THE ONGOING COMIC

Pritty awsome stuff my friend on deviant art Dicko17 http://dicko17.deviantart.com/ started a thing call the ongoing comic http://the-ongoing-comic.deviantart.com/ this is an awsome idea what it is , is were one artist draws the first page then a different one the second and its like an ongoing thing where each artist puts a spin on it, like the game where each of you says a word and eventualy form a story.

its gonna be ace im up and im gonna be doing page number 9 id actualy love to do more but i guess that kinda defeats the point haha ^^; cant wait to see what ill be doing hope i can do something good enugh !

oh and i had my assesment today at uni it went well, my tutors gave me an awsome compliment they said my poses were reallly good so im pleased about that.

i also talked about my final year film i had an idea about a cave man i was pritty much settled on but they prefer an earlyer idea i hade about the necropolis railway, im a little scared that it will be to long tho so i guess ill have a big think on it over summer while doing some jhon k exsorsizes, i also think that i will do the caveman thing as little news paper style comic strips and animate them in my spare time maybe.

id better evaluate my las project to so here goes.

I eas pleased with the idea and storybord i thought they flowed well and me and the person i was working with (jay) worked well togther, however i kinda wish i woulda chose a more fun character design.

also with regauds animating the project i wish i couldve got more done and also that me and jay wouldve cooporated more in the animation like we planed alas that did not happen and i think it wouldve been better had i made my own sound fx and music (if i knew how to make music) but the music i got from flash kit was good enugh and suieted the story.

i had a hard time animating such suttle things but it was fun nonetheless i am iching to do sum wacky stuff now though.

overall i think the project went okay ther is alot i am not pleased with but it flows ok and gets the stoy across fine, still ashame we couldent finnish it.

i will try and get some petal sketches up on here later and the youtube also.

peace.

Peter Chung

i tthink this will be useful ! i love peter chungs work its quite odd and interesteng and he has a individual style

2D ANIMATION secret of kells

http://theblogofkells.blogspot.com/

i found this blog last year and have been watching it a while its a company in island called cartoon saloon and they have made a 2d feature film called the secrate of kells i relly hope i get to see it!. i wonder if it will come out in england.

i think it looks awsome if it comes out on dvd i shall deffanatly get it.

John Krisfalusi

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/

i found John krisfalusis (ren and stimpy) blog a while ago i thoguth id put it in on here he is such a big help to students and animators puting all this stuff up and id like to thank him for it.

also he has some animation and construction exorsizes whitch i plan to do over summer.

so yeah thnaks Mr John K

bradford

This is a bit late, but what the heck.

12 of November I went to Bradford animation festival.

I saw many films and talks so i will mention ones that stood out to me, so the first thing id like to mention is panorama 2, this had showing ten short films the two that stood out to me most was Zoologic and chicken wings.
Zoologic
zoologic was a brilliant example in my opinion of how to use sound in animation and was also very funny, the minimalist backgrounds make the style like a watercolour sketch and not take away from the action, it also looks like a upa cartoon to me because of the minimalist and stylistic aproach.





i liked this film alot and it had alot of good animation.


Chicken wings

chicken wings was also very nicely animatied and a funny story it was about a cowgirl and a werewolf who fond a chicken and they fight over who gets it. i enjoyed this film and thought the animation was very nice couldve done with some colour though.

Films for children

these were all very good apart from one called peter piper the check up whitch was a cgi animation about a plane i relly dident like this one as the composition was shoddy and the colors were terible and i thought the character desigen was ugly and unorigional.
I will mention 3 of the films these being, A girl who stepped on bread, the tiny fish and the curse of skull rock.



A girl who stepped on bread

A girl who stepped on bread was a really nice looking film probably in my opinion the best looking film at Bradford, the character designs were nice the colours were easy on the eye and the animation was good, the only downfall is that i think it was little bit to long and at points the narrative got a little confusing.
It was about a girl who behaved badly towards the other people in her village and how her behaviour had consequences.

The tiny fish


This was a charming animation about a child that sees a man catching a fish and gets sad about it and makes a drawing of the fish which the child imagines it comes to life and they have to escape the man.
This film looked very nice and i think it was predominantly cut out animation but it could have some computer generated effects. I enjoyed this film a lot and thought part were quite scary and imaginative.

The curse of skull rock


When the film first opened and i saw the pirate captain I thought it could’ve been stop motion but later when i saw the ship and other characters i could tell it was cgi, this film was fun and short and was about some pirate looking for treasure and ending up fighting the un dead. It looked nice for cgi and had fun lighting i thought the character designs where fun and different and all had their own Shallotte.
I enjoyed all three of these films a lot and think they were some of the best i saw at BAF this year.

Commercials
The commercials were very good although I was shocked that the Sony bravia play-doh advert won again as it won last year and i found this a bit unfair
My favourite two adverts were the nspcc handscape ad which reminds me of the psp game loco roco.


