walkie time!

This weeks task was to animate someone walking, but with some sort of message/emotion. I chose to animate someone who was angry, therefore I wanted my walk to look determined and agressive. I have recently bought a lightbox so I thought I would give it a whirl... then I realised how rusty I had got at drawing! It took me aaaages to plan out each step of the walk, and even the finished thing doesn't really depict an 'angry' kind of walk... only the miserable face of the character gives it away!
But on the other hand I think I have learnt a lot with this walk, because I really struggled last year with gettinbg to grips with the walk cycle we did back then (I did mine 5 times and it still looked terrible!) This walk now was my first attempt at it, so I guess I could say I have improved a tad bit from last time :) Here it is!...

Inspiration

I likey this animation! tis quite simple but I think it fits the music well and I love the cut-out style :)

Inspiration

I absolutely love these animations by Gobblynne, I first watched them a couple of years ago and absolutely loved the mixed-media style. I really really really want to do something like this for the projects we are set this year! :D

Lifting box exercise

Blimey, time has flown and once again I find myself behind in my blogging, many apologies! I am now back in the beautiful falmouth and have officially started my second year... gulp! I admit that my memory has (unsuprisingly) let me down again seeing as I have forgotten a hell of a lot over the summer, and I'm now kicking myself for not doing more animating during our time off! But never mind, new year, fresh start and hopefully fresh inspiration! It sounds like we have some pretty exciting and admittedly daunting projects just round the corner, so I am going to try and throw myself into starting a sketchbook of doodles to get back into the flow of drawing this week. Here is our first assignment... we had to animate someone picking up a heavy box, which proved to be more complicated than I thought! I wish I had tried a bit harder on getting a realistic-looking character, but I tried instead to focus on the movement rather than detail. I have just bought a snazzy lightbox, so hopefully I will be able to brush up on my 2D skills over the next few weeks. I will upload some of my scribbles and doodles over the next few days, so until then, adios!

wormie!!

Now please don't judge this terrible piece of stop-motion too harshly, I know I have a hell of a lot to learn! But I'm giving it a go, definetly need to practise more! This is just a quick clip of a 'worm' wriggling across our kitchen table.. I only had black plasticine so it looks a bit weird and the movement is pretty jerky :s Going to invest in some new materials soon :D It was fun though, and Monkey Jam is a god send! :D

Monkey Jam Test!!

Well well.. once again it's been bloomin' aaages since my last post, and I am ashamed to say I have abandoned my poor blog once again! It's been a pretty busy summer so far catching up with people which has been lovely, but I have also been working quite a bit to try and pay off a fraction of my hidious debts (I try not to think about it!) So I admit I haven't really done much animating or anything remotely 'animatey'.. which kind of scares me because my memory is terrible, and knowing me I will probably forget everything I have learnt this year! :s So I have decided to kick myself up the bum and finally do something! For the past week I have been doing some doodling and sketching, trying to focus on a quick style rather than my usual painstakingly- detailed illustrations, which I'm finding quite hard to get to grips with, but I will upload some on here soon. I have also discovered an amazing programme called Monkey Jam which, suprisingly, I can actually work! :D It's designed to help make stop-motion animations, and I have been attempting to make some models using wire armatures for the skeleton and plastacine for the main bulk of the body.. they look pretty crude and clumsy but they will do for some practising! I've only ever tried stop-motion once a couple of years ago and it immediately caught my interest, but for some reason I haven't tried it out since. So I'm gonna give it a go over the next few weeks, it could be a disastor but wahaay.. trial and error :) Here is a silly test I did on monkey jam to see how the programme works :)

Finished Animal Firm PDF

Wahay! Here's the finished Animal Firm pdf that I handed in for marking! For some reason it wouldn't upload at first, so I loaded the file into Scribd and copied the code for my bible into here, and it seems to have worked! After grumbling excessively about this project, looking back I have actually enjoyed working on it! I struggled at first to get a strong idea and spent too long worrying about the plot. Bu then I realised it wasn't all about the plot... a simple idea can often flourish into something special! I still do not really like the concept to my Animal Firm because I think it is very cliche and has been used many times before. But I am really pleased with all my character designs and the final look of the bible that I've created, I just wish I had a bit more time to work on the backgrounds more since I feel they look a bit rushed and basic. But this project has definetely helped me to understand more about the pre-production side of animation, which is great because it is the area of animation that I would love to get involved with. So here is my final pdf, enjoy!
Final Animal Firm