I've spent most of this weekend planning my essay and trying to get as much as possible finished for the background project. So far i've completed both my exterior locations:
An Underwater scene: (you can click on the image to get a larger preview of it!)
and a Graveyard:
Aaaaand, this is my interior (I used the Sims2 to make a model room to base it on!): I think the graveyard is my favourite, I wanted to colour that one in, but our brief said that we had to colour the interior and leave one exterior in pencil. If I had more time and didn't have to write the essay (the deadline for both is on the same day, hence why I got this out of the way now...), I would've coloured it, who knows, I may come back to it later on.
And in case you're interested I uploaded some of my notebook scribbles (not related to the course) on my DeviantArt here.
Just a quick play around after installing Flash successfully! :D
I wasn't really sure what to do, but I found it quite amusing to turn the hand to a spider-type-thing.
It's a funny size because I originally set the document space to widescreen (like Andy suggested in our tutorial) but as I only really drew on the left hand side I thought i'd clip it so there wasn't a load of blank white space.
This new term is already turning out to be pretty sic. We've got some crazy new projects (including working with Broadcasting students to produce graphics for their TV show [i'm scared shitless about that one], an Animation Background project and in the future we're being set Modelling projects in Maya and Flash projects.); new Software (After Effects [which after the first session doesn't seem as horribly scary as I thought, except it kept crashing...] and Flash [which I'm pretty stoked about]); and learning to do new things like Modelling on Maya. It's going to be awesome.
I spent most of yesterday afternoon installing upgrades for my computer in order to install Flash, which took forever. While I was doing that, I handwrote out this blog update to type up and began work on my new sketchbook/background project for Kathy (and cleaned my bathroom, on a saturday night, how unbeliavbly wild University life is). But today i've successfully managed to install it, so I'll most likely be spending my free time practising getting to grips with it. (Unlike Maya & AE, Flash looks a lot more easy to use, and it's small enough that my computer can handle it... hopefully.) I've wanted to learn Flash for a long time, but had never managed to get my hands on a copy or be taught any of the controls before now. I hope that now I've got my own copy, uit means I'll be able to do some animation of my own when I get home. At Christmas I only had Animation paper, and a combination of being ill, working nearly everyday and having a distinct lack of ideas and Rostrum Camera meant I did nada on the work front. I also like the idea of Flash being Vector based and related to Photoshop, (I think this is perhaps why I feel a little more confident in learning it), it'll also give me a chance to improve my graphics tablet skills.
I'm looking forward to the background project alot more than the animal-head one (sorry Kathy). The backgrounds have to be the weirdest sizes I've come across, it's a size called 12 Field (which, incase you're wondering the exact measurements, which you're probably not, are 267 x 330mm), which is a little annoying because it's slightly larger than A4 (a nice comfortable size), and means i've had to crack out my mahoosive A2 sketchbook in order to work at the correct size. I'm glad though, because you can't work on A4 forever and the larger size means I can add more detail within the drawings.
I'm already feeling a bit more confident with Maya (which is a relief, although i'm still terrfied of going anywhere near the graph editor), our first CGI environments tutorial/session with Georg was on tuesday and I was very pleased because I actually understood it all. It'll still be a long time before I'll be able to create anything decent on it, if I thought my computer could handle it, I'd install Maya on it to practice,though it may buckle under the weight of Flash, we shall see....
Yesterday was a sad day for me. The drummer from my favourite band, Avenged Sevenfold died. At 28, it's far too young to be taken from this world. They were halfway through recording a new album and I was so stoked about the subsquent tour that would come with it where i'd finally get to see them. Sadly, even if they do tour, it won't be the same.
Jimmy "The Reverand Tholomew Plague" Owen Sullivan (aka The Rev) was quite possibly one of the most talented drummers on this earth and no other drummer could possibly fill the space he's now left in Avenged.
My favourite song, Little Piece of Heaven, was written by him, and has one of the most twisted concepts going. But it's fantastic, beautifully composed and has a brilliant animated video, which is why I'm posting it.
I'm home for Christmas and feeling as Scrooge-like as ever.
I wish I was back at Uni, or (dare I say it?) that we'd been set some work to do over Christmas. Inspiration has deserted me completely in recent months, and I would've liked it if I had something to try and get the creative juices flowing (although, had we been set an essay or something along those lines, I'm pretty sure that would've drained whatever inspiration is knocking about).
Anyway, I hope everyone has a nice Christmas, and if I don't update before then, I'll post some shit for you in January.
I’ve been meaning to get round to talking about Bradford again (like I promised a good while ago). I’ve hunted out some of my favourite films I saw on YouTube, and provided the links so you can have a cheeky peek at them (and either agree with me on how cool they are, or completely disagree).
The Professional Films I have to say, if I’m brutally honest, I thought the quality of the student films were (dare I say it?) better than the professional ones. The Student ones have been proved much harder to find online, probably because they’re still owned by the Colleges that made them, two of the films I really liked (“Bruce” by Tom Judd & “I See What You’re Saying” dir. By Lottie White), came from the RCA but even though they’re mentioned on the website, there’s no link to see the films, which is a shame.
The Cat Piano Directed by Eddie White & Ari Gibson (Australia/2009/8mins, 23secs) I really loved the style of both this film and the one below, the story is a pretty strange one but engages your attention all the way through which some of the other professional films didn’t succeed in doing.
Lettin’ Go Directed by Malika Whitaker (France/2008/5mins) I love the style used for this, it almost looks like it has been drawn with spray paint and stencils, I also like the looseness to the story, I style can’t really figure out the ending and what has supposed to have happened to the male character. Other films I really liked in this category were “French Roast” directed by Fabric O Joubert (France/2008/8mins, 15secs) and “Alma” directed by Rodrigo Blaas (Spain/2009/5mins, 2secs), both were done in 3D and are simply amazing animations. They both won awards, but sadly I couldn’t find videos for them.
Commercials I love animated adverts so much, they make a nice break from the normal low budget adverts that are constantly repeated. I only saw this advert on TV a couple of times so was really pleased when it was featured at BAF (and won the Commercial award). It’s a clever combination of 2D and what must be Pixilation, I also love the song that goes with it, it fits really well, and you’ll see why:
Audi Unboxed
Panoramas
Photograph of Jesus Directed by Laurie Hill (UK/2008/6mins, 40secs). I really like this one (well, I like all of them which is why I’m writing about them), but I think this one is pretty clever, it uses Cutout and Collage with Pixilation which is something I’ve been really tempted to do myself at some point (who knows, I could try it out over Christmas...). It’s also a visual piece that goes with a spoken interview (like Creature Comforts).
Loof and Let Dime Directed by Vereshchak Roman (Russia/2008/2mins, 31 secs). This is similar to “Photograph of Jesus” in that it creates a visual to spoken words, but it couldn’t be more different. A lot of my fellow students disliked this film, but I thought, even though it wasn’t one of my favourites, it was worth talking about. It creates a visual to a nonsense repeated poem, even though the images it uses don’t have anything to do with the words being spoken, I love how the text travels around the screen, it reminds me of a similar thing on of my classmates did in foundation.
It’s been nice to be able to watch the videos again and write about them, I can’t believe Bradford was nearly a month ago! It’s not nice when you realise just how quickly time has slipped through your fingers!
(you can click on the image to get a larger preview of it!)