Creation museum Eden

Which I thought were very well composed and coloured.

Professional films
3 of these were very good in different ways,

Varmints was brilliant in scope and concept and had some beautiful composition and shots and ideas also very nice character design and some of the best cg ii have seen, it was a bit to long though and i think it over explained itself.


Post! was funny and nicely animated and reminded me of a newspaper comic it had alot of charm.


And Skhiezin was a brilliant and funny idea and story quite unnerving at parts although I didn’t like the style much.

Animated features
Out of the features i went to see Idiots and angels by Bill Plympton.
Before it it also had a shot by Plympton aswell called hotdog.
Hot dog was brilliant fun film and had stylish animation it was about a dog that wants to be a fire man it still amazes me he does them all himself i actually preferd hot dog to the main feature Idiots and angels whitch was about a downtrodden man who finds out one day he is growing wings that force him to do good deeds this is not in his nature though as he is quite mean and problems ensue, this was well animated and interesting in style but i thogut that it was way to long and could’ve told the story in half the time and been more entertaining.

hot dog

Idiots and angels

Waltz whit basher

I did not like this film and was amazed at how many people thought it was good, i found the animation lacking in any character and the acting was nonexistent. Thought the colours were okay but that is all it had going for it, the story was sad and based on real events but i found it boring and unengaging and did not care for the characters the animation was badly drawn almost looked traced form photographs not rotoscope because it didn’t even move much.
personally i think this type of film if not well animated should’ve just been done as life action.

Barry Purves retrospective
I hadent really seen any of Barry Purves animation before and was pleasantly surprised at the quality and richness of it i think in his work you can see a strong sense of theatre and the movement and lighting is superb i cant say i always like the subject matter but the animation and sculpting of the characters make up for that my favourite was screenplay although i think it could’ve ended more interestingly.



Daniel Greaves Tandem films
Daniel Greaves is an award winning animator and made the animation manipulation and flat world this was an interesting talk and most of the films were fun and well animated. I particualy like manipulation for its simple yet entreating idea.


Over all Bradford animation festival was good this year and i found some films that i really liked its a shame most of them are shorts and wont be coming out on dvd, i will also metion that i met the animator Johanna Quin she was really nice person and let uslook at her sketch book whitch was amazeing and made me wanna go practice drawing .

some doodles from last year

doodles and things

a caricature of my friend dave it was ded fun to do i should do caricatures more often.

Belated

i havent been keeping up to date with this so some of the next few post will be from earlier events in the year.
any how secondya is about half way through its been fun so far much better than first year sides the lack of enough life drawing classes, workin on a film with a fellow student at the mo( i will post details later).

over summer we had to do a story board mine was about a yeti and jenny green teeth alas i dident finnish it but i did learn alot.

my fist project of the year was walk cycles and maya and blummin heck is maya confusing thers so meany buttons and things i dislike being at the mercy of the rig. i did okay on it but i have forgoten how to model things :(.

the walk cycles were fun i did mine in 2d nothing to flashy simple figurs, they were fun i think i did about 10 overall not counting faild atempts ha i also did some rough in flash i got a first for them so that was good :).

During this we had a project set by gene flynn then part of cosgrove hall but it shut down befor we finnished our project we finnished it ayway it was an advert for the royal mail in story bord form this was a really fun project i had to design a character and idea and draw the bord, ill upload scans of this work if i can.

i very nearly got a first for this to it was only because of it not being presented in a portfolio that i did not.

we also went to BAF this year ill upload a post on that soon.

also id like to mention an anime i have found called heroic age, now i used to be anime/ manga mad but ive matured to like lots of other things to whitch has improved my art.

but this anime named heroic age is by no meens stunning animation or story but it is fun and i think its a very good example of how music can have a big effect on the feeling of films its really epic ( i really like it) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBDTCpm15YA&feature=channel_page

also i have been watching samurai jack that show is brilliant for its composition and color keying and camera language it should get more recognition in the uk !
i wish you could get the dvds in the uk to.

anywas ill be back soon with a post on bradford and also the midlands anime expo laters

Some sketches i did of torsors i used bruce lee as refferance, i know the bottom one aint a torso but i like the forced prespective :)

Cut Out Animation

On this project we were expected to work in a group and get sound dilolog recordings from the radio and animate the lip sync to them in cut out animation. Alas the other menbers of my group did not seem inclined to work on this prjects very much as they did not come down to the sound room when i asked them and didn't seem enthusiastic or intrested in the project. So i was forced to just go it alone. It took me along time to find soume diolog that i liked, i find find alot of diolog that i didn't really like or intend to use. Eventually i found something i liked from the radio station Rock FM, It was a Phone in show. i dope sheeted this quite quickly because i wanted to get animating after beeing stuck in a sound room for two weeks. I decided to use coloured card, the design i used was an ailen old lady because in the diolog she says 'get to mars' and i thought it would be funny. I quite njoyed cutting out the images and i may actually do a still picture with cut out card.

