"It's over... Goodbye..."

Getting there... Slowly but surely, but this writing...

I've returned from my soul searching journey in Singapore with my quadriplegic Portuguese stripper to find that the UK is still a dank, soulless environment with high suicidal tendencies. You may find that there's a hefty gap between this post and the last, this is most likely down to the fact that blogging was the last thing on my mind during the summer.

During the past 3 month, i've searched high and low for work and honestly, I thought I had found some at one point or another, one fell through sadly and the other company never got back in touch which was irritating to say the least. That said my college task was to produce an idea for when I return from the summer, my initial idea's were mediocre at best UNTIL I found some imagery from the book, Megaman Tribute (which I would recommend getting, it's got some gorgeous work!) With some work, my idea, so far, consists of a Rat escaping from a viking-esc man in a somewhat post apocalyptic setting, they run into a forest, the Rat gets cornered, climbs what he thinks is a tree, turns out it's a robot covered in moss (what a twist!) The robot intimidates the man and he flees, it's simple but it all revolves around character interaction, physical communication and emotion to carry it, it's something I don't usually do so it's just about see how it goes! 

So fingers crossed! Great to be back? That's debatable. 

Pictoplasma... This is going to be a LONG post.

PictoPlasma 2011, it was held in Berlin as per usual and it wasn't bad, there was a vast selection of spokes people some of whom I preferred more than other's and Berlin, as a whole, ended up being much different than I imagined. The Pictoplasma festival ran from Wednesday, April 6th till Saturday, April 9th, within that time me and my comrades ventured around both Berlin's very own Alexanderplatz, it's shop's, the Pictoplasma workshops and finally the festival itself.

Incase you missed out, here's a list of all the artist's who spoke about their work, the same artist's also had  galleries scattered around Berlin... Sounds good, the trek around Berlin wasn't, my feet are still f**ked.

1) Jeremyville  2) Matt Jones  3) Rilla Alexander  4) Roman Klonek  5) Juliana Pedemonte  6) Pic Pic Andre  7) Mcbess  8) Nomint  9) Christoph Niemann  10) Ryan Quincy  11) Motomichi Nakamura  12) Sfa-Zentrale  13) Matias Vigliano  14) Amandine Urruty  15) Mark Jenkins  16) Blackheart Gang  17) Nick Cave  18) Doppeldenk  19) El Senor  20) Mark Michalowski  21) 3753% Tordal  22) Siggi Eggertsson  23) Jeremy Dower  24) Ben & Julia 25) Keita Takahashi

I didn't attend every lecture, truth be told I find it hard to tolerate lectures, especially when the hostess is asking the most STUPID questions and also when the artist's themselves aren't very enthusiastic about their own work. It was disappointing to see that even though David O'reilly was there, he didn't give a lecture, in fact I much preferred the morning programmes to the actual lectures, bar one or two, it's not that they were bad... Okay well a few were, but the programmes were more appealing to me, it was an hours reel of animation each morning for 3 days and something I thoroughly enjoyed though the experience of seeing these animations in a theatre is something which quite frankly, can't be mimicked through online viewing.

Programme 1 was the only reel I missed and that was due to a late night, that said, what I caught a glimpse of was a sure sign that what was to come, wouldn't be bad, in fact, quite the opposite, for those interested, if anyone, these are the animation's which played through Programme 1...

Marcel The Shell With Shoes On, The Silhouettes, Look 4U, Pixels, How Your Money Works, The Time Travellers, Between Bears, Giant, Rubika, All That Cats, Gluko & Lennon, Sky High, Balloons, Birdboy and Wisdom Teeth.

Now I only caught the end part of Birdboy and it was a deep plot as far as I'm aware, if you can watch it,  Wisdom Teeth on the other hand is a straight up comedy. Gluko & Lennon I've seen before and again it's good, but it showed that the festival didn't focus primarily on one genre it was mixed and set the scene as to what was to be expected, though spoiler, it was mostly comedy.

 

Character Sheets... Not quite done...

