These posts will probably keep getting shorter and shorter the busier I am! The main reason being that the current project / commissions i'm working on aren't really things I can showcase just yet. Im i'm still trying to keep on top of my own personal projects like regular sketches... SHAUN T for example.
I'm also really wanting to update my concept art game, but that's looking less likely this side of the year but i'm still hoping to cram it in to my days.
My current list of priorities are:
1. Animation Project (With Natasha)
2. Commissions x 3 (before Christmas)
3. Comic Commission (for Phil)
4. Ribbiting Comic
5. Creative life (including Drumming, Concept Art and other projects)
I need to be stricter with myself and make sure i'm sticking to my own personal schedule - 4 and 5 are falling to the wayside for too easily and that's even before starting #3. but i've got a handle on it me thinks...its all about more and often! So dedicating an hr or 2 each day of solid work to 4&5 should help a lot.
Definitely been a bit on the slow side in terms of personal projects, mainly due to Dudley (Natasha) and I landing some freelance work =D its a 2D project which i'll keep hush for now, but been pretty flat out all week with illustrating and kicking off the 2D animation next week.
Now that i have my time back, i've started a couple of online courses to help me progress with my animation. I'm doing a Programming in Python Course and Game App course all courtesy of Future Learn.
They're about 4-7 weeks long and it's a lot of into to take in. But knowing all the stuff I learnt this last year and some previous knowledge of basic coding is really gonna help - I don't entirely feel like a deer caught in the headlights just yet!
ALSO almost at the end of inktober and I think i've learn heaps, and my style has definitely relaxed a lot more. I'm gonna do a more concept art based challenge next month to get my environments up to scratch.
Im in serious Inktober mode - working mainly on my speed. I'm still not Natasha quick, but in the last week i've found that i'm getting quicker and less hesitant with my lines.
Here are a few and I still need to draw the first 4 days that I missed. Trying to do different things and not just stick to my comfort portraits (which is working).
Well this has taken me longer than hoped mainly due to just having time to do it... but i'm calling this finished!
Pretty happy with this and I know that in a few months i'll be able to do a much better one but as it stands i'm happy with it ha. Still need to work on adding much more personality and secondary movements in other areas like the head etc but that will be with my next cycle
I've pretty much spent the week (or bits of it) working on a walk cycle haaaa. I've sketched, resketched, and resketched again atleast 6 times, each time figuring out something new. I'm also starting to give it a bit more weight and character...
This is the most recent rough one with Garnet (Steven Universe) as my model. This will need tweaks a a few inbetweens so I can get it to a semi polished state
__________________________________
Also finally kicked off my Inktoberrr haaaa, using it as a an excuse to try out new things and push my character work a bit more
So before moving onto the next stage of my 2D animation learning, i've decided to redo some of the previous tasks after paying better attention and really considering timing and the principles. I don't want to just gloss over steps and I really want to improve quickly.
I've realised (and so has Natasha) that i've got a good understanding / grip of the principles, but depending on my artistic mood (mainly laziness) I can let these slip in favour of finishing quickly. oops.
Well eithr way i'm keep reworking on some of these. The flour sack kicking the ball was the first to go!!
Old
New
Finally 'fleshed out' the jump. I think this one will be redone once I get near to the end of my task list
More daily practice. I think this one was a bit rushed, I could definitely have worked more on the weighting especially. But its good I can recognise that
Task 11: Flour Sack Kicking a Ball
Task 12: Change in Character Emotion
The hilarity of it all.
Task 13: Character Jumping Over a Gap
I need to flesh this one out...
Task 13: Standing Up From a Chair
Was a bit lazy with this one, but I guess my main aim was to get the key poses in - i've been working in 1s so i'm trying to break that habit kinda...
I also decided to sculpt the creepiest thing i've ever seen in my life... and abuse the polypaint tool
I present, Day 7 of my Speed Sculpt. The creators of Stephen Universe must be quaking in their boots
Day 8: in my attempt to reacquaint myself with ZSpheres, ZBrush turned on me today. So this was less of a speed sculpt and more of a lesson in confusion and patience. Im planning to make this one a longer project.
It's almost 6am and I am in full character design mode for the short comic project i'm working on with Kaitlin.
It's always nice to flex my design muscles, but also focus on diversity outfits etc. I've tried to keep the designs simple because they need to be easily recognisable on the page (without confusing the reader / viewer) annddd there's lots going on with lots of characters on the same page at the same time so each character needs to 'pop' but not for the wrong cluttered reasons.
