Quiet isn't it?

Sorry for not updating. I have no idea if anyone reads this stuff or not but I like to think someone does. It's actually more for myself than anyone else. Being on so many forums also takes up a huge chunk of my spare time. I've given up slavishly watching loads, but there are a few art and animation ones I can't tear myself away.

Any hoot, I've been hard at work doing more animation on my main character. He's changed a fair bit since I started. I really need to get started on the other three. The position of the head is not that important at this stage, as I'm only interested in the body movement. The lapels have gone because they jumped around too much.



Since then I've been drawing vegetables. I'm drawing them straight from life. It's fun and I'm learning a lot. I'm rather proud of my broccoli. This was done totally in vector. It was slowing done my computer a lot so when I eventually ungrouped everything to find out how many objects there were and finding it was 44,777, was amazing. I know it took a few hours, but I didn't realise how many little bits I had.

Boy, has work been tough this month. Deadlines are next Tuesday and then I can relax a bit. I’ve been slodging out reading forums this month and not gone to any life drawing classes or done much in the drawing department because I’ve been too exhausted.

For my animation, I’ve been grinding away at backgrounds and background characters. No work has been done on the main characters and I really need to get back to them soon. I’ve been messing about with Antics to get the low down on some movements. The lead singer is fairly jerky, so using cold, shock and various other expressions; I can cobble together a reasonable dance routine. The Antic dance stuff really does suck, but small bits might be okay. By exporting it frame by frame I can use the movement to animate my characters by using the Antic models as templates. I know it’s not ideal, but I’m still learning loads even if it is the wrong way round. Actually, I learn most things the wrong way round; my brain must be wired up wonky.

Maybe if I had my life in front of me I might do things differently. I have a deadline and if I miss it, I’ll be kicking myself for the rest of my life. The window is fairly large (2010 – 2011), so I won’t be panicking until the end of next year.

Here’s another background. Just another 200 or so to go.

Getting bored with titles

Well, my husband is back in touch with his old manager. Seems that bygones are bygones, which is a relief for me. It would be nice if he made up with the lead singer’s ex-wife as well. I liked her and I think the whole thing is stupid, but I wasn’t around then.

Things are going slow on animation front. I’m still churning out the backgrounds; I need so many! I’m going to redo the other band members, especially the girls, now that I’ve rediscovered some of my drawing skills.

I forgot to mention that I won the June 2008 contest over on the Serif website with my Gherkin, and because I already had DP8, they offered me X2, the latest version. This has key frames, but I’m happier with stop frames (it looks better) at the moment. There are loads of additional features that I haven’t had time to explore yet.

Update

I did use biro on my third week, but didn’t restart any pictures. After over scribbling with biro, I mixed biro with pencil and was quite happy with the result (posted below) except for the hands. Then I went back to pencil and found that I had improved a bit.

Tomorrow we have a dancer as the model and there will be a lot of short poses.

Relearning

I’ve now been to two life drawing classes, and took my middle son to the second. I am very rusty. I look at my sketch book days later and this is what I see: the 30 second and 1 minute sketches are pure gesture - that's good for animation. Big improvement on the 1 minute ones from week 1, but the 30 second ones are lagging behind - looking like stick figures slightly fleshed out.

I really need to learn to draw faster if I’m going to be any good at animation. The five minutes were better but didn’t give much chance for correction of errors. That’s another thing, on the longer poses, I did correct bits but carried on overworking in other areas – I’m going to use biro next week to force me to look and if it’s wrong, I’ll start again. It’s what I used to do at Goldsmith’s – it was always the second sketch that was that much better.

I have to improve drastically, as my son is catching up fast on his first outing and he’s only twelve.

An Exercise

As I hadn’t put pencil to paper other than for doodles for more years then I care to mention, I thought I’d best refresh my skills. Oh boy, was I rusty! I can draw recognisable things but they were lifeless.

I posted a drawing of my hand that I drew using my tablet on www.animationforum.net. I had greatly overused the pencil tool on Serif DrawPlus8, but I was reasonably pleased with it. Then n00b set me a challenge to do a couple a day and see how I improved over a week.

It was so nice to get some actual criticism, that I did it. The next one was damned with faint praise – the thumb was good. It was true.

I sucked it up and took my anger out on the brambles with my shears and got a huge burst blister bang in the middle of my model. Sore, I dashed off another one just using negative space. This time I was asked if I had traced it – result.

My smugness did not last long. I had a day off and then did two using pencil. The first one was crap. I thought the second wasn’t that deadly, but again it was rightly pulled apart as it didn’t show enough volume.

Next a lecture with diagrams was posted for me to learn. In my heart of hearts I know where and why I’m going wrong, but it is practice, or lack of it, that’s failing me. It didn’t help that every time I moved my hand it would split back open along the same line, even when I was sleeping thus waking me up.

Grumbling, I did another one. I knew it was doing me good, but I was tired from being woken up by my model and after doing my day job, it was a real effort to do anything. Better volume, but then a review showed my third hand was the best – the one I dashed off!

I changed the lighting a bit and my next effort was posted. The pads of my palm looked puffy. That’s me saying it.

Anyhow, I thought I should do some life classes, get my shoulder moving again, so I googled (my favourite occupation). I found www.meetup.com and there are a number of groups in my area. Woot! Signed up for one and might be able to go along tomorrow evening. It’s difficult trying to concentrate on drawing with kids, husband, housework and cooking all calling me. Getting a few hours away to do this would be bliss.

The whole exercise has been very illuminating. The one thing I have learnt is not to put too much thought process into drawing and over kill it. I love Matisse’s line drawings and used to try to emulate them. The ability to create volume without any shading is perfect for animation and I need to get back to where I was once.

I had a little contretemps with photobucket recently. If you label life drawing as nudes, it doesn’t like it. Funny that it only removed three out of the eight I’d uploaded. As it pissed me off, I deleted the rest and posted them to Deviant Art instead – within 12 hours I had a subscriber. Any how, photobucket replied to my complaint and apologised for removing my life drawings in error. That was nice, but now I’m wary of this “family wholesomeness” that is prevalent in certain sections of the over PC brigade. Woe betide any child that looks on a picture of a nude person regardless of any artistic merit.

To me a body is to be celebrated in all their forms; an object to be drawn. Fat, thin or perfect, I’ll draw the lot. The one thing I have noticed is that pretty, perfect people are the hardest to do. Give me a knobbly, lanky person with all their reference points and I’m in heaven. A pretty person has even features, is smooth and well proportioned; fewer reference points makes an error shriek on the eye.

So here’s the filth (sketches are A5, the pastel is A3)