These here are my Character sheet's, not quite finished yet, I did these about a week ago now and looking at them with fresh eyes I can see faults, thing is, deadline's drawing near so I don't have time to amend every little flaw which is really annoying, that said I do like how these have turned out, allot of character sheets seem to consist of standard plan backgrounds and nothing more and being able to venture further into what can be done, what works and what doesn't work just makes it more enjoyable to do. I just feel as though my standard of work needs to vastly increase, I don't consider my work good because it can become so much better but for now, this'll have to do, maybes, by some stroke of luck a fella might see this whose in the industry and point me in the right direction! Would be nice. 

1/3: Backstory 

2/3: Elevations and palette 

3/3: Facial expressions and Personal details

C.

Looking at 3D Animation and the realisation of my own.

Got too look at some Three-Dandy-Dee animation, not much, I have what I want in mind so I just want to talk about animation or more so animator's that will ultimately help in the foundational structure of my animation, I've also found out that using big words makes my work sound more important than it actually is.

First up is a piece from one of my favourite animator's, David O'reilly. O'reilly, to me, has a fantastic range of animation's to show, what's apparent in "The External World" is the contrasting character designs, there's plenty of them, some take reference from the old 1930's cartoons though still retain a 3D element making them seemingly modern, as if they've aged with the passing era's, whereas some of them are just completely off the wall and are there to serve only a minuscule role though their presence IS apparent.. The animation itself is reminiscent of the era O'reilly grew up in, whether or not video games were an inspiration to David doesn't excuse the fact that the animation model's are similar to that old, polygon style seen when the Playstation, Sega Saturn and N64 were battling it out. It might just be me but the colours also seem... Washed out? It's not exactly a dark animation, it's bright and in your face! It's so bright in fact... That it melts your face!! In any case, check out the External World, it's amazing, if not for character's, then humour, if not humour, then style, if not style then experimentation.

http://www.theexternalworld.com/

"Doomed", as brutal as it sounds is quite possibly one of the best animated documentories I've watched, featuring bright visuals, excellent narration, timing 

"Gluko & Lennon"




The premise of my 3D character is set and ready to be worked on

Working in Illustrator and failing miserably in the process.

This here is my first attempt at vector based work, as you can clearly see it's a terrible piece of work, I had never before used Adobe Illustrator and it shows. This was for a front elevation for a character board I had to do, the elevations need to consist of at least, front, side and a top view though I felt it necessary to focus primarily on the front view since that is where the detail is more prominent. It was a case of tracing over something which I had drawn and scanned in with the pen tool. What it boils down too is that I hated this first approach to the elevation, I had made a mistake in drawing the face though, at the time, hadn't realised. What's also apparent is the clear colour contrasts, it's blocky in terms of shading and looking back at it, I hate it. I also think one of the problems was that the realisation of the character hadn't been fully seen so in that respect he lacked actual character and personality. 

Because of that last attempt I redid the elevation, focusing more so on gradient-based shading rather than clear cut bold colour contrasts. The outcome, though better still lacked what personally, I wanted to achieve, it didn't have that cartoon sensibility about it, or at least the depiction I had set out to achieve, nor did it have the character and personality I had mentioned previously.  The design of the boots and gloves did change however, this was mainly due to failed experimentation in Cinema 4D, which I'll talk about later on. The face however, was more reminiscent of it's original concept, because his face is long and shaped like a drinking cup, I had to work out whether or not the facial details would be spread out, or condensed, the original concept had the facial detail at the bottom of the cup giving the character a rather large forehead, this elevation however, had the face midway and personally, it still didn't work for me. Because of these flaws within the design, I scrapped using Illustrator and approached Photoshop...

Using Photoshop, for me, allowed for more flexibility, I felt I had more control over the overall approach of the design and because of this worked at a much quicker pace whereas with Illustrator I chugged along seemingly slow. I built the character up and changed his backstory which in turn, changed his actual physical design. I drew up the front elevation in a vector-esc manner, though this was to give the character form and allowed for me to work off a template of sorts when working over it. What's more, I felt that I was able to depict the character's personality, which was now established and also give him that cartoon sensibility I had been after so it made work allot more motivational to see the overall execution of this piece.

...A COUPLE OF HOURS LATER...

