A wellyboot of animated happenings

This is the finished piece, I made the clock greener for a more realistic dusty light. Shadows in the rest of the clock draw more attention to the slice of light peaking out of the crack.  Also, it further defines the differences of what Spider is used to (dark) and what he isn't. (light of day)

This is an art piece to help develop an idea in the works for my pre-production story idea which revolves around two clock bound characters facing the concept of the great outside. Here shows the Spider reacting to a beam of light shining through a hole in the clock. I'm the first to rush towards a line drawing, the thought of relying on just lighting terrifies me. However ... just by chance on photoshop I turned the layer with the line drawing off, and for the first time I saw something I'd drawn with nothing but colour and shading!  This is a biggie, as I'm pretty stubborn and have been avoiding doing sustained painting online for a while. The importance of light has definitely been realised. The Spider is delicate, as is the light. This proves to be a nice mix. That said, I'm sticking with the line drawing for this particular piece, just because I feel it gives the character the personality he needs, which would be slightly scraggy yet def...

Glen. A4, drawn with a pencil I found on the bus.     I began by drawing a huge nose and consciously decided to fiddle around with the normal placements of facial features. His ears are small and in line with his mouth; His eyes are wide apart and slightly rotund, yet still around halfway in the middle of the head; and his eye brows take the shape of clear lines, almost looking paved or carved into his face.     Drawing bodies in proportion has always been a grey area. Call me mad but it's pretty exciting to think I have so much work to do to refine this, I'd love to become more confident in drawing full figures, as I reckon it's a weakness of mine.    Glen is a cover teacher. He used to be a food critique, but one of his reviews caused the closing down of a restaurant owned by a guy called Dudley. Glen put him of work, leaving him homeless. But, feeling bad, promised to let Dud stay over in his house for a few nights. 10 years ...

The story of how I came up with another story. Bongo.  (do ignore the wings.) This is a doodle that happened some while ago.     I bought some new glasses that somehow made me look like Diane Keaton and they arrived today which prompted me to get re-get tumblr so I could search for cool photographs of her off-set drinking tea or something. The first thing I see on the dashboard was one of those "fill-in-your-own" character sheet; promoting the capabilities of bringing to life a complex character. This caught my lil eye, and I had a moment, so I thought oh, what the heck.  Here's a transcript deciphered from the scribbled questions and answers that popped up all over the page.  Name: Bongo Age: 30 Gender thing: dude Socio-economic background: casual labourer - serves coffee  Personality strengths: laid back, trusting Personality flaws: always exposed, too laid back Unconscious want: sense of family Conscious wa...

Sketching away: with much tea I've begun applying life drawing techniques to my doodles. It's giving them recognisable humanoid legitimacy! I'm loving the spontaneity of it all, as sketchy time is full of un-planned hand/mind combinations resulting in unique drawings that wouldn't have happened at any other time. There's something special in that I reckon. The girl above is an A4 portrait drawing (ish) which to be honest is faairly unheard of for me. I rarely fill a page! Began with the nose and the rest followed. As I type this, I realise many times when I draw, I'll start drawing a man and it will somehow become a woman. Perhaps it's a habit of mine to add features, (hair, earrings, eye lashes, necklaces, tops etc) to expand doodles. Thinking about it, these are all features that break out of the pencil line of my drawings of dudes.  If I could find my rubber I'd move that eyebrow slightly to the left. 

Clockwise: I drew the character above out of nowhere the other day. His design is simple!  Wasn't expecting this to go anywhere, but those who saw him seemed to really engage with his character. "Who is that?" they'd ask. "Where is he?" So I figured I had to give this guy a story. Looking at him, he displayed large eyes and ears, so one could assume he'd spent a lot of time in the dark. The small scale of the drawing must have subconsciously rubbed off on my mind, so I saw him as small. Clocks are everyday objects just about large enough to be someones home. He looks honest and innocent, more importantly alone. Isolation and clocks seemed to compliment each other wonderfully! It also kicks up questions of time and working around a coggy environment. Very quickly I found my mind racing and there were almost too many possibilities in terms of story! Growing mad with ideas isn't easy, but by quietly mulling I managed to finally see s...