Not sure if that makes sense... its 6am. HERE THEY ARE
THIS was definitely a lot tricker than I thought it would be... sneak animators island...
Learnings are...that I DEFINITELY need to be more patient AND pay more attention to my timing. But I also need to make sure i'm blocking out the key poses - which I haven't really been doing. A bit of exaggeration wouldn't go a miss either!
Task 8: Flour Sack Waving
Task 9: Flour Sack Jumping
Speed Sculpt day 5 & 6! Trying to be a bit more creative...
Did this in 20 mins using Dynamesh... my main aim was to see what I could achieve in this time and see where I lag / faff around, as as per usual its with trying to add in as much detail as possible too soon, and I didn't even achieve this haha. I need to get better at blocking rough shapes then building on these
Speed Sculpt Day 3:
Done in about 35 mins - quick attempt at my face taking learnings from yesterday, like using the move and mask tools better, and the move brush.
Speed sculpt day 4: A slow and unfinished version of the Dr himself, Mr Peter Capaldi. I must commit to finishing these. But again, learning new things as I go along. This was about 25 mins. A sloppy 25 mins I must admit.
And my Animators Island for Task 3:
Decided to add in the ball as well to push myself a bit and get better with timing.
Getting less rusty on the principles, and visualising testing things a lot more, especially where weight is concerned!
Annnddd here's Task 4: Simple character head turn!
Task 5: Character head turn with anticipation
Task 6: Character Blinking - which oddly enough I found more tricky. Slowing stuff down always is
After a mini (2 month) hiatus, i've been reacquainting myself with ZBrush!
This is the ridiculous result. I just had to remind myself of the hotkeys etc and I was mucking around with Dynamesh which is something I didn't use in my last ZBrush stint.
I plan on doing a speed paint a day for the next month alongside my 2D animation shit so hopefully this time next month i'll see some massive improvements in my skill and speed, as well as my creative ideas. Need to break out of the face sculpting bubble!
This is a couple of months old, but i'm reposting it to remind myself that I can actually sculpt. ha
Also pulling together some rough sketches for the comic project. Kaitlin's asked me to put the breaks on this one for the meantime and to focus on a project that's shorter which i'm going to start work on tonight after day 2 of my animation challenge.
alas the animation journey ceases to be over, and as mentioned all year i'm working on getting my 2D animation up to scratch with the help of one Miss Natasha Dudley and Animators Land.
I'm going completely back to basics to make sure I don't pick up any bad habits, and we're going to be doing daily / weekly sessions. So hopefully in a few weeks I can start work on the 2D project ive got in mind.
For now, I present BOUNCING BALLS... my first attempt is definitely shameful, but a fair (still shocking) warm up i'd say...
Other projects in the pipeline:
- Comic with Kaitlin, Natasha and a few other peoples
- 2D animation project
- 3D animation project - this will be a bit trickier when it comes to rendering but i'll tackle that when I get to it.
I've also pulled together a breakdown reel and my show reel for the upcoming Master Show.
I guess next steps for me are to now SLEEP for a very long time, and start working on my 2D animation skills and tests which Natasha has kindly offered to help me with.
EDITING EDITING EDITING with Sushma's kind guidance ! It's nice to have an extra set of eyes because mine are official crossed and lacking sleep.
Fingers crossed all editing will be finished by Friday (not much to tweak, woohoo!) and should also have the credits done in the next couple of days to render everything out and pretend this was all a confusing dream. :D
Haaaaa it is 7am and I have FINALLY finished all compositing / colour correcting... considering I don't even have that much in there effects wise its taken a hell of a long time. Standard slowness... although I think the unexpected tracking probably had something to do with it haaa
Some completed shots I was using for colour correction reference!
You FINALLY find the tracking for your background / matte painting information you've been searching for and it doesn't require mocha or tell you that your 3D camera tracker is broken....
My own fault for attempting to be fancy with my camera angles. Woe is me
Where the hell have I been... feel like ages since my last update. ha. Well also life is still non-existent and all sleep and waking hours appear to revolve around finishing this project... which I can happily say is 80% done with just under 2 weeks to go.
Considering i've been away the last few days the extra 4 days will definitely make all the difference. But i'm still working towards the date of the 7th. i'm aiming to have compositing finally finished by Friday, with the weekend for final edits :) then the last few days will be my credits hopefully!