After a couple of hours of shading I had finally came to the conclusion of the front elevation. I went into a fair bit of detail I'd say on this elevation alone, the lighting and shading really bring out the character, pin point curvature, crease's and depth, it was what I set out to achieve from the start and thankfully, what I achieved. Whereas I had used a simple, bold brush to draw out the structure, I used a more distorted brush with rather low opacity to basically, build up on the layer of colour applied to achieve a somewhat detailed character elevation. There wasn't any sort of problem I encountered, I found it relaxing to sit, hunched over my laptop, scribbling away on my Wacom tablet, it's pretty old too, does the job though. After all this was achieved it struck me, I had spent a fair amount of time on one elevation and had about 2 more to go... Fantastic.

Now, who is this character? Doctor Al Saltwort Carbonate, aged 38, born March 17th, 3042. This next part you can choose to read of ignore, it's pretty much just his backstory and a written piece which, for once, I'm rather pleased with. 

"Born into a family of Monotheistic Religious psychopath’s, Al Saltwort Carbonate was forced into believing the ways of the higher entity, commonly known as, “God”.  At the age of six, his Mother enrolled him into Saint Paraphila’s Academy of Properganda, it was here where Al discovered his love for science and the factual basis that engulfed the subject as a whole, with time however, his forced manner into believing in God slowly led him into denial about the existence of humanity as a whole and with it he began questioning whether he himself was real or just a marionette acting upon a scripted stage.

 As these questions slowly became his demise over the year’s, he slipped into paranoia and began showing signs of bipolar disorder, feared amongst classmates, Carbonate was left to his own means of work, sinking slowly into deep, nonsensical trances whilst doing so. One day however, in an attempt to challenge God’s will, Carbonate jumped from the fifth story of his high school building, plummeting to the ground and landing face first, smashing his skull entirely and leaving him facially deformed though miraculously, his brain remained intact and functional. For the rest of his high school and higher education year’s, Microsoft Sam was his means of speech and tubes were his means of food and water intake, his pride crushed and self esteem at an all time low, his bipolar disorder triggered a psychotic rage within Carbonate and in doing so was the cause of death to the entire college campus through a so-called, “freak” explosion which coincidentally, Carbonate survived.

Psychotic, misguided and mentally unstable, Carbonate pursued a path of petty crime, disorderly behaviour and injustice towards man until, through a spark of diabolical genius after being tasered in an escape attempt, he envisioned a cure for his deformation and thus after his ten sentence to jail, left and began work on his Carbotron-Autograft, the machine that was to restructure his face. Many years slaving away lead to the accomplishment of the Carbotron-Autograft though it came at a price; his body began to reject any food or water substance and Saltwort found himself rapidly dying.

Putting the Carbotron-Autograft on hiatus, Saltwort began work on a Bio-Mechanical Hyper alloy Endoskeleton, a system which didn’t require standard hydrocarbon fuel substances nor Fission or Fusion fuel, it was to be completely operational through Biodiesel and protein nutrience. Over time however, as his health deteriorated ever more, Saltwort lost interest in the Carbotron- Autograft and more so on his own survival, he had calculated his life expectancy and if it were to be correct, he had approximately 5 days, 13 hours, 15 minutes and 32 seconds to live and the timer was ever ticking. Aftert slaving away for days on end, grafting and amending frequently arising problems, Saltwort slumped into his chair, exhausted, frail and only minutes away from death he gazed at his work, overwhelmed with an emotion he had only once felt before, joy.

Instead of running off of Biodiesel and protein nutrience, the Endoskeleton ran off of radio-active sugar substitute which fuelled the atomic nucleus within its nuclear-energy cell casing, grafted to run the most sophisticated system of hydraulic actuators and servo-motors ever constructed, baring enough power to run the lights of a metropolis for days on end and it was all placed where a man’s heart would be, shielded in a case hardened, fully armoured, hyper alloy torso.

Pre-installed with distinct guidelines, Saltwort booted up his new to be body, readying himself, he injected his body with a lethal dosage of liquid-neuroparalysis, unable to move, Saltworts body began to shut down completely, as it did the Endoskeleton removed the brain from Saltwort’s dying body and placed it into a cylinder-like pod, from there it infused the brain to the inner working’s of the pod before sealing it inside. Time passed, gaining conscious from the pod filling with highly focused Cerebrospinal Glucose Fluid stood Al Saltwort, alive and well, fully piloting the Endoskeleton, his brain was linked to the entire system, he could see, smell and taste like he used to be able too. His new persona was that of a soft beverage-drinking cup with a simple facial structure that could express emotion. The focused Cerebrospinal Glucose Fluid only fuelled Saltwort’s bipolar disorder, spurring it to maniacal heights, with that however; he became an incredibly quick thinker with impeccable reaction times, a force to be reckoned with. Distasteful towards man, Saltwort left his past behind, with that he took up the persona of Doctor Al Carbonate and swore not rule mankind, but to destroy it in the most inhumane way imaginable by whatever means necessary until he sets the stage to oppose God."