Life Drawing: By tackling different aspects of the body at a range of scale, the outcome becomes unpredictable. I like this approach, it's made me look at the bodies closely. Blocking out darker shading has proved a recent habit, although I reckon I need to loose some of the structure of the drawings. Loosening up with the charcoal might leave potential for fate to swing in and get some real action on the page.

 James Henry design work: Ella is a small determined little mouse. The lucky type I'd expect to jump into puddles and come out completely dry. In the design process I thought big eyes with big ears would be a likely combo. Chipper little mice also need to use their tiny paws to keep a grasp on their scrolls and swords, so I gave her puffy paws in which to do such things.  Overall I reckon my designs could suit their demographic more, with this show being aimed at young audiences, perhaps a design of simpler and easier means for ease of animation work flow would be better suited? Still, I confess myself proud of the above drawing as I managed to get a lot of character out of her stance and face! I'm slowly discovering how to draw each feature (through life-drawing) and it's exciting to see my sketches become better rounded and unique.

A friend of mine is soon to release an EP (exciting!) and has asked me to come up with an album cover! I'm at the beginning of the process, so I'm just about coming to grips with the massive amount of responsibility that's been given to me.  As a massive music fan, over the years certain album covers have come to define the music itself. (T.Rex Live in Concert 1993; David Bowie, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust; every Led Zep album; Pearl Jam, Ten; Funkadelic, Maggot Brain; Guns and Roses, Appetite for Destruction; Pink Floyd, The Dark Side of the Moon; Foos, Santana, Blur, Stone Roses jOY DIVISION STEVIE NICKS AC/D- okay the list is quite endless.  The (allegedly) cold, hard truth is that the album cover has to reflect the songs perfectly. So after a good week of listening to nothing but the wonderful Will Dunn's unfinished EP, I felt brave enough to begin coming up with ideas.  When in doubt - run to collage. That's my motto. So I did. Results...

The Destination of Leavers Survey is a national survey that is sent out to all the people that left university. The aim is to find out what they've been up to since leaving and how the university helped set them up in their desired field. I'm making a short video for the FXU at Falmouth university to promote this survey! From a professional design perspective, this has to be informative and relay the strong importance of people completing it. I've opted for a simple paper background, nought' too fancy. Simple graphics in cool teal/green will aid the visuals for each point that's made. I also mashed up various parts of the Falmouth and Penryn campus to create a single building representative and recognisable as the whole of Falmouth University. It's set to be 20 seconds long (although I reckon the information they want told will stretch it out to at least double that time.)  It's been great to work with the FXU to make this video! I hope to wor...

So I'm working on storyboards for Dino Diner! It's a third year animated short about a failing chef who owns a diner. "But Amy, WHERE COULD THIS STORY POSSIBLY GO?" Don't worry, I hear your cries. Sadly you'll just have to wait and see. Here I've given a harmless sneaky peak at some of the storyboards. Dino Diner is to be made in 3D. I'm an unnatural 3D'er and the mere thought of Maya sadly sends my brain into turmoil. Still, visualising these shots doesn't seem to be too different to 2D. There's a whole 3D space to consider, but that is as it should be in a 2D storyboarding anyway.  Excited to see where this goes!

To begin tying in roman baths with 1950's textile design, I've taken some my recreated designs of Lucienne Day's work and taken them into photoshop to play around with how they might sit in a background design. In my opinion, the mix of roman/greek style baths and these deigns work well together as they seem to compliment each other. There's a sense of growth and delicacy about the designs that seem natural on top of the buildings in these mock ups.   Below, I used colour schemes with less distractions such as colour. By using simple tones of the same colour, it brings out the beauty of the building and the pattern. They stand out as effective concept pieces, as well as pretty lil pieces of art.

