Moar Update

Third Year work:
Pieces thus far;
-Re-lining one shot
-Colour for Fall shot
-Colour for Lute Player
-Colour for Turn scene
-Colour for Interior of Coach shot
-Beginning of Colour for Kings celebration shot

Currently trying to render out the parts I have worked on for the final Production report. Dropbox seems intent on foiling me.

Negotiated Brief:

Draft 1 complete, ready to being Draft 2 of the script after feedback today. Am happy with the pacing, need to remove the narrated style and include dialogue and more visual story telling, rather than explanation. I have a good idea of how this should work out already. Onwards and upwards.

Pitch project:

Need to do character design work for my part of the trio. Will begin tommorow, have been copiling ideas mentally.

Animation Technologies:

Still need to begin serious work on this. Will begin over the weekend and early next week.

Status Update

Way, way overdue.

3rd Year Project;

Working on 'Inbetween a Fable' for Jake Jones, my work thus far has included;
-Line cleaning for an animation section
-Colouring work on a second animation section
-Colouring work on a third animation section

Further colour work is due soon. I'll also get the files thus far converted into miniature clips to post here.

Pre Production Project:

Hacking through the list of stuff that has to be finished for this.
Concept is nailed, story layout is nailed, script needs to be typed up but is pretty much nailed.
Character designs are sorted and I'm down to the last turnaround.
Layout is finalised, backgrounds still need to be finished, as do storyboards.
Wow images and final cover are not yet done.

Here are the turnarounds that are complete so far (Minus Izumi the Potter)

Character Sheet overview

There we go. Roughed out designs for the Shopekeepers, narrowed down to four out of six original sketches.

More Character sheets will be put up as they are completed.

Year Two, Term Two

Been far too long since I updated here, so this might be a long 'un.

First off, Pre-Production project, to whit; a character and story bible using four random pick cards to decide Main Character, Setting, Film type and Style.

Mine were;
Banker
Corner Shop
Silent Movie
Hokusai

Ideas at first were a little hazy. Hokusai instantly made me think of something Japanese. A banker in a corner shop, though? And a silent movie meant there had to be a strong story that was nevertheless easy to get across with nothing but location and gestures.

I don't remember the idea of a fable came from, honestly. But it suddenly made a hell of a lot of sense, and everything clicked into place.

So, I'm currently working on 'The Tale of the Greedy Banker'. It focuses on the titular banker, Hiroto, and his experiences with the four villagers that live in the 'Corner Shops', four shops arrayed in a little square by the river.

Some work so far;

Hokusai Research

Experimental Project Production Report

Experimental Project Production Report

For the experimental project this term, myself, Lucy and Corrine teamed up for production. We chose to use the short musical clip ‘Drones and Refrains of Death’ out of the choice of music’s. This clip stood out above the others for the staccato, edgy quality of the music and vocal chants/shouts. We felt we could produce something really unique to coincide with the music.

Our initial idea was to utilise a solid material to create an end result. Our first attempt made use of blue tack sculpted into a figurine model. When this proved slightly more restrictive than we thought, we moved onto use rice on a glass surface to creating shifting shapes and patterns. The rice proved to be a more effective medium to work in, allowing us to produce varied shapes, patterns and other things with relative ease, as well as being easy to work with. The oriental ambience of the sound also went well with the innate association of rice with the orient.

Eventually, however, we decided that rice didn’t quite do justice to the more macabre element of the music. Our decision to move from a solid to a liquid medium was what really made for an effective shift in direction, making use of a not inconsiderable amount of fake theatre blood to create our work surface. Jarring, strange and somewhat morbid images took on a whole new meaning when done in what for all intents and purposes looked like blood on glass.

The equipment used was fairly simple; a camera and a tripod, a glass plate and the materials mentioned above, using stop motion techniques to get the pictures of the various images and their stages. The footage was then edited together and finalised on the computer.
For my part, I helped produce the images in both the rice and blood mediums, along with taking a turn at operating the camera while we cycled roles.