THE LAST MODULE!? ALREADY!? IT'S BEEN SO QUICK!!

Mighty Morphing Frogger Pod's and the Tempered, Flaring, Scorpio's.

Had to do a metamorphosis animation, basically a transition from A to B... So... I did a frog transforming into an Ipod... Or some sort of device.



Also my E-sting is complete, I know, I haven't updated in a while but things went sour near the end of the module, it was a slow spiral into desperation and what ended up happening was that I suffered a vast amount of migraines, I hadn't prioritised my work properly and ultimately that became my downfall. The E-sting, like the rest of my work, isn't near completion, there's allot I want to either add or change, as of yet I don't fully know what exactly, it's going to be a case of trial and error. To me the whole thing feels lacking, I don't know if it's due to character design, environment, both, I really do need to research and experiment more, my weakness wasn't so much being ambitious just not having a structured enough idea.



That said, I'm still quite pleased, the character of Scorpio was quite detailed and drawing him over and over again, though tedious at times had a decent pay off though it can still be MUCH better.

To end on a decent note, here is a picture I drew for a friend, she was showing me some of her old work and one piece stood out, I said if I could redraw it, she said yes and I got to work, thankfully she liked it. Actually, considering that it's Sonic related, you might remember that old Sonic idea, well I'm still all for doing that, maybes not as an animation, just a small motion comic, I've just been busy lately and haven't had time to fully commit myself to work outside of college.

C.

It Never Ends!!

This week will again focus on more or less the same stuff I did last week, I really have little to nothing to say about this week other than what I have planned...

Monday: Any outstanding work from last week will be sorted out... It has to be sorted out... If it isn't then I'm going to severely struggle in the coming weeks.

Tuesday: After convincing several Primary School children that I'm Batman and that their Head Teacher is the Joker in disguise and that the only way to redeem themselves in the eyes of Santa Claus is to brutally attack him... I'll be getting on with animation-based work, line tests? Perhaps finishing off other bits and bobs, whatever the case it has to be productive.

Wednesday: Besides receiving my fair share of shifty looks on the morning Metro, I'll proceed to get on with whatever I need to get on with, it's that simple.

Thursdays: Again, whatever has to be done will be done... This is pretty much like Wednesday.

Friday: Finish off character animation, it's dire that it is sorted by the end of this week.

Now I will talk about Vector artists, Gaston Caba, Aron Martin and Fons Schiedon... Urgh... The thing is, Vector isn't a genre I like, Fons Schiedon is one of the few vector-based artists I like, I've always viewed it as a simple, easy way to make money, it's often used to depict simple character's but my god is it annoying to see the industry become slowly devoured by this sort of work. 

Anyways, Caba... The piece I've chosen appealed to me as it seems to depict a mental institution. The central character is the facility hooker and Captain Meathead and his fellow friends are ready for some outdoor action... The colour scheme is made up of about 5 or so colours and the designs are flat and simple, the line work is crisp but the actual artwork itself is lacking and is a style I don't find at all appealing. 

Aaron Martin... Draws allot of angry Panda's. The style surprisingly isn't incredibly vector-esc, more graphic novel-like, I can appreciate the work that's went into making a piece because it's apparent, the character IS simple and could easily take on a simpler form, however, Aaron has went the extra mile to give the piece more "Oomph!" 

Fons' work, at first, never appealed to me, I found it lacking, that said I have a broader outlook and have taken a greater interest in his work and animation. The character design that Fons offers speak for themselves and in this image, remind me of Ed, Edd n Eddy, each character has a self explanatory design which I feel is a necessity within character design, it's not so much about stereotypes as it primary and secondary elements of a character... If that makes sense.  

Looking at EStings and IDent's and everything else in-between.

