Adobe Illustrator

Used Illustrator for the first time today. Just playing around at first and then we had to replicate a logo using a template. Lots of fun!

 

Meg's Animation lesson 27/02/15

As always, lots of fun in Meg's animation class today using Flash. We looked at using 'tweens' - both class and motion.

 

Flashy fun

 

Flashy fluttering

 

Flashy flowers

 

 

Life Drawing 25/02/15

So we had Brian as our life model again today. We started off with some quick standing poses and then moved on to reclining poses using collage. Enjoyable as always. :)

 

10 and 5 minute sketches in charcoal

(I want to call this one 'Get off my ball'!)

2 minute poses in chalk

50ish minute pose initially in charcoal, then worked into with collage and then ink over the top

20 minute pose in charcoal, chalk, collage and ink

Fantastic Voyage - initial ideas

Very excited to be briefed on our new project today - Fantastic Voyage! From the four choices of virus/parasite we were given, I've decided to focus on the Influenza Virus. From the description and images that Dr Klappa has given us, I could envisage lots of hands grabbing from the cell to the virus and pulling it in (possibly with a theme park feel to it?! I still have lots of thinking to do about this!). The nucleus of the cell I could see as a 'room of mirrors' where the RNA replication happens. Some of the RNA would then 'sneak out the back door' into the main part of the cell where the 'translation' happens, before they punch their way out of the membrane and go on to create a new virus in the body.

Diagram of the Influenza Virus

 

 

Initial thoughts are to aim this towards a younger audience, maybe 8-10 year olds. I'm not sure this subject would be as appealing to Key Stage 3 children as they may struggle to grasp the concepts and lose interest. I'm planning on doing a little bit of early market research to see how aware children around 6-12 years old are of Influenza and this will hopefully help me to target the right audience.

 

Another thought I had was to aim this at a slightly wider audience and create a (possibly interactive) video that can be played in doctors' surgeries or maybe science museums which will be shown on a continuous loop. I would need to ensure that any music or voices used weren't too irritating; that they could be listened to several times in a row without getting annoying. Obviously it would need to be family friendly and not too scary for more vulnerable audiences.

 

Any thoughts very welcome.

Master painting studies

So happy to have lessons with Jordan again and really excited about the things he has in store for us to do! This week we looked at master painters and tried to begin replicating several famous paintings by mapping in blocks of colour. The exercise really made us look carefully at the particular colours used instead of what we might immediately imagine them to be. Very interesting and enjoyable. I hope to carry on with these studies at a later date.

 

We spent about 15 minutes on each of these three paintings. Am pleased with how they turned out.

We began by flipping this painting and blocking in the main colours upside down. It really helped to get the proportions and positioning correct. We spent about 15 minutes working upside down and then another 15 minutes fine tuning with the painting the right way up.

 

I chose to work on just a small section of the original painting here and only worked on it for about 10 minutes, mapping out the larger shapes. Will hopefully carry on with it later on.

 

From Script to Screen - Final Crit Presentation

Crit Presentation

FSTS - Pre-viz (before cameras and sound)

FSTS - Script (final version)

Script - Final Version

FSTS Animatic (with sound)

Life Drawing 18/02/15

We drew a new model for today's session - Lydia. She was beautiful to draw and we also got to try using some collage in our work.

 

6 x 3 min poses in charcoal

3 x 10 min turnaround poses in graphite and pastel

 

10 min in pencil

30 min in chalk pastel and collage

FSTS - Scene 2 animating

I'm having so much fun with this and spending far too much time on it! Need to animate the last scene and then add cameras and shoot the pre-viz.

 

 

This is Scene Two where the action happens!

FSTS - Scene 1 animating

 

Scene One - mostly animated! Just need to animate Scenes Two and Three and then tweak the timing before moving on to camera shots. Really enjoying this part. :)

FSTS - The beginnings of Pre-viz

I began the pre-viz of my story today in Maya. It seemed to come together pretty quickly as the kitchen is mainly made up of planes and cubes. I've used the pre-modeled characters from Alan's tutorials but just adapted them to suit my characters. Both have been given chequered trousers and white chefs jackets. I've tried to make the pot wash boy slightly shorter and plumper and the pastry chef taller and thinner with an added tote and moustache! I need to add more props and textures and then I will begin animating.

Potwash

Once added into the scene, I made him even plumper and much shorter

 

Pastry chef

Once in the scene, I made him much taller and slightly thinner

Kitchen

The beginnings of modeling the kitchen and trying to gauge scale and spacing

Maya tutorial - Pendulum settle & rest

Maya tutorials - Bouncing Ball

 

Bouncing Ball on the spot

 

 

Bouncing Ball travel & rotation

From Script to Screen - OGR2

OGR2

Storyboards to follow :(

FSTS - Script

Script

Life drawing 04/02/15

 

We drew Callum again today. We started with 10 minute sketches and then moved onto a few 3 and 1 minute sketches. I really enjoy the quick sketching. The last two were 20 minute poses.

 

3 mins in charcoal

1 min in chalk

10 mins in charcoal

Both 20 min, chalk, pastel and charcoal on black paper and ink on white paper

FSTS: Character sketches - Pot wash boy and bully chefs.

These are the ideas I have for the bully chefs in my story. I want a main 'ringleader' and am thinking of something like number 2. He will be the opposite of the main character in my story, so will need to be tall, skinny, arrogant - a stereotypical French pastry chef. The other guys will be his cronies. Am looking at maybe number 6 being the butcher etc. It doesn't really matter what job they do but I want a bit of a mixture.

 

The guy is roughly how I envisage the main character in the story, the poor potwash boy who is bullied by the others. I'm working on before and after sketches on him at the moment to show how he looks when he begins the story compared to how he ends up at the end.

As always, feedback much appreciated. I know the work needs cleaning up and I'll do this once I've got a definite 4 or 5 characters.

FSTS: Kitchen sketch

Sketch of the kitchen just to get my head around where everything is. I referred to the layout of a 1920s restaurant kitchen to help me as I wanted it to make sense. This is where my whole story will be set. Working on developing characters next...

 

 

 

Kitchen layout 

 

 

 1920s Kitchens