Doing cut out animation was quite fun although very crude, during the animation process i noticed that somthing seemed off so i took what i had animated and edited t to the sound and i didn't work. I think i had animated a word twice and i had to cut out about ten frames. the occured again later on bt i noticed in time to stop myself.

I do like the animation that i have done although i wish it was smoother but this would meen longer diolog, more frames and more time. I also dislike the way the cut out model gets more scruffy as time goes on but it inevitibul as i am moving and touching it. I try to get as much gesture and acting as well as good lip sync into the animation as my goal is to become a Character animatior.

nick robinson

Nick Robeson of Mackinnon and Saunders (corpse bride) came and did a workshop on monday and tuesday. It was quite intense but i like that, it was best lesson i have had at uni yet probably because i got taught. It was fun doing a good model and i quite proud of the arms but the feet are rubbish and i think i could do better on the feet. I will upload charcters designs of him later maybe.

Claire Wendling

I was looking at some comic artist recently and found Claire Wendling. I have no idea wat her storys are like but he art is ace i really like the line quality i think it has a lot of life,
also think i see a touch of egon sceile in her work
images copy right to Claire Wendling

L'Illusioniste finnished

L'Illusioniste finneshd plese ignore the rigging. I will upload some of the prelimaney work later. all 3 of us had a go at animating him.

Evaluation of the L'Illusioniste.

This is the first of the group projects which is in stop motion. There was three people in my group, me, charlotte white and Jay Townsend. We had a choice of four themes and we discussed which theme we were goanna use. We chose illusion and we came up with the idea to do an old fashioned magician. We had the magican draw a cartoon of himself and magicaly make it move paying homage to the likes of Windsor Mckay and the old animations.

We settled on my design for the charcter and we all did storyboards. I volenteared to make the arature, charlotte made the clothes, jay was ment to make the set but he didn't get round to it, so we use some brown paper and cloth. I also did the 2d animated character on 'post-it' notes.
The model making took two weeks which was a very long time i thought, i did remake the head because i didn't like the first one. The model was quite hard to make and he did fall appart a few times.

When it came to animating we only had three days to finsh it, and we managed it. All in all the animation was okay but im still not happy with the bits i did as i was rushing thorugh fear of not meeting the deadline. I think if i had time to do a few tests before starting the final film i could have done alot better, but i was qute happy with the little bit of 2d animation i did since i did it straight ahead and with a pen.

Overall im quite happy with the project but if i could do it again, it could be alot better.

bill plympton

amazing that he did it all himself the thing with the webcam is an ingenious way to publisize and its quite funny, im not to keen on the style mind you but i apreciate it all the same, i wish i could draw a character in such few lines ><

glene kene draws tarzan

i really like the design of tarzan pluse glene kene is an awsome animator

Water fall

a student final year film from calarts i love this i hope my final year project is this good, i think the centuars design is really nice his face reminds me of an iron ha!

i found one of the girls websites her name is ammiee major (http://aimeemajor.com/) the other girl who worked on this is called crystal chesney shes worked on curious george and other stuff i cant find her website though.

these r some of the concepts of the characters^
picures copyright to ammiee major and crystal chesney

walk cycle practice

a walk cycle practice i did a few week ago it looks better wen looped .
here is the link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBtDs6I4FxE

Le Illusionist

in uni we have had group projects to do my first is working in a group with my girlfriend charlotte and jay we had to do a stop motion, its finnished now we managed to film it all in 3 days, these r some progress shots from when we were making the model.

i will put the film on you tube wen we have edited it.

sketching

i did a few sketches in my a5 sketchpad t'other day, i really like the guy with grey hair i wish i could come up with a story for him i will work on it i think :)

Jumping

I found this short on youtube by osamu tezuka i thought it was quite unusual made me feel a bit queezy lol http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45_8ejTGAw8&feature=related

principals

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Saac7xTE-QM this is in my opinion the best of the first projects i have done at uni on the principals breif, i would write more on the subject but i have wasted a bit of time drawing and not makeing my pdp ha! welll its started now and shall try my best to keep it up.

i am not at all happy with my principals project looking back i think i will redo them as i am sure i can do much better, i will deffinatly try anticipation again,
as for my force weght and volume (tun-ga ruogh animation) the hardest part unbeliveably was the box turning i did not expect that i thought that the water would be harder alas i was wrong and i redid the box 4 times and im still not happy but deadlines will be the bane of us all heh :).

i s'pose i better write something about bradford animation festival, it was good not as good as is hoped but thats my fault for being to optimistic we saw nick park and bob godfary witch wasgood, it was interesting to see all the animations from different places and i was suprized and appaled at the amount of rotoscope (i hate rotoscope), t seems cut out is big atm aswell.

ther were some really good hand drawn nimation to woo hoo!
thats all i have to say about bradford.