Number 1 is probably no surprise, "A Ride of Some Sort...". When me and my other classmates were shown this, the response was that of laughter, it was funny, hilarious in fact and basically said to me, "you're only limited by your imagination", this is true, though only ten seconds, allot can be achieved within that time, it just depends about how you go about it. The timing for A Ride of Some Sort... is spot on, the build up, execution and resolution all balance out and allow the animation to flow, the colour scheme also is very straight forward, keeping in tone of the E4 logo itself allows for the viewer to have instant recognition as to what it is they're watching and a recognisable colour scheme is something I should gear towards.

Number 2 is again no surprise, Cyriak is an animator whose work I've viewed since he started out on Youtube and since then his fame and popularity have escalated to new heights and really, given the circumstances as to how he first began animating, it's good to see that a downfall lead to his uprising. Created using Adobe After Effect's, "Recursive Culture" elaborates on a formula in which Cyriak has become become known for, 2.5D metamorphic animation using real footage, so is it 3D? It's personal opinion. The timing is, again, really well done, a steady build up with the TV rolling in which leads up to the execution where the city expands and distorts until ultimately the purpose of the scene is realised. Between this and "A Ride of Some Sort..." I do feel A Ride of Some Sort should have won though it's apparent as to why Cyriak won, good on him really to be fair, it's down to personal taste. 

Probably the weakest IDent I've looked at so far is "Disney Cinemagic: Island IDent", may only be 5 seconds long though it's an IDent with a quick establishment of what it is mainly due to the use of the Mickey Mouse Logo. The 3D animation itself is good, even if it is just an IDent the problem is, it offers nothing more, it hasn't got any charm, it's like it's there because it needs to be and the creativity behind it isn't there. It pushes no boundaries, plays it safe and offers the viewer a wasted 5 seconds. 

The BBC3 IDent's which ran between 2003-08 were great, for those who don't know they were small orange slugs which advertised BBC3, they became incredibly iconic and sold the premise of what the channel was. The simple design made them easy to recognise and because of that they became a sort of mascot. The colour of orange allowed the slugs to stand out against the common blue background which they were usually surrounded by, this causes the viewer to focus primarily on the slug more so than anything else, if there's too much going on, they loose track of focus. Sadly, they ultimately changed the IDent and now it's a surrealist fanboys dream. 

The final IDent is debatable as to whether it's a short cartoon OR actual IDent, I class it as an elongated IDent. The Cartoon Network IDent's from a few years back presented multiple cartoon characters such as Scooby-Doo, Ed, Edd n Eddy, Courage the Cowardly Dog and nearly every other cartoon character to grace that channel associating with one another. They were enjoyable to watch considering no two character's were alike, the tension could be felt if it was present and it was only because of how the audience already knew about these character's and what's more, you weren't viewing just one style of animation, you were viewing a good few. The colours are vibrant, character design is well executed and character personalities are able to speak for themselves by their overall look, mainly in the case of Johnny Bravo, Shaggy and Dexter. The production value is of high value and no corners have been cut to offer the viewer a really nice Identification advert. 

And now, my weekly plan...

Monday: Presentation, Proposal and Treatment need to still be complete along with a couple of storyboards. Nothing too much really, it should be straight forward.

Tuesdays: The presentation in front of a selected group may or may not commence. If not, I'll be getting all of my work nailed and present it all to the best of my ability for Wednesday, which I've just found out, is the day of my talk. Good times.

Wednesday, Thursday and Every Other Day: I'll be doing what has to be done, plain and simple.

"I'll Be Back Bennett" - And Thus He Returned.

I would say Happy New Year and all that jazz but let's be honest, 2011 is going to be no different than 2010, it starts off with the usual resolutions such as, "I'll stop smoking", "I'll stop drinking" etc, etc, but you'll find that it lasts about a day (give or take) before they're back on track with old habits. If you are one of the few who has kept up their resolution's, congratulations, you're not a failure.

Anyways, why do I return wielding an arsenal of a thousand Quality Street Tins? Work. E4 Stinger's this time too, fun times. It's GOT to be 10 seconds long so you can therefore only work with so much and what it boils down to is... "Make a ten second short story". Easy? Hard? It's hard to say at this point.

Before I go on and talk about other bits and bobs, you might be interested in this weeks plan, i'm not very good at weekly plans, you can't determine how long something you haven't started yet is going to take, you'll find that 9 time out of 10, it doesn't work... For me.

Monday: I will partake in events which cover the medium and exploration of E4 stinger’s, this is commonly known as research, I will, “research” a number of stinger’s, how many Stinger’s I research however is unknown, though when I feel as though I have enough source material to progress, I will most certainly do so. What I will go on to look into will be popular traits within Character Design, as much as it annoys me, I feel that abiding by the unwritten rules of character design within this current generation of animation would attract a bigger audience and ultimately have a higher appeal within the market.

Tuesday: Tuesdays is relatively straight forward, from the research collected from Monday I’ll execute Operation: Derezzed, drawing out conceptual characters, idea’s, locations, stories, because it’s the conceptual stage of design, I HAVE to keep in mind not to focus to heavily on one particular aspect since come the day of presentation, I MIGHT need a back-up plan.

Wednesday: Wednesday again, is relatively straight forward, this time focusing on storyboards and how each idea will play out, preferably I’d like to have about 5 idea’s, if not more, in total, it’s not too much I’d say, not if I work solidly, which isn’t impossible.

Thursday: This is where the week falls apart in a blaze of insanity, writing, writing and what’s that? More writing! Both the Pitch Proposal and Treatment File need to be written out, this isn’t as bad as it seems it’s just well and truly soul destroying and more so tedious, though with that said, it depends how it’s written, as long as it’s not sloppy and poorly written, I have no real problems,

Friday: Friday, will be when I bring my weeks work together in a Power Point Presentation for Monday, this HAS to be finished, I really can’t be bothered with the humiliation of being unable to show my loving crowd the work I’ve produced… Okay that’s a lie; I don’t have a loving crowd… At all, either way, it won’t take long as long as
it’s properly structured, easy on the eye and informative.
   

I nearly forgot to mention, I've been busy with Life Drawing lately... Did it go well? Did it balls. My problem is commonly that I have a hard time keeping focused with life drawing, there's an element to it which I find boring, it's the lack of creativity behind it, I can understand that it benefits skill and it back tracks to the old masters but it's very restrictive and that's what I found hard to work with, if I remember too, I'll whack up the final picture image I did... It's bizarre to say the least.

C.

Randomosities.

Besides the usual rubbish the average online viewer is subject too, you find the odd sparkle of a video, the one that stands out. The first time I saw this I was in hysterics, thing is, I think it had more to do with the violence behind the cartoon more so than the actual video composition.

This era, to me, has a notable cartoon mascot, Spongebob Squarepants seems to be at the forefront of cartoon entertainment, he's everywhere,  that said could you really compare Spongebob to Tom and Jerry, the two series are completely different and the audience seems to have changed also. What's this leading to? The reason I find cartoon violence funny in old cartoon's such as Tom and Jerry and Looney Tunes is because it's such a rare occurrence to find that same charm within todays media, true there IS cartoon violence in certain cartoons of today but it doesn't make you laugh whilst at the same time making you go, "Oooo... Bet that hurt!" It's there because it can be and the gags applied are random allot of the time with no build up. It's hard to explain, especially at 2:30am in the morning, but what differentiates the old from the new is the overall populace that watch, there's no doubt that the youth of today are shown very toned down cartoons, there's no substance for them to pick apart at, they're given s**t and they quite happily eat it.

I hear this allot from people, that todays youth are subject to poorly animated, strung together cartoons and I can't help but wonder why? What happened within the 15 years I went from being 4 to 19? I don't mind some cartoons, Spongebob Squarepants, Ed, Edd n' Eddy, Courage the Cowardly Dog, Recess and all those other shows will forever be golden cartoons to me, they're fun to watch and they keep you coming back, even if it's a repeat, what I don't understand the appeal in is shows like Ben 10, Pokemon and nearly everything shown on Disney these days, series which should've died off a good while ago, it's not that todays youth are stupid, quite the opposite, it's that the people making the animation's haven't properly looked into the audience they're trying to win over, a child has a very erratic imagination they need food for thought and personally, I don't think it's offered to them in todays world of media.

I now question as to why I wrote out a rant at this hour...

Remember Humpty?

Going back to my 2.5D stuff, I said I was going to redo it in a different style and that I'm doing... In the style of Fons Schiedon!! 

