London

I've been walking around London sketching. I've never been much of an environment artist but so much stuff around here just demands to be drawn that I think I'll get over that little handicap. I'm in Edinburgh now and look forward to drawing the sights here as well.

Face Studies

My expressions seriously need some improvement so I've been working hard at making silly faces to my web camera. It's always fun seeing where the different thumbnails compose themselves based on "Oh look! there's still some space there!" when I do these sorts of studies.

BTW: Trailer

Many thanks to Ozma Sound for such a fantastic job on the music and sound effects.

WHIIIIRRRZZZZZZMMMMMZMZZZZMMZMMZMZMZMZMMMZRRRRRRRRRRMMMMMMRRRRRZZZZMMMMRRMRMRMRM

That is approximately the sound my computer is making right now. Really, really, really loudly.

...

...

&^%$

Painting backgrounds

Tables are overrated. The floor is comfy.

Animating with a track pad: because I like making things difficult

Every now and then I feel like really challenging myself: switching things up a bit, getting my brain working again, adding a little bit of extra interest to my work, you know?

So in the spirit of of unnecessary difficulty and being too lazy to get my tablet out of my bag... I decided to animate this with my track pad. After about 3 frames I decided to pack up and go home and continue on the bus (because you know, drawing on a track pad isn't hard enough on it's own, why not do it in a moving vehicle?). The bus proved much less of a complication than anticipated. The only difference I noticed was that I couldn't make funny faces without looking like a creeper and that I had to just hold onto the laptop whenever the bus had to stop to keep it from sliding off my lap.

My favourite part of the experience was when on the third and final bus, a passenger behind me tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I'd ever considered using a tablet. I told him yea, but there was no space on the bus and I just couldn't be bothered to take it out. (Thank you random stranger!)

Between those three frames at school and getting off the bus this is what I accomplished. Go me.

Someone out there panning a walk cycle hates me right now.

So, more often than not I do a walk cycle then just leave it looping on the spot and don't bother panning it across a background because in the past most of my walk cycles have been exercises for the sake of the walk itself.

So I think that when you DO take your walk cycle character and pan it across a screen the idea is to measure out how much you've put the planted foot back on each frame then calculate how quickly the pan will have to move, or if you're doing the pan by hand you carefully line up the tickers to the accorded distance or something.

That's how I think it works anyways. I've yet to actually do that because I tend to just guess at random then check the feet. It's happened for the second time now that on the first guesstimate the feet stick perfectly.

Well, if that's how my dice are going to roll I guess I'll just have to live with it.

Refrence Footage: A whole Vimeo Channel Dedicated to the Task

So apparently there's a vimeo group dedicated to collecting good reference footage for animatiors. I wish I'd known about these guys sooner, but I'm glad to have found them now.

The Secret Revealed

So I've been pretty hush-hush online about how I'm doing the underwater scene in my gradfilm but.. the film will be done in a month so I may as well explain myself now.



This is a small test from the fall. I'm using a zen/Buddha board. When painted on with water the wet area turns black. As it evaporates the area fades then disappears. I use the evaporating images like an onion skin and do straight ahead animation taking pictures as I go.

An updated leica reel.

A lot of the cuts are in too early and some of the animation needs timing adjustments, but here's an updated reel for my film. This will be the last non-password protected posting of this as film festivals often require works to not be posted online.

A WILD CHANGE OF PLANS APPEARS!

Sooooo... I was thinking through how my film was going to look cleaned up. I thought about what the lines look like cleaned up, how they'll look with the backgrounds, comments from my grad panel waaaaaay back in December about how I shouldn't clean the lines up so much and also of the background sketch I have here on the blog and... I came to a conclusion that surprised myself: I really like the sketchy look of that background kelpie. I regret that I won't be able to have the bleeding ink lines via digital cleanup but... I like the gestural mess and I think if will actually add to the atmosphere of the film.
I had originally thought I was going to do clean lines but ink bled; I abandoned that plan rather earlier on in the game because printer paper does not bleed the pilot pen ink very well. But that failing, I can still use the other aspect of my sketches. I will still be able to colour in the images easily enough using the drag tool paint bucket set to paint unpainted in toonboom. So messy lines of mayhem: here I come!

Character Animation WIPs

Patting Pony WIP from Kendra Davey on Vimeo.

This one (above) was done on paper with grease pencil. I intend to finish off the scene and clean it up digitally in toonboom.

Kelpie Head Whip WIP from Kendra Davey on Vimeo.

This one is just about done, I just need to fix the jaw close and then clean it up.

Animation WIPs: Splashes

splash wip from Kendra Davey on Vimeo.

emerge wip from Kendra Davey on Vimeo.

Cleaned Still

I've decided to clean up on the computer after all. The lines don't look too bad and then it's easy to apply watercolour textures in ToonBoom so that it still has that look.

Smear Drawings

One of the very best parts of animating in 2D is getting to do the smear drawings:

Life drawing: arm studies

Last Friday I focused on arms in life drawing as they've been giving me trouble in animation. I've become convince that hands aren't the real problem in my life: it's the long twisting, bending limb they're attached to.

Gestures: 1min

2Min

5Mins

10-15mins

15-20mins

I'm trying to play with stylization a bit more on my longer poses (and in this case getting bored and playing with water colour), so far they aren't straying too far from my regular observations.

I think next round I'll focus on necks.

Samurai Costumed Life Drawing

Illustration club has costumed life drawing. EFF YEA! So last time it was samurai. I got there late as there was another event that day around the same time. Why must there be so many events on Fridays?

There were two models and most poses ranged from 5-10 minutes in length.

Background Elements

Going to trim some these down to use as elements in the background. Thank you Jaquie (sp?) for helping scan them in! Still not quite sure about the ground colours. Playing with it.

Life drawing

10 AND 15 MINS?

BETWEEN 3 AND 5 MIN POSES
I 'unno, I missed the time call outs.

ONE MINUTE POSES

Another round of life drawing. I only stayed for the first half so had I had the shorter poses this week. My sketchbook is a bit bigger than the scanner...

Kelpie models

Final designs for the kelpie in "pretty pony" and "monster" forms. Pretty pony's legs are just a tad long here, but they're right in the scene I'm working on right now.

After watching Cats Don't Dance I've decided not to be too hard on myself sticking to the model and try to get myself to play more with squash and stretch.

Life drawing Jan. 28th

Last week's life drawing. I came late because I thought it started at 6. Apparently it started at 5, so I missed gestures. I think these were mostly between 10 and 20mins? First time I've done life drawing in ages. I really needed to shake off some rust.

A face off of grad film characters.

The result of sketchbook passing about between my friend Betty and I.