   The wonderful woman you see above you is prominent 1950's textile designer Lucienne Day. I've been researching 1950's textile design to use as a style influence for Falmouth University's Animation and VFX second year Pre-production module.  When I was first assigned textile design, I wasn't expecting to enjoy it. A classic example of just how wrong I tend to be. Upon finding Lucienne Day, I fell in LOVE. Her patterns are abstract and fresh, with perfect colour combinations and inspiration taken from growth and nature. In order to better understand her style, I gave it a go myself! I focussed on colour and form. Whilst drawing, I recognised a lot of similar traits in her work to mine. Some of her pieces had an odd slant to them, a kook or kink in the line-work that settles her pieces firmly into the abstract genre. There's also a strong sense of balance and composition that she's clearly taken into consideration.  As I am to match thi...

Tablet drawing... So it's been a while since I've drawn digitally, as over summer I spent a lot of time drawing with paper and pen. However TODAY I had the chance to kick start the digital drawing again.  Drawing characters of various calibers, face shapes and features is a lot of fun and I enjoy following characters line of movement. I used to draw characters straight on, alas now I'm incorporating actions and situations into the sketches. This way it's far more dynamic, and they immediately become better 3D characters. Brush experimentation lies in my future...

 ~ 11 Second Club ~ To develop my initial ideas I've been sketching potential character designs for character 2. She slinks into the conversation and my interpretation of her appearance based on the voice file is as follows;  A smooth, slightly cheek weighted character who's well adjusted to life in espionage. Experienced, headstrong and composed. She lets out a rare and secret confidence in character 1. "Well, I think you're brilliant", she remarks.  The clothes she wears echo her loose personality, with a sculpted body and sleeves that drape across the bar. Fashion, for her, is natural. She carries herself with ease.  She's basically just really cool.  Top left is the design I'm taking forward.   

Layouts: Above is a sneak peak of my double pan layout! (I decided to do that apposed to 2 separate pieces) It's come from a storyboard from the Penryn 800 project, in a sequence where Peter Mundy walks through Russia and wanders into a camp of Samoyed people. I used mountains in the background to add a sense of scale and drama to the scene. The style for the actual animation is fairly flat and 2D, so I tinkered around with the perspective a lil'. Below is the panel from the storyboard showing what was worked from to create the layout above. 

Backgrounds: I decided to base one of my final painted backgrounds on a storyboard I jotted down a few weeks ago set in a remote fantasy land. My photoshop skills have definitely improved since the beginning! I got the hang of creating shadow and a sense of mass, ultimately I went a bit mad on the smudge tool but I'm sure I'll get bored of it soon.  When it came to colouring I wasn't sure which angle to take - the tones in the top picture are what you'd expect a fantasy land of this nature to look like, but that bugged me. I didn't want to fall into the trap of the obvious! Below shows the changes I made, the scene seems a lot grittier and the mushroom house roof has become a lot more prominent. 

Photoshop adventures: As part of this project, we are asked to copy compositions of existing animation backgrounds. I saw a lot of my course-mates AMAZING photoshop skills and decided to give it a try! My approach has always been more hands-on when it comes to creating backgrounds, I'd draw and create textures then bring them on to photoshop to tie it all together. I've never done it entirely on photoshop so I thought this was a good time to attempt it. (attempt being the main word) I took a dramatic still from Beauty and the Beast, and below is a small section of the whole picture that I'm working on. As it's a screen-shot of a section, it's a lot easier to focus on the finer details, like the stars in the night sky etc. Overall my style has always been sketchy and loose, and the backgrounds for mainstream films rarely do that so I'm trying to be as precise as I can. Adding my own twist to these classic backgrounds is something I can'...

(^Peter Mundy's drawing of a Samoyed he saw) Samoyed character redesign: On the right hand side you'll see my first attempt at a Samoyed character. I'm not too sure what I was thinking at the time, but sleep deprivation is probably to blame. The general feedback was that he didn't look like he was covered in fur or was warm at all, and I completely agree. Compared to my other two minor characters he just didn't fill the role enough. Using his basic figure as a frame to redesign, I made his beard subtler, his clothes fluffier, and most importantly, his colour scheme warmer . Samoyed people dress colourfully, can't be sure how I managed to overlook that at the beginning! He's probably feeling a lot more confident with his new appearance, I know I am. For the record, here are the final secondary characters: