the long weekend (a la "BC Day") here in Alberta. Is it Heritage Weekend, or am I just thinking of the Heritage Days? In any case....

august 5:
doodles from Chapters, where I was sitting for 4 hours manning a zine table. And then, one from the lake, where I went after work.




august 6:
the next day. A face!


august 7:
this one was a doodle inspired by a crochet hat jordyn made. It's called "The Mariner Stole My Salty Heart". Ha ha ha!


august 9:
August 8 was comics again, so here's the 9th: staff meeting doodles amalgamated.

august

the first few days of August I was drawing comics that I'm not posting yet, but here's what I did on the 4th day!

end of july

and it's upon us already! august!

I sort of totally didn't draw much for a week. Weird. In any case, here I am back now with the last few days of July.....

july 28:
part of a garbage bin at rehearshal, and then a blind countour lang while....sitting somewhere?


july 30:
In a realllllly delicious Pad Thai restaurant with my parents and Dorian; this was what Dorian's beer looked like before he spilled it all over the table.


july 31:
A doodle while watching movies with an awesome cote and a cute puppy. It's a girl in profile! Holding a bowl-ish thing! Wowie!

july 14 - 20

A new batch of mostly scribbles!

july 14:
A monoprint that I made as a demo for a class I was teaching at my work. Fiddled around with in Photoshop. I've never done much printmaking, so this was fun and I may do more of this kind of thing!


july 15 and 16:
the local river city shakespeare company put on delightful performances of hamlet and taming of the shrew this year. I always adore their costumes (designed by narda mccarroll for as long as I've been seeing them), so I'll usually bring along the ol' sketchbook to doodle some while they perform. I meant to fancy these up a bit, but ....oh, well.


july 17:
obviously from the same inspiration as the previous day, I doodled these while at an art workshop run by my good friend jordyn. I was really tired for some reason that day.




july 18:
yeah, so this week turned into "week of vests and hats". A doodle while I was learning about my chinese zodiac signs (ox/snake/rooster, though the last two don't seem to fit).


july 19-20:
I did eleven of these portraits altogether, for the programme for the production of 'the green room' which will be premiereing at the athabasca fringe festival tomorrow at 9pm, and then at the edmonton fringe later on. http://gnomadicartists.com

july 11 and 12 were a drawing filled time.

lots of weird little work doodles here! Be prepared for some Disregarded Anatomical Correctness.

july 11:
First off, a lot of these are a result of my having seen 'Mirrormask' finally. A great film with a greatly underdeveloped story, it got me on a mask and coloured skin kick, mostly influenced by the character 'Valentine'.

I don't know what this one is, but it was the first.



On staff meeting notes. A hipster greaser and a lady pirate (yes, I saw the film).


I think this one's my favourite of the bunch? from the same staff meeting, I like the two people flanking the middle one.

july 12:

masks and markers:

trying to do...children's illustration? I don't know. Something. I don't like how it turned out, but it was a try.

A character design? Gone wrong? We had these tall strips of paper at work that I borrowed one or two of. Again, I apologize for the anatomy. Yeeks.


Another trio, and again I dislike the middle and like the sides.

july thus far

july 1:
we went on a road trip/camping trip over the long weekend. Here's some sleepers. Canada Day Nap.


july 2:
we went to the royal tyrrell museum during the trip and I did a bunch of quick dino-sketches there.





july 3,4,5:
I didn't do much else during this time, but I did work on one of my webcomics, May. Here's a panel.

june 6:
a rough draft of some costume design ideas for a play that I'm in that will be in the Vancouver Fringe this year.

june 28 +29

june 28 + 29:
a lady and some weird floating clothes, what can I say? It felt nice to be doing some good ol' ink washes with the lady there, I haven't actually done that in a while. I referenced the dress from a Victorian-era dress of a woman who lived in Essex, but I really screwed up the bottom (so I cut most of it off, ha ha!).

I need a new brush, and also to learn how to carry my brush around with me without damaging it.