Life drawing 4

This week's life drawings:

2 minutes warm-ups:

3 minutes:

3 minutes with focus on shading:

The drawings I hung up on the wall of our studio:

Life drawing 3

Friday's life drawings:

2 minute poses:

3 minute poses:

10 minute poses:

I tried using different materials this time. The blue pastel was really fun; it felt safe and playful for some reason. This was also the first time I managed to add a bit of shading to my drawings. I'm learning to draw faster, although I still struggle a lot with finding the balance between gesture and proportions. The 2 minute- poses were done in compressed charcoal which I quite like because it's a lot darker than willow charcoal. It gets everywhere though and I'm already the one in my course who tends to end up with charcoal all over her face, so maybe I won't use it as often as I thought. 

Automata!

For the past few weeks, we have spent our Wednesday afternoons trying to make our own automata. The theme was "I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside" and inspiration was to be found from things like Juan Fontanive's "ornithology", Keith Newstead's work (which can be found here) and the book "Automata and Mechanical Toys" by Rodney Peppe.   

Ornithology, 2013 flip book machine from Juan Fontanive on Vimeo.

This one by Keith Newstead seemed appropriate for the theme:


But this one is my personal favourite:


I was confused by this brief at first and didn't really know what to do with it. It seemed like a nice idea but I just couldn't wrap my head around the little mechanisms and how to combine them with my ideas, which ranged from mermaids to musical hall performers via hurricanes. I settled on what seemed like a more simple idea: a dog swimming after a ball while the owner waves in the background.

I thought of using wave-shaped disks that would turn for the waves.This didn't work for the frontal view I wanted; I needed the waves to bob up and down.

When we finally went to the wood workshop to make a first prototype something clicked. It helped to be faced with the fact that I actually had to do it now. It still needs work (I forgot to plan a space for the dog and the man isn't finished) but I understand the mechanics much better now.   

The string will pull down the man's arms and the cams will make the waves go up and down. I used two different cams to make them move a bit differently.

This is what the little man looks like so far:

First test to see how to make it work:

            

What I have got so far (with Styrofoam waves in the background) :

Testing a swing animation in Stop motion

Yesterday I did a very rough test of a swing animation in stop motion. I used aluminium wire to make the chain and plasticine for the tire and attached the whole thing to a chair. It wasn't ideal but worked better than I thought it would. I think I might need to find a lighter material for the tire and make the chain a bit sturdier. The main challenge was getting the swing to stay in the right position as it tended to move down ever so slightly before I could grab a frame.

I also needed to figure out how the swing really moves. I made the mistake of just animating the entire construction at first but then I realized that there is actually a bit of secondary animation around the part of the chain which is directly attached to the tire. 
Nevertheless I am quite happy with this test. 

Life Drawing 2

This week's life drawings (2 minute poses): 

Illusionist's toolkit projects

I have started to work on a few projects this week. It is exciting to have several projects on which to work. That way I can go from one to the other as soon as I run out of ideas. 

1.Thinking outside the box 

In this exercise we have to draw a storyboard of a match trying to get inside a match box. The emphasis is on dynamic performance and the match should not be anthropomorphic. I have been juggling with ideas about why the match is outside of the box, why it wants to get back and why it can't but I haven't had any good ones yet. So far I have done a bit of character design in which I played around with the different states of the matchbox and what I could do with flames and smoke.

I am considering doing this in 3D because I quite enjoy doing squash and stretch in 3D and I think it might be a good way to make myself use Maya. However this one is a team exercise and our teams will be announced next week (if I remember correctly) which means all of this will probably change a lot.  

2. Swing

For this exercise I have to animate a memory of my childhood involving a swing. Obviously this is a classic exercise in animating a pendulum but I really like the idea of exploring childhood memories. I already have a specific tire-swing in mind. The many playgrounds I went to as a kid might end up getting jumbled together in my head so I don't have an exact location in mind, however I know it will take place in autumn since that is my favourite time of the year back home. My home town is beautiful in the fall and dead multicoloured leaves and chestnuts feel like a big part of my childhood there. 

I would love to do this in stop motion. I think it just has the kind of charm that fits the idea of childhood memories perfectly. 

3. Hook, line and sinker

This exercise is based on the Disney half filled sack of flour exercise. In this case, the sack has to interact with a hook and a sinker. They can be separate characters or just props but the main character is the sack of flour and the narrative has to be based on the idea of "being fooled" (hence the title). I am not sure what method of animation I want to use for this one yet, although I am leaning towards 2D. So far I have only played around with the sack-character, I still need to work on the other elements. 

Life drawing 1

Last Friday was our first session of life drawing, which we will be doing every Friday until Christmas break. The model was a young woman and the poses were 2 to 3 minutes long. I had never done life drawing before and found it rather difficult in the beginning. It got easier as I warmed up and relaxed and I really enjoyed it in the end even though it was surprisingly tiring. I have to say I have a lot of respect for people who work as models. I can't imagine it being easy to spend hours being naked in front of strangers, especially if those strangers are a group of 19 to 20-something year old students. Those people do a great job.

On a side note, the life drawing lesson reminded me of a youtuber called David Razi who, a few years ago, made this video: 

He is really funny and he has made a lot of videos about his time in art school. I always find it a great source of inspiration to hear other people talk about their experience with things I am doing myself, especially if they are funny.

The first hand-in!

Our server is back and none of our files were lost! Last night I put together all the work I have done so far and uploaded it to vimeo. Here it is:

 

If anything, putting this video together was a nice way for me to see where I stand. I definitely need to work more on my 3D animation although I have to say stop motion is so far my favourite way of working. Since this is only my first year however, I think it is still too early to focus too much on one method. I am still exploring.  

Gifs of bouncing balls

Here is some of my animation work I managed to find. I finished the water balloon and claw during the reading week and I am quite happy with the way it turned out. 

On learning the hard way

Data loss!

Our network crashed just before the reading week (which was last week by the way). Guess who didn't save all her work to her external hard-drive and Google drive every day. That's right, me. And to be fair my entire course and since we're all young and innocent first years, our teacher was kind enough to postpone our deadline until the network problem is solved and we find out if we have actually lost all our work or if it is still there, patiently waiting for us. Of course this shouldn't have happened and we are all idiots. 

#AnimationDay

I didn't know it was animation day yesterday. According to http://asifa.net/international-animation-day it commemorates this first public performance of this film:

 

In celebration of Animation day I thought I'd share one of the animation films that I not only love but that also made me want to be an animator. It's Yuriy Norsteyn's Hedgehog in the fog.



Yuriy Norsteyn is an amazing Russian animator who made stunningly beautiful movies. I hope I get round to writing more about him some day because he is a truly fascinating artist who has influenced many other and who was called "a great artist" by the wonderful Hayao Miyazaki himself (right here: http://www.theblackmoon.com/Deadmoon/spiritedaway2.html).

Mother Moor

Two years ago, I went to what is known in Scandinavia as a folk high school called "The European Film College" in Denmark. For my final film project, I was an animator and sound designer on my friend Niels Harpøth's directorial debut "Mother Moor", which has been put up on the EFC website. You can find it here http://www.europeanfilmcollege.com/ either on the home page or under student film > final projects. It is the most fun I have had on a project so far and given the fact that it was our first animated film together, I am still quite happy with how it turned out. 

Little bit of animation

This is a little thing I did a couple of days ago. I realized too late that the balloon doesn't fall perfectly on the second step, but I thought it was high time I shared a little bit of actual animation work. So here is a small preview of a work in progress.