Background Progress

My uni was holding an open day today, meaning the studio was open, so I decided to go in and started working on my background and going over it linelessly using the pen tool in Photoshop.

I haven't quite finished it yet, but this is what I have so far. I'll probably need to do the background for the first scene before I can complete it properly - I need to know what colour I want for the walls and carpet, since the doorway in the kitchen background leads into the living room from the first scene.

I'm not really sure about the colours at the moment, since I made this on a Mac and forgot that the colours would look different when I was back on my laptop. I might have to tweak them a little.

Not-so Megaman

I was struck by the urge to doodle and ended up drawing a few Robot Masters from Megaman 2 for the NES, looking... not terribly menacing. Hm.

Updated Animatic

Just finished the second version of my animatic, which has a lot more going on than my first one did. I had to cut one or two little things out in order to fit the time constraint, but I managed to get it to a minute exactly and I'm happy with the results. As with my first animatic, the voices are just placeholders until I get some proper ones. I recorded them in my room with my phone and I was trying not to talk too loudly, so the voice-acting isn't great, but hopefully they convey the right sort of emotion anyway.

For comparison, this was my first animatic (and the voice-acting is even worse because again, I was trying not to talk too loudly so my housemates didn't think I was talking to myself :P). There aren't really very many gags in it, so I think the new version is going to be a lot more fun to animate.

Warm-up Doodlings

Usually when I plug my tablet in (particularly if I haven't used it for a while), I do a few warm-up doodles before I do any proper drawing. More often than not these just consist of scribbles and circles that soon get erased, but sometimes...

...things like this happen. Hmm.

Stepping Out Of My Comfort Zone

Considering I took Graphics at GCSE, I should really have a better grasp on one point perspective than I do. But backgrounds aren't really something I draw very often, so I'm very, very out of practice.

...As you can probably tell from this horrendous first attempt. My goal was to create a kitchen background for my Comedy Brief animation, as I've made quite a few changes to what's going to happen after getting some feedback from my tutors. They essentially said that I should really be trying to get as much as I can feasibly and reasonably manage into my 1 minute time limit (argh rhyming), and made a few suggestions as to what could be changed.

My updated version will focus more on Percy, with Ivan feeling a little bitter that he has to go to work while his brother just lazes about in his underwear, and on his way out makes a quip about him not even being able to make a bowl of cereal. Percy takes the challenge and, once his brother has left, heads straight into the kitchen to get started.

After a montage/time-lapse scene of sorts in which Percy messes with blenders, opens every cupboard and door in the kitchen, scratches his butt with a spatula, somehow sets himself on fire temporarily and all sorts of other things, he finally manages it.

When Ivan comes home from work, he finds his brother in the exact same position as he'd been in before he'd left, only with an upturned, half-eaten bowl of cereal on his head instead of a bowl of Cheetos, and a spatula lying next to the sofa. ...And smoke billowing out of the kitchen.

While I was initially hesitant to move the focus away from the two brothers interacting with each other, I think this new idea will be a lot more fun to work on, and there'll be a lot more opportunities for gags and slapstick and whatnot.

I really wanted to get the background to look right, so after one other failed attempt and some help from my friend, I ended up with this, which is much better than my first one. While my first background has far too much floorspace and makes the room look like it's a funny shape, this one (while currently lacking in basic things like a cooker and a microwave) actually looks like an apartment kitchen.

The background is going to be done linelessly, but here's a colour test to finish this post off.

FLIP Animation Festival

This past weekend, I went to FLIP in Wolverhampton to do some volunteer work. I wasn't able to stick around for too long (my shift was 8 am - 11:30 am and I'd booked my train back for 1 pm), but it was still a great experience.

I was helping out with the Aardman workshop, where Jim Parkyn was showing people how to make a clay model of Gromit. A few of the other volunteers and I worked on some of our own as well, to help get the interest of the public and help out the people who were taking part.

So basically, I was making a Gromit model from scratch for 2 hours. :P

I also got to have a talk with Jim and other people who are studying/working in animation, and overall it was a pretty fun day.

These are some pictures I took of the progress of my Gromit model. I had a bit of a mishap in that he looked fine from the front, but when you looked at him from a higher angle, he suddenly started looking rather anxious.

As seen in this line-up of some of the finished Gromits. It didn't help that mine was right after Jim's considerably more professional looking one, but ah well.

To finish this post off, here's the quick, unfinished demonstration Gromit that Jim made while he was running through the procedure with us. :>

Truxton

A commission I did for my brother of a character he's fond of. Truxton belongs to an Electronic music artist known as Renard, who has many aliases for his various kinds of music, with Truxton being one of them.

This was a lot of fun to do, as I'm a huge sucker for contrasts in colours and this guy's colour scheme has some pretty nice ones in it. Since it pretty much consists of cool colours, I couldn't help but contrast it with a warm one for the background. So many bright colours.