MOVED I haven't been on blogger much lately, and I haven't been enjoying it since their massive overhaul which made it impossible for me to find a follow button when visiting the blogs of others. That, coupled with their lack of support for gifs, has sent me towards tumblr. My new art blog can be found at kendaroo.tumblr.com. I hope to see you there.

I’ve been trying to get myself to practice drawing people from different angles. I found a good spot not far from my flat where I can look down on people walking on the path below. Only downside is that I can’t always see their legs past the edge of my roost. These are some after sketches I just did to test myself on what I’m actually retaining from the practice, as well as a sketch of the spot itself.

My attention span for airplanes was lower than I expected it to be at the airshow last month. My attention span for gesture drawing people on the beach was much better.

The Local Fowl

The studio is on a Farm. There are chickens right outside the building. They are entertaining to watch. I'd like to run around doing some more studies of them after we're done the current project.

Alternate Solutions to a Problem in Perspective

Paige was animating a wolf, and having troubles with it's arc of action in perspective. She came to realize that the problem was that the silhouette we wanted for the pose ultimately meant that, for the angle she was working at it from, the wolf would be landing in a handstand.

I oh-so-helpfully came up with some completely and utterly viable solutions to the problem that don't go out of character or offshoot from the action even a little bit.

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Ehm...

Finland Plant Studies

Our director, Sunna, came prepared with a fantastic selection of photos of local landscapes and plants (this turned out to be lucky as we found ourselves with limited internet access after the first half week). Having volunteered to animate the plants growing, I had the fun task of scouring through these photos keeping my eyes peeled for what might be different stages of life of the same plants, and improvising for the ones that only show up in one form. I've been trying to cross reference some of the plants' growth with local shrubbery where I can and the plants are similar enough. It's been an interesting puzzle to piece together. C'mon grade 10-11 biology! Don't abandon me now!

Reindeer Walk Study from Video Footage

We're animating our reindeer as cutouts, I didn't worry too much about the head movement as
1: reindeer are surprisingly stiff from head to tail,
and 2: Our puppets do no have moveable heads.

The walks came out quite well.

Cat Gestures

Gestures of a bengal cat named Sage. Spritely fellow.

Developing a New Character

I've got this idea for a character... but... it's weird... I have a ton of ideas for how he acts and hold himself, how he gestures when he talks, etc... I have no idea what he looks like. I've got some basic back story, some basic life goals, an idea of what he sounds like... again... no clue what he looks like. I think this is how one is normally supposed to develop a character... but it's the first time I've actually gone about it with any sort of commitment or intention. I'm thinking I might actually find a character designer to finish up the look... because I know from past experience that I can spend forever redrawing a character in different ways and never be happy enough to just stop and go with it. I've a project in mind for this guy... I'd like to get to the point where I can actually start animating it sooner rather than later. Eh, well, finish up the current project first, then see where I go with this I suppose.

Self Reference Sketches Sans Mirror or Camera

Also describable as the "balancing the tablet game".

Using Reference: Am I doing it right?

Park gestures

Ultimate frisbee players and people walking by.

I grew a flower.... and then I killed it!

I'm looking at the possibility of having to come to grips with the idea that I might be a special effects animator... On the current production I am animating flowers growing and dying. This was a fun little close up shot that my friend Paige inbetweened and coloured for me and loaded up as a gif to her tumblr.

I've also been growing (and killing) trees and bushes and shrubs and grass and whatnot.

This is a 6 week time frame to get out what is turning out to be a 3min-ish film, and there's just the 3 of us working on it. It's amazing how much faster things go when there's a director and a team.

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.

...

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&^%$

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.