The final result came out very well, in my opinion. Some slightly overt jarring occurred, but through fault of computer and software limitations. The images in fake blood really worked well with the music and its strange rhythm and chants. Images such as the skull and crossbones, bird like creatures and wolves really matched the grim nature of the sound.

New term, New work

Back to Uni and back to work, looking foraward to doing some new and hopefully interesting stuff. And putting out the results worthy of it.

Little bit of refresher animation, a figure picking up a fairly heavy box. Not perfect, I'd probably add in a few more stages if I were to re-do it, particularly at the anticipation stage. Even so, it flows fairly well, and I was quite pleased with how it came out in Photoshop, frame by frame.

Sit-Rep

Just a quick one, with two completed character sheets for The Firm;

Not a Shrubbery

Big dump of concept art for the Animal Firm project, which I simply call 'The Firm', after the main group or protaginists.

From left to right and down;

Firm Overview, Edward Thompson and Edward-Charles Melbourne

Angelina 'Demon' Gerards, Terry 'Terror' Sanderson

Terry 'working' with an 'associate', Finbar O'Conner

Rachel Crosby, Detective Sergeant William Keegan

More to come.

Bring us back...a concept art!

Well, how about three pages?

Basic char design and knocking ideas around;

Defined first character, and front/side poses;

Second character, defined, front and side poses;

Stay tuned, more to follow asap.

Or I shall update you a second time!

New term, three new projects. Let's see, shall we?

Group Animation Project: Looks good. Myself, Stacey, Corrine, Lucy and Joe are tackling this one. We chose to do the 'What' project. The script is very simple; two people saying 'what' a total of five times. We have the character and story idea nearly pat down, and I'll be uploading stuff when it's finished and scanned in.

Animal Firm: Lock, Stock and Two Smoking barrels meets Wind in the Willows? British cops and robbers with an anthro twist? Sign me up for this one, big time. Given a lot of my art (Read; majority of) is anthropomorphic, this is really a case of finding a story that works and making some characters I like. Then it should be plain sailing. Some period or contemporary research will probably go far here.

Experimental sketchbook project: After being initially confused on how to tie this in, I've managed with some help from Cathy to link it into the Animal Firm project, looking at Day to Day items and how they would work in a world where the people were different to humans. E.g. chairs with holes or room for tails, larger chairs for larger body types, hats and helmets with holes for larger ears/horns, etc.

Pictures to come of various work, and more rambling.
-Red

Brain Dump

Animated Map for the Live @ Five news course students;

The lip sync project has been completed succesfully, with a video to be put up here in due time. The Storyboards project has been handed in. The 3D environment has been completed, as well;

The last project is the Ident for Virgin Media's Red Room. Work shoul be finished on that by the end of next week.

Given the deadline is a week today, that's pretty much a given, isn't it?

Artistic Babble

Been a while since the last post. Mostly due to holidays and then getting back into the swing of work.
And, boy, is there a lot of it.

So, just to update, here are the designs for four characters to be used in the up-coming flash 'lip sync' project. In the project, we choose a segment of a recorded interview with four students, and have to animate characters that lip sync with the spoken words.

Here are the concept designs for the four. I left out the interviewer, as her spoken segments are very quiet, and it would detract from the focus on the main characters having to change the view just for a few lines.































I'll keep the background simple, having the four character sat on and around a desk, to tie in with the artistic nature of the characters and the courses they are talking about.

I was inspired mostly by the Aardman animations used in the 'Creature Comforts' series, which is a similar brief to our own; animating characters in sync with recorded voices from interviews.

I also need to begin work on other projects; a 3D modeling project of a room, storyboard panels, an ident project and this lip sync project.
Needless to say, I'm going to be busy.

This Page is made for Walking

More walk cycles, the 3D piece from last week and both 3D and 2D from this week. The first 3D one uses a rig ('Burt') which was simply for legs, while the other is a modified 'Andy' rig edited by 3D chief George. The Andy rig walk is rather scrappy, and I think I need to practice a bit on using humanoids in 3D more. It was fun to work with, but a little tricky, especially given time constraints.

In order; Burt, Andy, Mr Walker

Walk it off

Latest 2D project completed;

Work has also been carrying on with regards to The Pack. The Grapic Novel has, finally, been put into the long and slightly clogged pipeline that is my production process.

Page 1, Page 2/Title Page

Long time, no post

A slight break in work has meant no update. I hereby remedy that with a slightly late pixelation animation, with the idea in part coming from Scott Wiley and Stacey Remnant, animated by myself, and photographed and sound-edited by Nigel Kitts. (Yes, he sounds that goofy.)

Personal work time is going on more up to date designs for characters, story settings and other things that, hopefully, will find themselves animated in the not too distant future. The one I would really like to set to work on is a story called The Pack.

The Pack is set in a world where the people are what are known as anthromorphs, or simply anthros. Another name people tend to know this style of character by is 'Furry'. While technically true, the word itself is more often than not used in the context of an insult to those who draw or follow that style of art and character. As such, I refer to my art of that style as Anthro art, and always will do.

The Pack is based in England, in and around London. The year is around about 2030, a not too distant future, but the country as a whole is starkly different. The Government, complete with capital letter, is almost a police-controlled state, headed by the Anti-Anarchy-Strike-Force, or AASF, following a year long eruption into pure anarchy. Peace is now maintained by iron-fisted rule and the AASF. London was the worst hit, whole districs reduced to rubble, some areas of the city actually crumbling and sinking into the subway beneath. Overhead hangs the Smog, a congealing mass of cloud and fumes that never truly dissapitates, covering the city in perpetual gloom.

Against all these odds hope endures, namely in the form of the Track Runners, musicians and artists outlawed for not complying to the Governments strict censorship laws, who use the miles and miles of train tracks to keep one step ahead of the law, hosting gigs and shows for those brave enough to travel to them.

The Pack was the very first major story I started work on, and the one that brought forth the most ideas, including Winterwolf Arts itslef, which features heavily as a figurehead for the Track Runners of London. I would definitely like to work on The Pack as a major project while at university. Only time will tell, I suppose.

Of Jumping Cubey's, and other things

More animation for ye, and me. The light-box is proving to outshine my expectations, and is producing some very good results. The latest 2D assignment was to make a bouncing ball, and then to make a little 'Cubey' character jump up and down. Both of which are shown here;

The 'BB' Project:

The Jumping Cubey:

Now I need to try out Maya 3D software, for the 3D assigment. Once again the subject matter is B-Bs, and hopefully the process won't be quite as complex as it looked in the lecture. Mostly it will just be a case of getting to grips with the software and interface. After that the principles are identical.

-RW

Begin the Begin

Finished the first project with no problems. After drawing out the starting frame (a basic circle), I actually went to the end and drew the final frame (The snow-star, a symbol I use a lot). I then worked from the #12 frame all the way back to the first frame. This ensured that the morph remained smooth throughout.

The actual technique of lightbox-animation, drawing a drawing effectively on top of the last one using the lightboxes, is much easier than it sounds. Although it would definitely take longer to actually move than 3D animation (Once you have the rigs, scene etc.) it is surprisingly fluid. Although that does depend on how many inbetween stages you want to do. I think I'll definitely be looking at this more when I drop into the studio.

Currently working on digitising a picture of Optimus Prime, designed for my UK Transformers story line. More of a personal project, but it's a good example of how Uni is helping to improve the way I work.

And So it Begins

6/10/09

So. How do you begin on something like this?

University proper began today. First lectures in 2D and 3D principles, along with the first assignment from Andy in 2D. A simple circle morph animation. I already have a fairly good idea of what I might do, the question is wether the morph is feasible in 11/12 frames. If not, then I can always simplify the idea somewhat. Given tommorow is our studio day, I would hazard a guess at being able to get on with it fairly fast.

Art History and Theory was the second part. Some interesting and downright useful points from that, a couple of which I need to have a look at when I start working into my stories again. Also a few examples of animation, and other useful bits and pieces.

That about wraps up the first post, at any rate. Winterwolf Arts is officially open.
More likely to have a fuller post tommorow.

-R.W