I want it to be more of a small sketch rather than it's original "short" concept, I'm talking it being a few seconds long, that said things can and probably will change in terms of timing and pacing. In any case, I thought I'd share some really rough storyboards depicting the idea I have, I'm not going to write about the idea, I just want you, the viewer to interpret as to what's going on.

What's more, I've finalised the design of the Big Bad Wolf, I'm quite fond of it, it's reminiscent of Schiedon's work, it's nothing amazing but it's a simple design and it's the path I chose to follow for this animation... The same can't be said about the other concept's for the Wolf I had.

Tom and Jerry, Orange Bricks and Boxe's and another DVD player to boot.

I recently ordered the Tom and Jerry Collector's Box set, volumes 1-6, you can't complain at a £15 price tag for quite possibly some of the best animation you'll see with two of the most iconic character's to ever grace the television screen. What annoys me though is how some of the footage has been cut mainly due to the political incorrectness, any sort of racist insult has been cut, this includes the "black face" gag's and changing the voice of Tom's owner, was there REALLY any need to change it? Or is it too much of a risk to grace both young and old fan's of what Tom and Jerry is? That being a 1940/50's cartoon, by removing the offensive element's of Tom and Jerry only draws attention to those aspect's, it's a well grounded fact that because of it's time period, Tom and Jerry had racist aspects but did anyone complain? No. It was a cartoon and the time period was reflected in the work, as it is today, though I don't agree with racism, I don't find it necessary to tamper with a sublime piece of animation... That's my little rant over... Or is it?

Though looked down upon by allot of people, Dragonball is a series which I draw allot of influence from, it's a show I grew up watching and at times, still do. It pointed me in the direction I wanted to go in terms of career though it distracted me and I found myself drawing manga and anime and other forms of Eastern Animation more so than Western Animation, this, to some, isn't a problem and they'll be perfectly happy drawing anime and manga for years to come, for me however, it's a problem though that rant is for another day, what I want to quickly run over is the Dragonball Z Orange Bricks and the Dragonball Z Dragon Boxes, both depict Dragonball in its uncut entirety, both have English and Japanese audio, what they differ in is quality. The "Orange Brick Boxset" is, so I hear, region free and is tempting for it's price tag, what's off putting is Funimation's "remastering" process behind it, it's filtered to hell as to get rid of any film grain and scratches, what this does in contrast is also completely destroy the line work which if you're fussy, like me, ruins the experience. On the other hand the Dragon Boxes were remastered frame by frame, realigned and cleaned, it's more worth the price tag, it's downfall is that it's only for American based DVD player's... Great.

You would think that since there ARE multi-regional DVD player's, it would be somewhat of a normality... Obviously not.

The Dirty Kebab Bitch!!

A while ago I got the idea to draw a T-Shirt design and though that idea never took off, the drawing did, anyone who knows me knows that I'm not a big fan of, "Tangelo's", creatures of the female race who douse themselves in orange makeup, tarty clothing and think they're just... FFAAABBBBBUUULLLOOUUUSSSS!! With this said and done I drew out this first rough idea in Photoshop...

As you can see it is a clear representation of today's female, however, it was when I showed my Mam she laughed and said it looked similar to a slab of kebab meat... "Holy S**T!! That's genius!!" So with that in mind I traced over the top of the rough drawing and a couple of hours later... I ended up with this...

If enough people were to say they'd like a T-shirt of this then by all means I'd do it but there are still aspects of the drawing which need cleaning up, I like it, but it could be better.

First time with Photoshop, the Animatic that followed, the realisation of the 2.5D Animation and the unconfirmed Remake.

Though this may lack continuity in terms of the last post, it's something I still need to, sadly, share with you lovely valued viewer's. Up until I started the course I had barely used Photoshop if at all, I didn't know the in's and out's of it and it's never been more so apparent than with my animatic.

This was also my first time animating in Photoshop and again it shows, it lacks any polish and I have a hard time looking at it never mind uploading it. That said, it was through blunt criticism about my colouring technique which made me approach Photoshop in a completely different manner and within the past few month's, not to sound big headed, but I've improved greatly from where I started.

The animatic was to depict the original concept of the 2.5D Humpty Dumpty story I had, the original concept was that Humpty Dumpty was a character in a puppet world, though he saw it as reality and his world as a fantasy realm of wonder, he returns home to witness his wife playing a game with the three little pigs and instantly jumps to conclusions. Assaulting the pigs and running out the house, Humpty wanders into the night, drinking, acting violently and awaking upon a set-piece building. From the sky a shadow lurks and grabs Humpty Dumpty, the shadow as it turns out, is a hand and Humpty Dumpty is cracked open over a frying pan.