I've been looking at a few tutorials to help with a couple of things like using my ID passes to emit glows (this I was unable to find in the way that I needed, but I managed to work out my own way). I was mos nervous about creating a breath for shot 6/7, which turned out to be pretty damn easy -_-
The ID passes have been sooo sooo useful for some of the unexpected masking that i've had to use - mainly with the landscape and my character blocking each other out on shots - things I hadn't really considered before (mainly time when the landscape has been in the fore ground to look like a mountain/ rock...if that even make sense).
OH and this has happened for promoting the Masters show...(a very good idea from Ritchie and Kaitlin)
In terms of the other other projects... Hell Well
I've still been colouring and doing some minor clean up for Yannis's shots, and he's been really really helpful in giving me some After Effects tips, as well as some TV Paint short cuts in terms of colour. I wish I was able to do more but this compositing malarkey has taken a bit longer than i'd initially hoped (mainly due to my slowness I think) - but hoping to colour a couple more shots next week
Once Bitten
I've been colouring a few shots for Slava, and again I wish I was able to do more :( Butttt what I like about this project is that Slava has animated it in Photoshop, which is something i'd like to try at some point, so it's been really cool to see how she has structured this.
Lets Find Them Together
I've been doing quite a bit for this the last few weeks (in terms of various tasks), I've provided the script as well as the narration hahaha. All the animation on my side is finished and because I was going away I provided the group with a document for setting up renders (based on knowledge from Sean and my own learnings). I think it will also be really really useful for me (and others hopefully) to have at a later date if I ever forget how to render lol.
So after a day of avoidance and blaming the world, i've finally come to terms with compositing, and decided that I actually do understand it and I actually can do it.. especially if Dragonball is playing in the background.
In order to hit my own personal deadline (all compositing finished by 29th) I need to be doing 3 shots a day - this might seem a bit much / long, but ima way for 2 days so I need to make sure I make up for that lost time and have time to complete my credits!
I've already had a 'minor' setback / realisation - this being that my Matte Paintings are kinda no good haaaa. Putting together my initial shots with colour corrections, effects etc i've seen that they just don't fit anymore.. and this is mainly due to me finalising my landscape textures a few weeks after completing my backgrounds, so they 2 don't gel.
I'm gonna tweak them so they fit my current style / Borderlands-esque look.
Here's the current look...:(
And after doing a quick test in Photoshop by throwing my landscape texture on as an overlay i'm already getting much better results, so i'm gonna tweak them all tonight and get back on track with compositing tomorrow.
Need to add a bit more depth/ variation so it doesn't look flat but I think they'll be ok. In terms of effects so far i've added in a slight star twinkle and some dust/gases type things! I don't want to overload it to much as I still need it to look 2D-esque
I'm also finding that i'm getting slightly better results by using my painted colour corrections and adding those into AE. I' trying to keep on track with the 2D ness of it all, and thats also given me the idea of adding any extra lines /out lines that I might need on the landscape or my character by creating them in PS, importing into AE and just animating the translates to follow my character. This will be more useful with the helmet I think! Back to Dragonball... the motivation is real.
A few of the updated textures! This is a lot more similar to the initial background design that I did - mainly in terms of lines and textures (but definitely better ha)
I wanted an eerie effect for the first half hence the red and green, and then lighter / happier for the end - but i'll probably still do some more colour correction in AE.
Still having issues with the dance again, although i've made it easier on myself b cutting it up into different camera shots so I can work on less animation an make changes on animation layers - its also given me the chance to cut out key frames.
I'm pretty much working the routine out from scratch now to get it to work properly and I really need to have it finished by the end of the week. So I can direct my full attention to compositing (and other projects O_O)
____________________
I've also been animating again for Ritchie doing a walk cycle for Peanut (the little cat). I initially looked at a typical quadruped cycle (Some very useful Walk Cycles: Here)...
... only to then fail and remember that this isn't your typical quad - the legs are really short and kinda modelled like a humans.. not the character needs be more in the face and I need to be a bit smarter with the strides.
First test: Walk 1 - too much happening here in the upper body.. make it all look very unfluid and like the body ad legs come from different things.
Second walk: Walk 2 - much better follow through, although a bit too much baby walk-ish! And need to get the translate to match up better which is proving rather tricky due to the leg length and stride pattern.
I've cleaned that walk up a bit more and have applied it to Peanut walking across the road... again more to clean up and I was having a couple of deformation issues with the global control, but animation layers have helped me cheat it slightly.
Aiming to have this cleaned and finished by tomorrow / Friday latest!
