Friday 21 March 2008

WACOM-derful!!



Well, look at that then... doesn't seem to be much difference between using a pen, scanning it in, lining it all up, cleaning the images, putting it into AFX, and then you get the same result as using a tablet in about half the time.

Oh, and it's environmentally friendly too, cause this method is gonna save me a whole lot of money in paper, and you can make more mistakes cause it's all pixels anyway!

Right, well I'm at homehome now and going skiing from Sunday for a week, so no broken bones pending I will be back to work, with a planned purchase of a WACOM tablet (not a table like I've been using!) to continue my final project. In less than three weeks Bianca is coming over for a week which will be fantastic and together we will work on our FMPs and maybe record some more sounds together like we did at St Joost.

Monday 17 March 2008

More speeeeeeeed!!!!



More tablet practice, this time with Bianca's character, the illustrious Mr. Tophat, and seeing as I'm skiing next week, I thought he might enjoy it too!

My God... it's huge!! (UPDATED)



It's not much, but this is my first attempt at getting used to pressure sensitivity with a tablet pen, the early attempts are in the middle with the left and right edges being the latter tries, which I was getting a bit more pleased with, and I appear to have to work in Photoshop at about 200-300% to make it feel right. Now I will attempt to animate a little something, see how it all goes - wish me luck!

UPDATE: So, a little ten minute sketch, my second attempt at using the WACOM today!

Wednesday 12 March 2008

...shouldn't you be doing proper work?

Well, I have been, but this evening (after 5pm when most people had gone home) I went to the DV workshop and put together a little animation of some of the drawings from the recording picture... enjoy!



(I have also recorded a lot of sounds using my own voice, and also a fair bit of water too, so that's going well... oh, and John enthused me to use Logic instead of the evil Soundtrack Pro!)

Testing, testing... 1, 2, 3...

I recorded some sounds today.

Mostly watery sounds.

It was wet.

Tuesday 11 March 2008

What? Seriously... will the madness never cease?!??

No, clearly it will not, and this is another animatic that I actually did last night but the YouTube link seemed to be up the spout but now, having just checked BEFORE uploading it again at college I found it to be alive and well...



Phew! That was a long one, huh? Now, don't get TOO excited, as I have spoken to Suzie and she pointed out it goes painfully slowly in places and that he shouldn't see or hear the angels while he is having fun and so just ignore them when you rewatch this animatic over and over again after you've finished reading this thrilling blog post.

We had a group crit/discussion thingy this afternoon which went quickly because Suzie is busy with top secret governmental animations (or not...) and had to leave sooner than she thought, but we saw some peoples work, including a rather swish fly through intro sequence by Simon and some words spoken about poor Hannah's dead computer.

So, that is all for the moment, but wait there will be MORE!!! I bet you can't wait, and so I tell you keep a beady eye on my YouTube page for "Insect Animatic" which is currently processing as I type this... I will endeavour to post a direct link of it later tonight.

Monday 10 March 2008

Quick! Nurse... he's working again!!

As if you weren't amazed already by one animatic, lo and indeed behold, here is ANOTHER animatic, this time for the Dendrophobia (fear of trees/forests) segment.



I spoke to Suzie today which was useful, and she likes what I'm doing now, simply encouraging it to continue in this consistent fashion... tonight I will do the animatic for the third storyboarded phobia - Uranophobia (fear of heaven), with lots of little angels and a very long ladder!

Sunday 9 March 2008

Behold!

The Animatic of Wonder (or the Zoophobia animatic I made today)!! Well, I'm finally progressing a bit with this FMP lark, and have created something that gives you an idea of timing and stuff... sorry it's in two parts, it was just how I made it and it was faster to upload like that too.

Part 1 (21sec)


Part 2 (34sec)


Oh, and the sound for the Breda/Norwich animation I worked on with Bianca is done and put on to the video, so here it is... hold on to your ears for the mindblowing awesomeness...



That was an audio extravaganza... don't you think??!? What do you mean... it's amateurish??! We just don't like sound that much, that's all, and we had fun and that counts for something surely!

Right, well, I still have another animatic to do soon for the tree phobia that I did the storyboard for ages ago now. Hope you liked these videos... until next time!

Friday 7 March 2008

Do NOT Feed The Drawings!

Today I went in fairly early intending to do lots of work but ended up talking to Catherine and Zainal about my work and holiday, helping Jane with her dissertation binding and getting filled in on the latest developments in our show's location.

I decided to work on better designs for the animals that Swimming Man encounters in the Zoophobia episode, as seen in yesterday's storyboard, and here is the LION based more on an earlier drawing in my sketchbook and more in keeping with my style than the one in the storyboard.


The next obvious one to do was the SNAKE and he was a little tricky to figure out how his mouth would possibly open/work if indeed it will open and he won't simply hiss and poke his forked tongue out.


I also did a quick drawing of the monsters/dinosaurs/dangerous creatures he discovers in the last opening of the door...

Thursday 6 March 2008

Back to work...

...but with Easter coming up fast and school shutting for some time over that time I realise how my time is being eaten into without me even trying, so, that sucks.

Since, I don't have a lightbox or a DAR for filming AND the holidays are THREE WEEKS?!?!! I don't WANT that much time off, argh!!

Anyway, I went to a talk with Max Hattler (Collision, Drift, Everything Turns) and he gave me a bit of a tutorial afterwards as well, I showed him my sketchbook and he liked the style and suggested that maybe I should try to draw directly in to the computer, and after last week when Bianca taught me how good and easy TV-Paint is to basically do what you can with paper animating with a lot LESS hassle in the long run... which means maybe I should think about investing in a WACOM tablet, which would mean I wouldn't have to rely on college being open and could test animation over weekends and evenings.


***(As promised (to Suzie and Zainal) here is a storyboard for Zoophobia, it's not as clear as I think it could be, but hopefully you can follow it...)***

TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES have been sorted out...