At the time I liked the concept for the animation though looking back at it, I hate it, I hate the character designs I did, the world I made, the lack of flow, it's a really ugly piece.

As for the final 2.5D animation itself, it followed a completely different narrative, as I stated in my last post I was trying to emulate Tom and Jerry just a bit too much as well as the detailed work of Todd Schorr, an artist who I aspire greatly too, I had went back and changed the character designs and the story completely. Humpty Dumpty was still the central protagonist though instead of his own self insecurity being the villain, it was the Big Bad Wolf, Humpty returns home to find his Wife (know an egg herself) smashed to bits, Humpty panics and runs out of his apartment and onto the balcony where he breaks through the barrier, dropping to the ground the Big Bad Wolf pursues and waits eagerly with a giant frying pan at the bottom, sadly he's hit by a bus and killed whilst Humpty hits the ground soon after, a tragic end to a tragic animation.



There were about 200 assets prepared for this animation but I never got all together in time and I ultimately lost interest... Or did I? I had been FAR too ambitious with my 2.5D animation, a more reasonable approach would have been to shorten the story and work with a much simpler premise but to be fair I'm glad that the pay off wasn't as self gratifying as I hoped, it's a simple case of trial and error.  

Now then, I've went back to the story of Humpty Dumpty and the Big Bad Wolf and I've this time drawn influence from Fons Schiedon to fuel my work. The new look of Humpty Dumpty is much simpler though I find expresses much more and the same applies to the Big Bad Wolf, the premise is shorter, snappier, random yes but unexpected and it's something I'm going to get finished during the
Summer.

It's been a while...

I've been pretty busy lately so I forgot about my blog for a time, so it's time to get back on track, well try too. My second module was that of 2.5D animation, now to give a brief explanation as to what exactly 2.5D animation is, it's 2D animation within a 3D environment, at first the concept was confusing and honestly hard to grasp, I had used Cinema 4D, the program which we were to use to animate, in the past but never to such a degree where it involved frame by frame animation, only very simplistic box movement animation.

So then with this said how did I eventually execute the final animation, well, I looked into some 2.5D animation, "Cowtastrophe" by Aaronkimatnimation was the first piece I looked at, though to be honest this piece is more of a cut-out animation based though still served as inspiration and a guideline as to what COULD be achieved.


The second animation I looked at was by Sophie Durand, what I particularly like how Durand approached the fore, middle and background, it has a very watercolour-esc approach and I really liked how it had been approached and something which I considered taking inspiration from. The separation in layer's and object's is apparent though at this point I was looking to replicate the look and feel of old Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry Cartoons so therefore I didn't take into account all possibilities due to my own narrow mindedness which, spoiler, led to my downfall within the module.

"Washerbots" was the third piece I looked at by Sumo Science, though not overly detailed the animation retains a charm about it, it could be better, the lack of detail or colour brings down the overall standard and the animation comes off as being half-arsed, that's not to say it's bad, the premise is clever but it could've been so much more.

The next piece is by Fons Schiedon, at first I didn't like Schiedon's work, I saw it as too simplistic however, it's his work which has inspired me quite heavily and I'll talk about how later on. "Little Bright Eyes" blends 2D and 3D together really well, the 3D environment isn't incredibly detailed whereas the main character is, what this allows is for the attention to be primarily on him and because of that more effort is applied to his movement, it isn't static, quite the opposite, it's very fluent. This is an aspect that needs to be taken into account for future work.

The final piece I looked at was Adherent, though not a big fan of the overall style, the approach to 2.5D animation was clever and at the time shared similarities to the story of my 2.5 animation, the characters are really nicely detailed though the segmented black outlines of each individual limb of the character is something which always annoys me and some I try and avoid, it always looks off to me and detracts from the overall look and feel though that said, if that IS the style then for what it is, it's very good and the sense of depth within the 2D world is very nicely done.

So these were some of the things I looked at to get a general grasp as to what 2.5D animation was and it gave me some incentive as to what was to be achieved, however, things didn't go as I planned...